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[Question]
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I'm writing a story about a company similar to Google, i.e. which wants to know everything about everyone and which wants to trace everything that is traceable out there. But which, at the same time, wants to secure their key, top-management workers (CEO, CFO, CTO etc.) from being traceable by all, including own company.
The key requirement: next to being most secured and untraceable, this phone must also be as flexible and operational and possible and thus usage of public infrastructure and solutions is a must. Complete separation from public industry (i.e. own transmission network) is out of discussion due to:
* costs,
* inability or high cost of hiding such network from others and
* lack of flexibility -- inability to cover the entire world (as public GSM network currently covers it).
This requirement could span one of two areas:
1. Make such phone completely untraceable to other 3rd parties.
2. Make it traceable by others but use some special solution to transmit sensitive data and only hide this data from others.
So far I have come with only one idea. Very limited one. And only for the second area above.
Since this company is worldwide and very influential in IT business, being part of steering committees in many projects, technology solutions, protocols etc., it could possibly "include" (technical details not important at this level) some garbage in one of GSM or Internet transmission protocols, convincing others that this garbage is necessary, but easy to be filtered out. Regular phones would actually filter out this garbage while "these" phones would use it to encode and transmit sensitive data hidden in this "noise". Something a bit similar to using steganography for hiding sensitive data in images etc.
Are there any other options that I do have do consider? Can I achieve area one (i.e. making phone completely not traceable while still using the public network) using today's or very-near-future technology?
[Answer]
[Satellite phones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_phone) are clearly the answer; these days they don't need a huge bulky antenna, and if you handwave technological advancement a bit you could say that these high-level executives have special sat-capable phones that look like normal cell phones in a bulky case.
Then, your company just needs a few satellites in orbit - either they put them up there (which is within the means of large tech companies) or [someone sells the service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation). Add standard encryption security measures and VOIP gateways, and you've got something that works more or less like a regular cell phone except it can't be traced with any real degree of precision.
The best a third party with control of the network can do is figure out which satellite your phone is connected to. However, each satellite can receive from a huge area (think all of Europe), so that's not very helpful.
Of course, if there are people looking for you on the ground (or in the air), they can look for the signal your phone is sending. That's unavoidable if you want to send any kind of signal, though.
[Answer]
# Your idea won't work.
First, please read any of the RFC documents. These are open to general public, so you can. For example, [739](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc793) seems a good example. Nothing is left unexplained. Most people will not understand it, all right, but technical staff will read documentation and see what's there.
Data = money. If you want to convince other parties to increase data usage, keep in mind you are convincing them to lose money, to make their service work in a poorer, slower way. Overhead introduced must serve a really, really solid purpose, that ultimately leads to increased earnings. Increased overhead decreases earnings.
# Two parts of your question
## Making phone untraceable
This is, by its very nature, impossible. If you can't locate [BTS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_transceiver_station) that's closest to the phone, you can't call that phone. So a big no if using regular phone network. This literally have to be done.
Own set of BTS is costly, and still phone needs to broadcast some kind of identification code to pick up base stations in reach, or BTS needs to broadcast - and phone will answer. Even with encryption, and public keys broadcasted, it'll be easy to pinpoint a phone, and a matter of time to identify which one is it. Call your opponent and see increased radio transmissions?
For satellite phones it might be easier, but you would need directional antenna, so it wouldn't be simple "pick up the phone". Someone would need to set up na antenna, target it at satellite with directional transmission. Closest to untraceable, but not good enough. You will need more sensitive receiver to pick up transmission from the side, but then you'll be pretty sure what it's directed at. Dedicated team would be able to do this.
## Untraceable data
It's a tiny bit simpler. Heavily encrypted VPN with pseudo-rendom keep-alive traffic. We have it now. Anyone would be able to see your phone is transmitting, and trace that transmission to company's server1. But it is hard to know what's in this transmission, and obfuscating times of actual data transfer is well within our reach even now.
Of course, no phone calls. Only [VoIP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_IP),
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1 Or any other VPN or routing service. Just remember that exit nodes of Tor can be provided by anyone... including ones that wants to sniff you, as shown by [Silk Road case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace)). So don't trust onion routing too much.
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As other answers point out, the 1st area is not reachable. Every phone must transmit radio waves, and it must [identify itself to the network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_mobile_subscriber_identity) to receive calls/traffic. If your special phone doesn't do it, it can't function within the network. Cloning the phones of the normal people isn't reliable (they will receive your calls sometimes), and in the end, traceable.
You could get somewhere near the 2nd area, however. With cooperation of **the *entire* industry and government**, a *side channel* can be built into the network that would use [onion routing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_routing) to throw traffic of some select phones randomly across the whole network, hiding the original phone.
It requires cooperation of another parties, however, as otherwise your side channel won't be kept in the system, and you can even be punished for being sneaky. And such cooperation is unlikely:
* Your competitors don't care that much about being traced, but care a lot about making money, and cutting the side channel makes the whole system cheaper.
* The very top brass of the government won't use the cell phone networks, they have dedicated satellite communication instead. And they actually want to trace everyone else, including your company execs.
Also, ordinary people will complain about the side channel consuming their batteries.
[Answer]
This is actually a solved problem. As most of the other answers have pointed out, you can't really make a phone untraceable, as it needs to uniquely identify itself to connect to the network(s) that make it usable. It is possible to spoof or clone the unique identifiers on the phone, but the standard solution to this problem is to make it so that the phone can't be linked to the person using it. For most people, this means "burner phones". Cheap, disposable pay-as-you go phones bought with cash and thrown away after a short period of use.
With the resources available to wealthy CEO, rather than buying cheap flip phones to use as burners, you'd be able to buy smartphones with security-centric OSes, but the principle is the same. You can't make the phone untraceable, so you prevent it being attributed to the person using it, who is really the target of the tracking in the first place.
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**Untraceability is basically impossible**
>
> Make such phone completely untraceable to other 3rd parties.
>
>
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In security, absolutes are rare. When talking about security, you talk about *attack vectors* and *adversaries*.
This is playing against you here, because as the top executives of a top company you are on the watch list of all the biggest adversaries; unlike Joe Random.
That is, we are talking about protecting yourself from the CIA, NSA, MI6, the Kremlin, ... every single secret service in the world. You *must* assume that every single operator you are interacting with is being tapped.
Even using your own access to the network (via satellites) does not protect you from detection; waves can be intercepted and used to locate you. And secret services have the means to.
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**Hiding in Plain Sight, however, is within reach**
>
> Make it traceable by others but use some special solution to transmit sensitive data and only hide this data from others.
>
>
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This is I think within reach.
We are talking about Google as our basis, so:
* Android,
* Chrome,
* Gmail,
* Youtube,
* ...
Every single smart-phone owner sends and receives data from a nearby Google data-center. And these applications use custom protocols to communicate, over encrypted channels.
There's nothing easier than hiding a hidden functionality, tied to your phone, that allows you to use those same channels for increased communication.
And there's nothing suspicious about a Google top executive using Google services/applications.
Hiding phone/video calls is a bit more complicated: the download patterns are easily hidden in a Youtube connection, but the upload patterns require something new... so people may realize you are uploading data (thus communicating), but you are communicating with only Google (you) knows.
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**Yes, making a phone like this is possible** - with cooperation with other big companies, data that your imaginary Google already collects, and some additional hardware.
There are two main factors that make up "phone identity" - phone IMEI and SIM card data, and both of them form an "identity". For example, if you use different SIMs in one phone, they are linked in your cell provider's database. *If anybody at the cell provider is even going to care about your shenanigans, this is the data they would use to try to determine what the hell you are.*
Now, with [IMSI catching](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSI-catcher), you can impersonate cell base stations and intercept other phones, and then steal identities. Say, you're a fake base station that 5 other phones have connected to. Now you have 5 "phone identities" to choose from, and whenever the real phone's owner wants to use the services, you simply relay his requests to the real base station.
That is one thing. Once you have a database of identities, feel free to use them almost anywhere! You just need to figure out the ones that have unlimited data plans. Then, you can disguise your phones as "cheap Chinese phones". Why? **There are things that modern cell providers already don't care about.** Many of cheap Chinese phones have duplicate IMEIs. From what I know from local phone black market, many cell phone providers have learned to just live with this and accept those phones into their networks - customer satisfaction.
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Now, this all needs technical know-how and highly educated people. No problem - you're a large company, you can ask another large company to do it for you. If they ask, you can say you need this as part of a contract for a three-letter agency. In fact, you can say it's a private contract, and if they want to dig deeper, make it look like a cleverly hidden three-letter agency contract.
What about the "unknown parts" of GSM chips that you can't take a look inside? **Just buy a company which makes GSM chips**, then ask their engineers if they could implement a backdoor. They'll either 1) refuse (that means there's none, and those aren't the people you want to work with) 2) start working on it (there's none, and you "lose interest and scrap the backdoor project") 3) they tell you about one (there is one, and you can tell them to scrap it) This is so you don't have to ask directly, but you still get an honest answer).
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Disclaimer: I'm working on a phone which, among other features, is designed to be as untraceable as possible while using technology that even hobbyists have available - avoiding data collection by both cell carriers and technology companies, as well as fake base stations and GSM jamming.
[Answer]
Everything is traceable. Something just take longer time to trace.
SO your mobile phone (or just call it internet machine) would need to cloud itself into own net before sending data.
Using public services it could establish special net made of nearby wifi, setting everything with memory as a sender of partial data thus making it difficult to trace the source.
Second: why would you need to have no traceable phone? Just use any device that can send data, set a relay and order it to connects in 4 hours. And thanks to Samsung we know it's very easy to set those things to autodestruct.
What you could consider, and it's really good but it sound silly, is to send data with pigeon. Sending a bird with 1TB of data Is totally untraceable.
[Answer]
## Reception - Global broadcast
As other answers have pointed out, one important hurdle you need to scale is that data needs to get to your phone.
Current implementations require your phone to let nearby towers know it's there, so that data can get routed to your phone *efficiently*.
However, this is not *necessary*. You can do broadcasting, ie. sending the data to **every single phone in the entire world**. If the data is properly encrypted, only yours will be able to understand it.
This already exists for SMS: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast>
Note that this would only be feasible for a small number of phones, since otherwise you would quickly saturate the entire network, but you did say it was for a few key people.
Note that you really, really need to have rock-solid encryption, because every single hacker in the world will also receive the data.
And finally, note that yes, you will need to get other companies to accept this broadcast traffic. You can probably get away with an excuse along the lines of: "let's implement this in case of global emergency, we keep the keys so no-one can use this without permission".
## Sending - no real solution
So you can receive data, but sending is another problem. Your phone will always be the single source of the transmission.
Now transmissions like these always hop over a number of stations. The best way to go is to ensure you reach a station you control ASAP. Once there you can totally cover your tracks. This means no-one can work their way back to your phone from any station between yours and the final destination. They could find your phone if they start somewhere between your phone and your station, but they'd have to know where to start looking.
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You could use a phone that hack other's phones, Then removes all traces after hacking.
This would therefore make actions of these CEOs recorded under the identity of somebody else. and this other identity all the time different.
This shall not be hard to imagine this kind of implementation by a big software/apps company.
We can still Note that even if we would not be able to trace who would be using this feature, and when, it would still be not so hard for a proper hacker to discover a list of phones IDs which are allowed to use this feature...
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There cannot be an "untraceable" mobile phone. The carrier network *must* by necessity know where the phone is at all times, otherwise it won't be possible for the network to route calls to the phone... If the network doesn't know where the phone is, then when somebody tries to call that phone the network will say that the subscriber is out of the coverage area. If you want your phone to ring it means that you have to let the carrier know where you are.
However, if you are willing to relax the requirements a little, you may have better untraceability. The communication device (not a "phone") may be able to use available free Wi-Fi networks to establish encrypted communications with a VPN (virtual private network) server, and use this encrypted channel to connect to other devices; the user may then run some sort of voice-over-IP software, providing much of the functionality of a telephone. Note that while such a solution makes the communication device pretty untraceable, the problem has just been pushed upwards to the VPN/gateway server; if the nefarious adversary breaks that server they will have access to all the communications of the user(s), or at least to the associated metadata.
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With our current technology, and not working with military, **no, you can be traced as long as your phone is on**. There might be a way around this, but I have never heard of it, and will make you a very rich person. Maybe wanted as well...
If we obay this:
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> as flexible and operational as possible
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Transport of the data (calling, browsing, mailing etc), the [network provider](http://www.pcworld.com/article/228813/what_your_wireless_carrier_knows_about_you.html), will know what phone you have and probably where you are, within 50ish meters. If you use WiFi, you can be [located](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_positioning_system) even closer.
The data itself can be [encrypted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption), but you will need professionals to do it right. Luckily you are from such a company, so that could work.
To give an idea how hard it is to get what you want: [Unknown parts](http://www.osnews.com/story/27416/The_second_operating_system_hiding_in_every_mobile_phone) of every mobile phone. [Black Phone](https://www.silentcircle.com/). Whatsapp [Encryption](http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/feature/internet/how-secure-is-whatsapp-whatsapp-security-encryption-explained-3637780/) (one of your competitors). [Hunted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunted_(2015_TV_series)) (TV show).
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This is already a thing. Either use a [crypto phone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_phone) or encryption [here](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2042096/does-encryption-really-shield-you-from-governments-prying-eyes.html) and [here](http://www.tomsguide.com/us/smartphone-encryption-faq,news-21915.html).
>
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> >
> > Crypto phones are mobile telephones that provide security against eavesdropping and electronic surveillance.
> >
> >
> >
>
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> The interception of telecommunications has become a major industry.
> Most of the world's intelligence agencies and many private
> organisations intercept telephone communications to obtain military,
> economic and political information. The price of simple mobile phone
> surveillance devices has become so low that many individuals can
> afford to use them.[1](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2042096/does-encryption-really-shield-you-from-governments-prying-eyes.html) Advances in technology have made it
> difficult to determine who is intercepting and recording private
> communications.
>
>
> Crypto phones can protect calls from interception by using algorithms
> to encrypt the signals. The phones have a cryptographic chip that
> handles encryption and decryption. Two algorithms are programmed into
> the chip: A key-exchange algorithm for the key agreement protocol and
> a symmetric-key algorithm for voice encryption.
>
>
>
Basically this is real-world technology. For a high-level IT company implementing the right sort of phone technology and encryption should be child's play.
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### Possible: Skype over Tor
It depends if you are willing to differentiate 'untraceable' from 'undetectable', because if you are using GSM (or similar) the handset will be detected.
So, if you want to be able to make a call that cannot be traced, and you are happy enough to use mobile internet (eg Skype) as the medium of communications, then you can make your calls untraceable by implementing over Tor.
VOIP won't work with Tor, because VOIP depends upon UDP packets, whereas Tor only supports TCP packets. (UDP tunneling would suffer from latency issues).
Unlike VOIP, Skype has a fallback option when UDP is blocked, and it's very good at handling network/bandwidth issues, which is fortunate because Tor has an inherent latency issue.
So don't try video. But audio Skype over Tor is tried and tested.
Using today's technology, that's probably the best option you will get.
The problem with vanilla Skype is that it is probably [CALEA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act) compliant. However, your company is 'like Google', so it should be totally plausible for the company to develop a 'stealth' secure non CALEA derivative of 'Skype' (or a less tech. dependent version of Hangouts for that matter).
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It's not (currently) within our technological capabilities, but not completely out of the bounds of possibility: how about going quantum? Maybe the company has managed to integrate a mechanism for entangling and modulating the spin on the photons involved in the radio transmission?
The combination of the potential for quantum cryptography, along with the steganographic bonus of nobody even thinking of looking there might make it a good candidate. (Plus, one of the bonuses of using entanglement and spin is that if someone did look, the person sending the signal would know that the transmission had been intercepted!)
[Answer]
Being only a layman i may be completely wrong, but:
In order for your phone to be reachable and to use the network, it needs to call in to the nearest cell. It needs to identify itself, so calls and data can be routed. all this can and will be logged and traced.
One way to work around this would be to have a very large number of different IDs. Think of an RFA token that generates a new key every 60 seconds. You might do the same with your phone ID (basically your phone number). Now you need your service provider to handle these ID switches, which should be possible, maybe creating a little bit of lag.
A caller would dial your regular number, some tech routes the call to the current ID.
I think that would make sure your device just became a lot harder to trace.
It would still be possible, if you had access to the algorithm and code for the ID switches.
It will also be partially traceable without these for longer phone calls, so long as the device you are communicating with does not use the same technology, because you "only" need to trace who the caller is connected to.
And of course if the person or agency that wants to know your current position just calls you, they will be able to trace where this call goes.
Not exactly what you are looking for, but it will at least make tracing harder.
Obviously, there is the one thing all of us can do, which is to switch off the device when we don't need it, at the price of not being reachable. Which need not always be a bad thing...
[Answer]
## The crux is bandwidth availability
Where bandwidth is modestly plentiful, there's no worries anonymizing data, for instance WiFi.
However, where bandwidth is expensive and/or needs to be throttled to protect all users (e.g. the cellular data networks), the usual gating protocol is *paying for it*, which means your network connection will not have anonymity. If the FBI wants your cell phone, they'll subpoena all the major carriers, one will say "Joe Dissident is our customer, he's at Main and Market right now". That's a big damn problem.
## But then you Tor everything
However, they'd have no earthly idea what Joe Dissident is browsing or doing, because every device on earth would run a Tor-like protocol which would anonymize everything deeply.
## Or maybe not *quite* everything.
OK, so sites already get revenue by placing ads. What if data providers did too? Suppose websites which place ads are required to give 20% of their ad space to ads by the data provider. The website says "Give this ad to the ISP" e.g. by rewriting an ad space as `adprotocol://ad?size=200x600&flash=no&html5=yes`. And this is a new protocol that's by design *stateless*; it doesn't pass Referer and doesn't allow storage of persistent data.
That protocol is intended by the first router (WiFi node etc.) Which answers that ad request. It knows nothing about Joe or what site he's browsing. **But it does know where you are** physically. It also knows the time. It's 11:30 - bet you're getting hungry! Here is a local restaurant with a $5 pizza special.
Why this huge digression into *even more* damn ads? Because the ads would pay for bandwidth. Which means there'd be more WiFi type bandwidth, and it may even pay for cellular data bandwidth, **which would allow cell phones to be anonymous**. The cell company gives service to any anonymous comer who accepts some ads, and the phone randomizes its ESN whenever it's idle, so nobody can track patterns of use.
[Answer]
All of the requisite pieces for this already exist.
What you need:
* End-to-end encryption
* VPN service with aggregation and no logs
* VoIP client using data on the phones
So, the data is carried over the existing network, but can't be read because it's encrypted. When you as the CEO call the CFO, your call goes to the VPN servers, then waits a random number of milliseconds there to mask what data is yours, and pops out through another one of their nodes and connects to the CFO's phone, so if they're trying to trace the call from the CFO's side they get stuck at the VPN, and likewise from your side. While it is true that with sufficient control over infrastructure one could potentially match data from your phone going to his by timing, if you're not nearby it's very hard to do, especially if you're in a different country.
In short, [Blackphone](https://www.silentcircle.com/products-and-solutions/devices/) + [www.privateinternetaccess.com](https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/).
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Really you should just do your own research. You're getting some good information and some bad information here. Example:
"Satellite phones are clearly the answer; these days they don't need a huge bulky antenna, and if you handwave technological advancement a bit you could say that these high-level executives have special sat-capable phones that look like normal cell phones in a bulky case."
As someone who procured and set up satellite phones in the 1990s for civilian use, I can tell you that "like normal cell phones in a bulky case" is EXACTLY what they looked like, in the 1990s. No handwaving required.
You want untraceable? Forward your call through a denied area like North Korea. Or use TOR to access one of the phone services for the deaf. Problem solved.
[Answer]
If you wanna pick up phone - you can't be completely untraceable by definition. Since network needs to know where incoming call would go.
However if you wanna call - you can "turn on" your phone and it will choose "random" or "new" identity, add to your phone 100 credit. And you can call. Every minute someone buy new phone with new identity so this way it is untraceable.
After you activate your phone, you can go to some "public" but encrypted site, where you store your number and only other CEOs can use that. There you can also "pick up" today numbers for other CEOs.
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[Question]
[
In this universe humans aren't the first civilization to reach space in the local stellar neighborhood (a bubble of ~1000 light years across). In fact for the past several billions of years civilizations were popping in at a rate of roughly once every couple hundred thousand years to a million years or so. Each went to interstellar age, founded several colonies, then fizzled out over a course of several thousand years (since their first spaceflight) or rapidly went extinct for various reasons (Who said "Reapers"?!). There was no communication or influence between those civilizations.
So each civilization roamed the stars in search of the various resources it needs. Some went full-on megastructure building, but assume that time is relentless and in absence of people to keep maintenance, most of them eventually got destroyed and fallen into their respective suns by the time humans arrived, and similarly most of the remnants of these civilizations were lost to time, decaying orbits and geological processes as well.
The question is - why instead of stars upon stars of mined-out systems where no easily accessible resources had left over the course of billions of years and millions of civilizations that roamed there, we see that there are still asteroids rich in metals, lots of ice, oils on planets that can have oils, and so on (Including, what's important, completely pristine Solar System among all of that)? I suppose on planets some geological events might eventually renew deposits of ores, but what about outside of the gravity well? Yes, the space is huge and has a tremendous amount of resources in it, but we're talking billions of years and a very large crowd of those who want these resources, and the new star systems aren't popping up all that often.
Ancient humans could find large chunks of raw copper ore just laying around on the ground - that's impossible in the modern world, everything useful was scooped out and dispersed long ago.
[Answer]
### Few reasons:
1. Supernovas keep seeding new elements
* Every few thousand years another supernova goes off, seeding the nearby area with fresh elements.
2. Alien megastructures collapse into gravity wells.
* The gravity well pulls in rock and compresses everything into a new molten planet. The materials used to make the megastructure are now ore deposits deep underground.
* Indeed in your fiction, certain valuable ores are eventually discovered to be not actually form in nature, but were refined by aliens, and then found their way into gravity wells and back into planet formation.
3. Different races have different priorities.
* One mans trash is another mans treasure right? Different lifeforms categorise minerals differently. It is entirely plausible that one race moves waste quartz rock to get to the valuable iron, another race moves waste iron to get to the valuable quartz rock.
* Perhaps the valuable asteroid of rare metals that you're going to mine was nuclear reactor waste a million years ago that was recklessly shot into space and has decayed into another form.
4. The neighbourhood is constantly shuffled by its orbit around the galactic central point.
* The neighbourhood isn't static, everything is orbiting the galaxy center, but from the fundamentals of orbital dynamics, those orbits are all different, you're all orbiting the galaxy at different speeds simply because you're all different distances from the centre. The 1000 light years surrounding a star are going to be very different after a few million years.
* This constantly shuffles resources between neighbourhoods.
5. Space is really really big, especially if there is no FTL
* A society with no FTL, that goes extinct a few thousand years after achieving space flight, is not going to mine the entire 1000 light year region. There are [8 million stars in this neighborhood](https://www.quora.com/How-many-stars-are-there-within-1-000-light-years-from-our-Solar-System). They're likely to only explore a few hundred or thousand of them in their short life time.
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>
> "then fizzled out over a course of several thousand years (since their first spaceflight)"
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Right there is your answer. You species died out very soon (galactically speaking) after achieving space.
Space is **huge**
A spacefaring species that only hangs around "for several thousand years", and then fades away, will have visited an infinitestimal slice of their environment, even if we assume they had access to FTL travel.
Remember, these are races that did NOT spread to conquest everything in sight, because such a culture would not just fade away. A rapid expander might fail as a whole, but parts of them on the periphery would just keep on expanding, forever. Like a fungus.
There *are* mined-out planets and systems, you just haven't located them yet. They are a few hundred, at most, scattered among the 5-10 million stars in your designated distance.
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**The nature of stars**
What are "resources"? There are really three fundamental "resources" that are needed:
1. Energy. Stars just keep making energy available to anyone who can collect it. Unless some selfish, destructive type with "magic-level" technology "drained" a star of energy (whatever that means), a star will happily keep producing usable energy for the benefit of any life form who arrives at that star today, no matter how many solar cells were used to collect energy fifty thousand or fifty million years ago. Energy is not in short supply if you are in space and reasonably close to a star.
2. Matter. A technological civilisation needs varying amounts of most of the elements in existence (with the possible exception of some of the short-lived ones). It is *convenient* to have some of those elements pre-packaged into a useful form by long-duration biological and/or geological processes (ie hydrocarbons such as oil) but by the time a civilisation can manipulate such vast quantities of energy that it can attempt interstellar travel, it can manufacture materials from the raw elements.
The question lists the concern that structures in space will eventually "fall into the sun". This is an understandable misconception, as satellites in low orbit around the Earth eventually "fall" down - meaning that they slow enough to lower their orbit to impact the atmosphere and then it's all over very quickly. This is not the case with the sun - there is no "atmosphere" that extends out a long way. It takes far more delta v to send a spacecraft from Earth orbit to impact the sun than it does to impart escape velocity so it can leave the entire solar system. As noted by NASA [here](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/its-surprisingly-hard-to-go-to-the-sun), it takes 55 times more energy to go to the sun than to go to Mars. Structures may end up crashing into other celestial bodies, being captured and ground against other debris in [Lagrange points](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point) or suffer other fates, but unless there is deliberate expenditure of more energy than is needed to send them to other stars, they will not "fall into the sun". So the vast majority of the raw material in a star system will still be available when the next civilisation arrives.
3. Knowledge. Once a civilisation has energy and matter, it needs knowledge in order to use them constructively. Scientific and engineering knowledge to know "how" to do things, social knowledge to know "when" and "if" to do things. The nice thing about knowledge is that it doesn't get used up if other people have learnt it in the past. Examining the relics of previous civilisations may give the latest starfaring race more knowledge, but they will not be unable to build solar cells because someone knew how to do that before.
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Some early estimates according to [Drake equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation) gave that there were probably between 1000 and 100,000,000 planets with civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.
[Astronomers](https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Herschel/How_many_stars_are_there_in_the_Universe) estimate there are about 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way alone.
Even assuming that the early estimates were too optimistic, we end up with on average more than 1000 planets per civilization, in the Milky Way.
If we extrapolate the same ratio to the other galaxies, and consider that as you state that they went extinct in few thousand years, it's easy to see that they didn't have time to consume all those 1000 planets they had available.
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You could handwave it away and claim that is why asteroid belts are as sparse as they are rather than being as dense as how they appear in Star Wars.
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I agree with the points about space being huge and the number of races small, an additional point could be technological advances in:
* disintegration of matter, to get huge amounts of energy of whatever is around you, and
* transmutation and other forms of construction of materials from the scratch (so you can get a bump of, say, iron, into an equivalent mass of carbon and the other way around, and you can use those atoms to efficiently build whatever you want built).
That will mean that those civilizations would not have a need to mine until depletion scarce resources, as suddenly there are no longer scarce resources as you can get anything you want out of whatever you had at hand.
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# Space is big
There is a lot of space. It takes certain kinds of growth curves to saturate a galaxy. They might not have time to go everywhere.
# Resources are what is rare
There are lots of empty solar systems; a generic empty solar system is thus cheap. Getting to that solar system, and specific solar systems, might have value.
If every human went "poof" today and an animal was uplifted to sentience 10000 to a million years later, there would be **more** resources up until the modern age for that animal to harvest from the ruins of our civilization. What more, there would be relatively pristine wild lands as well. They might have problems finding easily accessible **coal** or similar, but for entire phases of technological growth things are going to be easier.
# Technology advances faster than growth
At "we are at K-1 scale" civilization, a 2nd solar system is worth a lot. But by the time you have turned a few 100 systems into dyson swarms, you tech up beyond the need to turn systems into dyson swarms.
Maybe you are extracting energy from the dark energy expansion of the universe, and building solar panels is no longer a big boost. Maybe you have wormholes and pocket universes that let you stuff an unbounded amount of territory within a single asteroid.
# Topology
If the ability to travel isn't based on "as the photon flies" distance, then the shape -- topology -- of how travel works could open up places between the eras of civilizations.
This could be hyperspace lanes, primordial wormholes, whatever.
Suppose 1 in a thousand astronomical bodies have one end of a primordial wormhole in them, and those wormholes can be expanded to provide a portal to the other end. Now the graph of travel is based on what wormholes you find, and the other end could be in another galaxy; finding another civilizations wormhole network connects you, but most of the places you connect to are in dark space, and most of the rest are to pristine solar systems.
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### It's all a difference of scale.
Imagine that on modern Earth humans created a giant strip mine for coal or ore. Or maybe humans have cut down all the trees in the forest, leaving a barren dirt field. Then the humans went on to exploit a different natural resource.
Then after some period of time ants colonized the immediate area of the strip mine or the barren dirt field, creating elaborate ant mounds of their civilization. These ants would be eating the leftovers of the human civilization.
According to humans, there are no resources left. But according to the ants the former strip mine or lumber yard contains much more resources than in the surrounding areas. For example where there was a logging activity, although humans took all the trees and maybe even the branches, they left a lot of wood chips, bark pieces, and leaves lying around. For ants it is a real treasure because they have readily available wood chips for eating, that they would have had to painstakingly extract from real trees via a long and difficult process. Now there are wood chips and leaves lying all over the place, and the ant colony expands very quickly. Maybe the ants have now also learned how to utilize coal. Usually the coal would be deep under ground, beyond the capabilities of the ants to reach it, but in the strip mine the humans have done the heavy work to get the coal to the surface. According to the perspective of humans, there is no more coal in the strip any more after centuries of mining, so they abandoned it. But according to the perspective of ants, there is a lot of coal dust and small pieces of coals (giant boulders for the ants) all over the place. Now it becomes a very profitable coal mine for ants. Maybe even the ants do not know how to burn the coal, but they can perhaps eat the coal, using it for their own, but different purpose.
Another example is a garbage dump. The humans put lots of waste together in one place. When the ants find this location, it would be a heaven for them. There is a lot of food, plastic, metal, and other components lying in one place. So the ants will be very happy because the humans have collected a lot of useful resources all in one place, just for them!
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Now back to your question, the human space civilization are the ants, and the alien space civilization are the humans in this analogy.
The human space civilization will come across "empty" mines, according to the aliens perspective "without resources". But from the humans perspective there will be a lot of resources. They will find the whole solar system, with a lot of asteroids made of different pure metals orbiting the star. Including rare Earth metals. These are the "wood chips", left over from the aliens mines. According to the humans this is the largest collection of easily extractable metals that they have ever found in their entire history.
What happens if humans space civilization discovers a planet which had been used in the past as a garbage dump by the aliens? There would be mountains made of scrap metals, lakes made of oils.
So the humans space civilization will live off the waste generated by the aliens space civilization.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L8sVT.png)
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**Substitution:**
Shipping resources across stellar (and even mere interplanetary) distances is uneconomic, so vast space-mining simply won't occur.
* It's okay for a few grams of unobtanium shipped from Tau Ceti to cost as much as the GDP of France. But it's not okay for a household vacuum to cost a year's salary merely because the facing was mined in the oort cloud. The vacuum manufacturer will find substitute material to eliminate the cost of all that unnecessary shipping.
Resource demand waxes and wanes over time.
* Early starships and habitats might be built out of metal, but then supplanted a few generations later by shiny newer spun-carbon hulls, themselves supplanted later by grown bio-hulls.
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**Mass to energy to mass conversion.**
Raw copper from the ground is nice to make wires out of. But if you can make copper out of whatever you have handy, you can leave the raw copper in the ground. Fusion power turns mass to energy, and a lot of it. Reverse fusion would be turning the energy back into mass.
Once this tech is mastered, one could turn any element into any other element, with appropriate sacrifices to the god of Entropy along the way. The planet of origin might be depleted in raw materials by the early civilization but after this tech is mastered, the civilization can make gold out of silicon or iron out of hydrogen. This will satisfy the need for raw materials useful as pure elements and obviate the need to retrieve elements from wherever chance has placed them in the universe.
Other raw materials become unnecessary. If you have mastered fusion you do not need fission fuels or petrochemicals for energy. I do not need to strip mine my new planet looking for coal if I can warm my hot tub with fusion power.
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At 200,000-1,000,000 year intervals between civilisations you're looking at 3,000-15,000 groups over 3 billion years, they're exploiting an area that contains as many as 3 million star systems (that's the standing estimate for star systems within 500ly of Sol, 600,000 Solar Masses of stars all up) for an extremely short, geologically speaking, amount of time. 15,000 civilisations spreading across 100 star systems each wouldn't get everywhere if they didn't overlap at all so a good number of star systems must be left totally untouched. The proposed civisations simply don't have the range or endurance to do much against that scale of available material. There may be some areas that have produced more civilisations, their neighbourhood will be relatively heavily depleted in raw materials but enriched in the processed, but decayed, materials left behind by other civilisations, some of those materials will be more useful than raw ores while others will be less reusable or more dangerous.
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That is exactly what you would expect.
When you're extracting resources, you go for the ones that are easiest to extract first. "Easiest" is a bit of gloss here - it's some complex combination of cost-effectiveness, taboos, energy-efficiency, proximity, current demand for that resource, etc. Complex or simple though, mining sites and resource extraction methods are driven by the situation when they are being extracted.
Currently in the real world, for a few examples: one of the places we mine resources is from the tailings of earlier, less efficient mines. Hydraulic fracturing is driven by manipulation of well depreciation rates. West Virginia is full of beautiful rolling rills that were constructed to make it look nice after strip-mining it for coal (and also still has a bunch of coal).
Additionally, we concentrate a lot of resources in ways that will turn them into rich mines for future generations, once a few millennia have gone by (junkyards and dumps).
So, *just following the patterns we see already on Earth*: you don't have a good view of how many resources were floating around 1 billion years ago; nothing suggests that the "abundance" you see now is anything more than mine tailings. The local area might also be way out on a spiral arm of the galaxy, which is inconveniently far from the civilization, so not worth exploiting yet. There may be some taboo about mining most places near us, (just like you would not expect to see Yellowstone strip-mined or clear-cut). Planets are least likely to be mined out, because the additional expense to extract resources from the bottom of a gravity well will make mining planets inefficient.
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## The universe is very young
After the big bang, there was a lot of hydrogen, helium and a smattering of lithium laying around, but virtually nothing else. It has taken time for the elements needed to support life of any kind, to be produced by stars. The supposition that there have been millions, or even thousands of space fairing species in our galaxy is nonsense.
As the percentage of metals (elements heavier than helium) accumulates due to novae, the probability of life forming increases. The scarcity of available metals in the early universe is the reason there are few if any interstellar capable species at this time. There will likely be more interstellar capable species in the future.
The rate of supernovae was higher in the past, and will continue to decline gradually over time, as free hydrogen gas supplies dwindle. The rate of supernovae correlates with the rate of species extinction. So over time, the odds that a space fairing species will survive long enough to scatter beyond the reach of a single supernovae will increase. The odds of survival were very low in the past, and some have argued, continue to be too low for any species to spread far enough to survive a single supernova.
It will likely be hundreds of billions of years before the galaxy is safe enough for any species to use up all the available metals in even a single star system, much less an entire stellar neighborhood.
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When people think of interstellar civilizations, they usually have an exponential growth model in mind, as that is what we know historically. But fact is, our growth is slowing and already negative in some regions, correlating strongly with the standard of living.
Your past civilizations died out after a few thousand years, that means they weren't aggressively expanding, but instead focussing on a high standard of living. By the same mechanism we can observe in our world, their expansion slowed to a stop, eventually regressed.
So, you have not only an explanation for their disappearance, you can also see that they won't have spread across all that many systems, and won't have used up that many ressources.
Your newcomers will find ruins etc., but also plenty of freah, unspoiled systems.
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**Slowing down to collect resources takes a lot of time. A space-explorer civilization would travel close to *c* all the time.**
1000 light years is a long distance, and cubed it is a even huger volume. If you want to explore any significant portion of it, you want to be travel fast.
Thanks to relativistic time dilation, once you get close to speed of light, distance starts to matter less and less as time goes slower for the traveler. But unless you have very powerful motors, slowing down to mine anything will take years.
As such, a true space explorer civilization would make a few colonies in the most interesting places, but other than that they'd be zooming around without ever slowing down enough to collect any resources in solid form. If the whole civilization travels at standardized speed, you can have inter-ship communication and meetings as if the galaxy was a lot smaller. But if you settle down on a planet, your 100 year lifespan will be just a few weeks for the rest of the population.
They might have developed technology that is able to collect interstellar dust and gas clouds without the high speed difference destroying the ship. Maybe a huge magnetic field could accelerate the particles to match the ship speed before capture? This could be a plot point, detecting some lines of lower density inside a gas cloud.
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### Resources are expensive/impractical to move
You'd practically need to *convert* the resources into starships to move them; it may be much more practical to just pack up, take a small group of starships and move elsewhere, using the resources in the new system, *especially* if fuel is limited.
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[
I want to kill a huge Dragon. How to do this?
The only description currently available of this Dragon is very short:
"It looks like a lizard with two wings of bats and he swallowed our ship without even noticing" (The boat mentioned is the size of a small Viking ship.)
My technological levels is limited and the only existing weapons capable I think of piercing these scales are ballista. So even if I have all possible human resources I do not think I can kill it by brute force.
So forget about the knight. My main idea is to poison him. And with this we come to the question:
What would be the most effective poison against a huge beast? I know that I did not give a very precise size therefore how to calculate the necessary quantity of poison according to the size of the beast?
Even if wood must not be harmful to its health it does not seem to ask any question before swallowing an unknown object. To make him swallow the poison seems easy but is it the best solution?
Intuitively I suspect that the digestion of a very large beast will be long is this true? How long would the poison take effect?
I conclude by saying that the world's technology levels do not provide a chemical, biochemical or pharmaceutical laboratory.
Of course we can get around the problem it is to kill only one individuals not a whole species so any alchemist out of nowhere could provide the subsistence if it is complex put that would lack a little elegance.
Please avoid the use of advanced bacteriological weapons anyway, it must be simple.
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Well the first thing you're going to want is a lot of what ever poison you are using.
If we are to assume your dragon is roughly reptile like then [this site](http://www.reptilesmagazine.com/Reptile-Health/Habitats-Care/List-of-Plants-That-Can-Be-Toxic-To-Reptiles/) gives a list of plants toxic to reptiles. The one that immediately stands out is Belladonna, also known as Deadly Nightshade. Even if your dragon isn't reptilian this stuff should be fairly lethal.
The other advantage is that it should be fairly easy to find for your (presumably) Viking civilisation.
I'm having trouble finding an exact [LD50 value](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose) for Belladonna, but [this paper](http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/Maximum_Residue_Limits_-_Report/2009/11/WC500010731.pdf) suggests the following values, with Atropine being one of the toxic components of Belladonna:
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> Concerning atropine the following LD50 values are available following oral administration: rat: 622 mg/kg bw; mouse, 400 mg/kg bw. In human adults the oral intake of 100 mg of atropine is considered the minimum lethal dose, in children a few milligrams
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I can't see an exact value for atropine in Belladona, but Wiki suggests:
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> All parts of the plant contain tropane alkaloids.[18] Roots have up to 1.3%, leaves 1.2%, stalks 0.65%, flowers 0.6%, ripe berries 0.7%, and seeds 0.4% tropane alkaloids; leaves reach maximal alkaloid content when the plant is budding and flowering, roots are most poisonous in the end of the plant’s vegetation period.
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So probably about 1% of the weight of the plant. Now if we assume your dragon might be of a similar size to a blue whale (probably larger if it's swallowing ships whole, but it's a good starting point) then it weighs around 140,000kg. If we assume an average value between the toxicity for rats and humans then we need 350mg per kg or a total of 49kg of atropine. As that is only 1% of the plant, you would need 4,900kg of raw Belladonna.
So I'd suggest you cultivate as much Belladonna as possible and load another ship with it, possibly throwing something tasty in there to ensure the dragon eats it.
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If you are looking to poison, you can load a horse with poisonous plants and let the dragon feast with it. Assuming the dragon didn't study in a Ivy league college, it will swallow it in one go, assuming also the poisonous plants.
Some plants you can use are, for example
* [Conium Maculatum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conium_maculatum)
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> Conium maculatum is poisonous to animals. In a short time, the alkaloids produce a potentially fatal neuromuscular blockage when the respiratory muscles are affected. Acute toxicity, if not lethal, may resolve in the spontaneous recovery of the affected animals provided further exposure is avoided.
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* [Datura Stramonium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_stramonium)
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> All parts of Datura plants contain dangerous levels of the tropane alkaloids atropine, hyoscyamine, and scopolamine, which are classified as deliriants, or anticholinergics. The risk of fatal overdose is high among uninformed users
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* [Amanita Muscaria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_muscaria) (not a plant, strictly speaking)
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> Amanita Muscaria contains several biologically active agents, at least one of which, muscimol, is known to be psychoactive.
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If you want to be sure that the provided dose is lethal, you can also mix sharp blades together with the plants (razor blades, sharpened metal tips, etc.).
The blades won't poison the dragon, but will cause severe bleeding while they move along the digestive system.
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1. Get hold of some poison dart frogs. Careful when handling them: they're among the most poisonous creatures on the planet.
2. Get hold of some dead sheep/cows/virgin females/whatever your dragon's preferred snack is.
3. Hide the poison dart frogs inside the corpses.
4. Offer the corpses to the dragon as a peace offering, or a token of friendship, or whatever excuse you think he'll buy.
5. Stand back and watch as the dragon eats the corpses, dart frogs and all. If I recall correctly, dart frog poison kills within minutes, and is so potent that the poison from a single frog could kill hundreds of thousands of people.
6. ???
7. Profit.
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I have two suggestions.
The first is that we have yet to find a carbon based life form that isn't effected by Arsenic due to its interactions with certain proteins and protein synthesis pathways. So that could be a good place to start, but the dose is probably going to be high and delivery will be problematic and probably drawn out as water borne oxides are the best at accumulating in life systems.
My other suggestion is to go for [Ricin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricin). Ricin shuts down protein synthesis altogether and may be lethal as an ingested poison at doses as low as 1 milligram per kilogram of body weight (0.0001%, or 1 gram per metric tonne). Oil-cake from castor beans contains up to 5% Ricin by weight, so if you stuffed a few sheep with a few kilograms each of oil-cake and got your dragon to eat them whole (that's a total of about 250 grams of Ricin per sheep), assuming it has DNA/RNA pathways that are substantially similar to humans...
[Castor Oil and Beans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricinus) have been known and used since at least 4000BC and it's a reasonably widespread plant.
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The paper [Aconite arrow poison in the Old and New
World](http://www.washacadsci.org/Journal/Journalarticles/V.28-8-Aconite%20Arrow%20Poison%20in%20the%20Old%20and%20New%20World.Robert%20F.%20Heizer.pdf) describes using aconite (and other poisons) to hunt whales.
If you can wound the poor creature, perhaps you wouldn't need the huge dose referenced in other answers: I suspect that even a little bit of gangrene, a relatively small wound that goes bad, might prove fatal in time.
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You don't. You can't poison a thing with unknowable resistant to poison with unknowable dose.
This idea is so wrong that it was ruled out since middle ages when we started to run the story of killing a dragon with food.
In both Polish and Czech version of story the solution was to put explosive inside the beast (now you know from where Spielberg had his Jaws idea).
The Polish version contained also plot twist that the explosives didn't killed the dragon as it was already breathing fire. But it made him very thirsty. So thirsty that he tried to quench it by drinking whole Vistula river. In the effect his intestines bursted.
So the solution is: Drown the scaled beast. You don't need to hit him, just aim in his general direction with chains and weights.
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Depends what type of poison you're using. For example, VX (LD50 7ug/kg) versus a T-Rex (~12m, ~10,000kg) - 0.1g should be enough to kill intravenously (and one has to assume that if your dragon flies, then it would have to be somewhat less dense).
Of course, VX is tricky to make without labs, but Ricin - from the humble castor bean - is about 30% as deadly - so you'd want about half a gram to be sure of taking it down.
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So this isn't quite an answer to this question, but it is an interesting idea to consider:
Don't poison the dragon, put a parasite in it. It could be possible to make him ingest a living creature that could survive in his body, eating him from the inside. However, there would be a few problems such as unknown immune system, and finding a parasite that survives inside the dragon/creature.
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Botulinum toxin is pretty heavy-going stuff. Injected, you need something like 2 ng/kg of body weight. So something like 20g suffice to poison everybody. *EVERYBODY*.
Bad food conserves contain it. Honey can be a good starter since it tends to contain the toxin producing bacteria, though they don't survive established bowel acidity (honey is associated with sudden infant death syndrome though).
Of course, yield is a bit of a problem as is testing. Ricin is less lethal but yields are better controllable: it's basically castor bean residues.
So don't underestimate both availability as well as lethality of some rather potent rather generic poisons (botulinum toxin catalytically blocks nerves, ricin catalytically blocks basic cell metabolism mechanism making it widely applicable).
Of course, dragons being magical creatures, the question is just how much of their metabolism is subject to similar attack mechanisms as with non-magical creatures.
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Even without laboratory, it's possible to get poison with quick action and sufficiently lethal to kill a dragon, especially if the fauna and flora provide things like [chironex\_fleckeri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chironex_fleckeri).
With such deathly poisons, it's possible to coat ballista' projectiles, allowing to kill dragon on sight.
Another possibility, if the available poison need heavier doses, is to poison a bait and let the dragon eat it. An ideal way to ensure consumption would be to use living animal, like sheep, attach to poison on the bait with a degradable recipient like leave or paper. Thereby, the bait appear as alive and in good condition to the dragon, but the poisonous payload will kill the dragon during digestion.
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Polonium. An alchemist discovers how to isolate Polonium-210. The lethal dose of polonium for a human is estimated to be 0.089 micrograms fora 50% chance of death (that's 89 nanograms). If the dragon is 10 thousand times more massive than a human, it will require 0.9 milligrams of polonium to kill the dragon. That's an amount the size of a grain of sand. If you put it in solution and smeared it over an arrow, you'd have a couple times the lethal dose for the dragon.
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How about the accumulation of heavy metals? It is a known issue in real life [apex marine predictors](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0142522). Have all of your Vikings wear [mercury](http://www.theskepticsguide.org/say-goodbye-to-your-tuna-melts-because-weve-ruined-the-ocean), [lead](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160808115310.htm) and [aluminium](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4047426/Aluminium-DOES-cause-Alzheimer-s-Expert-says-new-findings-confirm-metal-devastating-brain-disease.html). Then if/when they are eaten then the beasty will accumulate more heavy metals. It would be a nice irony that the killing of your people brings the beat one step closer to its own death.
This wearing of toxic metals could be done by chance, or intentionally. You could also lace it's natural prey/carrion with metals so that you don't have kill of many of your people to accumulate enough heavy metal in its body.
Here is a list of some [heavy metals](https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/heavy-metal-poisoning/) with symptoms.
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How about biological weaponry? According to the technological level you've stated, it is about Middle Ages. It is easy to find a plague, typhus or smallpox diseased people in that time. Just feed the dragon with contagious corpses or even with living pandemic victims and observe the results. Maybe (just maybe) your enemy is not immune.
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Hypodermic Ballista Bolt (similar to a tranquilizer dart), filled with ergot fungus. It would be completely defenseless while having the worst LSD trip in history.
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My setting is what I would call "post-post-apocalyptic", meaning that our civilization doesn't exist anymore, but the collapse has happened in a past distant enough that people aren't really dealing with the direct fallouts of it anymore, or at least those aren't the story's focus. I need this setting to :
* Be technologically medieval, save for a few things like firearms – there are story-specific exceptions, but the general population in most of the world doesn't have even the notion of electricity generation ;
* Have very little to no collective memory of the old world and its history, and a very blurry/distorted memory of the collapse.
My issue is that both of those require a radical, virtually permanent knowledge loss, one that is complicated to make happen in our modern, interconnected world. For this reason, my question isn't about what exact type of collapse I should go for, but whether my focus should be "as few people left as possible without Humanity being doomed to extinction."
The idea is that going below certain figures would lead to a statistical lack of specialized individuals to operate/fix/produce modern technological items and act as teachers ; not enough people to spare from essential survival tasks and educate efficiently, let alone send to collect the knowledge still lying around ; large portions of that knowledge would gradually be lost to time as every electronic storage becomes permanently nonfunctional and books are left on their unprotected shelves to endure whatever comes their way for God knows how long. One can also assume that literacy rates would spiral down to abysmal levels, further hindering future generations' ability to retrieve any knowledge from those books on their own.
Until population recovery happens in any significant way (which I'm able to make as long as it needs to be), all those problems would only worsen until common and even "higher" knowledge stabilize around levels that we left eons ago.
So, to summarize :
* Preservation
* Transmission
* Recovery
Do you consider this a plausible way to reach the outcome that I described, or am I underestimating the resilience of our civilization when it comes to either of those three points?
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**The answer is undoubtedly yes, because you didn't specify how small the population could be.** Obviously, if you had a population of 2, then it's simply not possible for 2 people to know 99%+ of all modern knowledge.
But I'm guessing that what you really want is a self-sustaining civilization. In other words, you don't want the population to be so small that it goes extinct. If that's the case, then you want to learn about the concept of [Minimum Viable Population](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population): the smallest a population can be without a species going extinct over time.
One of the major factors is that you have to have enough DNA in the gene pool to not have inbreeding factors, over time, cause the population to become infertile. That bumps the number up to at least around 100, give or take.
But there are many other factors. The population has to be resilient to a disease or famine or natural disaster (etc) wiping out a chunk of them. There's debate as to what homo sapiens' true MVP is, but [a good guess](https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/how-many-humans-would-it-take-keep-our-species-alive-ncna900151) is that it's in the single-digit thousands.
So: could you have only a few thousand humans left and have mass knowledge loss?
Well, yes, depending on how you define "mass," but certainly a lot of knowledge would be lost, just from a statistical perspective alone this has to be the case:
* The population of earth right now is 7.9 billion. If 7,900 was your population size, that would mean you've lost 99.9999% of the population.
* Of any given profession, how many people would have to survive for knowledge of that profession to be passed down? Remember, it's not enough that some textbooks survived. Even assuming that your civilization is able to create printing presses, learning from unorganized, random books, without the aid of a teacher, is extremely time-consuming, and in general is not going to be a scalable way of people learning lost knowledge. Remember, your people are going to have to be spending the vast majority of their time just foraging for food, water, and protecting themselves and their food from the elements and animals, so people don't have all day to be reading books and trying to learn the hard way with no guidance (not to mention, most people don't have the proclivity for that anyway; remember only a small percentage of the population is nerds who enjoy that kind of thing).
* Of all the professions on earth, how many people have to survive in order for knowledge of their profession to get passed down? It will vary by profession. Carpentry? The answer may be as low as 5 (disclaimer: am not a carpenter). But for building computers? We're talking thousands, at a minimum. You would not believe how much specialized knowledge there is for manufacturing CPUs, let alone everything else involved. But suffice it to say, for some professions this number will be single digits, for others in the dozens, for others in the hundreds or thousands.
* And bear in mind that that many people need to be located together to share their combined knowledge. If it takes the knowledge of 2,000 people to build a CPU, it's not enough that 2,000 people survived...they have to be able to find each other and actually organize to do it.
* Ok so, given that number, what is the likelihood that that many people of that profession survived? For example, if it took 20 people who understand how to make an engine in order for that knowledge to be passed down, what are the odds that, when only .0000001% of the population survived the apocalypse, that that 7,900 people happened to include 20 people who knew how to build an engine? And those people all find each other and work together and have time for that?
**And remember, it's not just the knowledge that you need**, but also the whole supply chain and all of the resources and capabilities to extract those resources, everything that goes into making the thing, not just knowledge of how to make the thing if you were given all the materials on a silver platter.
And you have to pull off the organization of the whole thing.
Another way to look at it: you're one of the 7,900 people who survived the apocalypse. Let's say all 7,900 of you are located within a few hundred miles of each other. You're really outgoing, so you personally know 300 people. You have some knowledge of how to build an engine. You couldn't do it alone, but if you were able to get together with 20 other people who know about building engines, and you were able to convince the population to support you for many years, you could eventually start producing engines.
I say years because remember, you have to manufacture parts to make it, and that involves getting steel, and that involves forges...it wouldn't be enough for the 20 of you to be involved with trying to build engines, you would need hundreds of people at a minimum to be doing other tasks to provide you with the materials you need to build an engine.
Ok, let's say you get all of that buy-in. What are the odds that you even know 20 people, out of those 300 that you know, who have this kind of knowledge? Are 7% of your acquaintances experts in building engines? Not just that they know about it in theory, but they actually know actionable, specific details?
I think it's a good assumption that, given a population this small, the knowledge of how to build engines, as well as how to do a great many other things, would eventually die. Generating electricity is going to be hard, but possible in limited amounts. No one's going to make a full-blown power plant, but maybe some of the simpler ways of generating energy might happen in isolated areas. But without manufacturing happening, there's going to be a lot of difficulty using even that paucity of energy to make most items we're familiar with.
I think it's very plausible for you to get the end-state that you want.
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This is not only possible, it's happened.
The last Mound-Builder culture of the Mississippi River valley collapsed after the introduction of European epidemic diseases, causing the population to decline to the point it could not maintain the chiefdoms it had consisted of. Some tribes managed to maintain legends that connect them to their ancestors, but others even lost the knowledge that the mounds they lived next to were built by human beings.
Likewise, the Bronze Age collapse meant the loss of the knowledge of how to read Linear B and Linear A -- indeed, only Linear B has been deciphered now.
And these were cultures with a lot less specialization and long-distance interdependences. It would certainly be possible for modern society.
[Answer]
**"Can my modern society be reduced to medieval technology?" has been asked before, and the answer is always "no."**
The examples given by other authors are not from the perspective of modern society. They describe ancient peoples having had complex interdependencies — but compared to today, that simply isn't true. It's only easy to lose knowledge when:
1. Almost no one knows it, and...
2. There's almost no record of it.
**What most people don't realize is that 99% of all human technology was invented over the last 150 years**
And that's a groundswell of what I'll call "knowledge inertia" that's whomping hard to overcome if your goal is to justify a substantial reduction (pre-industrial-revolution) of general knowledge. While some of the most specialized knowledge might (might) be lost (like how to make nuclear reactors) due to lack of people to maintain the study, the vast majority of knowledge (e.g. electricity) would be very, very quickly re-established.
And then you're on a f(150\_years)(population\_growth\_to\_1.5B) or less clock to re-establish all of it.
Remember, knowledge (even advanced knowledge) is located in...
* Universities, colleges, and high school libraries
* Business and industrial centers
* Government repositories and scientific centers
* Even individual homes
And even today, a ton of it is in printed books. Rationalizing the loss of all those books for such a long time is very hard. People live in deserts. Worse, your idea about loss of specialized knowledge isn't practical. You'd be surprised how many PhDs there are in the world (some of whom are working as janitors because there aren't enough jobs for that many PhDs). Knowledge is *everywhere.*
**There isn't a realistic reason for the loss you're looking for, but that doesn't mean you can't reasonably *rationalize* why it doesn't exist**
And this is important. Many authors get caught up in trying to be "realistic." Realism in the central aspects of your story is important. Realism (or too much realism) in the back story is actually counter-productive. What you need is the proverbial one-sentence "reason" to set the story in the circumstances that you want. That "reason" should be based on some basic assumptions:
* Whatever the apocalypse, it drove people away from population centers 5,000 and above. The higher the population, the greater the taboo. This causes the vast majority of knowledge repositories to become unavailable.
* Whatever the apocalypse, it didn't result in a dry climate (perfect for preserving paper!) but a ***wet*** climate (paper rots, gets eaten by pestiferous critters). You also want a warm climate, not a cold climate. The colder it is, the easier it is to preserve the paper. This is also useful for rationalizing the destruction of vast amounts of machinery and technology. Rust is your friend when it comes to loss of knowledge. What you want if for things to *not work.*
* Whatever the apocalypse, the survivors are young. This isn't hard to rationalize. Children and young adults are remarkably resilient. As we age, we become more susceptible to disease, damage, etc. But it's us old folks that have the greater amount of *practical knowledge* in our heads. Don't get me wrong, I've spoken with 13-year-olds who have a breathtaking amount of data in their heads. But what good is it? Answer: not much. That's because they've yet to learn how to use the data (through education or life experience, doesn't matter which). They're also the most likely to forget that data because it hasn't been deeply associated with practical uses.1
* Whatever the apocalypse, the next 2-5 generations need to work like dogs to survive. Maybe this is toxic soil or toxic rain or prolific super-hyenas or whatever the reason that people have a constant and long-term struggle just to survive. The goal here is to rationalize a lack of time to pass knowledge along.
*Keep in mind that none of this would definitively explain a shift from modern tech to medieval tech. That's simply impossible. What it does is allow the reader to suspend their disbelief so they can move on to the story you're actually trying to tell.*
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1 *While we can always find that one child who is remarkably capable, that isn't a reflection of all children. Children are amazing, but they're not small adults. That's why they can be used to rationalize loss of knowledge.*
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Considering our modern society, I'd say it's very plausible.
If production of electricity becomes impossible during an apocalyptic event, what is left of our modern civilization?
First of all, Wikipedia and all online resources are gone forever. But at the same time food production (the raw materials as well as baked / cooked goods) and transportation become incredibly limited. How could anyone produce car fuel without electricity running machines? So very suddenly you have a huge amount of people stuck in cities that rapidly run out of food and too few people in rural areas to farm the available land without machines. Everyone is scrambling to survive and the only education people get in that scenario is what they need to survive.
Who in North America or Europe is currently able to transport large amounts of food without cars or electricity? Who even has a grain mill and oven that works without electricity? Who still knows how to preserve food without electricity? Who is able to weave and sew new clothing when the old one deteriorates? Who can smelter and/or forge metal without electric kilns?
**Ironically this would have a much bigger impact on industrial countries** relying on automation and global trade than those who have a lower level of industrial development and general education, **probably killing off huge numbers of educated people.**
Let's assume humanity manages to survive that for 1 - 2 generations and people keep books as memorials stored in their homes. Their level of literacy would probably degrade to a level where most people can comprehend "1 chicken costs 10 breads" but any book about science or engineering would be exceedingly hard to comprehend, especially if vital technical terms haven't been in use for decades and people forgot their meaning. So at that time you would need several books of increasing levels of expertise to first learn about the basic concepts and then the advanced engineering. At the same time the people who did learn all that stuff grow old and eventually die.
And let's not forget that modern bleached paper degrades much quicker than vellum, papyrus and other old types of paper you might find in a museum. After 100 years in a not ideal environment the books might be molded, eaten by bugs, or simply crumbling between the fingers of a reader.
And during all that time, the machinery still surviving the apocalypse slowly breaks down, either by disuse or overuse. If possible, people will try reverse-engineering vital machines like water pumps and cranes and rebuild them with readily available materials like wood and stone. Others like clocks will slowly rot and eventually people won't believe that this hunk of rust could once tell the time. **That is a direct equivalent of "medieval technology".**
**However, it's hard to make people completely forget the time before the apocalypse.** We know from religious texts and oral traditions like that of the Australian Aborigines that memories of certain events can survive an incredibly long time if the people deem them important enough. It's not very plausible that an event eradicates all religious elites and their knowledge and literacy from all of humanity. However, even written accounts of events long past lose more and more information. The many contemporary discussions about biblical topics like Noah's Arc or Solomon's Temple and what they actually looked like should be proof enough.
Imagine what a person in 1920 would think about our current life. People back then did theorize what the future would look like, but they imagined flying cars and life on Venus. They had no comprehension of what a "Computer" is and that you could carry a device in your pocket that lets you speak to a remote person, record moving pictures, view moving picture from all over the planet, calculate complex math formulas, translate spoken or written words and read more knowledge than a single person can possibly read in their lifetime. Accurate descriptions of our current life may still exist 100 years after the apocalypse, but they would seem just as real as aliens or high magic in novels, or maybe as real as Jesus parting the sea.
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# Yes, if you just have a few hundred people left globally you wouldn't be surprised they lost a lot of knowledge.
An apocalypse bad enough to wipe out humanity to the last few hundred is bad enough that most sources of knowledge could be destroyed, and is enough that there wouldn't be many experts left. You wouldn't necessarily have many books left- if you have as few people as possible, whoever is surviving is probably at somewhere remote without any books. Those in cities probably all died, along with their books.
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## Modern records are incredibly flimsy by historical standards
Paper is terrible for long-term storage; even in an arid environment, it starts to break down after hardly any millennia at all.
However, since the invention of the printing press, there has been loads of it. The most limited-release textbook will have a print run of a few thousand, and there must be tens of millions of copies of any given work of Shakesphere, Newton or Einstien. Further, they are scattered worldwide in public and private libraries.
It only takes one of these to survive to prevent the knowledge from being lost. It doesn't even have to survive all in one place - parts of texts from around the world can be recombined into the original. It also doesn't matter if no one can speak the language - we can reconstruct dead languages given enough material.
**But without the right hardware, we can't read data from only a few years ago**
Even if we have the hardware, digital storage degrades alarmingly [fast](https://www.arcserve.com/blog/data-storage-lifespans-how-long-will-media-really-last#:%7E:text=But%20three%20to%20five%20years,something%20will%20eventually%20stop%20working.). Remove the power from your flash drive; you will have no data in three to five years.
## When society collapses, future historians will date it to the turn of the 2nd millennia
It doesn't matter if it happens now or 500 years from now; the start of the 21st century will be where history stops. Up until then, there will be a wealth of paper records - fragmentary, yes; difficult to understand, yes; full of gaps and inconsistencies, yes - but there. After that, there will just be void of information: archiologists can play in the debris of the computer age but for historians there will be nothing.
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After the fall of the Roman Empire, no pottery was made in Britain for a substantial period; losing knowledge of historical details or electricity is easy by comparison!
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"Too few people left" is indeed a credible explanation. Small groups of surviving people struggling every day cannot pertain knowledge. A reduction in numbers alone is not the point, 1 million people maintaining a city state can save a lot of knowledge, the same number of people scattered in small tribal groups all around the world can't.
There may be additional factors like deliberate destruction of knowledge and technology: After the catastrophic events, some prophets arise and found a new religion and demand to destroy the evil writings of the past that led to the current desaster. Such events have taken place in history in the late Roman Empire after the transition to Christianity, or at the introduction of Islam in the Near East region.
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In my opinion, no, not completely. At this stage it's not possible to lose the knowledge so completely so that humanity globally slides back to some less advanced level. Barring Extinction Level Event I can't imagine such situation.
Now, please do not mistake that with complete collapse of our modern society, or even whole civilization. The fact is it is so close to collapse that it's not even funny. More specifically, we are at a stage of transitioning to a global model of technological society based on (and almost completely dependent upon) cheap and abound energy. While disrupting that transition may be catastrophic, and may well end, rather easy, any developed country in mere weeks, it will not be total.
Our globe's regions are still developed - and progress in that development - at different stages, which means somewhere there will be a strong resilience to problems that will be disastrous elsewhere.
And, to be honest, at this stage we're extremely susceptible to cascade failure, leading to collapse. There will be no access to technology, thus leading to mass die-off due to famine, disease and - of course - violence, especially in urban and suburban regions, but it will be quick enough so that some areas will be left relatively intact, and those will be the ones that can easily become self-reliant.
The only way I can imagine it happen is conjunction of several global events, impacting all regions similarly (though at different intensity). As of right now this would be, in my opinion, simultaneous: extremely powerful Solar flare, shift of the magnetosphere (flipping of the magnetic poles) and a global pandemic at the same time.
Explanation is simple: we are spread enough that pocket-sized societies will survive, and enough of them have still access to print-based knowledge that, after some initial adaptation period, people will bounce back up. Admittedly it will be locally only, but it will be enough.
Not to mention that some of those societies - i.e. small towns or large villages - are now being created with the explicit purpose of sheltering their dwellers from outside turbulences and preserving the culture. Of course, they may fail, there may be not enough of them to restore civilization, but again - barring real cosmic disaster - enough of them will survive.
[Answer]
# Limited numbers is not enough
Limiting numbers can be very effective in restricting knowledge. If only a few thousand around the world are left, too few are available to maintain the technologies and knowledge. However, there is a big flaw. The time after which it takes place.
Imagine that for whatever reason all people died, except children without even having seen electricity. No knowledge remains! The problem is that the technology does. There is plenty of simple electronics surviving that people are bound to come across it and start to use it. As simple as dynamo lamps or certain batteries. With enough time to forget the history of why the apocalypse happened, it seems doubtful that any remaining technology or (written) knowledge isn't found and eventually used. Unless you're able to destroy or otherwise make unavailable any piece of technology or knowledge of electricity or similar it is highly unlikely.
Lastly, even if everything is gone, it can be found again. We discovered electricity early on and used it in time.
Does that mean it is impossible? Not at all! There are many factors that can contribute to an electricity free society that has guns. Cultural, genetic or physical are all candidates!
## Cultural
The post apocalyptic society could have an aversion for electricity, blaming it for the collapse of society. It can be as simple as that social media is to blame, but as social media doesn't survive they can blame any electronic device. The problem is that such things are difficult to last for generations. We vowed we would never let it come to war after WW2. A generation or two later and it seems forgotten, ignored or even celebrated in the children.
Electricity can also not be understood because of culture and it's knowledge. Electricity was known about thousands of years in varying degrees, but it took very long before it was implemented as more than a curiosity. It is unlikely in your case with their technological progress, it can simply be overlooked.
## Genetics
Intelligence is a complex thing. Even between humans we see huge differences in their cognitive abilities with little differences in the brain structures. From hardly able to speak to flawless twelve languages, from understanding complex math to not being able to count.
The apocalypse could've affected the genetics, hampering certain understanding. The technology can be present and guns understood, but electricity or it's potential is lost on them.
## Physics
The apocalypse can also have different reasons than humans. If for whatever reason the magnetosphere of the Earth is changed, or the activity and strength of the solar winds, it can cause world wide destruction of any electrical apparatus. Electricity isn't impossible, but many electronics are difficult to use on long term. If every week or year most electronics are subject to a strong EMP of the solar storms it is hard to develop them.
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I do not agree with your premise that our "modern, interconnected" world is robust against radical loss of knowledge. We have plenty of single points of failure; remove only one of electricity, water, (easily available) gasoline, network access, etc. from a region, and that region will - unless being rescued from outside - fall into a scenario like you're describing very quickly. We're talking about days here, not years. Take away the internet, and within days there will be no food, no fuels, nothing at all left, with the exception of rural areas. Large cities will be like we know it from any of the Zombie movies of your choice. Cold, hunger and thirst make short work of civilization very quickly.
Even without massive population loss, knowledge is lost all the time, rapidly. There have been videos of younger people puzzling over an old-fashioned dial phone, and taking quite some time to figure out how to use it. In modern western countries, there are virtually no people who could, say, build up a factory or even workshop from the industrial age from first principles. Not to speak of a modern factory or workshop. Take our file servers away, and who will be able to read archaic microfiche archives of all our old knowledge?
If you wish to have some inspiration which is agnostic of the exact scientific/technological level of the world at the point in time everything went horribly wrong, one of my absolute favorites is the relatively thin book ["A Canticle for Leibowitz"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz). While my crystal ball is broken and I won't speculate what will hit our particular world, I could very well imagine that it'd turn out somewhat like in this story.
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Wow, lots of conflicting responses here. I'm not going to weigh in on whether or not you could break humanity this badly though. Let's ignore the naysayers and (as the slogan goes) *just do it*.
If only there were global stockpiles of explosives powerful enough to not only depopulate large parts of the globe but to smash basically every building, every port, every major infrastructure node into poisonous rubble in a matter of hours. Some sort of weaponry that assures destruction of all of the technologically advanced countries on the planet in a brief but very bright ware. (But who would be MAD enough for that?)
If we took all of those weapons and threw them at all of the tech-rich targets on the planet then all that would be left are a few million people living in wilderness areas, most of whom would die pretty darned quickly. Oh a few might ride out the aftermath for a few years in fallout shelters and such, and the resultant nuclear winter would eradicate a large chunk of the rest. The last few remaining viable populations would be people living near thermal sources and caves, and most of them would starve to death before a sustainable food crop could be located. (Probably mushrooms. I hate mushrooms.)
The first few decades would be pretty harsh. The surviving populations would be entirely focused on survival, with no remaining energy budget for anything as wateful as talking about the lost past. The survivors wouldn't have much of a past to talk about as far as your problem is concerned, since they'd almost exclusively be tribal populations who were living low-tech lives before the End. What little technology they do know about wouldn't be as important knowledge to pass on, except perhaps in cautionary tales.
When the endless winter eventually breaks and the world starts to heal, in a couple of hundred years or so, the descendants of those survivors may eventually spread out to take over the world again, with only garbled retellings of half-remembered stories about what happened. Half of the world will be closed to them due to radiation and toxicity. The parts that weren't smashed flat has fallen to corrosion and the march of time.
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While not specifically intended for this scenario, it's on the list of considerations for the 1,700 seed vaults and data archives scattered around the world. The most famous is probably the [Svalbard Global Seed Vault](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault). A little less famous is the [Arctic World Archive](https://arcticworldarchive.org/) next door (relatively speaking) which claims to have a data storage medium designed to last for at least 1,000 years. If your survivors eventually dig this all up then they'll find all sorts of interesting things in there, including some of my code on GitHub. (Oh joy, future survivors are going to be shaking their head at my code too.)
At that point the whole "lost past" thing bursts back into public knowledge. Whatever society has been created, whatever technology they've built for themselves, it's all going to change radically once they unearth one of the archives. It might take them decades to understand it all, but they'll have *videos* and *audiobooks* and *cat pictures*! They'll have a full dump of Wikipedia, so they can be just as misinformed as we are! Frabjous day!
(Unless someone nukes Svalbard. At least then my code follies will be safely lost to the mists of time.)
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[Question]
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My world has a very special political system.
There are no leaders, no dictators, no monarchies nor democracy, nor ... I think you get the point.
But wait it's not the case to say there is a non existing political system at all!
Instead let's describe what are the characteristics of this system.
The political system in my world is such that the citizens believe that all other citizens will keep contributing to welfare of all society.
They are educated enough to live without any kind of authority overseeing them, hence the lack of a leader. They can take their own decisions and they are able to adjust their actions according to their local needs (for instance if there would be a food shortage they would start producing more food).
Basically the people **are** the political system.
Now I know we can write pretty much what we want on a book. But is this just an Utopian idea, or how could it be feasible?
How long could a society live without surveillance/leadership?
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What you are describing sounds like some form of Anarchism, and it has the same issues.
Like, who has the authority to solve a dispute between two uncooperative parties and enforce the resolution?
How do they agree on the rules that everyone must follow?
A leader doesn't have to impose himself as such by force. A leader can happen just by everyone else relying on him on the above matters, or simply because he's the one who actually has initiative.
How do your special people work so those natural leaders don't happen or perpetuate?
Also, any political system is people, in the end. :)
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From your description and the fact you've said no democracy most people are picking up the anarchy angle. There is another option, **direct democracy**.
Any time a group of people with differing options have to agree a course of action, either the whole thing falls apart or direct democracy applies. The group come to an agreement by voting on which course of action to take.
As with anarchy, this falls apart with groups over a certain size without leadership. See [Dunbar's number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number) for details on your approximate limits for anarchy, direct democracy can cope with larger groups, but not much larger without developing a bureaucracy.
**Even people who are all attempting to work towards the common good, will sometimes disagree on what the common good consists of and/or what course of actions best achieves it.**
You will need some form of democracy simply to allow dispute resolution, otherwise any dispute will eventually lead to either the collapse of your civilisation or a return to dispute resolution by combat in other words, collapse of your civilisation.
As has already been mentioned, anarchy works as long as there's no more than one anarchist in the group. That's not entirely true, it works as long as there's no more than one opinion in the group. So small groups only.
**What is the group though?**
Family groups will naturally tend to have a leader, a head of the family, whether the senior male (at least he thinks it's him) or the senior female (more likely in practice) there's one person who is in charge. Under that person's instruction everyone acts towards the common good of the group, the family. This is *patriarchy* in its purest sense.
Groups of peers will often develop a natural leader, as we all know there's one person who sees the washing up before the others, and at least one who just can't see that the bin is full. A leader will step forward to help the group stay cohesive, *meritocracy*.
Sometimes the group will more directly acknowledge that a leader is required, someone to coordinate the cleaning and bin schedules and they appoint someone to deal with this, *democracy*.
Occasionally one will just be making more money than the rest and end up with the largest room and paying more of the bills to help the others out and eventually you end up with *oligarchy*.
It's actually very hard to maintain anarchy without slipping into another form of "government" within any group of people. The larger a group gets the more likely you are to end up with a leadership group of some sort, whether natural leaders (they do exist) or natural busybodies (them too) leadership is inevitable.
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> Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw.
> It was its tendency to bend at the knees. - Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
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In short, any group of people will tend to appoint a leader of some sort quite quickly, if one is not appointed, one will arise.
[Answer]
## You either will be overrun by an invasion or burn yourself to the ground
There are various [problems with anarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issues_in_anarchism). But the main problems I see is that a lack of chain of command will leave you slow, if not paralyzed in disagreement, to act. This means you will be slaughtered by the first nation that attacks you with an organized military.
Also, Have you EVER gotten a whole group of more than 4 people to agree with you? Ask 100k people what we need most and you will get 75k different answers. Most of them mutually exclusive. War or diplomacy? More Wheat or Factories? What should we do with this guy who just murdered a nun? Infighting is inevitable. And once it breaks out, you will effectively not have a nation anymore but a land of barbarians (maybe a little harsh but you get the idea).
[Answer]
How long could a society live without surveillance/leadership?
People can easily live without surveillance/leadership.
But there are some issues:
* [Tragedy of the commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons). To prevent this you need abundant resources of everything, or the people will end up destroying their own resources - although you could argue that even with governments we still face the same problem today.
* Some people might want leadership/power, and these people might use military force to get it. If you don't defend against military force with military force, your governing structures will change. So you need to put something in place that strongly discourages the use of military force.
* Also, you still need laws which need to be adapted and self enforced by the community. This does work in practice, on a small scale. But on a larger scale you face the threat that the laws of sub-communities may evolve into different directions, leading to irreconcilable differences between sub-communities after only a few generations. To avoid that, you may need to have some higher authority that takes care of laws and crimes without having an actual leadership mandate.
* And last but not least you still need public services like schools, road maintenance, somebody who investigates crimes, etc, and taxes to pay for these services. And once somebody is in charge of taxes you need to figure out how to avoid corruption.
All of these are solvable, especially in fiction.
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For a real life example, look at "Occupy Wall Street". Besides being externally driven and funded, once the "occupiers" got together it became a campground where everyone was involved in endless factional disputes and no one could be bothered to clean the garbage, empty the latrines or even police the area of pickpockets and thieves (and eventually rapists).
Political theories like Anarcho Capitalism or even Libertarianism are based on the fundamentally false premise that people are rational beings. Close observations demonstrates that in the vast majority of cases, this isn't so.
Real people are generally driven by the need to satisfy short term emotional needs, and to maximize the survival of themselves and their close families first, followed by clan and then tribe. While this worked for the Ancestors as they spread out of Africa and into the world tens of thousands of years ago, the Neolithic lifestyle isn't really conducive to a high tech civilization. Even suggesting that modern neolithic people's could carry solar powered iPads begs the question of where these are going to be designed and built.
I would suggest that this is not only impossible in human beings as currently evolved, but **impossible, even in principle** for any being living in the natural world, given the need to compete for resources to live and ensure they successfully reproduce. This is true of plants, which stage elaborate slow motion battles over access to light and fertile soil (watch vines shade each other in time lapse photography), and it will be true even of post humans or AI as well.
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Anarchism has been tried and it doesn't work. It falls to pieces whenever there are two or more anarchists in the society / revolutionary cell / militant group. It's not a political system, it's *chaos*. Basic example: two anarchists want to move a piece of furniture. In order to move it successfully, they must lift it at the same time. With normal people, one would assume the role of leader and say "We lift at three. One, two, three!", but with anarchists there can be no leader; so the piece of furniture remains unlifted and unmoved.
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Your question is a good one, and few posters bothered to answer it.
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> How long could a society live without surveillance/leadership?
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There is something called "monkey number" or [Dunbar's Number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number). It describes the number of other individuals with whom a primate can have a social relationship. Quite a lot of concepts which sound good and work for small numbers of people (below Dunbar's Number) fail for more people.
There is also the [Tragedy of the Commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons) from game theory.
The society will work as long as only few people realize that they can *defect*. Just how long that is is hard to tell, but I expect that the failure of the society will be sudden as the number of defectors snowballs.
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Yes, what you're talking about is anarchism. However, the bulk of answers here are assuming that either:
* *No rulers* is the same as *no leadership*
* Conflict resolution requires rulers
I think these are self-evidently nonsense:
* A group leader is not the same thing as a ruler; they do not have institutional power, they are what's called rational authorities in the same way as a doctor or other specialist. Anarchists are not against specialization or rational authority.
* People settle conflicts without creating systems of rule all the time.
There's a few other points in these answers I would like to address:
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> But the main problems I see is that a lack of chain of command will leave you slow, if not paralized in disagreement, to act.
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Chains of command can be very slow, because those on the lower level cannot act entirely on their own, nor can they make decisions that are solely informed by their experience and expertise; they need to defer to those above them.
The most common example given other than militaries is nuclear power plant operators. There is a [good essay](https://libcom.org/library/i-wouldnt-want-my-anarchist-friends-be-charge-nuclear-power-station-david-harvey-anarchi) on Libcom in response to a statement by David Harvey that he "wouldn't want [his] anarchist friends to be in charge of a nuclear power station." However, as the author points out, all major nuclear plant disasters were because of hierarchical management, not in spite of it.
The author doesn't address air traffic control, but since my dad was a controller and I spent a fair amount of time as a kid at work with him, I can tell you that the degree of hierarchy in an ATC center is very small. George W. Bush instituted new rules during his presidency that vastly increased the number of supervisors, and it made my dad's job much harder, not easier.
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I am a software developer and our team is largely non-hierarchical. We have managers, but they don't have authority over us so much as they are the ones who talk to the customers and have the more abstract, less technical view of the systems we build. Development decisions, especially for production issues, require quick and efficient action, and often require coordinating multiple people. We rarely, if ever, have a manager tell us, "okay, you do this, he'll do this, and she'll do this." Rational decision-making requires a dialectical process; the managers are very often wrong or ignorant about the problem at hand, and the "rank and file" developers' actions (and thus the outcome) would be unhelped or even hindered by authoritarian decision-making.
Hierarchical organization is not done in most cases because it's more efficient or effective or faster or less conflictual. It's done in nearly every case because hierarchical organization maintains control by small groups at the top of the hierarchy. It allows the wills of a few people to be carried out by dozens, hundreds, thousands, or millions of people with very little effort by those at the top. See [this presentation on hierarchy in capitalism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZAeBEcgtSM) for more information on how hierarchical organization functions in the real world today.
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> Anarchism has been tried and it doesn't work.
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Tell that to [Revolutionary Catalonia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia), the [Zapatistas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_Army_of_National_Liberation), [Revolutionary Rojava](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party), or one of the many smaller-scale anarchist communities in existence, like Twin Oaks, Christiania, or Exarcheia.
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There is exactly one recorded example of this system working: the tree of life. We've never figured out how to do it within the context of humanity, but the plethora of organisms in our biosphere show how it works.
Somehow, against all odds, we somehow manage to have a biosphere where foxes eat rabbits, but for some reason the rabbits seem reasonably content with their lives regardless. In fact, we've shown a few times that if you get rid of the foxes (with the idea of making the lives of the rabbits better), the rabbits procreate so rapidly that they actually make their own lives miserable. If you have the 5 minutes, I highly recommend the video [How Wolves Change Rivers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q). It's truly a work of art.
Of course, the trick to this is that evolution is not all that picky about what comes out of it. In fact, it doesn't have a goal at all. Most political systems have goals because people want them to have goals. Its those goals that are tricky to accomplish without an actual political structure. However, if you're willing to accept a goal free solution, let the wolves change the rivers.
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## Self-sufficiency, the key to Anarchy
The system you describe is a kind of Anarchy, and Anarchy comes with a lot of problems in an advanced society - that is why we see no successful Anarchies around. The main problem with Anarchy is that modern/advanced societies depend completely on:
* Division of labour: In modern societies, we are not all software developers, construction workers, writers, chemists and miners all at once. Instead we have specialized hard on doing a few things and depend on the existance of other people doing all other things.
* Shared infrastructure: We depend completely upon a massive infrastructure both in the largest scales such as roads and power-lines as well as the smaller scale where not everyone needs one oil-refinery each. Nations, organizations or oligarchs own and keep these facilities which keeps the gears of society turning and the supply of advanced multi-step refined goods available.
Without a social order, with law-enforcement, taxes, leadership etc. there is no way to keep the division of labor and common infrastructure going.
*Thus the key to working Anarchy lies in abandoning both of those points and gaining self-sufficiency.*
**Hunter-Gatherer society:**
One simple way of achieving that is to have a primitive society where every family or individual have their own hut, makes their own primitive tools and depends on no-one else.
**Slave owners:**
Another possibility is that these independent, non-governed individuals are actually not the entirety of society. Each person, or family, controls a large group of slaves/servants who provide them with all their needs. The slaves provide food, protection, maintains their homes and even provides skilled craftsmen like smiths and tailors.
*But how can we keep the benefits of an advanced society and still be self sufficient?*
**Post-scarcity/Augmented individuals:** For a modern/futuristic society to be self sustainable on an individual basis I think there is only one option. AI's, robots and other automatic systems allow each individual to gain what we currently gain from society. Robots can serve as protection and harvest raw materials and food. 3D-printers and replicators can create even advanced technological items. Structures are self-maintaining and contains their own energy source. If such a system of robotics would be in the hands of each individual or small group - then they would be self-sufficient. Such augmented people would avoid the drawbacks of anarchy.
Taken the augmented individual solution one step further each individual have their own space-ship full of automated systems. Each ship is entirely self sustained, leaving its owner with no need for other people except companionship.
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What You describe is a bit what happens in a Kibbuz, if I'm not wrong. Interestingly, Your question made me (italian) think instantly or Communism. What You describe is the basis of the communist ideology, not of the so called communism of the Soviet Union or worse, North Korea.
Maybe most of the commentators are American, so none of them mentioned it or thought about it (after the McCarthy brainwashing no wonder) but wrote about it's close relative, or forerunner, Anarchy.
What made Communism so easily "exportable" in the beginning of the 20th century was that the idea of an egalitarian, self regulating society, without classes, autorities or ownership providing for the welfare of the whole community, hit the nerve of so many oppressed labourers in the whole world, from Russia across to China, VietNam and Cuba.
The history o these countries shows already the limit of this Utopia: it works only with small numbers, as a larger group tends to stratify naturally, inevitably. Just look at what friction exists in relatively small groups (why do I have to take the garbage out, it's my brother's turn). When You don't know a large part of the group Your responability towards it deminishes and normal disequalities create fractures - a breakup of this Utopia is inevitable; unless You introduce again a leading class and rules, constrictions and punishment for insubordination. Exactly what happened in the so-called communist countries. Some with a motivated society (Cuba and VietNam e.g.) had nontheless a relatively good overall balance: relatively equalized wealth (everybody was equally "poor"), above median healthcare, similar income and housing for everybody, above standard schooling and relatively little corruption (compared to similar countries). Of course there was a powerful police force to make this possible, limiting personal freedom, but for the greater good this was a price the leadership was ready to pay. Unfortunately we'll never find out how these societies would have evolved without the embargos, military spending or foreign influence of the cold war. Would have been interesting to see.
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That society will last until the first crime or until the first disagreement.
Once you have a crime, no matter whether is big or small, the society will realize that they need surveillance to prevent further crimes.
When you have a disagreement you need someone to break the tie and make a veredict, hence that creates hierarchy.
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There would still be someone who wanted more or something different than what everyone else wants. Not everyone would think alike. Unless you take away peoples creativity or their ability to think for themselves.
In every society someone is still seen as the leader. Religion, politics and even animals have leaders.
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Depends on the size of the population, culture and genetics.
Humans with the current reward system in their brains have tendency to seek own pleasure. Even charity is only about empathy or need to show others that you are better person than them. Thus the humans have tendency to be selfish but compromise for the empathy. Psychopaths can be tolerated, but it depends how frequent they are and how the culture enables them to exploit the society.
It is not though only the psychopaths, but even the normal humans that have limited amount of empathy. More people are robust to anomalies, but the anonymity the person would have, and the limited empathy makes it easier for them to exploit the society.
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it doesn't matter how altruistic they are, the problem arises as soon as there is a problem with more than one solution and not enough resources to try both, now you have conflict and you need conflict resolution. your people will have different perspectives and thus favor different solutions, and this will not be a rare occurrence. direct democracy won't work unless they are spending most of every day voting, and it will be very slow on top of that. You need some specialized decision makers, which means you need a way to select such people, which is basically what a political system is.
Plus you have already hinted at an additional source of conflict, local needs, not everything has a local or easy to see solution. lack of information will exacerbate both these effects, as no one person can be well versed in everything there just is not enough time, so for many decisions they won't understand the situation, which again leads to a political system out of sheer necessity.
They may not have leaders, but they still have specialists who make policy decisions, which means they need a way to pick such people.
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## Background
For a pair of games I am working on, I'm trying to work in a VERY basic evolutionary timeline for a lot of the more mythical creatures to set up design language of some of the creatures. This timeline will give me an idea of which creatures are related to which in order to help guide the design process of each game world as I go forward. The two settings are very different, but have a similar problem that just have different means of getting to similar end results.
## The problem
Winged quadrupeds are something that don't really exist in our world (some avian dinosaurs may have walked with their wings, but I don't count them as quadrupeds.) As has been pointed out in multiple questions on the topic of flying quadrupeds, evolving extra limbs is a very expensive and unlikely event. Having it happen multiple times for different animals would be even stranger.
## Solution
So, instead of making each one have their own separate events where something evolved the extra pair of limbs, I thought I'd make it so they had a smaller number of evolutionary ancestors shared by multiple creatures that are similar enough (gryphons and hippogryphs and giving dragon-like creatures shared evolutionary ancestors, etc.)
For one of these game worlds, there will be centuries worth of strange magic saturating the world that will have the side-effect of speeding up evolution to the point of millions of years worth of evolution happening every century, so mutations like this are at least more likely for that one. Humans will have been in a magical slumber to hide from the effects of this magic, returning to find their world much different. The other game's setting is a far older planet than our Earth, having far more time for such creatures to evolve before intelligent life came to be.
## The question
Going down that path for the solution, would it be more likely/logical for a flightless quadruped to evolve extra limbs that would eventually become wings? Or for a bipedal flying creature to grow an extra pair of legs/claws?
I should note that I am looking for answers that work for both worlds. The magical side-effects mentioned for one of the worlds is more of a catalyst to speed things up so I can have humans wake from their slumber and still find some serviceable infrastructure among the ruins of the old world (though there will be some mutations that are strictly magic in nature like elemental imbuements, they are not relevant to this particular question.)
**EDIT:** I suppose a better way to ask this is which of the two body plans (bipedal avian or quadruped) would benefit more from the additional limbs/wings?
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How about neither? Tetrapods evolved straight from lobe-finned fish; essentially no-limbs to four-limbs. You could have a similar process, except when the fish were developing limbs they ended up with six instead of four. This would probably give you six-legged amphibians; I would expect six legs before four-legs-and-wings. However, if you wanted to throw in weird outliers, you could have some of these hexapods at like flying fish, potentially developing flight (possibly even with multiple sets of wings) before they developed legs of any sort. For a basic sketch though, I think your best bet is fish-->six legs-->legs and wings. As a side note, unless you postulate parallel evolution of tetrapods, this would mean that pretty much every land-dwelling animal would have six legs.
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# ***Pleomorphic Dragons and Monsters:***
Rather than trying to justify something in the normal way that is so controversial, let's propose a new thing all together. What if the ancestors of dragons and other monsters developed in a new but not unheard of manner? What if all dragons are a form of conjoined identical twins?
Identical twins exist, as do conjoined twins. So let's envision a developmental mutation that caused ALL embryos to split into identical twins, and then conjoin. By itself, it would not be a radical change, and wouldn't be lethal or greatly harmful. But what if it was occuring at a regular developmental stage, where some external signal (heat, light, space, or whatever) already led to a differential development between the two embryos? Normal starting development would be a winged creature with two wings and two legs. If you want to be bold, the (bird/lizard) is capable of developing two body forms depending on environmental conditions - either forelegs or wings.
While the original conjoinment happened without any obvious external sign, the conjoinment later meant the two embryos experienced different conditions in the egg. This new conjoinment isn't perfect, but generally leads to development of two forelegs and a head from one, and wings plus back legs from the other. It does require a stable and predictable pattern of conjoinment, but this species was already doing that before. It was just that no one could tell.
Surprisingly, these strange critters are able to grow and thrive in a time of many empty evolutionary niches. They give rise to an entire genus of hexapods.
Dragons have always been described extremely variably, and this would be perfect. No one can say how many limbs they have, or if they have wings or not, because environmental factors and sheer dumb luck cause a variety of conjoinments and differentiations. Some have two wings and two back legs, some have two, four, six or even eight legs depending on how things turn out. some might have no legs and move like snakes. You could even have those with two heads or two tails. Four wings, even. Over enough generations of these pleomorphic creatures, they might develop different ways of connecting nerves so all these possible forms can function seamlessly. There will be badly dysfunctional things that come crawling out of some of the eggs, and this only adds to the fun and horror of monsters. They'll be like mutants, but developmental ones.
Is it likely? No. But then neither is the platypus. It means that you can have dragons, basilisks, wyverns, wyrms, lindorms, and so many more wonderful things, and they can be one or a few related species.
The same logic can be applied to other species, with similar results. The developmental abnormalities can even switch off, giving you a stable species with a stable body plan. It's up to you.
* alternatively, you can have a hox mutation that causes a bird-like creature to develop a second identical set of wings. Usually, such things are non-functional, but given a sheltered environment (like flightless parrots on an island) such a creature could mutate into a function for the extra wings, then re-evolve flight. Perhaps the four wings allow a really large bird like an ostrich-sized bird to fly and exploit a unique hunting niche. Who knows? Why not?
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Your best bet is to have an early magical event that creates a 6 limbed lizard, that can evolve into the other 6 limbed forms you need.
repurposing unused limbs is pretty common evolutionarily speaking, so it can evolve into whatever else you need. Consider using something from Sauria they evolved a wide variety of forms (crocodiles, dinosaurs, birds, pterosaurs) so you can conceivable get beaks, scales, feathers whatever you need without much trouble.
If you need to get something like an ungulate just make it superficially like an ungulate and use dinosaur like details (dental battery, proto feather hair, ect) you can even give it 3 toes and just make the first and third very small.
It is important your first event is both magical and normal terrestrial limbs. Functional limb duplication basically can't happen in vertebrates, becasue you have to duplicate not only the limbs but an entire body segment to have the supporting musculature, but that will duplicate internal organ pathways which will be very lethal. I recommend duplicating the hind limbs since that is slightly more plausible as it will not result in the duplication of major organs but it is a good thing you are using magic to explain it.
Of course you can add a few 4 limbed descendants in the mix since loss of limbs has occurred several times, which can further confuse matters, maybe there are flightless dragons or something similar. You can also have marine forms evolve since again it has happened several times before (whales and ichthyosaurs)
People have already worked out similar evolutionary histories, so consider searching around for inspiration.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/st7Aq.jpg)
Source: Birvan from DeviantArt
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Evolution is not a predetermined path where from A follows necessarily B. It follows the laws of probability: random mutations happen all the time in a random fashion, if they happen to giving their bearer an advantage they are promoted in the life lottery.
Look at sharks and dolphins: they show that in at least two cases a similar hydrodynamic profile has been picked at the evolution lottery, at a few tens million years of evolution apart.
It's not a matter of where you start from, but if the mutation bring some advantage or not in the specific environment where it happens to be.
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I would say that both are highly unlikely: body plans are pretty stiff, and changing them is hardly possible. If ever it's easier to lose some limbs than to grow more: look at vertebrates: they started with 4 limbs plus a tail and some of them have lost the tail and/or the limbs, but none of them has grown more than 4 limbs.
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# They started at six limbs.
I have read a manga -*Centaur no Nayami*- where evolution went a road where terrestrial creatures had six limbs, to justify centaurs. But it checks out! if there were 6 to begin with, two of them can become wings, and if you don't want the rest of your fauna to have 6 limbs, they can become vestigial members and disappear visually. If the situation call for it, these can even grow back up to whatever utility you want them to have.
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Evolution tends to be very conservative when it comes to creating *completely new* body parts, but very creative when it comes to *reusing and adapting* body parts. So rather than starting with a smaller set of limbs and gaining new ones, think about starting with a *different* combination of limbs, and then *specialising* them.
An interesting comparison here are [arthropods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthropod): their original ancestor is believed to have had a set of identical segments with multi-purpose appendages, which in various groups of descendants have become legs or wings, but also antennae and mouth parts. Among those descendants are all insects, whose basic body plan consists of 3 pairs of legs and 2 pairs of wings, but which include such variations as beetles, where the front pair of wings have evolved into hardened wing-cases; and mantises, where the front-most pair of legs have evolved into something more like arms.
An even more familiar example would be our own body plan: we consider ourselves bipedal, with an "extra" pair of arms; but it is clear that we did not evolve from an armless ancestor with only two legs, instead specialising our front limbs until they were almost completely unsuitable for walking on.
So to get back to the question: the most plausible evolutionary origin for something that is "quadrupedal and winged" is **an ancestral body plan with six limbs**, from which you can derive various specialisations. Six is actually quite a sensible number - for instance, six legs allows for more stable walking over uneven terrain, because you can have more points of contact during a step. An arthropod-style system of repeated segments is quite a likely mechanism, because "repeat 3 times" is a simple instruction for the ancestral DNA to arrive at.
If you want some creatures to have our familiar four limbs, they could either be a separate evolutionary line - just as the existence of arthropods on Earth doesn't rule out the existence of mammals; or they could have one pair of limbs become completely vestigial - think of flightless birds, for instance.
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**Develop wings from display structures**
**Evolutionary assumptions:**
As remarked in several answer evolution tends to be conservative. Every step in the evolutionary path needs to have a benefit over the parent creature otherwise it would loose the evolutionary race. So extra limbs that have no benefit until completely developed are evolutionary not viable. Also as noted nature will tend to energy efficient models, (dolphins and sharks which end up the same via completely different evolutionary paths) the fact that all larger animals mammals and dinosaurs alike had four legs suggest that this is the most efficient system. Remember that an extra set of legs might be beneficial for stability, but it also requires extra attention and more food to mantain.
So assuming that you don't care about how the creature is developed as long as it is feasible I would go for developing wings from display structures. A bit based on the comment of [Clockwork-Muse](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/3553/clockwork-muse) who pointed out the [Draco lizards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draco_(genus)).
**Evolutionary path:**
An ape like tree dwelling creature that would have a set of dorsal fins for display (mating) or camouflage purposes should be able to evolve. That bigger and more flexible dorsal fins would allow for easier attraction of a mate (or better camouflage) pushing the creature in the way of bigger and stronger dorsal fins. If the dorsal fins were situated in such a way that they could extend the range of jumps from tree to tree by increasing the gliding distance this would add the evolutionary push to slowly transform them into wings. With this evolutionary path you could create wings with a benefit for the creature every step of the way.
**Critical points:** Whether you could create a gryphon this way would be questionable. Evolving from an ape like into something gryphon like is possible. Creating an animal with the size (and more importantly the weight) of a lion and be able to get enough energy for flight is very questionable for me. The largest flying animal was the Pterosuar, with an estimated weight of 250kg, but these were cold blooded, for comparison the wandering albatross (bird with largest wingspan) weighs 12 kg.
Another point against it is that as soon as you would have a gryphon due to evolution it would quickly tend to loose its shape for a more favourable aerodynamic shape. What might be a possibility is that a gryphon would mainly be a ground animal and only use flight to dive upon its pray from above after stalking it on the ground.
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### In the magic-infused world
In this case, there's no need for special reasoning - magic can do strange things. Evolution is already happening rapidly (and thus skipping the intermediary stages that can occur), so you just need some form of evolutionary force to push the creatures to evolve in that way.
So simply ask yourself, why does each creature have wings, and why does each creature have four legs?
Perhaps the pegasus evolved from horses because some predator was causing major problems with the species, and magic provided an escape path - the air. And so, the four-legged creature gained wings.
Perhaps the hippogriff, despite its similarities to the pegasus, evolved from eagles, and needed to be able to be more agile on the ground due to the formation of tunnels (created by another new creature), thus developing quadrupedal movement.
It all comes down to the evolutionary force causing the change.
### In the non-magical world
When magic isn't driving it, the cause will need to be more nuanced. Evolution is normally a very slow and undirected process - the question becomes, why did the pegasus develop little mini-wings, or why did the hippogriff start to grow a second pair of legs? Without magic to drive it, you're going to have trouble justifying the transition from four limbs to six.
Fortunately, in a world where evolution is very slow, and there's no need for the conceit of humans waking up to find things changed, this can be handled slightly differently.
Rather than having "normal" beings evolve into winged quadrupeds, work the other way around.
Rather than a pegasus being the result of a horse evolving, make the horse the result of a pegasus evolving. A pegasus's wings would be a large metabolic addition. In situations in which a group of pegasi have no need to fly, the wings would atrophy. Eventually, evolution would dummy them out - there would be some residual joints where the wings used to be, but there's just no need for them. And voila, you have horses.
To make this work neatly, all animals and humans would have, ultimately, evolved from winged quadrupeds. This can create interesting extra details - there could be humans with vestigial winglets, for example.
Alternatively, perhaps humans evolved from centaurs, who originally had wings, but they became arms over time. Then the front legs became less useful because mobility on the spot became more important than fast movement forwards, and they became bipedal - now the humans might have vestigial fore-hips.
The underlying driving force is the same. It just runs in the opposite direction.
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Start your thinking from **polydactyly**. It is quite common that (at least) mammals grow extra fingers. So they develop extra something of something existing.
If I am not wrong, there are people born with extra (no fully-formed) arms, or other parts of their bodies.
From here we can form a rule: it is likely that a mutation occurs, to create a new species with extra something which already exists.
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You have in mind two paths of evolution.
1. 2 legs + 2 wings -> 4 legs + 2 wings
This is quite close to what is already seen.
2. 4 legs + 0 wings -> 4 legs + 2 wings
Now, the situation is a lot more complicated. Even if the bones of the wings are similar to the bones of the legs, they must be covered with something to provide lift. Feathers (like birds), membranes (like bats) or any magic, whatever you want. Additionally, the brain must evolve also, to be able to control the wings. Movement changes from 2D to 3D, so the vision has to evolve also. If they have to fly very high, breathing needs an upgrade too. So this is the path less likely to happen.
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The only problem is if you want the 4+6 beings to be mammals. Because mammals do not have wings by design (with a few degenerated cases, where the legs are joined by membranes, so no real wings: bats, flying foxes, flying squirrels, sugar gliders...).
If you decide the beings to be birds, then go ahead. Growing an extra pair of legs would look gross at the beginning, but in time it will become every-day life.
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Perhaps it evolved from a separate group of lobe-finned fishes which had 2 pairs of pectoral fins through random mutation, which was found to be useful and so was selected for among that group of fishes. Over time, these fishes would go down a similar path their 4 finned relatives did, and evolve into hexapodal pseudoamphibians. Eventually, they would become very similar to normal reptiles, having scales and being able to survive indefinitely on land. Smaller species would probably develop wing flaps on their upper forearms so that they can glide through the air or open them up to scare predators. Eventually, they could evolve larger and more powerful wings that allow them to actually fly instead of glide. And it will still have 4 unmodified legs to walk on.
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Yet another possibility would be to use symbiotes along the lines of [those parasitic flatworms that cause frogs to grow extra legs](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/8/110802-frogs-deformed-parasites-animals-environment-mutants/).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HtQdK.jpg)
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**You need to explain why they need six limbs (and maybe why other land vertebrates don't)**
I agree with Sol and others; in a world where some vertebrates still have six limbs, it's most likely that *all* vertebrates would have had six limbs at some point.
However, even if their fish-like ancestors had six fin-legs, there would need to be some reason why some (or all) would keep six limbs over hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Given the increased energy requirements of six limbs over four, there would need to be some other advantage to it vs, say, two of them becoming vestigial over time.
Perhaps your world has very strong winds, and to stop themselves from blowing away the land animals all need at least one set of limbs to grip onto things? Maybe the terrain is dominated by vast cliffs that require extra limbs to climb? Plants that evolved fruits and nuts that require six hands to open?
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Who told you that all the dinosaurs that evolved into birds were bipedal? We cannot be sure.
Back to the present, flying squirrels are not bipedal, should in the future some squirrels evolve from gliding to full flight probably they'll have to become bipedal with two limbs evolving into wings and the other two remaining for motion on the ground. Flying quadrupeds should have six limbs in the beginning for other reasons, developing a pair of limbs requires a long evolution during which the limbs are useful even when they are a little bit more than stumps.
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There is an extinct gliding reptile called Coelurosauravus jaekeli that had "wings" supported by bony rods growing out just below the shoulders instead of elongated rib bones that are currently used by gliding lizards. You could use that as an evolutionary starting point perhaps.
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world one has magic and world two is super old. both of these situations allow for an ancient intelligence designing your creatures then going extinct or forgetting. nanobots allow for "magic" without actually being magic.
Evolution isnt needed.
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Suppose you want to invade Russia. But, beating it in a conventional or nuclear war isn't possible for your people for some reason.
What if, instead, you line up 500,000 soldiers to move to Russia with civilian cover stories, blend in, and at the right moment, emerge everywhere at once with the benefit of surprise, and take over, dropping their cover and becoming an invading/occupying Army (a bit like the lizard people [TV mini-series V](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086822/), but with humans, not lizard people). Put another way, something a bit like a supply it yourself [Fifth Column](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_column).
Could it be done?
How quickly could it be put in place without being discovered?
Are there any historical precedents for similar tactics being tried and either working or failing?
(Of course, Russia is just a concrete example. It could be India, or Brazil, or Nigeria, instead, for example.)
[Answer]
Russia has one of the most liberal immigration policies in the world (a measure Putin's government implemented to counteract its plummeting population due to demographics), but a half-million people in a short period of time is a bit excessive. Still, somewhat theoretically possible.
There are two problems you're going to have to deal with. Russia has one of the strictest gun control regimes on the planet. Aside from shotguns and rifles that people in the rural area have limited permission (note: *not* right) to possess, there are no legal privately owned firearms. So where this army getting its weapons? And where are they keeping them?
The second issue is maintaining secrecy. There's actually math that can be used to calculate how long a secret can be kept before it can be expected to get out.
>
> **On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs**
>
>
> Conspiratorial ideation is the tendency of individuals to believe that
> events and power relations are secretly manipulated by certain
> clandestine groups and organisations. Many of these ostensibly
> explanatory conjectures are non-falsifiable, lacking in evidence or
> demonstrably false, yet public acceptance remains high. Efforts to
> convince the general public of the validity of medical and scientific
> findings can be hampered by such narratives, which can create the
> impression of doubt or disagreement in areas where the science is well
> established. Conversely, historical examples of exposed conspiracies
> do exist and it may be difficult for people to differentiate between
> reasonable and dubious assertions. In this work, we establish a simple
> mathematical model for conspiracies involving multiple actors with
> time, which yields failure probability for any given conspiracy.
> Parameters for the model are estimated from literature examples of
> known scandals, and the factors influencing conspiracy success and
> failure are explored. The model is also used to estimate the
> likelihood of claims from some commonly-held conspiratorial beliefs;
> these are namely that the moon-landings were faked, climate-change is
> a hoax, vaccination is dangerous and that a cure for cancer is being
> suppressed by vested interests. Simulations of these claims predict
> that intrinsic failure would be imminent even with the most generous
> estimates for the secret-keeping ability of active participants—the
> results of this model suggest that large conspiracies (≥1000 agents)
> quickly become untenable and prone to failure. The theory presented
> here might be useful in counteracting the potentially deleterious
> consequences of bogus and anti-science narratives, and examining the
> hypothetical conditions under which sustainable conspiracy might be
> possible.
>
>
> <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905>
>
>
>
TLDR version: the more people involved, the faster someone will blow it. Using some of the examples in the article, counting just the 500,000 soldiers it will be a near certainty the operation will be blown in under 3 years. There's 50% odds it will be blown within *one* year. And that doesn't count the people staying at home who know about the operation.
So, realistically, no.
**Additional Note**
In the comments below are comparisons to real life-operations such as D-Day. That isn't a valid comparison for several reasons, chief among them being that while the details of Operation Overlord were a secret (times, locations of the attack, and so on) the *existence* of an imminent invasion was not, and could not be. Everyone knew it was coming, and the general area of where it would happen. There was no way to hide the fact an invasion was being prepared, and it wasn't even tried.
In comparison, the postulated scenario of infiltrating a large force is a conspiracy; it's not a matter of simply keeping secret the detailed plans of the operation, it's keeping the very existence of the operation itself a secret. Merely knowing that it's going on blows it.
Making D-Day equivalent would be saying that not only did the Germans not know where the invasion was going to happen and when, they didn't know there was an invasion force collecting in England, nor indeed that there was actually a war going on.
[Answer]
Short answer is no, but the longer answer is far more interesting.
First of all, if you're looking at a simple, knock down, drag out fight with the military in question, let's assume you need equal numbers to the military in question.
There is a [really cool graph](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.TOTL.TF.ZS) out of the world bank that shows the percentages of population in the military across the world, and by country, over time. The current average is around 0.9%, but let's assume that you want to get 1% of Russia's population being made up of your fifth column.
Russia's population is currently around 145m, meaning you need 1.4m, maybe 1.5m sleepers in the country. Based on some statistics I pulled off the internet, in 2017 Russia admitted around 250k immigrants that year.
Based on this model, assuming you can take EVERY immigration place in the Russian admission program, it's still going to take you 6 years to embed your sleeper force.
BUT; if you want an army and not a network of terror cells, you also need equipment. You need guns (of course), possibly tanks, planes, missiles, and LOTS of computers. You need infrastructure like training bases, etc. Otherwise, all you're doing is engaging in a guerrilla war in the streets, and that's still going to need lots and lots of small arms.
BUT; you also need a **plan**. Just going street to street and taking the country is (in a word) dumb. You want to take critical infrastructure, especially communication infrastructure, and neutralise your enemy's capacity to fight back. That means taking their bases et al. For that, you really want to embed your army in *their* army.
That means infiltration, having kids that are born in Russia, and getting them ALL to join the military. That's on average a 30 year investment or so to get the outcome you're after.
I'd argue that there's more efficient ways to do it, but it does have one single benefit that ties in nicely with Sun Tzu; you'd have your army literally living off the enemy lands once you've started your covert invasion.
[Answer]
## The biggest problem that you're going to face is secrecy
I probably don't need to point out that 500,000 people is a large number. Each one of those soldiers is a detection risk. If any one of them acts suspiciously enough to be picked up by the Russian intelligence operations. Even worse, each one of your soldiers is a defection risk.
And once you've lost the element of surprise, every part of your plan works against you. Your soldiers are isolated, difficult to contact, and in a foreign country. They'll be easily picked up one by one, and by the time it comes for you to trigger the attack, you'll have no army.
## Even if every member of your army has ironclad loyalty and master level acting skills, you'll still get discovered
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia) places the population of temporary migrant workers at about 7 million. That means that 500,000 additional people is about a 7% increase in that count, not exactly a drop in the bucket. Especially since the increase is coming entirely from a single country.
Even if some of your soldiers arrive through other channels, you simply can't conceal the movement of that many people, and the powers that be are going to notice. Especially when they notice that your armed forces are vanishing mysteriously.
[Answer]
Infiltration might work for small targets, but a whole country is too big of a chop for it to work alone.
First of all, if you want to be secretive, you cannot board 500000 soldiers on the smallest number of flights, so you would have to dilute them among normal passengers. Let's say you use 50 soldiers per flight. It takes 10000 flights to carry the entire group, and assuming you fly to the major 3 cities, with a flight every day, it will take you a bit more than 9 years just to infiltrate them.
Then you need to provide them logistic support: they will have to be provided weapons, instructions, means of sustaining, a believable façade to ensure they can stay that long in a foreign country without looking too suspicious and without leaking any info outside or defecting. Oh, of course you need that façade also before they depart. Formally they never worked for the army (and I doubt your own government will be happy with having 500000 secret soldiers).
Then, when the day X comes, you cannot hope for them to take over the country without giving them some sort of support: air supremacy is a must in modern warfare, and you have infiltrated only soldiers.
[Answer]
Complementing all fine answers above, all historical precedents I can think of are Coups in African countries by mercenary groups sponsored by foreign powers in the last half-century.
[Seychelles 1981](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Seychelles_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt) - 50 "we're tourists" mercenary team attempts and fails to oust the Goverment.
[Equatorial Guinea 2004](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Equatorial_Guinea_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt) - more "we're tourists" guys blown out while waiting for weapons shipment.
[Maldives 1988](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Maldives_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat) - Another bunch of "we're tourists" infiltrators (it's a classic now) with backup from a simultaneous landing succeeding to take over the capital city before been kicked out by Indian Army help.
There are other might-be examples, but too little information available on them to decide if they fit your criteria. Overall they match responses so far, any attempt you make will fail because secrecy will be blown beforehand or invading team will be too weak to actually take control of the territory & prepare defenses for a counterattack.
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Even the United States (a very large, immigrant nation) has a total of about a million immigrants per year and the biggest single sending country (Mexico) sends less than 200,000 per year. While you may be able to send a small group of elite soldiers this way, anything like a full-scale invasion army would be pretty obvious.
It would also be very hard to maintain discipline among troops that are not constantly living together. In a group of hundreds of thousands there is bound to be a few that would fall in love or find religion or go over to the the enemy or get drunk and blab about the invasion.
[Answer]
Yes, it can be done, it just takes a very long time.
It will be more or less difficult depending on the target country.
Your troops will have to blend in with the country's normal population, as tourists, guest workers, whatever.
Here's the plan:
1. Emplace a small network of deep cover intelligence agents in the country through normal secret agent methods.
2. Have the network corrupt politicians and law enforcement officials to enable large sections of the country's borders to be unmonitored.
3. Have the network foment grievances among different groups of people in target country. Use any precedent or cause that will sound plausible to the targeted groups. Class warfare, ethnic strife, religious disputes, economic woes, anything to get a group of people to be sympathetic to illegal activity and against their own society.
4. Start infiltrating your troops through the unmonitored border into the target country over time, like 50,000 a year. Send them into the areas infested with the grievance groups your network has created. Have your grievance groups infiltrate law enforcement, the military, the media, and the political system.
5. Have your network create organized crime groups supposedly in service to the causes of the grievance groups (terrorist groups do this to make money for their operations). Have the organized crime groups generate funding and form a network able to move weapons and equipment.
6. Have your grievance groups foment an atmosphere of civil strife throughout the target country to stress the political and social systems. Demand redress for all manner of grievances. Use the media to constantly propagandize the public that the society is bad and has to be radically changed.
7. When you have enough troops in the country, say after 15 years, send all your grievance groups into the streets all at once to commit civil unrest until the government gives them all the different things they want or resigns. Once the country is in chaos and the cops are stretched to the limit, have commando teams attack the power grid and cut power to the major cities and blow up transportation links so the authorities can't effectively move forces.
8. Then, have your secret army attack military bases to neutralize or capture vehicles, heavy equipment, and strategic weapons. The authorities will not immediately understand that the secret army is a different force than their own citizens who are doing civil unrest, and they will not respond with the necessary force for a period of time. In this period of time, your secret army captures military bases and arms itself with the target country's tanks, helicopters and artillery. Your secret army attacks the target country's air force bases, destroying the target country's air force on the ground and depriving any surviving loyalist aircraft of critical ground support.
9. Capture the media. Propagandize the people that it's all the authorities fault, and that the grievance groups just want what they rightfully deserve. Broadcast fake stories about government troops committing atrocities against the defenseless public. Have your commandos put on government uniforms and commit some atrocities if necessary. Broadcast fake reports about the grievance groups winning and taking over throughout the country.
10. Have a corrupted politician or well-known grievance group leader go on national media and call for peace, while your secret army attacks disorganized and unprepared government troops and cops. Have your commandos assassinate all the loyal politicians it can, so those positions can be filled with your corrupted politicians or with grievance group leaders.
11. Broadcast fake media reports of government troops surrendering or refusing to fight against the grievance groups. Broadcast fake reports of the well-known grievance group leader being swept to power by popular demand. Meanwhile you move in massive reinforcements for your secret army along with units of your country's military as 'peacekeepers' doing 'humanitarian relief'. Your commandos, secret army, and your official army launch an all out attack on all remaining government forces.
12. Once your forces control the streets, betray the grievance groups. Have your secret army and your 'peacekeepers' blow them away while wearing government uniforms. Broadcast fake reports of government forces working with 'peacekeepers' to 'restore order'.
13. Arrest the well-known grievance group leader you've been pumping up in the media, and have a corrupted politician go on national media, blame the whole thing on that guy and the grievance groups, and announce that martial law is in effect until 'order is restored', and that government forces are now ordered to work with the 'peacekeepers' to 'restore order'. Exterminate the grievance groups and all the traitors who helped your forces.
14. Have the corrupt politician create a new force to help 'restore order'. This new force just happens to be your secret army, which now has government authority.
15. Crush all resistance, make your corrupt politician the 'supreme leader for the duration of the emergency', and enjoy the spoils of your conquest.
[Answer]
You could write a book with a different scenario. American tries to invade Russia, so that they try to send 500,000 brainwashed soldiers. Although they were told what to do when the time comes but before that they can't remember what's the actual mission is because of the device that is inside their head. When the time's up, the American send signal to Russia and all the undercover soldiers will be awake and they started to kill every Russian.
[Answer]
You cannot take over but you can do a LOT of damage.
Maybe a look at threats to America. Set a date for everyone to move. Open borders. Sneak in 5-6 nukes in trucks over more obscure roads. Set the nukes in trucks to detonate just outside the five or six top military bases. Sneak in other insurgents as you can (walk over the border). Have some target dams and power production facilities. Have others identify and be ready to poison the water supplies (my brother was over the water department of a small city and all that kept people out of the water tanks was a padlock). Target some major bridges and communication towers. There is actual insurgent training facilities found here and just over the Mexican border. You will not be able to win with the undercover army but the first blow can be HUGE.
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An alternative reason it won't work... Immersion and conversion.
Country A sends a spy to Country B. The spy is Joe. Joe lives in B, talks with people, becomes one with the people. Joe starts to sympathize with B. Then, they decide that their new friends are better than their old ones. Now, they are a fan of B.
Joe now tells B about A's plans. Operation blown.
This is something that actually happens. Defections happen.
[Answer]
russia has strictest gun laws in the world, there are only few people in rural areas who own shot guns and rifles, first off all it wil not be possible for undercover army to get visa and if they get where do they live anonymously?
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[Question]
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In modern-day spaceflight, most astronauts with long hair simply bundle up their hair to keep things in order in zero-g, or to ensure easy helmet operation during spacewalks. However, fast forward a few centuries to when entire human societies might live their lives without setting foot on a planet, and many things will have changed. Among larger things like culture and technology, hairstyles will probably also evolve. If long hair is still in fashion or if metalheads still exist, they may very well develop countless unique hairstyles that both look good and have zero-g/spacesuits in mind. What existing hairstyles might be extrapolated for use by these kinds of people? Ponytails and buns seem like obvious options, but what are some other elaborate styles that are both microgravity-compatible and spacesuit-safe?
On the other hand, could spacesuits be designed around long hair, rather than the other way around? Would it be practical to have, say, a helmet seal specifically made to be loose-hair-proof?
[Answer]
>
> could spacesuits be designed around long hair, rather than the other way around? Would it be practical to have, say, a helmet seal specifically made to be loose-hair-proof?
>
>
>
You can simply forget about it. If you change the size of the helmet because you want to accommodate a large bump of dreadlocks in it, you will need to change the design of any aperture through which that helmet is supposed to pass.
If you have ever boarded a plane, you will have heard the recommendation
>
> do not inflate your life jacket before leaving the airplane, as doing so will impede your exit.
>
>
>
Now, look for example at the Redbull Stratos images and videos, notice how cumbersome is the movement in that cramped space, and try to figure out how could Felix Baumgartner have tried to get out of that narrow capsule hatch
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lFUYm.jpg)
while wearing an helmet designed to fit an hairdo like this
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EYXRg.jpg)
At best it would look like the famous scene where the Stormtrooper slams his head on the door.
Standardization can ensure reliability, and without reliability space is a graveyard waiting to be filled. I highly doubt there will be space for fancy hairstyle in space.
One will be allowed to have any hairstyle they like, as long as it fits in the standard helmet.
[Answer]
Well in the limiting case technology is indistinguishable from magic, and anything goes. But you said "fast forward a few centuries", so lets assume good space suits are still a bit tricky. Also, when we talk about "entire human societies" we are not talking about the bleeding edge tech, we are talking about what is easy to mass produce. Both of these things should tame our expectations.
There is something that is quite possible even with current tech; a space equivalent to the motorcycle braid;
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3StJ3.jpg)
That could just as easily be stuck on a space suit as it is on a motorcycle helmet. They come in lots of varieties too;
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GGlOq.jpg)
Given it's not real hair, it could be slightly stiffer so that it behaves well in 0G. Also, it would likely not want to be too firmly attached, so that it could pop off if it got caught on something.
[Answer]
## **Practical? NO, but people will find a way to do it? Definetly YES**
I´m sorry, but human stupidity and vanity can be infinite. As you said:
*"...fast forward a few centuries to when entire human societies might live their lives without setting foot on a planet..."*
Considering this long timeframe I'll bet that the super rich will gladly pay for any special equipment as a means to distinguish themselves from the common folk. Look how far people go today to do it alrealy. Heck, people DIE taking selfies just to make a cool instagram post.
Suits of many colors, with glitter, with pocket aquarium™ filled with live fish and even neo-led flashing designs will appear. The common man will surely try to show his individuality, heritage and culture through some cosmetic changes. Probably in cheaper ways but no less creative ones.
If you extrapolate you could have zero-g balls in the whole Marie Antoinette style with extravagant and exorbitant hairstyles. Fake wigs, syntethic fibers, holographic, augmented reality hairstyles, the sky is no longer the limit, nor the helmets will be.
Sorry for the lack of faith in our successors...
[Answer]
For a far-future society that views space travel as normal and safe, hairstyles can get quite outlandish. However, there will still be some constraints intrinsic to a zero-G environment that you will want to consider even if danger is not a concern.
You're definitely going to want to avoid anything *loose*. Long straight hair and ponytails, styles that are common planetside, are going to be impossible to control in zero gravity, so they aren't going to be practical or look good. Tightly bound buns of various configurations will be the standard way of wearing long hair.
One fun possibility that is stylish and silly without being completely impractical in zero-gravity is an angled version of the old beehive, with the hair bunched up and sticking out the back of the head instead of the top. Xenomorph-styled, swept-back space helmets could be designed with these structures in mind. While less practical than a regular round helmet, you could still fit it through a door with some practice.
Of course, if the tech is advanced enough and you want to be really out-there, why not try out completely ridiculous, gravity-defying "peacock tail" hairstyles that are held in place by automatic hovering drones and can fan out on command? I imagine this kind of thing would be a common sight among the stupid rich.
[Answer]
Braiding close to the head, as it now often done with hair with fine curls.
You will have to re-do it every few days to months, depending on the style and the hair itself, as well as outside influences as temperature (hot weather makes hair grows faster, it seems.) Think of what is now often used as the start of real or fake hair braids.
I expect that in those times many of the space ships will have some kind of artificial gravity and not many people will regularly go out of the space ship to do work in a space suit, but hairstyles braided close to the skull will fit under helmets. Helmets may evolve to have 'look through all around' materials and the braiding on the back of the head would be visible, very visible if the helmets are made for it.
I do not see long braids on the end of the close to the skull braids as practical, but it may well be possible for those who do not use space suits in space.
If someone does braid your hair for you, you can have a lot of variation in the patterns of the braiding, including a logo of your favorite band or brand (and get paid for being a walking bill board.)
In weightless environments having long hair braided has an advantage over short hair, even almost skinhead short, as there will be no hairs floating around and you do not run the risk of spreading short bits every time your hair grows beyond the limit and you have to cut or shave it off again. Just do not undo your braids and all your hair will stay with you.
[Answer]
I think a point is being missed in that as space-travel and habitation becomes normal, people won't be wearing spacesuits typically any more than you wear a life-jacket or special clothes for sea/air travel now.
In that situation, zero/migro-gravity provides an excellent space for freedom of expression with hair. Think of what you can do with your hair without gravity pulling it down....
[Answer]
In an effort to accommodate loose hairstyles, we have some options. The real trouble is when you loose the "keep it outta my face" effect from gravity. Some (most?) designs of spacesuit will not allow you to sweep hair out of the way.
# Cap
Yes, wear a cap to keep the long hair out of the way. Assuming the suit has a relatively close-fitting collar, the hair will be mostly held in place by these two articles of clothing. Some pulling may also occur, so care must be taken to give enough slack between the cap and collar.
# Stiffen It
That's right, use a hair product (gel) to make the hair stiff. It then stays (more or less) where you put it, even when you choose to look like a hedgehog. The size of the hair will be limited by the size of the helmet. There may be some "bend points" in the hair to allow neck movement while wearing a helmet. So long as it bends out of the field-of-view, it's fine.
It is not inconceivable to have a fairly spacious helmet, too. Some real-life proposed suit designs actually allow for hands to go into/out of sleeves so an astronaut could scratch their nose or readjust their headgear. (IMHO, they make astronauts look a bit like old sci-fi robots, but there are advantages to this style.)
# Face Seal
Maybe a newfangled and close-fitting suit, explicitly for long hair, has a "face seal" that splits the helmet into the "hair space" and "face space". The face seal explicitly prevents long hair from floating into faces, but allows whatever hair style fits back there. The neck could still bend, so looking around would not be an issue.
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1. Astronauts do not use suits. Their skin is amply reinforced with carbon fibers. They *could* breathe by using electricity to create oxygen in their bloodstream, but nowadays conductive protein wires link their battery contacts directly to mitochondrial electron acceptors.
2. Astronauts do not have hairstyles. When they are young, motor and sensory neurons that normally would have undergone apoptosis, for lacking appropriate wiring, are kept alive by being individually targeted for stimulation in response to hair-mounted sensors, or trained to move a tiny subset of individual hairs via actuators spaced along its length. Simply put, their hair is prehensile, concealing a powerful network of machinery. From one moment to the next it could adopt any hairstyle; but more often it is used to do complex, detailed, dextrous work in tight quarters.
[Answer]
**This is a non-issue.**
Loose hair works just fine in the ISS. See [Cady Coleman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fER9InpA7vo). This is what she looks like when inside the Station.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ixHKT.jpg)
It would work better in a more advanced space habitat.
This is what she looks like outside the station.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vVuQ5.png)
Outside the ISS the helmet and light conditions means the hairstyle can rarely be seen. There is no reason to have a hairstyle that cannot be seen.
If you want a future with fancy astronaut hairstyles then you first need to redesign the helmets they wear so the hair is visible.
[Answer]
**Force-Field Space Suits**
They can form up in such a way as to capture any loose hair and encapsulate it in a way that doesn't restrict motion of the wearer. That requires some significant smarts but isn't impossible.
**Nanotech Based Space Suits**
These could have similar behavior except that one alternative might be that extraneous hair is digested and made part of the suit while it's being worn. The hair can simply be restored to original form when the suit removes itself.
**Frame Challenge**
Genetic engineering that removes the need for a space suit. The person simply exits through a force-field or nano-vacuum curtain in all their glory, transitioning to space-mode operation as they leave. The hair remains where it is. This would be the ultimate in self-expression as their current form could be their own choice.
[Answer]
There are plenty of ways to keep very long hair very tight around the head without it obstructing anything:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QOwgM.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b352D.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pluTP.jpg)
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There is a really nice question about quenching swords in dragon blood:
[Quenching swords in dragon blood; why?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/140413/quenching-swords-in-dragon-blood-why)
That made me curious about a more realistic example: Mercury
Could this substance be used to quench swords ending up with some improved properties in comparison with conventional quenching liquids?
Toxic fumes shall not be a problem here, either there are some protective measures in place, or the work is done by cheap slave-goblins or whatever, so it does not matter.
The boiling point of Mercury is 357 °C, the thermal conductivity is 8.3 W/mK, In a more medieval setting water would be used which has a boiling point of 100 °C and thermal conductivity of 0.597 W/mK, so judging from the answers of the linked question Mercury would give a better temperature control. I don't know what kind of oils are used for quenching nowadays but I am curious about this comparison as well.
My initial guess about problems would be the formation of soft amalgamates on the surface, though these could be polished off if the reaction stays at the surface. The swords can be forged out of steel or some other metals like bronze if you think it opens up possibilities for interesting reactions.
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Mercury is heavy. Specifically, it has a density of about 13.5 g/cm3 - as opposed to steel, which varies but generally hovers around 8 g/cm3, less than two-thirds as much. (Compare also to the density of water, which is 1 g/cm3 by definition.) In order to quench your sword in mercury, you need to displace more than one and a half times its own weight in mercury - and you need to put a corresponding amount of pressure on the blade.
However, quenching is done while the metal is still hot and partially malleable. Shoving it into a pool of mercury is going to put large and unexpected stresses on the blade right as it's cooling, which is generally a Bad Thing. It would be frightfully easy to twist or fracture the blade and ruin it.
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If the point of quenching were to cool it as fast as humanly possible, we'd use liquid nitrogen. Quenching is the process of cooling it at the appropriate speed — the faster you quench, the sharper the blade and the more brittle the blade. The slower you quench, the softer the blade but the less likely it is to break. That's why katanas have a [hamon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamon_(swordsmithing)) — the edge was quenched in water quickly while the back of the blade is coated in clay and cools slower. This gives the katana a relatively sharp edge with a more flexible, stronger backing without using significant extra steel (iron/steel was rare in Japan, and had to be conserved, as opposed to Europe where the backs of single-edged blades were just thicker for the same reasons).
So, the goal with quenching is to get the right balance of ability to hold an edge (fast cooling) and ability to take a blow without shattering (slow cooling). Mercury is likely to cause too many headaches to provide any significant benefit.
Also, I'm not a metallurgist, but I know that *most* of the mercury-metal reactions I've heard of don't stay on the surface, but the mercury travels deeper into the metal (see: mercury-aluminum, mercury-gold, etc.) so polishing off any problems might not help.
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The point of quenching is to use an heat sink to rapidly subtract heat from a hot piece of metal, so that a certain phase transition happens. When applied to steel, quenching is used to freeze an otherwise unstable crystallographic phase, and the freezing is due to the rapid cooling.
The boiling point of mercury is, as you note, higher than water. This implies that the freezing would be slower or not happen at all. A slower freezing might be wanted for metallurgic reasons (lower stress on the structure, better properties for the particular usage) and this is the reason why sometimes specific oils are used, but no quenching at all simply defies the purpose of quenching.
About the formation of amalgama, I think you are underestimating the extent of the damage: the quenched layer is the superficial one and the effect of quenching fades away while going more in depth, thus scraping away the surface would remove also the hardened layer. Plus, removing a layer from a stressed material will likely result in induced cracks. For this very reason quenching of worked metal is done after all material removing steps in the production process.
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A couple of notes: mercury generally doesn't form amalgams with iron, see for example <https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/q/28916/54697> where a reference is given for low-temperature amalgams. My recollection is that it was sold in units of [steel 76-lb flasks](http://periodictable.com/Items/080.6/index.html) so one might think that the mercury isn't going to mess up the steel very much. Now if [meteoroic iron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octahedrite) were used with its relatively high nickel content the situation might be different; I don't know.
Water might not be as effective a coolant as one might think due to the [Leidenfrost effect](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTOCAd2QhGg). I know that I have stuck my fingers into liquid nitrogen for a couple of seconds without harmful effects, but doing the same with [liquid propane](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1779004) may be more risky if not immediately injurious. Lower boiling temperature doesn't necessarily imply faster cooling. **Don't try either experiment!**
Looking at Bergman, Lavine, Incropera, and Dewitt, Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer, sixth edition, John Wiley and Sons, New York 2011, p. 581, we see that
$$\overline{Nu}\_D=\frac{\bar hD}k$$
Where $\overline{Nu}\_D$ is the average Nusselt number for a cylinder of diameter $D$, $\bar h$ is the average heat transfer coefficient, and $k$ is the thermal conductivity of the fluid. Then a correlation for $\overline{Nu}\_D$ is given as
$$\overline{Nu}\_D=\left\{0.60+\frac{0.387Ra\_D^{1/6}}{\left[1+
\left(0.559/Pr\right)^{9/16}\right]^{8/27}}\right\}^2$$
For example, at $400\,°C$ table A.5 gives a Prandtl number of $Pr=152$ for engine oil and $Pr=0.0163$ for mercury. The Rayleigh number is given on p. 573 as
$$Ra\_D=\frac{g\beta\left(T\_s-T\_{\infty}\right)D^3}{\nu\alpha}$$
Where the gravitational acceleration $g=9.81\,m/s^2$ on earth, the volume thermal expansion coefficient for oil is $\beta=0.70\times10^{-3}/K$ while for mercury it's $\beta=0.181\times10^{-3}/K$, and maybe the difference between the surface temperature and the free stream temperature is about $T\_s-T\_{\infty}=500\,K$. We are hoping that the sword will be reasonably approximated by a cylinder of diameter $D=5\,cm$ for the purposes of convective heat flow analysis, the kinematic viscosity of oil is $\nu=10.6\times10^{-6}m^2/s$ and for mercury $\nu=0.0882\times10^{-6}m^2/s$ and the thermal diffusivity of oil is $\alpha=0.695\times10^{-7}m^2/s$ and of mercury is $\alpha=54.05\times10^{-7}m^2/s$.
Plugging in all these numbers for oil we get $Ra\_D=5.82\times10^8$ so $\overline{Nu}\_D=136$ while for mercury $Ra\_D=2.32\times10^8$ and $\overline{Nu}\_D=32.8$. But it's the average heat transfer coefficient that is proportional to the rate of heat flow and for oil the thermal conductivity $k=134\times10^{-3}\frac W{m\cdot K}$ so $\bar h=364\frac{W}{m^2K}$ while for mercury $k=9800\times10^{-3}\frac W{m\cdot K}$ so $\bar h=6430\frac W{m^2K}$.
Metals can use their conduction band electrons to conduct heat as well as electricity so mercury looks like it might be $20\times$ as effective as oil at transferring heat by convection. Now, whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is a question for the blacksmith to answer.
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Not for the blades.
Water has a very good feature - it boils at 100 C, quickly taking away a large amount of heat which would not be possible with liquids that are boiling at a higher point.
Quenching in a high point boiling liquid like oil is definitely a thing, but this leads to [lower hardness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quenching#Process) - not something we would want for a sword blade.
However, mercury can definitely be used in other metallurgical processes directly related to quenching - soaking and [tempering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempering_(metallurgy)), which require temperatures higher than 100 C.
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In addition to the density and specific heat issues raised in other answers, steel is susceptible to [liquid metal embrittlement](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_metal_embrittlement). If exposed to a liquid metal (say, mercury) and at the same time a tensile stress (say, from quenching) catastrophic fracture will occur.
If you are interested in a steel treatment that is toxic to workers, look into cyanide salts. They are both a great way to carburize steel and extremely toxic. (Carburizing adds carbon just to the surface, creating a part with a harder wear-resistant surface while maintaining a softer crack-resistant core.)
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Lots of answers that get part of the chemistry and metallurgy right, but that also either miss key features or are wrong in some conclusions (some facts are right, but the reasons for those facts lead to wrong conclusions). This won’t be exhaustive since I haven’t worked with mercury much, and it’s not in my home library, but this will fill in many of the gaps in other answers.
Quenching in oil versus water leads to lowered hardness (as other answers indicate), but contrary to some answers (and in alignment with others) this is neither good nor bad specifically.
Hardness of steel will alter how the metal interacts with other substances: if you hit a softer object you will cut it (in general), but increased hardness increases the risk of both chipping and breaking.
Other answers indicate that Japanese steel used differential hardening to get a hard edge and flexible backing, which while true, was because of the poor quality of iron ore and metallurgy throughout the Tokugawa period, which wasn’t significantly improved until the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800s, by which time sword development had largely ceased. While very good steels can be obtained from Japan today, it’s not because of their inherently good ores, but despite them. The opposite was true in Spain and Sweden, which had naturally occurring high quality ores that lead to superior steels with the same processing. This is a large part of why arms and armor development was so different between Western Europe and Japan. With modern steels differential hardening as seen in Japan adds negligible benefits.
One comment suggested that water was less effective for hardening because of the rate of absorption. This is incorrect: waters primary drawback is due to hydrogen embrittlement caused by the absorption of elemental hydrogen into the steel matrix, which weakens it in every regard. For maximum hardness you would want to use a high thermal conductivity liquid to quickly freeze the matrix into place forming a higher magnetite to austenite ratio.
Depending on desired features, a “best” method would be edge hardening with a liquid that doesn’t contain hydrogen and with a high thermal conductivity (pure magnetite) paired with a spine of softer spring steel (much more austenite). Assuming that mercury (or dragons blood) doesn’t form an alloy (metallurgists, please chime in if you know).
Also keep in mind that there is no “best” steel, everything is a trade off. For example, if I had to make my own sword from scratch, there’s no way I’d try any kind of laminated or pattern welded blade, but just get a nice Swedish or Spanish ore and forge a monosteel blade and be happy with it as is. The extra steps would be better, but not worth the cost. If you’re interested, different oils have different thermal conductivity, and will make different hardness blades, but remember that the real reason to use oil instead of water is to avoid hydrogen embrittlement, not slow cooling, as you can always address that through annealing (which is required under all circumstances anyway).
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I am very late to the party here, but the answer is actually "yes" despite what has been said in most of the previous posts.
The spindles of Rivett lathes were described thusly by the manufacturer:
" ….. of the best tool steel, and like the spindles are made as hard as fire and mercury will make them, and then ground with diamond to a perfect fit."
(excerpted from <http://www.lathes.co.uk/rivettearly608/index.html> )
Mercury would be a very effective quenchant (possibly too good) and might be a way to harden steels that are otherwise unhardenable. (bear in mind that some steels will harden if just left to cool in air, and some won't harden regardless of what you do to them)
Unlike many responders I actually am a metallurgist, and did some research to find the ideal quenchant for a particular process, settling in the end for molten sodium hydroxide. In that case the aim was to get to 450C *very* quickly and then hold there.
In the initial stages of quenching radiative loss is significant, and NaOH is great there. Mercury is probably about as bad as can be imagined, being basically a mirror. But conduction/convection would be very high and would more than compensate as the temperature dropped.
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**No**
Mercury offers no advantage over oils and has many moe drawbacks. the vapor point of mercury is lower than many quenching oils, so sou can't get it any hotter than oil. Cooling faster offer no benefit if you are still cooling to the same temprature, in fact it makes it worse. It leads to stress fractures, even water cools too fast for better quality steels, and waters thermal conductivity is nearly an order of magnitude less.
The toxicity cannot be hand waved either quenching is a technical process it can't be done by unskilled labor and it will kill your skilled labor very quickly. There is no medieval protection from mercury vapor.
Lastly getting enough mercury to actually quench a blade would cost more than a small army, mercury ores contain very small amounts of mercury, and are not easy to process.
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I have made several swords and repaired them many times. I have tried several methods of quenching but nothing beats just throwing it in a fast flowing stream. The only comparable sword was a rough clip sword I hastily made out of scrap mild steel from a building site using a mold carved in a block of slate and quenched in the sea. I usually case harden my swords in a mix of charcoal, hay and animal bone. The finished result was as good as any EN45 sword I have.
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In this world, a Bronze Age tribe hunts and is hunted by multiple species of large dinosaur. What bronze age weaponry would be utilized by these people for the purposes of combating these beasts, either in offensive hunts or defensive fights?
For this question, I'm primarily concerned with weapons effective against large dinosaurs. Small dinosaurs could presumably be dispatched by weapons similar to those used against humans and other large mammals, but large dinosaurs such as the ~8,000 kg *Tyrannosaurus rex* and particularly the ~100,000 kg sizes of the largest sauropods would pose a unique challenge.
What known Bronze Age weaponry would be most effective against such large animals, and what novel weapons might be developed specifically to combat them?
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Humans hunted mammoths (and possibly several other large dangerous creatures) to extinction. Hunting and killing them is easy; it is evolving alongside them that is all but impossible. The only real consistent advantage dinosaurs have is scaly skin, (which some possibly including T-rex would not have) which makes them more resistant to projectiles. Location will determine a lot of this, there are very different tactics in a open plain vs a forest, but for the most part tactics against large animals can have wide application.
Spears and group tactics are quite effective, if you have someone crazy enough to try cutting the hamstring with an ax it works even better. Spears allow you to puncture and more importantly harry, and can be thrown to keep your distance. An animal attacked from all sides gets confused and fatigued quickly. This works very well when combined with difficult terrain like swamps or mudbanks. [Here is a description](https://www.jstor.org/stable/41716005?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) of one method used by elephant hunters, a high risk method that uses a six man team of spearmen. Other methods use far more people to reduce risk.
Humanity's most effective defensive tool has always been ranged combat. Atlatl and bows can bring almost anything down with little risk. Combine them with poisons and it becomes orders of magnitude more effective. Scaly skin will make this much harder but still effective. Even the most well-armored dinosaurs still have vulnerable places that can be attacked. for defense humans pitching rocks can drive away many animals including lions. **Dinosaurs are animals not movie monsters, if something or someplace hurts, they leave it alone**, and humans can throw a rock hard enough and accurate enough to be painful to almost anything. Combined with fire and the ability to manufacture spikes we can drive almost anything away. Note that the most dangerous animals to humans are often semi-aquatic, where many of our traps and tricks don't work.
Lastly you have simple creativity, humans killed entire herds of bison by running them off a cliff, they killed giant lizards in Australia with fires, we hunt rhino and elephants with simple metal spikes on boards or pit traps. Look at poaching techniques, cruel but effective. The ability to observe a creature's behavior and plan how to turn its own behavior against them is the reason we dominate the planet. Elephant hunters will observe behavior closely using repeated paths, waterholes, and other such places to their advantage.
To look at dinosaurs specifically, there are some things you can exploit. Armor can actually work against them, humans can hunt slow armored animals with traps very easily. Bipedal ones are vulnerable to pits and snares and can be tripped up easier. Eggs are a vulnerability as well, humans can break eggs from a distance so they can quickly remove predators.
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## **The dinos don't stand a freakin' chance.**
The real question isn't, "How would a Bronze Age tribe defeat dinosaurs?"
The real question is, "How did those dinosaurs survive against humans long enough for us to develop bronze?"
If dinosaurs had somehow survived into the Paleolithic, they would have been rapidly exterminated by humans. Tyrannosaurs and all. With stone tools: no bronze required. We don't need to speculate; it is exactly what actually happened to all the existing mammalian and avian megafauna in Australasia and the Americas when humans turned up.
Why, exactly, are humans the most bad-arsed killingest monsters in the history of the planet, when we are far from the biggest? Paleontologists refer to the full set of our advantages as "the toolkit", and it has several parts that work together:
* Intelligence: we plan our battles to best advantage, and greatest disadvantage of our enemies. Several commentators have given specific examples already, like digging traps or fighting in narrow defiles. But all those are just for warm-ups: we have more tricks than Batman's belt.
* Teamwork: one human is a dangerous threat even to a large animal. But it won't be one. It won't even be fifty. It will be as many as it takes. And we won't attack at random, but as a single co-ordinated mega-organism, because of:
* Communication: our sophisticated language skills not only enable the whole tribe to work together like a single gigantic entity; they also enable the lessons learned in one generation to be passed on to succeeding generations, and shared with distant allied tribes, so that our skills and tactics constantly improve. For example, all the warriors will soon have a good idea of each animal's weak points: the zones that are safest to attack, yet likely to bring it down quickly.
* Missile weapons: it has only been realised surprisingly recently that the human body is specially adapted for missile throwing, and that it is one of our super-powers. Even the most dangerous predator avoids unnecessary fights, because it isn't a TV monster motivated by evil: it's an animal doing this for a living, and if it gets wounded it's going to be in a lot of trouble trying to hunt next week. But by use of missile weapons Man has the power to wound or kill dangerous opponents at minimal personal risk. It doesn't matter if the first javelin doesn't kill the Tyrannosaurus: there will be more, and more, until it either flees in terror or becomes too weak to fight.
* Fire: mastery of fire brings immense power in several ways. Even very dangerous animals can be herded and channelled into traps as if being lead by the nose. Packs of animals can be exterminated *en masse*. Entire landscapes can be modified to support our preferred lifestyle and make it harder for our enemies to survive (or, perhaps, to hide from us.)
* Domesticated animals: dogs prevent us getting surprised, and enable tracking the wounded monster to its lair. Horses enable us to run rings around a tyrannosaurus. (There is still some debate about their top speed, but the consensus is that it was slower than a horse. They probably also turned slowly, and had little stamina for a long race.)
* Blades: whether they be obsidian in the Upper Paleolithic or honed bronze in the Bronze Age, worked tools provide the ability for human-sized strength to inflict massively damaging wounds. It doesn't matter how big it is; no real animal shrugs off a full-strength blow with a razor sharp blade mounted on a polearm. If the beast is only middling huge, it goes down. If it is gigantic, it may take a while to die, but it is mortally wounded. Yes, this even applies to 100 ton sauropods. We know this because the same method has been used for a single man to kill **200** ton whales.
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Bronze age people couldn't do much when going face-to-face against a large dinosaur.
However, there is a number of inventions that can help people prevail.
1. **Traps**. Even primitive people can construct large traps that would be deadly for even the largest of dinosaurs. The problem would be to lure them into a trap while avoiding being stomped or torn apart;
2. **Fire**. Dinosaurs may be afraid of fire, and people can use it to their advantage. And if they are not afraid, people still have better odds in a fight when using fire;
3. **Poison**. People can figure out what can poison big dinosaurs and apply this substance to their arrows;
4. **Pikes**. They will be effective against smaller, bear-sized reptiles;
5. **Ballistae**. They may be able to kill large dinosaur outright, but have very low mobility. I suggest that ballistae can be used only for defense of human settlements;
6. **Caltrops**. While not particularly damaging against large animals, they can be effective in "area denial", and also to make a t-Rex abandon its pursuit.
7. **Domesticated dinosaurs**. If people can domesticate large dinosaurs, this will considerably help in a possible battle. Imagine a 50+ ton bronze-armored sauropod with human warriors and ballista on its back.
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I'm going to start with the tried and true *pike.* The weapon, not the fish (not that a firm slap with a Haddock doesn't demand attention, just maybe the wrong kind of attention). In the picture below, the dude on the right is holding a pike. (Image courtesy [Dwarf Fortess Wiki](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Pike_(weapon)).)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nec9S.jpg)
Pikes are a very traditional way of stopping large, heavy creatures (usually horses, but a T-rex will do in a pinch). Ideally, piercing the heart is really useful, but you can also get the critter hung up on the pike such that it's seriously disabled. In the case of something really heavy, like the aforementioned T-rex, it might make more sense to ground the back of the pike so the force of impact was against the ground instead of your hands.
If, on the otherhand, you're *planning* to kill said T-rex, then I'm very much in favor of the spike-filled pit. In this case you can use the weight of the lizard against him by dropping a log over the pit to run across, thereby leading hapless lizard to its doom. alternatively, [bronze-age people had rope](http://www.flagfen.com/invented-during-the-bronze-age), meaning they could make a rudimentary bridge. (By the end of the bronze age they could have fashioned very respectible bridges. The point is, it could collapse under the weight of the dinosaur, preferably after the human ran across it.)
Finally, the bronze age folks also had chariots, which would be useful against the larger, less agile dinosaurs (bronze age people wouldn't call them dinosaurs. They'd probably have a word derived from "Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!" Maybe "Ahdu" to honor the god "du" who preserved them from the dinosaurs. It's almost a prayer, if you think about it, but I'm off track.). Smaller dinos (ahdus...) would succumb to axes and sabers, so I can imagine developing an inverse-curve weapon similar to this bad boy: (image courtesy Toynk Toys via [Amazon](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B01KB28RPG).)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/X47DV.jpg)
That makes loping off a leg or a head much simpler.
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**Offense: Atlatl - the weapon between spear and arrow.**
From the [Manitoba Museum](https://manitobamuseum.ca/main):
>
> An atlatl is a hunting tool that is in two parts, a dart or very thin spear and a throwing board which is used to propel the dart. In most of North America it was the hunting tool of choice for many thousands of years. Archaeologists often use the size of projectile points as indication of which hunting tool was used.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PN5az.jpg)
Ancient hunting parties (outside Africa, where no evidence has been found) used atlatls to repeatedly puncture their prey from a greater (safer) range than spear-throwing distance, yet with surprisingly good accuracy. Then they merely tracked the prey while it bled out. Atlatl use decreased when larger prey became scarce.
[Modern example](https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/missouri/2017/10/08/atlatl-hunter-1st-modern-missouri-woman-take-deer-ancient-hunting-tool/737262001/): One hit on a deer, two days to track the prey.
As a weapon, used carefully with terrain and teamwork of the hunting party to trap the dinosaur(s), the whole tribe will eat well for many days.
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# Humans are smart, and smart humans kill baby Tyrannosaurs
Why would you mess with an adult Tyrannosaur? To be sure, a Bronze Age society would have the weaponry to do some damage. A [spear thrower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower) plus some bronze tipped darts will certainly give even the tyrant lizard king reason to reconsider what it is doing.
But remember, folks, our stone age ancestors were the most effective predators that ever graced this planet. We made mammoths extinct; we made saber tooth tigers extinct. We make [one ton bears](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-faced_bear) that hunted horses and bison extinct. Humans are intelligent pack hunters that are [effectively unstoppable](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/58104/would-the-existence-of-megalodon-during-the-medieval-ages-threaten-sea-travel-an/58118#58118).
So that all being said, lets look at the limitations of dinosaurs. Specifically (as mentioned in [previous posts of mine](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/99845/releasing-a-t-rex-into-a-modern-ecosystem-wouldnt-be-that-bad-right/99859#99859)), big dinosaurs take a long time to grow up. Here is a Tyrannosaurs growth chart:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/35CBU.jpg)
Look how long that Tyrannosaur is tiny! It will take over 5 years for a Tyrannosaurs to be larger than a human; and over 12 years before the T. Rex is larger than a cow. In that time, I can guarantee you, our cave man ancestors will have worked out how to remove the small ones.
# Conclusion
Humans are smart, and dinosaurs take a long time to grow up. A Bronze Age society with its food surplus would find a way to employ full time dinosaur hunters to eliminate any potential dinosaurs when they are small. That way, there won't be more than the occasional large dinosaur wandering in from the wilderness beyond. As Bronze Age humans spread across the Earth, dinosaurs will likely find themselves facing extinction.
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Traps, especially pit traps, are a bronze age tribe's best bet against T-rex or other gigantic dinosaurs. The T-rex falls in, then you drop rocks on it. Maybe you also have sharp stakes at the bottom.
Depending on when exactly in the bronze age you're talking about, they may also have access to siege weapons like the scorpion or ballista. Traditionally in the bronze age, these fired round stones for knocking down fortifications, but I don't believe there is anything preventing them from firing arrows as long as a person. You don't need to shoot all the way through a T-rex to kill it; just deep enough to hit a vital organ.
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The Three T's - Teamwork, Terrain and Traps. Regular weapons in large groups may be enough to severely hamper or defeat large dinosaurs, particularly if used by trained and coordinated groups of dino-hunters.
As Ryan\_L mentioned, traps could also be used - pitfalls, stakes, nets to entangle and slow. Luring it into a canyon and then dropping large rocks on it may also prove effective - and shows a good use of terrain. Caltrops and spikes would be devastatingly effective against the larger dinosaurs such as Sauropods. Once it's lame you can finish it off and your leisure and eat for a year.
Man-made terrain will also be a huge advantage - I'm picturing a series of tunnels and bolt-holes used as escape routes and shelters from hungry T-Rexs, whilst other hunters pop out of holes in the walls to fire stones and arrows.
Fire could also be used to herd and corral the beasts - flushing them out of heavily wooded areas, or using a bank of fires to ward them away from the camp.
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### [*Cheval de frise*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheval_de_frise)
Seems like [*cheval de frise*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheval_de_frise) would be easy enough to make:
$\hspace{150px}$[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cheval_de_frise_petersburg_civil_war_02598.jpg).
They're portable, so soldiers would carry them to a battle site as cover from cavalry (horses). Early humans could've done the same, then taken down dinosaurs with ranged weapons, either with the intent to actually bring a dinosaur down or to goad them into being impaled on the spears.
The particular picture above was designed for horse-sized attackers; one meant for larger dinosaurs might use a smaller number of thicker logs, perhaps with bronze spear-like tips if available. Hunters might want to bring several such that they could retreat when rushed.
Around long-term settlements, humans would likely favor using thicker logs firmly planted into the ground, again with bronze spear-tips if available. They'd probably also put in random pits; the pits wouldn't need to be deep or hidden, but rather just enough to deny a hypothetical rushing dinosaur firm footing and balance before it hits the spike walls. If available, randomly scattering large rocks or/and thick logs parallel to the ground (like tripping wire) could also help.
Long-term settlements would probably want defenses against smaller dinosaurs and other humans, too. For that, they could use traditional wooden walls as an inner barrier.
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How do humans and T-Rexes co-exist? First off, neither of them considers the other a primary food source. Humans are dinky little creatures that are way more trouble to catch than they're worth. To some predators we smell bad. Meanwhile as a top predator/scavenger, T-Rexes have all the parasites that can be expected and they probably don't taste good either.
Also, if we kill one when we don't want all the meat, that's many tons of meat that will attract a whole lot of scavengers while it rots. You don't want it rotting in your back yard and you don't want those vultures and hyenas hanging out there either.
So it might settle into generally peaceful coexistence. Humans only have to deal with the occasional loser T-Rex that can't get a territory anywhere else and is reduced to trying to take one from us. T-Rexes only have to deal with the occasional loser human who has been thrown out of the tribe and has nowhere else to go, or the occasional loser tribe that can't compete with other tribes for land and has no better choice than compete with dragons.
Human population pressure might eventually leave us encroaching on the big predators, but the slower the population grows the slower that happens. It could look like stability over a human lifespan.
Also, imagine the following scenario -- the T-Rexes are good at preying on 5-ton animals that tend to live in swamps but that come out of the swamps and rummage around. Humans learn by experience that when they have T-Rexes around, the smaller rummagers are not much trouble. But when the T-Rexes are gone the smaller animals are a *lot* of trouble. They breed in large numbers in the swamp and their surplus comes out and takes our crops and tramples things. If we don't have T-Rexes we need to go into the swamps and cull the things ourselves. So we're better off with T-Rexes.
As for how to drive them away when we need to, that depends a whole lot on how smart they are, and how dedicated they are.
Humans with fire are scary. Would the T-rexes have flammable hair or feathers? That would be enough to scare them off unless they were determined. But if they felt implacable, animals that could put out campfires by stepping on them might not be deterred.
If the big animals were smart, and occasionally determined enough to attack anyway, they could do a lot of damage. If they considered themselves at war, and used smart tactics, and were willing to take a chance of sacrificing themselves for their families and nations, that would be very hard.
If it was something like smart T-Rexes with a bronze age civilization, determined to wipe out humanity before humanity exterminated them, then I can't at all say who would win.
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None of the answers so far mention the obvious: Dinosaurs are reptiles and cold-blooded. Humans are warm-blooded. All of the above techniques will work twice as good during early morning when the dinos are still warming up, but human bodies are already working at full efficiency.
This has the added advantage that semi-aquatic creatures are much more likely to be found on land and much, much less likely to surprise you with a leap out of the water.
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As no one has mentioned it one technology (although not strictly a weapon) a Bronze Age civilisation could deploy against large creatures such as dinosaurs is defensive fortifications.
In Britain the Bronze Age people had by the Late Bronze Age started to build Hillforts with a series of steep side defensive ditches and palisades.
The Greeks, Egyptians etc. were even more advanced and constructed thick stone walls several feet high. Bronze Age Troy had walls at least 15ft high for example, those of us who grew up with the old upright stance for a T-Rex would not take too much comfort from this but modern stances put the height much lower. Sue the largest T-Rex known stands around 12ft high.
This would enable peoples of the Bronze Age to defend themselves using projectiles or long spears against dinosaurs in relative safety.
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The answer is trip and fall.
Use nets to cause them to trip and fall so they break and die.
Use shallow pits and they will break their legs and die.
Stone Age weapons have no chance you can't even reach their bodies.
Tyrannosaurus Rex had a 4 kilometre vision acuity so team tactics are never going to work against it.
The principles for the other enormous dinosaurs would be similar to fighting T T Rex though the four legged ones would extra hard.
How To Fight a T. Rex (and Win) (Because Science on Youtube explains the difficulties)
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 4 years ago.
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Posessed dolls are a common horror trope, they also make zero sense. Even if you say they have the strength of an average Joe, concentrated in a tiny body, it still leaves them with little to no mass to put the force into.
It's no wonder that haunted dolls in non-horror are always the [butt of the joke](https://youtu.be/zOMzfdZzqu8?t=172), just [watch Polnareff beat up Ebony Devil.](https://youtu.be/vWBU45H5_xU?t=142)
For this test we're gonna assume the following family:
* Dad: Veteran, gun crazy, **doesn't like his kids playing with creepy dolls**
* Mom: Paranoid, has set up a **CCTV** system in the house
* Boi: **Hyperviolent**, Fortnite junkie, tears ugly dolls apart with utter viciousness
* Girl: Paranoid, likes to play with dolls, sleeps with the **night lights on**, has a panic room and **motion detectors** around her bed
*Immediate obstacles are **bold***
**The doll starts out in the girl's room and has to kill at least one of the children and get away with it. The family is weirded out by the doll, but won't destroy it (yet).**
The doll is humanoid, 60 centimeters tall, and has the same strength as an adult. Its body has the same tensile strength and characteristics as the original doll. It has an "ethereal skeleton" that corresponds to that of a human. The doll's parts are attached to the skeleton. Severing a limb also severs the skeleton. The limb can move around as long as it can perform lever action.
I don't want this to be too story based, so the doll is going in blind and needs strategies that can be adapted to a threat, regardless the environmental factors.
**This test's purpose is to find a way for your typical haunted toy to be able to effectively dodge most modern security and asssasinate a kid.**
[Answer]
### Psychologically mess with them until they kill each other
As long as this family remains armed and paranoid, a doll is going to have a lot of problems killing anyone directly. Fortunately, the very qualities that make this family hard to kill makes them easy to mess with. We've got a lot of psychological problems to work with here - problems that a clever doll could exploit. In order to win, you're going to want to hit them where they are weakest - their minds.
Some ideas:
1. Move objects around and make noise at night. Make it seem like a burglar is sneaking in while the family is asleep. Anything that makes the father more likely to shoot things in the dark is a plus.
2. Hide under the boy's bed and whisper to him at night. Try to get him to kill someone or at least wander around at night in secret, creating more tension. You can also break his computer so he doesn't have an outlet for his violent urges. Maybe steal some of the father's guns and leave them around his room. If the son and the father are both sneaking around in the dark trying to shoot the "burglar" at the same time...
3. Disrupt the cameras. Cameras are generally set up to catch human-sized invaders, not doll-sized ones. You can probably find a way to cut the power without being found out.
4. Plant evidence that gets them to blame each other for the weird things going on. The more they suspect each other, the easier it is to kill someone and have them blame another family member instead of suspecting the doll.
As tension rises, the chance of accidents (or "accidents") will become more likely. If horror-movie serendipity is on your side, sooner or later someone is going to get killed or leave themselves open to doll-murder. If you're really lucky you might be able to pick off the whole family one at a time. Save the little girl for last, of course...
[Answer]
Use the obstacles to your advantage.
Dealing with calm, level headed humans is an issue - they'll be more sure of themselves and less likely to make mistakes. That's why we begin with....
**Step 1:** I'm so tired!
The CCTV and motion sensor combo means anything larger than a small dog will likely trigger the alarm and then be found. The cctv will likely be pointed into the room meaning blind spots directly below the cameras and behind/under furniture. So position yourself behind some furniture, away from the direct line of sight of the cctv and set off the motion detectors. Alarm goes off, everyone wakes up. There's no intruder to be seen, so they check the cctv. Nothing. Dad says maybe it was a mouse, he'll put down some traps tomorrow, everyone goes back to bed. A few hours later and the alarm is going off again. Doing it too frequently to begin with isn't that helpful, starting with once or twice a night is ideal to disrupt the sleep without making so much of a problem that they dig for the cause. Do this over a week or more, slowly increasing the number of 'false alarms'. Eventually one of 2 things will happen. The family will die of sleep deprivation (unlikely) or, they will disconnect the faulty motion sensor system (likely). Assumming the latter, that makes the next step possible.
**Step 2:** Mummy, mummy, I'm scared.
Everyone is tired, and on edge but the motion sensor system is off so tonight they'll finally get some sleep. As soon as the girl is asleep you can get to work, take another toy, ideally a doll and tear it a apart. Put all but one of the pieces on the floor out of vision of the CCTV. Take the final piece and get it some degree out of the girls room, towards the boys room. If there's no CCTV in the hallway between the rooms, then place it in his room, if there is, slide it along the floor towards his door. Then back to the girls bedroom. Time to wake her up, any way will do, so long as it draws her attention to the destroyed doll (make a scratching noise over near it until she wakes, pick up and throw a piece into the pile from cover, whatever works). The girl wakes up to the destroyed roll, screams her head off and wakes the extremely tired family. It doesn't take long for mum and dad to point the finger to the boy who loves to kill dolls. One of two things happens depending on the temperament of the girl: she's either convinced to go back to sleep, in which case we repeat the process tomorrow night with another doll or, she refuses to sleep so someone (mum/dad/girl) suggests she spends the night in the panic room. If its the former, we continue destroying toys and waking the girl in the middle of the night until she makes the move to the panic room. Now it's as simple as....
**Step 3:** I think we're alone now
Assuming the girl likes us (the murder doll) she will presumably want to keep us safe from her brother and take us with her into the panic room. Now we have ~6 hours to kill a single young girl that's locked in a cage with us. I'm assumming no cctv inside the panic room (it's usually the other way around), so we can be as brazen as we like. Choking is the obvious get out of jail free card. Wait until she's asleep, tie her hands to the bed and shove another toy down her throat. Don't worry about the fact she's tied up, you can untie her before the morning once she's dead. This takes us to....
**Step 4:** the family is ruined
The death of a child is horrible, but it's worse than that. When the autopsy is performed they see the rope burns on her wrists. The poor girl was clearly being kept tied up, probably in that 'panic room', more like a cage when you think of her being tied up. There's no way to know which parent was responsible, if not both, but they sure both knew it was happening. The boy isn't talking about any abuse, but he has violent tendencies that suggest an unhealthy environment. Social services take him away. It'll be a few years before he calms down and acts more rationally but eventually he becomes more within social norms. The parents get convicted of murder, the prosecution can't prove they choked the girl, but leaving her tired up unable to help herself was enough to get them thrown in a dark hole for the rest of their lives, what jury wouldn't convict. Cut to 2 years later, a package arrives at the boys adoptive parents house, a gift from his parents... they hesitate to let the boy have it, but on inspection it's just a toy doll, with a note that says it was his sister's favourite toy.... *cut to black*
[Answer]
**Little by little.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kOImn.jpg)
<https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/vampirebat/>
In Dracula, the vampire visits Lucy in her sleep, and slowly drains her. If there is a better description of a girl being slowly killed by a vampire I have not read it.
<https://archive.org/stream/draculabr00stokuoft/draculabr00stokuoft_djvu.txt>
>
> 17 August. No diary for two whole days. I have not had the heart to
> write. Some sort of shadowy pall seems to be coming over our
> happiness. No news from Jonathan, and Lucy seems to be growing
> weaker, whilst her mother's hours are numbering to a close. I do not
> understand Lucy's fading away as she is doing. She eats well and
> sleeps well, and enjoys the fresh air; but all the time the roses in
> her cheeks are fading, and she gets weaker and more languid day by
> day; at night I hear her gasping as if for air.
>
>
>
Your doll is no match for anything in a fair fight. Neither is a vampire bat. Any of its prey animals could easily smash it - if they detected it. The doll must be sly. No-one can know. When girl eventually goes to the hospital, the doll goes with her.
[Answer]
The answer is of course staring at you in most children's toys.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/11ytZ.jpg)
Kinda hard to actually inhale one of those small bits though, and they're often a poor shape for lodging in a trachea. When the toy is actively assisting the process though, and can time things right, then it becomes a serious threat. Can't call for help when you're choking, and faced with a surprise tiny animated monster you're unlikely to be able to put up a good enough fight in the short time before hypoxia renders you helpless.
Even in the aftermath it may not be obvious what happened, beyond the foolishness of play with hazardous old toys.
[Answer]
Poison, a different take:
The doll has some slow acting but very deadly inhaled poison. It's stored somewhere on the doll where the doll can decide when to release it. It's a doll, it gets played with, at the right time (close to the nose as she's inhaling) it releases it's poison.
Since it's very deadly the quantity used can be small enough she doesn't notice it. Since it's slow acting there won't be a physical reaction to tip her off. This can be done in the direct view of CCTV and it won't spot anything.
Polonium-210 fits the bill (but will be hard to get), I'm sure there are others.
[Answer]
Possible scenarios
1. If the doll is capable of mind control - getting the child to kill herself is just too obvious. Use girl to play on mom's paranoia, whilst playing on girl's. Mommy begins to complain to dad about girl's recent behaviour, girl does the same for mommy. Dad indifferent, plays off claims as usual paranoia. Then get mommy dearest to crush apple seeds and use resultant products to bake a confection (whatever you will, but most preferably muffins, only Girl's muffin with crushed apple seeds). Girl sees muffins, steals some for play Tea Party. Fortnite junkie brother refuses Tea Party invitation, but forced by mommy and daddy.
Tea Party held in girl's room, doll of interest on shelf somewhere.
Halfway into the Tea Party, girl starts to cough and gasp for air. Panicked family surround her, girl soon becomes unconscious. Panicked family race to the hospital, girl dies.
Dad manipulated to view CCTV footage of the earlier events of the day. Sees mommy's poison preparation and violently confronts mommy. Gun goes off during scuffle, mommy killed. Police arrive and dad is arrested. Doll of interest still on shelf somewhere in girl's room.
2. Fortnite junkie boy sees doll of interest and starts to rip it apart. Girl screams at him, mommy tired and tells everyone to quit making such a racket. Fibres of doll of interest lay embedded under fortnite junkie boy's fingernails. Turn into needles and begin to dig into flesh there. Boy awakens from sleep, screaming frantically. Panicked family rush to the scene and see nothing, but fortnite junkie boy insists he is in pain, and is bleeding. Panicked family think he is still reliving a nightmare, and tell him to calm down.
This continues (even at school) until fortnite junkie boy is committed. One day, a new entree arrives with a doll that resembles doll of interest. Fortnite junkie boy freaks out and throws himself down the stairs and breaks his neck.
Doll of interest remains atop a shelf, fixed, somewhere in girl's room.
[Answer]
If the motion sensors are only around the girl's bed and the doll can get clear from them without triggering them (for example being "lost" the day before so it isn't taken to the girl's room at night), then it's in the clear so long as it can destroy the CCTV's recordings before the family wakes up, or kill the whole family (presuming they're the only ones who can access the recordings).
I'd go with multiple gas leaks. Turn on every stove, break a pipe or two if you can do it without waking everyone, and let it kill the family in their sleep. Then, maybe half an hour before they usually wake up, blow the house up just to be safe.
[Answer]
The doll is made of asbestos. Whenever not in view of a family member or cameras, it vigorously rubs itself all over to produce as many tiny asbestos fibers as possible. The daughter inhales the fibers when she plays with the doll, contracts mesothelioma, and dies a few years later.
[Answer]
# Poison
A proper substance can be placed in a drink or food item when no one is looking. A powdered substance can be placed on the switch for the nightlight, a door handle, or anywhere which is frequently touched.
The best option, however, is probably a blow-dart full of poison. The possessed doll only needs a clear line of sight, while itself sitting outside the realm of the CCTV cameras. For example, ricin was used in the [assassination of Georgi Markov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgi_Markov#Assassination). It took him hours after the exposure to go to the hospital and four days for him to die, but the end effect was achieved.
Such an event with a child could go unnoticed while sleeping, and even while awake could be mistaken as a bug bite. This would not be an immediate death. It would take hours to days to figure out what happened, and no one would know when *exactly* to look for the assassination attempt. Was it when she was outside on the way to school? While sleeping? Was her veteran father to blame? How about the hyperviolent brother?
Without clear evidence, no one would believe it's a possessed doll - not even the family themselves. This would lead to all the hidden fears of the mother coming out to question her husband and son. And the same for the son and husband question the mom and each other. Sure, they may look at the CCTV - but they'd be scanning through days of footage, not sure if the event was caught on camera at all.
Even if the family suspects the doll, the authorities would likely be involved as soon as the child was taken to the hospital. And, like you said, the idea of a doll committing an assassination sounds silly. The cops wouldn't buy it.
[Answer]
If the doll is able to get to a sleeping child and has something sharp, a slit in the carotid artery would require **immediate** attention to survive.
[Answer]
Strength is not an issue. Traps take little strength to set up, and are quite effective. A wire snare trap around the neck, a tripwire in front of the stairs, an extension cord in a bathtub, a propane tank and a blowtorch, gunpowder from shotgun shells and a bunch of razor blades in a PVC pipe... the list goes on.
The motion detection isn't going to be much of a problem; as long as the doll stays out of sight from the cameras, it can move around the house unhindered, because it doesn't have heat (for PIR sensors), and it's not big enough to set off most sensors. And even if it is, the inhuman doll can just move very, very slowly. If the cameras can see it, no one will realize it until they review the tapes, and it will be too late long before then.
So, the doll creeps out the girl's door and out into the hall, then from there to the kitchen. It searches drawers until it finds a nice, sharp knife, then heads to Fortnite boi's room. He probably stays up late playing games, but once he's asleep, he's not going to wake up to anything. Ever again, in this case. An hour after he has fallen asleep, the doll unplugs his computer, cuts the cord to expose the wiring, tapes the neutral wire to the boy, then wraps the hot around the knife blade and stabs him in the temple, killing him instantly. ZOT.
Assuming the boy didn't make much noise, the doll can set up a few traps for the parents, then stab / strangle / shoot / blow up the girl. The parents, assuming they didn't die from the traps, will certainly die from the fire the doll sets, using gas from the family car.
] |
[Question]
[
In my story there are two largely unknown secret corporations (on Earth; present day) which are at war. They are quite technologically advanced, although all of their inventions are somewhat feasible. Except for one, which involves an 'aether' (not *quite* the luminipherous one).
Anyway, one of them has a base about 5 miles under Abbeville, South Carolina.
How do they get food to it w/out people noticing? There are about 100 in it.
Edits:
The 5 mi. underground is not *definite* yet.
And please ignore the 'corporation' aspect; I mainly used that word because 'secret society' has acquired a sort of specific meaning.
[Answer]
* Digital age of info-tracking, quantifying, etc by the computerized resources of national and powerful business entities; your resourcing the surface world will be noticed. Only a matter of time...not enough to win a war.
* Human nature and Chaos theory: if you put a person, no matter how loyal, into consistant and constant contact with outside world persons(to gather foodstuffs, supplies, etc), the odds of discovery will increase to the exponential in short-order.
= Suggest your 'Corporation' use some of the, doubtless, sizeable resources at it's disposal to R&D subterrainean environmental and support systems for the long-run. And just plain learn hydroponic farming.
... Guiding BFI(big fat idea): become self-contained, thus limiting odds of vulnerability crop-up, and educated your minions to think better; more resourcefully.
it's a brave gnu world after all. ;) Now get off the grid and think outside that box. B4 you can't, anymore, children. (wolfgrin) You'll win that war.
[Answer]
**Run a supermarket**
The corporation sets up and runs a completely legitimate supermarket, which provides food for (among all the real customers) several fictitious restaurants. The deliveries are made by a select few employees who are part of the conspiracy. It ought to take no more than one or two delivery puppets to keep 100 people supplied. Plus, of course, the delivery puppets also do regular deliveries as well.
[Answer]
**Recalls.**
Large unknown corporations will likely be in their position by controlling smaller corporations. Consider how even in the real world, [there are ten mega-corporations that are the source of just about everything we eat](http://www.businessinsider.com/10-companies-that-control-what-we-buy-2014-7). If they're becoming powerful enough to actively wage war on each other, they probably act as an umbrella corporation over some of these ten.
Then they fake some data that gets sent to their holdings. Turns out that there's a strain of [insert generic bug like E. Coli] in the [food]! We need to recall all of the [food] shipped out to the stores in the past two weeks!
Recalls happen all the time. Nobody will really care. People pretended to care about the Chipotle health issues earlier this year, but that hasn't stopped many people from eating there. You get a temporary dip in public approval ratings, but your profits aren't affected, especially when you take on the cost of dealing with all of the disposal. The stores will ship the [food] to a disposal location, say, Abbeville, South Carolina, the corporation reimburses them for the shipment, and the [food] is then moved from the trucks into the secret base.
**Alternatively:** You could just ship the food to the base yourselves. Drive down an interstate highway some time, and count how many big semi-trucks you see. One time as a kid, I counted over three hundred on the road between Milwaukee and Chicago. You can pack a ton of food onto a truck and just ship it to Abbeville, and nobody will think twice of another truck on the road. If anyone asks, just say that you're testing the savings that could be gotten by building a distribution center there. Better yet, actually do build a distribution center there, so that you'll have trucks coming and leaving constantly. As long as nobody is actively measuring how much food comes in and comes out, you can say that you're holding things in storage there and they'll never know the truth.
[Answer]
Hydroponics... create vast hydroponic farms in your underground world. Basically large fish tanks with floating soil. The decay of plant feed the fish, the excrement of fish feed the plants. It's a completely self sustaining farm that reproduces through seeding, etc... oh but everyone will need to embrace the vegetarian lifestyle! Unless of course you just walk a random cow down there every once in a while. A single cow would go unnoticed and would feed a number of people for a LONG time...
[Answer]
Here's my design for your underground base:
It's pretty simple. Here's what you need:
* A house.
* Someone willing to live in the house.
* A delivery van.
* Some way of getting from the surface to the base five miles below (tunnels, elevator, etc. Your choice).
* An underground base.
All you have to do is connect the base to the house. The person who lives in the house will supposedly have a job as some sort of delivery person for a small company - or maybe a construction worker with a creepy white van - and they drive that van to and from work each day. The van, however, carries food - and lots of it.
---
As a side note, in the *Artemis Fowl* series, The People ride in egg-like capsules or more graceful shuttles from many miles underground to the surface in magma streams, which lead to exits through unobtrusive natural landmarks. I suppose your corporation could do the same.
[Answer]
Why would they have to transport food? Just produce it underground to begin with. They could do this either "the natural way" with hydroponics, or entirely synthetically. Either way the energy (the only real input you need to make food, assuming sufficient technology) can easily be carried in electrically via high-voltage cables, or could perhaps even be produced underground from underground fossil fuels or nuclear reactors.
[Answer]
A lot of industrial processes use agricultural products as feedstock.
Run a shell corporation or corporations dealing with food.
If you need grain? Run a brewery. Siphon off some grain or 'reject' some of the supply, and send it off. Likewise run a cannery for vegitables, and have 'rejected' or 'offcuts' used to supply your needs.
Milk might not meet "standards" for butterfat or such or "just went bad"
Frozen meat could 'fail' inspections and be 'destroyed', funneling it into your underground lair.
Considering that food is overproduced in many places, a quiet offer to purchase commodities meant to be destroyed at a fair price would likely make many small farmers happy. "Dispose" of it for them 'charging' them for it, while paying them under the table.
[Answer]
**Food Waste Disposal Site**
Considering the [vast amount](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_waste#United_States_2) of food wasted in the US, it should be incredibly easy to organize a few shipments of food for 'disposal', that is really entirely edible and viable food that is rerouted to the secret base.
The secret base could even be underneath the food disposal site. That means that few people will be poking around there, due to it being waste disposal (so it will be in the middle of nowhere), and it will be almost impossible for the entrance to the secret base to be discovered accidentally.
This also would account for any electronic equipment that needs to be shipped there, as the disposal site will probably need at least some industrial machinery. If it just needs more repairs than usual, it can be put down to old terrible equipment that needs frequent repairs.
[Answer]
Your problem isn't food delivery. Food delievery is easy. You simply pay people to deliver food. Nobody inspects food transfers strongly enough that a truck driving food around get's strongly monitored. As long as the driver is on the paycheck of the secred society there's no problem.
On the other hand you forget the problem of building an underground basis in which 100 people can live in the first place. That's going to take heavy building machinery and a lot of workers. It's going to get noticed by the local government and the local government is going to want building permits.
That's why actual secret societies like the Mafia or groups like P2 don't have underground bases hidden 5000 meters under ground. That's why other mechanisms for secrecy get used in real life.
[Answer]
You do what everyone else who needs to serve hundreds of meals every day does: You buy the food from food service distributors.
In principle this is pretty easy: You set up a dummy corporation registered somewhere more privacy-conscious than Delaware, and the corporation buys all the food from distributors, the same way restaurants and supermarkets do.
The best part of this is that these transactions are often conducted old-school, offline, with phone calls and occasionally faxes and physical letters, which makes them much more difficult to discover through today's typical "big data" search techniques.
[Answer]
Consider this:
Your society has the technology to build a base 8 kilometers under the surface. And keep people alive.
Well an average person uses less then a cubic meter of food and water each year.
Given your societies technology level it would be easy to incorporate a 10\*10 shaft of a kilometer long in your base. That is enough storage to feed 100 people for a 1000 years.
What I'm saying is: you don't import food, you build it into your base when constructing it.
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[Question]
[
I am writing a siege battle that takes place on a fallen world. The defenders are behind a large steel reinforced wall (20m by 8m). The attackers, after suffering heavy losses, decided to bring in the big toys: “THE FORT BREAKER” (cooler name will be decided). The fort breaker is just a slightly bigger and more armored version of the [Bagger 293](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket-wheel_excavator) (see picture down below).
What I want to know is: Would this really take down a wall with people shooting at it or just add to the already high death count of the attackers?
To have a better understanding of the defenders' capabilities, it may help to read [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/113127/fire-resistant-armour-for-a-medieval-era-like-setting); it’s based on the same faction the defenders are. To sum it up: Firearms and combustible fuels are commonplace in society, but tactics are more tribal/feudal in nature (people can shoot and throw bombs at you but no one is pulling an RPG out of their pants
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dqVKR.png)
[Answer]
While the Bagger 293 is an awesome piece of machinery, it is mostly static, and meant to displace large quantities of dirt. For destroying a wall it would be extremely impractical.
The mad inventor labs would like to introduce you to the "MOLE":
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/btjUn.jpg)
Tunnel boring machines have several advantages over the Bucket wheel excavator:
* It is a much squatter machine, specially if you don't need to create a long tunnel: most of the structure you see behind the shield is for creating the supports, so a wall boring machine would be much shorter.
* Is easier to armor: The front face shield is already heavily armored, for the rest you can cover it with plates
Think of the TBM as a highly advanced ram.
Of course, it is still quite heavy and a warfare oriented version will probably have tracks instead of wheels.
**EDIT:** [Sebastian Lenartowicz](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/25538/sebastian-lenartowicz) points that in fact, someone had already this idea. In *Avatar, the last airbender*, the fire nation uses what would be a heavily armored tunnel borer to perforate a giant wall. It also solves one of the problems an aboveground TBM: the machine uses a kind of wormlike displacement where some kind of metal hooks perforate the earth to keep the bore moving forward instead of following the path of least resistance and stop moving when it arrives to the wall.
(and yes, I watched the episode to write this :D)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/s1wtK.png)
[Answer]
Can it breach a wall? Especially with extra armour and features? Probably with no problem.
The problem in this case are twofold:
1. This thing moves veeeeeeeeery slowly. And the main problem with any siege machine is that it can be destroyed (or stopped) before it arrive at point. Making a wolf pit in it's path with explosives would probably stall the machine for days if not weeks
2. Why would you need to break the wall if this machine would make it much easier to go over it. Look at this! This is moving tower giving you (attackers) two advantages. Higher ground, so you can shot, throw, spit, plummet, cast, hurl or fling anything at the defenders. Second thing is that you just need to extend the plank to find your troops behind enemy walls. And it's hard to stop the landing when you have people shooting at you.
This machine would be much batter as a siege tower than bettering-ram. Because a) destroying walls take precious time b) when you siege that "castle" you have a wall to fix. With just hopping over the wall you gain time and save some in the future.
[Answer]
The major problem I see is not if the thing can tear down a wall (I think it can with little effort), rather how to take it there and how to take it away.
[Super-heavy tanks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-heavy_tank) have often been proposed in the past, and always slammed against the problem of their size, see for example the [Panzer VIII Maus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1500_Monster):
>
> Development of the Panzer VIII Maus had highlighted significant problems associated with very large vehicles, such as their destruction of roads/rails, their inability to use bridges and the difficulty of strategic transportation by road or rail. The bigger the vehicle, the bigger these problems became.
>
>
>
In a mine you have a dedicated surface to move the machine, while around a city you might lack the infrastructure to allow the machine to move. Moreover, its large footprint is subtracting space to other troops, so while it moves in you have to move away someone else, and once it has opened a breech in the walls you have to move it away quickly (the thing is all but fast) to ensure your troops can access the breech.
Else it might be taken by the defenders and act as an outpost for them.
[Answer]
When you say 'like' the Bagger 293, are you talking about a re-purposed mining machine or something that looks similarly cool but was designed from the tracks up as a siege tool?
As Mazura has mentioned (more than once ;-) ) a standard bucket-excavator isn't really the right tool for attacking reinforced walls. Replace the bucket wheel with a smaller diameter, toothed cutting wheel and you would have something that can chew through walls - when it eventually reaches them. It's still going to be slow.
If, on the other hand, this monster is purpose-built for siege work, there are all sorts of things you can do to make it more effective:
* Replace the cutting wheel altogether and fit a multi-disc boring-head, similar to the Mole described in another answer.
* Design your motive unit so it can advance on the walls at a reasonable speed (things like the Bagger don't need to move more than 0.5km/h; the mine isn't going anywhere)
* Fit steel plate armour around the boom to provide safe passage for your invaders and have turret mounts to provide covering fire.
* Design the Fort Breaker such that it can be transported to the siege
in easily moved pieces and assembled near to the target. For example,
each of the Bagger's track units could become a self-propelled
carrier unit, small enough to fit onto a tank-transporter size
vehicle. The mining-head could fit into the a same size vehicle.
You could even go the Transformers route and have each Track unit act as a battle-tank in it's own right until the siege engine was needed. Then you line them up; fit the battle-harness, boom and mining-head; then charge!
Your Iron Guard wouldn't stand a chance against that!
[Answer]
# Use the right tool for the right job.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T03Yw.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CCFea.jpg)[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6YhCT.jpg)
If the cab is close enough to be in range of flaming oils, you'll have to run **snorkels** out the back until they are out of range, for both the air intake and the exhaust.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RSQ2p.jpg)
This is a demolition shear that goes on the end of the arm. It's designed to cut scrap steel, but it will cut anything you put between its jaws. If those were fireproof **steel braided hydraulic lines** there'd be nothing anyone could do to stop it eating walls.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8PRUBm.jpg)
This is an excavator with a **hydraulic chisel** attached to it. Steel reinforced concrete walls have rebar inside them, so you'll need to crack it into pieces that are still stuck to each other, and then finish up with the shear.
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If it's still in range of the enemy, erect **a tower crane that can pick it up and move it** between two work sites. If they also have an 'excavator', by the time they move their crawler over to ours, we'll be picking it up, swapping heads, and carrying on. That is, unless they *also* have a tower crane (if they do, none of these above ground solutions work).
[Answer]
The only problem with the bagger is it is designed to work on softer rock, however there are other large impressive bucket wheel excavators that will work on harder rock. Basically the only difference is the size and configuration of the bucket wheel.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V7bZM.jpg)
The machines are not quite as big as the bagger but they are still impressively huge and also more mobile.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7SEjL.jpg)
The steel reinforcement may be a problem, their will be a tendency to hang up rebar, and steel plate will stop it entirely. Of course if they design it with those materials in mind rebar will not be much of an issue. Steel plate still will be, if the fort uses steel plate, explosives are your only choice.
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Why worry about breaking the wall at all? (after conquering the fortress, you want to use it for yourself, right?)
The thing is high enough that it can easily serve as a bridge **over** the wall. Instead of punching a hole through, make a pathway on top and walk in, then slaughter the defenders inside, and enjoy an undamaged fortress.
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Opposed to everyone here:
**NO IT ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT** breach an "a large steel reinforced wall" [as by OP]
That thing is made vor moving DIRT.
As in normal, regular soil.
Brown coal (which this excavates) is NOT in rock, it's at most buried in gravel or dirt.
It can barely break frozen soil, how would it be able to destroy concrete, let alone steel-reinforced one?
Sorry op, but at least the front part would have to be replaced by actual mining equipment in order for this to work.
Alternatively: Use the big arm as a siege tower, from which your army runs onto the wall.
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# Trojan Horse
It's already inside the wall - doing, or sitting where it used to do, its thing. It's a 100 million dollar piece of equipment. That's why there's a wall.
There could be some good plot stuff about how your guy knows this ancient tech and thinks he can at least get the tracks working again. Saying that even if the treads broke right out of the gate, it'd still go about forty feet and then we just wiggle the arm until it breaks if we can't get it to move down.
Capture it and then creep over to the wall until it kinda smashes through and/or falls over and makes a ramp. Yea! *Charge!*
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If an alien race visited us, is there any possible reason they would care to interact with us? They would already have a percentage of light speed, access to many worlds, technology unimaginable by us. Interaction would be on the same scale as us to Cro-Magnon man or lower. Their culture would not even have the same goals as us. Would they interact?
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Three scenarios come to mind, based on the assumption that there is nothing to learn about technology from humans and the idea that we are "rare":
* **We are a curiosity**. We are a strange creature to come across in the universe. Perhaps the aliens have all the physics and chemistry figured out, but when it comes to alien (alien to them, that is... us) biology and psychology, there could be research to be done. Certainly, the vast universe, there is virtually endless possibilities... you just cannot pretend to know all there is to know about alien biology and psychology. In addition, we, humans, certainly are not all over the place. *More research needed, do experiments! Let's see how they react to this bacteria.... hmm... it makes red dots appear in their skin, good, good.*
* **We are an endangered species**. Why do we keep zoological parks? Is it because we may need some precious resource, or is there some knowledge these creatures may have that we need? No, it is because it is an effort to preserve and document creatures. Although this actually makes a good argument to declare Earth a... ern... "galactically park", that is meant to not be disturbed. *You can come and watch rare creatures! Just keep your distance and do not feed the humans!*
* **We are entertainment**. Derived from the idea above, we may not be in a zoo, but we may be in a circus! - Aliens secretly control politics and the media. They cause misinformation, scarcity and wars! It is all to have us come up with new inventions, fight for resources, and feed media production... all for the amusement of aliens. After all, they have interstellar travel figured out; it is not like there is much more to learn. *Nobody exists on purpose, Nobody belongs anywhere, everybody is goinna die, come watch the humans.*
So, is our planet a laboratory, a natural reserve, or circus?
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Ok, here are some more *hitchhikeresque* ideas:
* **Everything grows somewhere**. In the vast universe, full of possibilities... there is no need to build anything. You just have to figure out where does it happen naturally and pick it up. Maybe we manufacture some material (that doesn’t happen in nature), and they just take it. Or for the more dark variant... we are delicious!
* **We are in the way**. A wormhole network goes across the galaxy. Turns out, we are just in a bad location. Since aliens need to demolish Earth for their circumvallation route. They may as well take advantage of the planet first... extract any useful resources, perhaps use it as test ground for a few weapons. Eventually demolition will come.
* **We are a threat**. This sounds weird, but it just happens that we did not know what we were doing. Our experiments with nuclear energy and particles accelerators are messing up with the higher dimensions (heck, in fact, that is what we want to do). Such a primitive species with access to that technology is a risk; they need to keep close watch on us. *Insert ancient gods plot for a darker twist.*
Addendum:
* **Refuge**, the home planet of the aliens is dying/has been destroyed. They have found a "nearby" planet with abundant natural resources and potentially habitable. Of course, that's Earth. These aliens either try to surivive hiding from humans, or try to settle in some inhabited land... or they will try to get rid of humans.
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A good example to go from here is how technologically advanced powers interact with vastly less advanced ones on Earth today. In today's world of VR, reusable rocket ships, and online Worldbuilding forums, there are still many societies that still live in what is essentially the stone age. Generally speaking, modern interactions with them tend to involve National Geographic reporters visiting them as a **curiosity**. For Aliens to venture to Earth in the first place they'd have to be curious, so I can definitely see a tourism/research angle.
Also, humans tend to have a kindhearted streak, and there's no reason why Aliens shouldn't feel the same way. As such, an Alien **Peace Corps** could be possible, giving us advanced medicine and the like out of altruism's sake. For that matter, Alien UN Interventions could be a thing to prevent Earth wars.
Finally, many **criminal organizations** will exploit defenseless tribal groups to take advantage of their land/resources/manpower. Even if alien governments keep humanity at arms length, if we truly were that defenseless then some aliens would almost certainly come here and try to exploit us.
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We don't know much about other sentient beings. We might fascinate them if we're unique in some way.
For example, aliens would likely not be surprised that we have wars and quarrels, since they stem from basic Game Theory - unless they happen to be monadic species (e.g. Whole Ocean Being or Sentient Star) - in this case existence of great multiple of similar sentient beings who appear and disappear might intrigue them to no end.
Another consideration aliens will not be surprised by love - unless they are reproduced by pollination or are hive species. In this case, the whole idea of love between two sentient beings might draw them immensily. We think of us as of very cynical species, but for really competitive aliens we might be the Verona of the galaxy. Come to think of it, every person is not only theoretically capable of feeling love, but is supposed to find it!
We don't know how we are unique but I assume we might hit at least something.
The way we eat? The way we talk? The idea of poetry or music?
In our own world, India and Japan seem to be examples of cultures with innate curiosity pull.
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**Some aliens will interact...and some will not.**
Without commonly accepted "real" documentation of alien beings visiting Earth to use for reference material in an answer, I will answer based on personal experience of observation of an intelligent species currently on Earth - ourselves.
Some people on Earth are very ego-centric, living lives that involve primarily only themselves and their closest circle of people, be it family, neighbors, coworkers, community members, etc. This circle extends out as large or as small as they choose, and differs over time as their life experiences and environments change. These kinds of people do not venture out of their created circles at all to investigate or participate in the goings-on of other circles near or far. They may be struggling just to find their next meal and a safe place to sleep, or they may very involved in a rich, activity filled life that keeps them extremely busy from dusk to dawn...but still within their own circle of involvement.
Other people on Earth are different than this in that they feel a connection to all other people (and any life species, really) sharing time with them on this planet. While they usually also have an internal circle, they do not have hard boundaries to their "circle", which is really more of an amorphous, blobby sphere of inclusivity that allows them to bring in any and all people they connect with as they go about living. They tend to seek out new experiences and find ways to interact with many different kinds of people, sometimes just to learn from others, sometimes to help or inspire others, and sometimes to teach and share something of themselves with them.
Then there are the many people who fit somewhere in between the descriptions of these two kinds of people.
If the actions of any of these kinds of people occurs at others expense too excessively, be it on a small or large scale, naturally this gets curbed eventually by counteractions of protective, helpful types.
So...
**Of the other intelligent species ("aliens") around, some will fly right on by, all involved in their own circles of life and pay us no attention, if they even notice we exist.**
"Hey Mom, were those lights on down there on that planet?!"
"Stop trying to change the subject...we were talking about how you are going to call up and apologize to the neighbors the very second we drop back in to Fornax..."
You might wonder if an exception to this might be if the alien is in a circle of struggling for their next meal and notice we happen to fit their idea of food, but this is extremely unlikely, as I suspect the nature of inter-stellar or inter-dimensional travel is not something they can attempt in that state. Think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, alien-style. Those at the bottom of the pyramid are not practicing their cross-space travel skills. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs>
**Some will be right down here in the thick of us -- highly interactive and involved--here to learn from us, help or inspire us, or teach and share something of themselves with us.**
**Some will fall in between those extremes, and more randomly pop in for a quick look-see or maybe a more extended stay, depending on how things are going in their own "circles".**
And when some aliens cause excessive harm to people here, they will eventually be dealt with by the more protective, helpful types.
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They are interested in grasshoppers, which they find fascinating. We happen to inhabit the same planet as grasshoppers, and they have to deal with us in order to study grasshoppers.
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There is youtube channel [Primitive Technology](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA/videos), it's about showing some primitive ways of doing things, a pretty successful channel, and why people watch it. Sure they do that for different reasons, and not all do watch it.
If we would discover a stone age humans on a planet - it could be like a time machine for us. Same way as researching Mars can be a time machine in the past of our planet, [Dr. Robert Zubrin, "Why Should We Go To Mars?"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2Mu8qfVb5I).
Same way as astronomers look in the past of the universe.
If one is smart enough he can extract useful data from different kinds of opportunities, even if they may look a bit unusual at first glance ["Tokyo rail network designed by Physarum plasmodium"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZUQQmcR5-g).
One of the reasons to talk to others is to be affected by the interaction in a way you would not influence yourself in absence of the interaction. In that sense talking to the ants is a very interesting thing, they are interesting creatures, and sure there is a good channel on youtube about them [AntsCanada](https://www.youtube.com/user/AntsCanada/videos).
Even if you on the way of creating or have created the model of everything, like I suggest in the answer to the question [Aliens are on their way. What can cause them to not understand us?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/41975/20315) (discussing model thing is significant part of the answer) and your possible knowledge is really superior to what we already have or will have in near future, even in the case you would like to interact with the species to test you model, to test you approaches, your ways of ["talking"](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/70724/20315) to them - just to use the opportunity to validate and check your model, to find things which are not known by the model.
I agree with other answers and comments of those who mentioned that it depends. That's true, there can be different cases, but the superiority of knowledge is not a reason to not interact, and I would say it's opposite of that. There can be an objection, in a case if they need undisturbed human behaviour, because how would our behavior be changed would we known for certain they do exist, but the answer again, depends on the situation, at some point it might be a good thing for them to let us know, or may not if they are not experienced enough or it had bad consequences for them or have some different goals.
So, the answer is **yes**, there might be reasons to interact with humans, not because they(humans) are so special, but because aliens may need that for their own reasons.(not exploiting, which is crappy idea, but as a part of their own ways of thinking and acquiring the knowledge for themselves)
One big X in the situation is the question - is there live in the universe except for our planet and if yes, then how often it happens. And if it is so rare how some of us expect it to be, then it might be an opportunity of the life for those aliens. However, I would recommend reading H. P. Lovecraft to raise awareness level and to think after reading on the question you ask, by imagining humans to be those aliens, and these Cthulhu's to be the aliens you consider to contact and to feel how would you be a bit worried about the destiny of your species. (or if awareness is high enough, to read something more relaxing)
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Space is big. Really big. Unimaginably big. Think of the biggest thing you have ever thought of. That is small compared to space.
Big.
Even for a type 2 civilization (capable of harnessing the entire output of a star), it takes a lot of energy to move mass at a noticable fraction of lightspeed between stars.
A planet is full of low quality computronium (life). The ecosystem is a type 1 civilization itself (in a sense), if not harnessed fully.
Imagine if Mars had a stone-age civilization on it. Even though we'd be able to fly there with really expensive rockets and land a few people and have technology like magic to them, the fact that they are *there* and we don't have to bring the stuff they have all the way from Earth would make them a valuable resource.
And Mars is close. Space is **big**.
If they are a type 3 civilization (have harnessed an entire galaxy), we are pretty sure they aren't in this galaxy (they are noticable); so they are even further away from home.
Now, as you know from history, while the "natives" of a lower technology area often are valuable and useful to the incoming high technology visitors, they do run into problems when the higher technology visitors manage to finance an entire colony and start an industrial revolution on their territory.
So this far from guarantees it will end well.
It could end poorly on really short time scales. You could imagine a starwisp (light, so cheap to move) arriving and finding our resources (like our ecosystem) *useful*, but quickly coopting our ecological support economy for something more useful (like, mass producing copies of itself).
This ends poorly for us, as we like having air to breathe.
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This is answered by a well-known principle in classical economics, David Ricardo's [theory of comparative advantage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage). Ricardo showed that societies will trade goods even when on of the two has superior technology/resources such that it is able to produce **every** good more cheaply.
In a nutshell, when one society has superior production capability for every good, the total wealth for both is maximised by having the less efficient society focus on producing those goods for which their disadvantage is smallest, then trading it for the goods for which their disadvantage is greatest.
The aliens should be able to mine resources for their spacecraft from asteroids. But their production capacity will still be finite. They can simply make a little extra of some goods (probably high-tech stuff, e.g. graphene) and trade it for a larger amount of resources from Earth than what they could have mined with the same effort.
This can easily be extended to a trade in information. If humans are relatively better or worse at studying a particular discipline relative to absolutely superior aliens, the aliens can slightly reduce their manpower in the field at which humans are *less bad* to focus a little more of their effort in the field at which their advantage is greatest, then exchange notes. For example, they may want to just trade for our data on Earth biology instead of going to the effort of studying everything themselves even though they could theoretically do it better.
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If we assume that the alien race is capable of achieving a “percentage of light speed”, i.e. has no FTL technology that makes travelling the galaxy a daily trip, the space will still be a large empty void for them, which makes an inhabitable planet where you can stop, a valuable resource.
Travelling at e.g. 50% light speed still implies needing several years just to reach the next star. Even if you have enough can food for years, you might consider leaving the iron cage and walking under a real cloud a viable method for avoiding going mad.
It might be possible that searching for habitable planets to hop from one to another is the actual travelling strategy of the aliens.
Now, there are several possible scenarios, all of them including some kind of interaction, ranging from
“This habitable planet is occupied by an alien race. Exterminate. Standard procedure.”
to
“Before we can go on a vacation at an unused place on that planet, we have to ask the indigenous people for a permission”
Even if the alien’s standard procedure is landing at a not-so-crowded place without permission, ignoring locals unless they become a threat, it might occur to them, that we are about to destroy the most valuable resource of the planet, the ecosystem, and decide to intervene.
Since being capable of travelling with a significant percentage of light speed doesn’t necessarily imply being capable of moving arbitrary large masses at that speed, it is still imaginable that they prefer to load food, water or other agricultural products at the planets they stop in-between their journey and let the primitive locals deliver them in exchange for some technology that isn’t above their heads. Some people even believe that this has already happened in the past (or may even happen today, without the public noticing).
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Short answer: depends
If you look at species on earth, behavior differs a lot. And all those species developed on the same planet, influencing each other and having the same ancestors somewhere (very far) down the line.
The aliens have (probably) no connection with us. They are likely to be very - well - alien. They may be very open and want to educate us, like we try to educate apes or pets. They may not even recognize us as living beings if we are too different.
They already be trying to make contact but *we* don't notice because of the difference. Or because we are simply to dumb. Or they may be training and educating us without us knowing, because they are so superior to us. (Like humans do with some animals).
Point is, there is absolutely no way to know. But there is much room for speculation. That's why there are so many SF-Stories about this topic.
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**1. Depends on the competition.**
If the aliens are at war with the Gazronk Empire, or have just discovered the Karixi who can offer a wealth of trade, they're not going to have much time to bother with us. If, on the other hand, we're one of the most advanced civilizations they've encountered so far, they might take an interest in us.
**2. Are aliens going to be more intelligent, or just have more technology?**
In the last 100 years we have progressed from a pre-computing society to a highly digital society that has achieved space travel. Maybe the aliens are similarly intelligent but have just got better spaceships. If so, they will surely be interested in learning how we tackle our "big problems" — life and death, unemployment, crime, big-city logistics. It's easy to say "oh, advanced aliens will have better solutions than we do", but these problems are inherently challenging and advanced aliens might still struggle with them.
**3. Maybe the aliens really value diversity.**
How did they develop such advanced technology, anyhow? Perhaps by allowing varied ideas to be pursued, fostering different approaches to things. Maybe they let fledgling planets develop in their own way, to see what creative solutions they come up with.
This isn't that different from us protecting and studying nature to find inspiration for new technology, like aeroplanes, medicines, etc.
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If you look at the recent discoveries of organics traces found on Ceres, the proto-planet in the Asteroid Belt, as well as other traces of organics on Mars and finally some of the creatures living in crushing pressures beneath the ocean near vents, you realize that Life as we always think of it, isn't the norm.
In addition, they won't necessarily travel in a spaceship or have a humanoid or other "animal-like" appearance.
They could very well be microbial yet very powerful. They could also just travel on or in an asteroid, this is also one theory that gets frequently mentioned when thinking of the origin of Life on Earth.
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There is a subculture that believes aliens are already here. (Think Roswell etc.) Members of this subculture tend to think aliens are here because they live here, they were here long before humans evolved. Humans may be less than a million years old and significant life on Earth is half a billion years old (microbial life several billion years old.) Examples would be 'reptoids' who are intelligent dinosaurs dating back to the Cretaceous (evidence includes Naga type mythology; the Ubaid figurines in the British Museum) and 'humanoids' such Homo Capensis dating back before the last Ice Age.
Then there is the Sitchin sub-subculture which holds that aliens came here about 200,000 years ago and created man from a pre-existing ape creature as a servant to mine gold. They needed gold to seed gold dust into the upper level of their home planet's atmosphere because the ozone layer was all gone. Evidence includes man's genetic unlikeliness (being a rushed job for a particular task) and his irrational pursuit of gold.
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From what I have read, which were all very good points I am going to go with Earth being a product made by a group that specializes in building rest and resupply worlds.Since FLT is not in possession of any known race these world would be cultivated in the paths of galactic highways. They started here in the Mesozoic period and set the world up to be self sustaining then we came along.
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What are plausible reasons for equipping an army with the Faceless Goon style helmets? Is there a good reason at all? Please note that its a faceless *helmet* not a Balaclava or other form of covering but a full on total head covering helmet.
Some examples-
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ek5cXs.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4DBuas.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9p7vps.png)
[Answer]
## Full Face protection
A full helmet provides protection not just to the head, but to the eyes and face as well.
## NBC
Per Sasha's answer, NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) protection requires a completely sealed suit, including enclosed head gear.
## Harsh environments
Sandstorms, underwater, vacuum, etc.
## HUD
At least one of the images you show are from near future style games/movies. Integrated comms, heads up displays, and low-light/enhanced optics make such a device useful for obvious reasons.
## Psychology
Intimidation, anonymity, uniformity, and so on, all have a value in some situations.
## Other
In general, the helmet, due to general bulk and inconvenience (can't scratch an itch, stuffy, etc) probably won't be worn at all times, likely only being donned just prior to action, similar to current military helmets. And for scenarios where they aren't needed, lighter headgear might be provided. But there will certainly be scenarios where the fully enclosed helmet is useful, if not critical.
Additionally, people are wired to pick out faces. A shiny helmet might not help, but something matte or camouflaged could make it slightly harder to pick out targets, giving a fraction of a second or longer delay that the helmeted soldier could exploit.
And, hey, it looks bad-ass.
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**Anonymous**
You can see Riot police covering their faces and name tags so to avoid public persecution, the same thing could happen for soldiers if they are deployed into a civillian zone and if identified could risk their personal lives or that of their families because of the acts they have to commit.
**NBC Protection**
Maybe they are operating a zone of nuclear, biological, or chemical dangers, so the full helmet is needed to protect them from dangers of their enviroment. In this case their uniforms would be completely sealed to prevent contamination.
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The very first people to consider that were probably the [ancient persians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortals_(Achaemenid_Empire)):
>
> Herodotus describes the 'Immortals' as being heavy infantry, led by Hydarnes, it provided the professional corps of the Persian armies and was kept constantly at a strength of exactly 10,000 men. He stated that **the unit's name stemmed from the custom that every killed, seriously wounded, or sick member was immediately replaced with a new one, maintaining the corps as a cohesive entity with a constant strength**.
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Suppose one of your faceless soldiers.gets shot by the enemy and leaves the enemy's sight. Another faceless soldier then engages and gets shot, and again gets replaced. Over time your enemies will be questioning whether they are actually scoring hits, or whether it is even possible to take down that resilient guy. This can reduce enemy morale.
Also [what Sasha said](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/136928/21222).
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Reasons are:
* Its cheap to mass produce identical/scaled equipment
* Full head-gear protects the brain and eyes
* full head-gear can have a HUD
* Full head-gear provides a controlled atmosphere
* It can provide a membership symbol to those wearing it
* It can be used to induce fear/respect
**Fear/Respect**
This is perhaps the most likely reason, particularly in earlier cultures. *Why?*
The most scary and terrifying thing you will ever encounter is an Army of the Nameless Other.
That squad is uniform in appearance and movement, it has tools that you consider dangerous or threatening, and you do not encounter it everyday.
You, a human, are a prey animal and that squad appears to your brain as a hyper-predator.
You will enter flight or fight mode.
Because that hyper-predator is too big and alien for you to mount a proper counter-response too you will prefer flight. There are three exceptions:
* You came to confront that predator specifically.
* You are defending something of value, eg: your children or your wife/husband who cannot get to safety or an idea which is as deep as life itself such as free speech
* You are possessed by extreme emotions already and cannot think at all.
That is why protestors in front of a riot squad behave as they do.
* Some are actually there to attack and tear something apart - the squad is a challenging target
* Some are there to defend something from harm - the squad is representative of that harm (hence why riot squads walk slowly so as to not trigger this response).
* Some are there because it is already a bad day - the squad is alien and will attract a negative response which is why they move slowly, these people will likely come to their senses given some time.
* Everyone else flees.
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Whelp, to me it boils down to heads being very valuable things to protect. They house four of the five primary senses, the third largest organ, several arteries, and the means to both consume nutrients and communicate. That's why helmets are some of the oldest pieces of protective gear.
Now, in modern combat helmets have become slightly less viable due to the sheer power of firearms. Simply put, the amount of material and padding needed to stop a bullet to the face from being lethal makes for a helmet too bulky and stuffy to be worn for long periods, especially in hot environments. If advances in material strength or cooling were made, however, I could imagine a number of organizations adapting much more protective and encompassing helmets.
Ballistic and possible advancements in armor aren't the only factor. Most faceless goons won't be spending all day warring against equally-armed opponents. They're most likely going to be doing things like riot control, raiding buildings for rebels and contraband, and guarding camps full of undesirables. This means a majority of combat they'll be experiencing would be against people that are unarmed, armed with improvised melee weapons, or simply throwing bricks and bottles. In those situations, something as simple as a metal helmet with a hard plastic mask would reduce injuries by a great deal. Full helmets are also useful against shrapnel, a type of damage long associated with guerrilla fighters.
From a stylistic and physiological standpoint, having a standing army with face-concealing has some benefits. Firstly, is it makes it slightly more difficult to count how many soldiers are in a location. Secondly, it makes each of your soldiers look more intimidating and powerful, a trait equally valuable for commanders pressuring enemies into surrendering and for recruiters pressuring young adults into conscripting. Lastly in this category, wearing a mask can make a person feel distanced from their actions, which can lead to them performing acts they would otherwise result to partake in. This would not be a selling point for most organizations, but would be a desirable feature if you were employing these soldiers to oppress their fellow citizens.
The last category I can think of is potential offence, and I don't mean headbutting dissidents into submission (although I would love that propaganda poster). Having helmets that are equipped with air filters can make tear gas a dominant strategy, which would make oppressing the common folk a lot easier. Night vision or some equivalent could mean these soldiers could cut the power of houses or neighborhoods before they raid them, which would make them really hard to fight and evade. Of course, built in computers that link to, say, a database of criminals would be useful.
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faceless helmets could be handy for morale purposes in combat. If a faceless ally gets killed next to you it could be less traumatic than seeing the guy you trained with killed. On a similar line of thought bringing faceless soldiers back off the battlefield for medical attention may help to ensure there isn't any preferential treatment.
Faceless helmets could also have an intimidation factor in combat as the helmets give them a less than human appearance, essentially fooling enemies that they have less mercy than a regular soldier or to imagine how horrifying they must be if they need to hide their faces.
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pSiwM.png)
[source](http://news.tokunation.com/2012/05/04/toei-to-dub-power-rangers-mystic-force-236)
1. You can have actors who are easy on the eye and can deliver their lines in the native language of your audience. Then with the helmet on you can have fight scenes with a martial arts expert who looks nothing like your actor but who has got sweet martial arts skills. And you can use those same helmeted fight scenes for versions of your program with completely different actors / languages.
2. If actor stops showing up or holds out for more money midseason, you can have his character's helmet get inexplicably stuck on his head and film the rest of the season with someone more tractable.
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Depends on a technology you use for building the armor
but as an example, it allows equipping the thing with 360-degree vision, which may be controlled by ... whatever you like it being controlled like eye movements even if it may create some problems of being without a helmet, so maybe not the best example, but it depends on technologies at hand.
generally head is most vulnerable and honestly the most important part of the human body, so you would like to protect it as best of your technological abilities. It isn't done that way, because our technological abilities to implement our wishes are quite limited. But if we imagine some future tech, and if one has the ability to keep head functioning after it is ripped off by some strong force, which actually quite doable on smart matter level tech, you would like to have enough of it in head region to be able to do so.
However smart matter armor probably would take a different approach in more than helmet region, soo ...
just being in the choir of - why would you like something different if you can implement the whistles. Vision, tactile information on the face, vacuum/underwater/chemicals, sonar vision, information about situation trough taste, tongue; hearing for sure, hairs on the head for feeling danger situation, enemy visual contact - a total sensory overload of everything in the body combined with AI - 6th feeling for real.
Medical assistance, etc etc.
So what limits us are technologies - not reasons or what we would like to have as functionality.
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Full face helmets can affect your situational awareness by limiting your peripheral vision, telltale pressures of wind on your face and if not done correctly dampen your directional hearing.
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A [seawall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawall) is basically a coastal defense to prevent waves and tsunamis. Let's suppose there is a town that is located in a lagoon next to the ocean, a sea version of [Esgaroth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esgaroth), the lake town.
In this town, with a 16th century technology, is it possible to build a seawall with length of 5 kilometers in the ocean delta, [like this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/Saemangeum1.JPG/350px-Saemangeum1.JPG)?
This town basically encounters heavy storms more than thrice a year, and big waves (about 5 to 10 meters) hit the town. This causes hundreds to die and causes serious damage to the town. (This town earns money with trading.) But this town harbors more than tens of thousands, so hundreds might not have a serious impact. Also, the town will be located *inside* the seawall.
I did some research about seawalls and their materials, but it looks like a seawall made out of pebbles and stones might not be a good building material for this. Concrete would be a best solution, and I am not very sure whether 16th century technology can create tons of concrete and cement.
So the conditions are:
1. Must use solid materials
2. 5 kilometers of seawall
3. Has to be stable enough to last a couple hundred years
4. Maximum construction time: 30 years
Would it be possible to build a seawall with 16th century technology in these conditions? (Assume the town can provide *infinite money and workers*.)
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It's nice when Wikipedia provides a real-world historical example fitting the question almost exactly...
>
> On December 26, 2004, towering waves of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake tsunami crashed against India's south-eastern coastline killing thousands. However, the former French colonial enclave of Pondicherry escaped unscathed. This was primarily due to French engineers who had constructed (and maintained) a massive stone seawall during the time when the city was a French colony. This 300-year-old seawall effectively kept Pondicherry's historic center dry even though tsunami waves drove water 24 ft (7.3 m) above the normal high-tide mark.
>
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> The barrier was initially completed in 1735 and over the years, the French continued to fortify the wall, piling huge boulders along its 1.25 mi (2 km) coastline to stop erosion from the waves pounding the harbor. At its highest, the barrier running along the water's edge reaches about 27 ft (8.2 m) above sea level. The boulders, some weighing up to a ton, are weathered black and brown. The sea wall is inspected every year and whenever gaps appear or the stones sink into the sand, the government adds more boulders to keep it strong (Allsop, 2002).
>
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> (From the Wikipedia article on [Seawalls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawall#Historical_examples))
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*[The Pondicherry sea wall](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:India_-_Pondicherry_-_004_-_Seawall_prominade_(491029285).jpg), by McKay Savage, made available un CC Attribution 2.0 Generic license on Wikimedia.*
* 300 years old.
* Resisted a tsunami raising 7.3 meters above high-tide mark.
* Made with splendidly cyclopean technology.
* Is 2 km long, so we can safely assume that 5 km is possible.
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In Europe dikes were built already in medieval times.
A solid wall makes no sense since there was no concrete in 1500 in huge quantities although cement was used as mortar already for building the pyramids. Dikes made out of earth and stabilized with plants are your best choice for that scenario.
You could also use huge stones and cement as mortar, but a natural dike would be better, since it doesn't sink due to its weight.
Edit: To be honest, your conditions make this a very unlikely endeavour...
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Yes. It is easily doable. Alexander the Great created a one-kilometer causeway in order to take [Tyre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Tyre_(332_BC)). Depending on the design, they would use a barge to dump the rock or else build a causeway from land to the wall.
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Here's an example that was made in the 20th century, and reclaimed nearly 1000 acres of land from the sea with nothing more advanced that medieval technology - though to be fair, they did used some modern machinery in the later stages, if only because the prison supplying the labour was re-classified and fewer people were available to finish the job.
<http://parishes.lincolnshire.gov.uk/Freiston/section.asp?catId=14871>
All you need is an "infinite" supply of prisoners, and plenty of time - the project took nearly 45 years to build about 5km of embankment. One part of it was washed away by winter storms in several successive years before it finally survived the whole winter.
They also built this memorial - unfortunately I can't find a picture of the plate (on the right hand side of the picture) with the story of what it is. Reclaimed farm land is on the left of the bank, salt marsh on the right - at high tide the water comes right up to the wire fence. The metal ball on the top is a datum point for the UK Ordnance Survey (the national map database).
Image from <http://trigpointinguk-photos.s3.amazonaws.com/031/P31121.jpg>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/D6c8H.jpg)
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"Wer nicht deichen kann, der muss weichen": This expression is in german and means that communities which could not build their own seawalls have to go, so they can be replaced with people who can. This expression was coined in medieval times since frequent flooding at the north sea required the people living there to build seawalls or drown. Sometimes they drowned anyway, simply because the floods were too great to be handled by the seawalls. See the grote mandrake for example <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Marcellus%27_flood>
The german article about seawalls has a good overview of the evolution of seawalls and the laws governing it: <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deich#Geschichte_des_Deichbaus>
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Well, by living in a city with one of the largest tidal variations (you can see in a nice graph [here](https://www.tide-forecast.com/locations/Sao-Luis-Brazil/tides/latest)) in the world, I think I can help you with that. In some months, tide variations here are about 8 meters (~26 feet).
I don't know if it can be managed in your time span (probably yes), but by using a mix of seashell dust, clay, and stone you can build a seawall that can last for a good number of years. In my city [we still have one like that](https://www.google.com.br/maps/@-2.5271598,-44.3071745,3a,75y,125.86h,85.27t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szXfN5PurxL3dkCyz_APz9g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656). It lost its purpose after modern technology kicked in, but it was used since about 1600 as a seawall.
By the way, I live in [São Luís do Maranhão, MA, Brasil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A3o_Lu%C3%ADs,_Maranh%C3%A3o). A 400-year-old French-founded city, later taken by the Portuguese. The state government building also sits atop this sea wall, because in the 1600s it was a military fort built by the French.
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Yes, obviously, if stone materials are available. The pyramids were built, right? Stonehenge was built. The Roman Coliseum was built, and we know how.
Infinite money and workers means stone walls of great height and width can be built. Unlike the pyramids; it is not necessary to have huge stones that are problematic; just 'large' stones of one ton or so can be shaped (using other rocks) and moved by about 20 men (i.e. they must each carry 100lb some distance). Such rocks can be loaded on a barge and transported to their destination. twenty or forty men on the barge can lower the rock into the water. Divers (natural divers can dive a hundred feet, and hold their breath for minutes at a time) can guide them to put the stones in position. Likewise, using medieval (or even Roman) technology, such a sea wall could easily be built.
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A few points to consider:
* Even in prehistoric times, people could move big stones (pyramids, Stonehenge). So you can build something with enough manpower and a source of stone.
* If *waves* are the issue, you don't really need walls, you need very large boulders to dissipate the energy (a rock armour [revetment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revetment). If you have walls that's in addition; they'll help with tides but need the boulders so they're not undermined.
* Consider the (defensive) walls of [St Malo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Malo) and many other cities; with a revetment of boulders to stop them being undermined (which in places they have), they'd hold back some oretty severe storms.
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Concrete wasn't invented until the Eerie canal was constructed. They did not have that technology in the 16th century. However, the Romans built aquaducts long before that. Perhaps you should use a more conventional technique but it is just more massive and requires lots of maintenance to endure the pounding. They built seawalls long before the 16th century but they broke frequently. Hope this helps.
I agree with the previous posts, which apparently appeared while I was typing. A natural wall would work best.
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A sail [generates propulsive force by the difference in pressure on the concave and convex sides](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4CQ4T_K8Hw). This principle of fluid dynamics should be true of seawater as it is of wind. And the seas do have currents, including predictable permanent currents.
This got me thinking, could a submarine deploy an underwater sail that would billow in the current and create a force that pulls it forwards?
Thanks.
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Sailing actually requires two separate mediums for it to work. Sailing ships tack based on the wind pushing the sail, and that presses the keel of the ship against the water. The direction of the ship is based on the sum of those two forces. Solar sailing involves the sum of the solar wind against the solar sail and the force of gravity.
With a submarine, you only have one medium. You could raise and lower the submarine to catch different currents, but I don't believe it's practical for a submarine to, for instance, scrape its keel against the ocean floor to generate deflection.
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### Yes, but not quite in the way you imagined
Oceanic currents are generally fairly slow, so aren't a great source of power. And as stated in other answers, surface sailing requires the ability to push sideways on the surface to counteract lateral forces, whether that's with a keel (on a boat) or wheels (on a land yacht). I don't think that's possible in this context.
There is something which you may be interested in though, which is the [underwater glider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_glider). Currents may be slow, but the actions of floating up and sinking down are much faster. Instead of using a vertical aerofoil to produce force from a horizontally-moving current, the glider uses a horizontal aerofoil to produce forwards force from the vertical action of floating and sinking. It angles the aerofoil so that sinking produces forwards motion; then changes the aerofoil angle and floats up, producing more forward motion; and repeats the process. This cycle runs continuously, so an underwater glider can travel in any direction and is not limited to travelling with the current, or (with suitable positioning equipment) can be left to stay on station at a fixed location regardless of currents and winds.
Sailing vessels obviously have the benefit that they need no external power source, whereas the underwater glider needs some power to inflate or deflate its buoyancy device and change the foil angle. However the temperature difference between deeper and shallower water can be exploited as an energy source in its own right, and this keeps the glider powered. Underwater gliders therefore need no external power source, only an onboard battery, and can operate indefinitely in the same way as a sailing vessel. (Barring antifouling, repairs and so on, of course!)
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There are a couple good answers already, but in case it helps...
You would have to extract energy from something, so an underwater sail would only work if it "billows" into a current that is traveling faster than the one the submarine is in to "pull it forward". Otherwise the sail and submarine would just continue move along at the same speed.
Picture a hot air balloon drifting with the wind:
* Does it need to deploy a separate sail in order for the wind to act on it? or...
* Does it simply move along with the air mass that it is a part of?
Alternately, consider a rowboat drifting along in the middle of a river. If you dipped one or both oars in the water and **held them stationary,** (*not imparting any force or motion to them*) would you:
* Generate a propulsive force by the difference in pressure from one side of the oar to the other? or...
* Would the boat and oar both remain stationary relative to the water, and continue to drift at the same speed as the river?
Whichever answers you pick, the same principles apply to a submarine in an ocean current.
(Spoiler alert, the second bullet in each example is what would happen, but this presumes a relatively uniform and homogenous mass of air or water, and is premised on NOT using gravity to create kinetic energy.)
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Subs and ships do this already without the need for sails. Sails are for wind currents. If the sub/ship has no method of propulsion (e.g., sails), then the currents take them where the currents will based on the buoyancy of the ship. So, the answer is "sure!"
But why would they deploy sails? I doubt a ship can tack underwater. Tacking into the wind works because you have the ocean's surface to push against (like an ice skater using the edge of their skate to change direction on the ice). I can't imagine the ocean being both wind and surface to push against. Thus, the sails are mostly irrelevant.
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The answers provided are almost entirely right.
Sailing requires two mediums. Absolutely correct, however, it is extremely important to define "medium". More specifically, if we take two control volumes, the medium inside - does it have the same density, velocity, composition, energy etc.?
Conservation laws state, in laymans terms: You can't get something from nothing.
Sailing works, because sailboats actually have at least two sails: one in the air, one in the water. A sailboat can tack faster than the wind, because it works on the principle of transfering energy between the two. In the process, part of the energy is siphoned and converted into boat speed.
Adding the two concepts together, in general terms - in order to "sail", we need two sails in different control volumes, which have different properties. Next we initiate energy transfer between the two sails and siphon part of the energy into our vehicle.
Returning to the OP: Can a sub sail underwater?
Lets check.
Can we find two different "medium" underwater? Yes!
1. Anyone who has gone swimming in a lake in early summer, can recall, that the surface is nice and warm, but a few meters down, the water rapidly gets icy cold.
2. A popular photo of an ocean with a clear boundary between fresh water and salt water.
3. Current - underwater current is similar to a river in water - it moves in a different direction and/or speed, compared to the rest of the water.
The point is - water can have different properties with very pronounced boundaries. Sailing requires a difference in velocities, but if you can find that difference in velocities underwater, you can put two sails on a sub an sail these boundaries. The exact speed we can achieve requires calculation.
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Yes, but if it were to do anything other than to use the sail to provide initial acceleration to overcome its inertia and travel with the current in a straight line it would either need to operate at the boundary between two currents or find some way of generating drag.
For example, if it deployed a sail in front of itself that would try to move with the current, but if it also deployed a steerable drogue to much deeper- i.e. colder and denser- water it might be able to tack.
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Yes, that's possible, and it's being done since a long time.
The catch is, you need a catch somewhere, i.e. a steel line that connects your boat to a fixed point, or to a rail or wire with a traveller on it.
With the line stretched by the current, you can change the angle between current and hull (=sail), and observe a perpendicular force.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_ferry> (check the picture of the Rhine ferry at Basel in there)
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We need two media to sail, such as sails in the wind and the keel in the see, as people have pointed out.
There is one overlooked possibility, which is to have a submarine with wheels on the ocean floor. This might work like the 'downwind faster than the wind' machines but underwater. I doubt it is useful - the sea floor goes up and down, and the abyssal seas are quiet. The submarine would need a good grip on the sea floor for the process to work. I doubt whether this is a good way for getting from A to B with any speed, but a slow crawler that investigated the ocean depths, could have a tethered float with a turbine that generated electricity to turn the wheels.
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As others have pointed out, you will have a very large challenge doing anything but floating along in the direction the water is already going.
But even if you accept that, it's of limited use.
In some rare situations, ocean currents are forced between obstacles. This can concentrate the current and produce higher velocities. The problem with that is, it requires the current to be constricted. This is very unlikely to be helpful to a sub. Imagine you are letting yourself be dragged by water between two sharp obstructions. The chances of a good night's sleep are minimal.
You will see such things in certain bays and inlets due to tides, for example. You might get some help crossing through the tidal zone. Then you are in deep water again, having risked scraping the bottom.
Other than such restricted locations, the fastest ocean currents are only a few miles per hour. The Gulf Stream, possibly one of the fastest in the world, is only about 5.6 mph, slowing to 1 mph in the middle of the ocean. So even accepting that the water determines your route, it takes a very long time to get there. Absent the ability to "tack" somehow, you are pretty much limited to the speed the water is moving. It might well take several months to cross the Atlantic.
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If you remember Pixar's *Finding Nemo*, there was a scene where Crush and fellow sea turtles ride an underwater current. While the current was dramatized for the movie, it still is an example of a current. Real animals use currents such as this. Fish do not have sails, so your sub wouldn't have to, either. However, in specific, predictable currents, sails would help with propulsion. Airliners use high-altitude jet streams to their advantage, for fuel efficiency. If your world has large, predictable subsurface currents, and there is sufficient technology to make the sails open and close underwater, this could work. However, another question is, why? If a civilization understands that a sail would work underwater, they would probably also understand that water is more viscous than air. It is harder to move through water than air, so most people would stick to surface ships with sails. However, if a civilization is located entirely below water (think Atlantis or the Gungan City from *The Phantom Menace*) something like this would most likely develop in some fashion. Either way, it's your world, so "Why" questions can be answered however you want.
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## Yes, but only with a really big submarine
One detail that every answer so far has missed is that oceanic currents move slower the deeper you get. The Gulf Stream for example moves at 6.4 to 9 kph at the surface, but that speed tappers off to nothing at a depth of 800-1200m deep. So, if you have a really big submarine, something a few hundred meters tall, then you'd have enough gradient to experience the 2 vector forces required of sailing. Instead of "sails" what you really want are 2 giant rudders that go over and under your sub to create that interaction between opposing currents.
This said, your best bet is generally going to be to just go with the flow, and not bother sailing much at all. Oceanic currents are way more predictable than the wind, they move in relatively fixed paths and will bring you more or less where you need to go all on its own (as long as you are planning to follow the stream) and if you follow it long enough it will bring you back to where you started making it viable for unpowered trade route propulsion.
Consider this, if you are moving at an average of 154km per day following the Gulf Stream, you could drift the distance between Spain and the Bahamas in about 50 days. That is faster than it took Columbus to cover the distance using traditional sailing before the discovery of the gulf stream. Unfortunately, you will still need to have some other form of propulsion to help you get from the ocean currents to ports and back again, but while in the current you could just use your "sails" to help you keep on course and navigate to find the best parts of the current as you go.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ioFOX.png)
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In a distant future where FTL interstellar travel is commonplace, there is a stable large-scale market for a commodity called **photonic negentropy** (**"PhoNE"** for short, though nobody remembers what the word was once used for). PhoNE is a kind of consumable "wonder-stuff" that facilitates the construction and operation of self-repairing nanomachinery. A constant supply of it makes a system more or less self-sufficient, in place of repairing or replacing components by hand, though it is used mostly in technology that can't reliably be accessed by repair drones or personnel properly. It occurs naturally in the vicinity of stellar outflows, with [asymptotic giant branch stars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptotic_giant_branch) being the best source (but all stars producing some). Some believe, perhaps religiously, that its existence is a mark of the entire universe preparing to recycle itself.
PhoNE is harvested with **sails**, large sheets of smart-matter fabric that sieve out the useful part of stellar wind, and stored in battery-like **cells** for trade. It is a reliable commodity everywhere in civilized space: it is always in demand, and just about every station and planet has people willing to buy and sell it, albeit at unfortunately low prices. System-wide governments or major corporations typically put huge banks of static sails in low solar orbits, collecting their batteries every so often, while ships can mount their own sails for lower quantities of it.
There is at least one way in which PhoNE is not *really* a commodity: it is still somewhat profitable to collect it yourself. In our world, if you try to start a one-man operation for some fungible resource like iron, then even ignoring the initial investment you have no hope of breaking even, because economies of scale have lowered the price such that only the largest industrial mining operations can profit.
But, for whatever reason I'm trying to figure out, that's not the case with PhoNE. While high-speed transports, warships, and such don't mount sails because the returns are tiny and they need to save space and weight, there is a small interstellar community of private yacht and passenger-ship owners who do. They collect PhoNE on their voyages, use some fraction to save on their own maintenance, and sell the rest when they dock, in order to pay for docking permissions and any reasonable purchases they have to make in station. It's not lucrative by any means — investing in stocks is probably better for returns overall if you're already rich — but it's enough to get by and support someone who wants to be a "self-sufficient" spacer. In fact, there are even debt-relief agencies who will rent out harvesting ships to spacers, take a cut of the PhoNE sales, and let their client use the rest to pay off debts.
I'm trying to figure out how this can be the case. *Something* about the nature or harvesting of this material means that, even with the bulk of intake being provided by giant industrial sail operations, it's possible to get by, though not get rich quick, off going out in a ship with a sail and harvesting it oneself. **What is it?**
---
As requested, a few details on the economics:
* A starship's warp drive runs off reactor power alone, and can push a vehicle in any direction from any location (though warp entry and exit points must be in vacuum). In-system travel is limited, by the rate of warp acceleration, to a few dozen times the speed of light, and is monitored in civilized systems by remote-control warp stations that can control nearby flights to prevent accidents. Travel between systems takes at least half a day; most civilian vehicles have a reliable top speed of about 10,000c (~0.4 pc/hr) but take several more hours to get up to speed or slow down. There is no limitation on how far a warp trip can take a ship.
* Mass recycling is quite robust even without any PhoNE-based tech, so a ship designed for long-haul flights can stay out in space comfortably for many years. Anti-aging treatments are cheap and commonplace, but living for decades or centuries as a spacer is considered fairly weird. So the main timer on when you have to come back to port is mostly societal (is there a port to come back to?)
* A minimally functional warp-capable starship is just about affordable for a middle-class person who wants to burn all their money on one, though renting is far cheaper — ships are built to last a long time. The equipment for storing and handling PhoNE is inexpensive compared to the somewhat more expensive ship you need simply to be big enough to carry it.
* I do not have a clear notion of how much harvesting one needs to do to pay for trip expenses. Consider this a free variable for an answer.
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## Small-scale harvesting is more art than science.
**Your flow of PhoNE is variable and difficult to predict.** It changes constantly.
Large-scale operations just throw a huge "net" and sell whatever they catch. Average return, but the huge scale makes up for it.
Small-scale operations find temporary currents or concentrated streams to harvest which yields a lot at once, but still a relatively small quantity by industrial standards—BUT they also have a low harvesting cost, so it's very profitable. A skilled harvester can predict it reliably enough to make a profit.
Imagine gold mining if the concentration of ore was constantly in flux. You can harvest the whole deposit and average it out, or—if you are skilled—take one whack with a pickaxe at just the right time and snatch chunks of pure solid gold just when the concentration is at its highest. Both are profitable, but the latter requires a great deal of skill. Space is big enough for both to be done without conflicting.
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**Space is dangerous**, as we all know. And space around big stars, space that's full of the stellar wind that contains Phone, is extra dangerous.
So if you're a big corporation harvesting Phone with these huge sail-stations and ships, and you want to avoid the wrath of the workplace safety people and massive wrongful-death suits, you need to make the entire process as idiot-proof as possible. Loads of personal safety gear, ships larded with all kinds of just-in-case contingency equipment, countless billions of worker-hours of boring lectures about standards and practices. Not to mention a paper trail that proves you dotted every last *i* and crossed every last *t*.
That's a lot of work! And while it's worth putting in all that work to keep the government (and their law-enforcement battleships) off your back, there's no getting around the fact that the market rate for Phone is a good deal higher than *strictly* necessary. You *could* harvest it a lot cheaper, if you didn't need all those permits and inspections. If you could find people crazy enough to dive close to those big stars *without* all the redundancies and safety gear and quadruple-checking of every thruster burn.
Good news! There are *always* people crazy enough, or desperate enough, or arrogant enough to try it. People who think they don't need all those redundancies because they're *just that good*. Because they're always very careful. Because they're smarter than the government drones who write the standard. Because their ship can take a few knocks and they know it. Or because this is their only chance of keeping ahead of the law, ahead of the debt collectors, ahead of their past.
Of course, some of those people will discover that the rules do exist for a reason, most of them anyway. They'll discover that they weren't as fast, or smart, or careful, or lucky as they thought, and they probably won't make it back. But some of them will roll the dice and come out ahead, for awhile anyway.
[Answer]
## Social problems
Two social factors might do the trick:
* persistent sabotage by political groups unhappy with the status quo
* non-violent people who also want to live off-grid
If your fictional world is anything like the real world, it will be dominated by very large and wealthy groups that use their economic power to squeeze most people to death for power and profit. This will very naturally result in discontents who are eager to tear down the big players. Some of these groups will also be misinformed, or even manipulated by medium-sized players seeking an unfair advantage by fomenting useful violence against their competition.
A big problem with your massive corporate harvesting collections is that they are big, stationary targets. A lone actor with access to a spaceship will be able to hurl junk at the collector sails, and perform other kinds of sabotage.
They cannot target transient "hobbyist" collectors, who aren't around long enough to be the target of bombardment. They won't target the hobbyists either, because those hobbyists are the people they'd *prefer* to have harvesting PhoNe.
Hobbyist collectors are the only vendors that disaffected groups will buy PhoNe from -- not just for reasons of political preference, but because they wish to stay off the grid in one way or another, and the hobbyists are fine with that.
This will include lots of people who are not criminals in any sense. They need PhoNe just as much as anybody else, they just don't want to buy it from EvilMegacorp: they don't want EvilMegacorp to gain their money, collect their payment information, be able to generate consumer profiles in order to squeeze them harder, etc. They do want to support individual people.
This doesn't mean that out-groups are the only market for solo PhoNe harvesters, but they will be a natural market.
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1. First possibility: there's no difference between PhoNE and gold, today. Large corporations mine gold, but it's *valuable enough* that medium and small (even hobbyist) miners can make a living (even gain wealth) mining it. This happens because gold is useful in a LOT of ways, which means that even with industrial extraction, the want for gold is ever greater than the supply.
2. You could make the quality of PhoNE dependent on something desirable to avoid to large-scale miners. Something like the quality is better when harvested out of solar flares, and the closer you are to the source of the flare, the higher the quality of PhoNE. Or perhaps it's simply the closer you are to the star, the higher the quality of PhoNE, but the greater the risk of getting it.
3. Profitability isn't dependent on social acceptability. Pseudoephedrine is a common over-the-counter decongestant that's cheap — but do a little behind-the-scenes chemistry and you get the much more profitable methamphetamine. PhoNE is run-of-the-mill, but do a little behind-the-scenes chemistry and what you get phu... well... something else that really expands someone's consciousness. This idea works from the perspective of profitability, but it likely doesn't work from the perspective of your proposed economic structure. If authorities knew one was harvesting for nefarious production, they wouldn't be lending out harvesting equipment for debt relief... but then again....
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**Artisanship**
What's the difference between a McDonalds, a local Fish and Chip takeaway and Gordon Ramsay?
All of these could be considered as real-word proxies for your PhoNE resource. All of them are essentially cooking food, but it's the skill in taking the raw (IT's F$%@ING RAW!) ingredient(s) and turning them into something that is desirable.
If you make PhoNE as tricky to refine *at scale* - then you have the perfect solution:
Big Industrial Mining entities, despite very strict policy and procedures, can only have a very limited oversight of the product - just like McDonalds - there's a large amount of variance. Sometimes it's cooked amazingly and it's like Nectar of the Gods (either that or you are Hungover/Still Drunk) other times it's 'Meh'.
The Local Takeaways are a good proxy for your Small Business owner who isn't going to get super-rich running it, but can make a rather a comfortable living.
Then, for added realism, you might get the occasional person who is really good at managing the refinement of PhoNE (like a Gordon Ramsay) who can command a very high price for their product and get rather rich off of it.
You could even add in some sort of incentive - whereby a few Small Business owners do *very* well, and this encourages a lot of people to try their hand at it - who do okayish (you could have an allegory to the likes of only 'fans' whereby a few people are **hyper** successful and this encourages a lot of people to try it)
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**It decays**
Your PhoNE might display properties of a fissile material like having a half-life, in cells or outside, therefore even if it's not expended, you would lose the contents of your PhoNE battery over time. Also it might instead behave like a rechargeable battery's self-discharge mechanics of RL, meaning that there could be better batteries that preserve more PhoNE for longer, yet still should be somehow charged with newly harvested Thing once in a while, even if you leave it stored.
This alone could be sufficient to require sunward missions for any single star system to at least retain PhoNE-independence and be able to remain self-sufficient in case of interstellar supply delays/break-ups, yet a good station/system government wants more as it's expensive to pay for logistics of this, thus a cheap manually controller fleet of solar miners is ready for an unhappy broke person to pilot towards the star's mining range and back, delivering some extra PhoNE for the community's needs. Also the stuff might get exceedingly volatile if collected "too dense", limiting the practical size of PhoNE storage devices (eg horror energy accumulators in *Monsters, Inc*), so delivering extra supplies in small/er quantities is always desirable.
**Robotic mining is unsafe**
There is a possibility that decay effects of PhoNE cause various levels of electric discharge all around the mining ship, occasionally causing it to "commit undesired operations" or just jam its commlink to inoperability, leading to excessive ship losses and a potential loss of collection point space station due to various reasons, therefore a star system must not only rely on robotic supply of stuff. Humans, while requiring a lot more than robots, are also capable of solving situations like detector jam or engine failure with direct actions, also it's possible that any discharge running across the ship is not enough to cause lasting or maybe even minor damage to a living pilot, thus humans are largely unaffected by it and human-driven ships do not experience excessive loss while harvesting PhoNE. Yet, if all mining would be done by humans, the overall costs would go too high to allow a mining company to stay afloat. This calls for some balance across prices, but in case robots are decently cheap to manufacture (hey we have nanites in operation, maybe it's true) while humans require a lot to get educated beyond what we have right here, in order to be able to pilot a mining ship and ensure safe return, both types of mining could be profitable at least to the miners.
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**Copy the fishing industry**
This just sounds like fishing to me. Giant corps go around with trawlers and serve most of the global demand. But that doesn't mean small operations can't go out and serve local demand or even individual demand. Long running family operations could be familiar with the star and stellar winds (like an old fisherman knows the seas and currents), thus enabling a family business type situation where individuals are able to harvest larger quantities per-capita than the big corps that just throw up sails and rely on size to achieve scale.
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# PhoNE is not refinable. At all.
It's a mess of *mumble mumble, throws sci-fi dice* of entangled particles of some exotic form of matter. Any interference, beyond delicately trapping it, causes it to instantly break down.
It is emitted unevenly, in bursts by the star. Lower layers and stronger bursts contain more of it.
So, your big megacorp produces "semi refined" PhoNE - it's what most stuff is made out of, it's fine. Works well, in most cases. It's harvested by cheap, disposable robot miners. Some contaminates, that interfere with delicate systems. Oh, and they're a bit radioactive - not the kind of thing you want on medical nanotech.
Refined PhoNE, however, needs high concentrations of the substance, from extremely close into the star, and, often, from unusual stars - An unstable star chucks out loads of it, but in erratic bursts. No one is going to set up a mining operation there. The whole thing would get burnt by a gamma ray burst, or some burst of x-ray radiation would wipe everyone out
Your artisian PhoNE miners have ships with sails that work like surf boards - you try and catch a big burst from the star, and ride it while the PhoNE tanks fill. Robots can't learn to read the solar flares, and can't learn to balance a ship while it's rocketing just ahead of a jet of superheated plasma being shot out of the surface of the star. They certainly can't learn to do it in an uncertain, 3 body star system whose stars are simultaneously collapsing in on each other and being ripped apart by tidal forces - but that's where the good stuff is. A successful AI rights movement makes it so putting more intelligent mining AIs in the disposable robots would be murder. And solar flares basically block any signals, so remote control is out.
The average life of a PhoNE miner is roughly two solar flare rides. Good ones sell information about the sites they find, and hope to retire before they end up cooked, irradiated, or driven insane by the stress.
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Light freight and passenger ship captain here! We do a lot of business in remote areas, so we always mount a sail to sustain PhoNE reserves in an an emergency. If you get caught in a solar storm a few hops out from a deep space observatory, or a micrometeorite tries to liberate the minerals you just picked up from an uncrewed asteroid mine, or you crash out of warp because some barely catalogued star has a dormant black hole companion that isn't on the charts, having enough PhoNE to repair comms, engines, and life support can make the difference between life and death.
On remote runs, we set out with full PhoNE reserves whenever we can, but full doesn't last—and full isn't always full enough. In-flight maintenance is always draining the PhoNE supply, especially in harsh environments where no one wants to build infrastructure, so we harvest when we can to keep supplies topped up. The adage that [space always vents the tank you need the most](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13) very much applies to PhoNE storage. It's possible to take more than a full PhoNE reserve's worth of damage and still be alive enough to attempt repairs (ask me how I know). It's possible to be the only ship within twenty parsecs of a distress call, turning your PhoNE reserve into the lifeline for a much larger ship. Finally, if "civilized space" is the place where PhoNE is a reliable commodity, there are plenty of uncivilized little communities out there, and they still need specialty goods and FTL data delivery. When we visit those places, we don't expect to leave with full PhoNE reserves.
Thankfully, we also do a lot of business in developed areas, where we can save fuel and boost our payload mass fraction by emptying and powering down some of our PhoNE containment units. We do not, of course, empty those PhoNE tanks into space. At the end of a remote run, if the wind was good and not much went wrong, we can sell enough PhoNE into the pipes to cover docking fees, fresh food, "docking fees" (looking at you, Port Centauri cargo inspectors), i-mail, and maybe even a music hall show. We don't have the same profit margin as a planet-scale PhoNE utility, but that doesn't matter. So far, the return on our investment in a sail has been close to 100%, by which I mean 100% of passengers and crew getting off the ship alive. The money is just a nice sideline.
Similar considerations apply in other contexts. I've met plenty of comet campers, endurance racers, and warp hackers over the years, and let me tell you: they may be rich, but they're not stupid. These people invariably carry both generous PhoNE reserves and the best sails money can buy. Humanitarian disaster response and military special forces ships often have sails, and people who've worked on those ships often don't like not having sails. If you see a sail on a vacation yacht docked at an orbital ring in an asymptotic giant branch system, you can bet that someone on it has Seen Some Things. Do you remember the days, not even a thousand years ago, when major PhoNE distributors could and would refuse to serve dust-lane great-rafts and Cælinesian starcruisers? Some folks sure do. Their ships mount sails. Small ships mount sails for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes for no reason you'll ever know. If you spend enough time at spaceports, watching the ships come and go, you'll always find a few dreamy or scarred or reclusive people who just want to tend their closed-loop gardens and wander from star to star. They don't need much except a little skiff with a decent sail, and if on occasion they could use some money, selling off stored PhoNE is a fine way to get it. They always have it, and there's more where it came from. The wind, as they say, is free.
p.s. You also asked about debt relief PhoNE harvesting (or debt bondage PhoNE harvesting, depending on the details and your point of view). I don't know much about that. I have the impression that it often happens in politically unstable regions where the PhoNE majors won't operate, and on borders where governments want to say they control certain asymptotic giant branch stars without *saying* they control those stars, and in places where decommissioned ships and desperate people both come cheap. I also have the impression that more than a few journalists have looked into it, but less than a few stories have come out, so I hope you'll forgive me for not speculating further.
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### Slot Machines and Restaurants
(partly borrowing/expanding on TheDemonLord's excellent restaurant analogy)
The simplest answer is that it is *not*, largely profitable. It has a **slightly-negative EV**, but with occasional 'spikes', the same way a slot machine does. Expulsions of PhoNe are random, come in different grades, and quickly denature in a vacuum, so harvesting is a matter of being in the right place at the right time to catch it and stabilize it.
* Big industrial rigs are (mostly) not practical because having a *bigger* ship doesn't help you catch the small, rapidly vanishing expulsions.
* Big companies aren't interested in hiring / training / equipping fleets of small ships, because *across their investment*, they are going to average to a loss.
* System-sized governments go with the static approach, because they are able to *operate at a loss* in return for the consistency of having a consistent averaged amount of the stuff on hand. They're also alright with having the maintstay of their economy be the 'mid-grade' stuff.
80% of self-started PhoNe fishing operations close down within five years. You might think that stat will keep people from going into the business... except that happens to also be the real life number for what percent of restaurants fail, and there's not shortage of those. There will always be people who think *they* will be the success story. And because they're playing the slot machines... some percentage *will*, and their existence keeps the dream alive.
With a sufficiently close-to-50% EV, some percentage of people will catch *just* enough lucky breaks, just often enough, to justify continuing to operate in the business. Maybe there's even a real skill or talent component to it, where some people have a 'knack' for it, and are genuinely likely to do better than break-even.
Some portion of them tend to specialize in the highest grade of PhoNe, needed for specialty applications (or for snobs). Those people will likely end up with a fleet of a half-dozen ships or so, the Joël Robuchons and Alain Ducasses of the galaxy, making a profit by selling at a higher margin than the typical operations cna.
Other success stories are simply the inevitable survivorship bias lucky ones, turning a profit for years or even a lifetime, their good years keeping them going through the overall downward trend, buoyed by occasional successes.
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Although somewhat similar to *Cadence's* answer in parts, I'd say **intensity** and **dispersion**.
The closer you are to the star producing PHoNE, the higher the intensity and the more you can grab per square unit of sail. The further away you are from the star, the more the PhoNE disperses, meaning lower intensity and the more sail you need to get the same amount of PhoNE.
Surrounding stars with massive sails would be big bank for corporate industry but sitting massive sails that close to a star incurs not only huge maintenance costs (solar flares, prolonged heat and radiation damage etc.) coupled with health and safety nightmares but also a massive backlash from environmentalists who think that surrounding and, essentially, obscuring stars is a major no-no even for uninhabited systems.
Since the ACB Uber-Collector disaster when two massive, fully-automated, close-proximity sail rigs collided in a solar storm, causing a freak detonation of their PhoNE stores which temporarily destabilised the star and thus the orbits of its planets, directly resulting in the extinction of over 30,000 species unique to that system, fully-automated, close-proximity sail rigs are illegal.
Given the above, the corporate players generally prefer to go for planet orbiting sails where they need quadruple the sail for the same amount of PhoNE but it's so much less of a headache to implement, not to mention the ease and savings of getting the PhoNE from their orbital source to their planet-side consumers by space elevator.
However, for a skilled pilot, star-skimming with a smaller sail does not obscure the stars. the pilot and ship's exposure to heat and radiation is for short, manageable bursts and they harvest a lot more PhoNE than would be possible from further away. Yes, they take a loss with the longer travel distance and time from source (star) to market (planet/space station) and back again but there is sufficient market to turn a profit, despite the higher costs of ship maintenance compared to a static, planet orbiting rig.
For the more laid back approach, e.g. private yacht cruises, space flight is essentially point in the right direction, deploy sufficient thrust to head that way and, optionally, turn off the engine until you need it again to slow down. They may get less PhoNE than one of the dedicated collectors from earlier but they are out to cruise as a priority and gather PhoNE as a benefit. Imagine if modern, private yachts on today's oceans could deploy fully automated fishing nets. All they'd have to do is cruise from A to B for pleasure and then sell off any fish they happened to collect along the way upon arrival. Given that collecting PhoNE is essentially deploy the sail and let it charge the batteries that we can then sell off on arrival, there is no reason why this wouldn't be at least sufficiently profitable to significantly reduce the cost of the journey if not even make a little profit.
As to why people would bother with such tiny margins, think about the borderline crypto miners these days. When the market takes a dip, they turn off their mining rigs as their mining profits don't cover the electricity bill. If they mined with, say, dedicated solar panels on their roof, then they'd leave their rigs on all day and possibly make slightly less than they would on mains power as solar power has ups and downs based on the weather and the time of year but they could let it run on full autopilot instead of having to monitor market rates all the time. (Yes there's some handwaving involved as you'd have to throttle the mining rigs based on the amount of solar power available at the time). It becomes a tradeoff between freedom and profit. Yes, this generates less profit than pro-active mining but then they can do something completely different at the same time. The point I'm trying to make is that if you can make PhoNE gathering a fully automated side-gig bolted on to your main ship then you can still get on with what you want to do in life and make some additional money on the side without thinking about it. This is why the private yachts etc would be in to PhoNE gathering too. As a potential bonus, vanity sails could be made that light up in certain ways or can filter out parts of the visible spectrum as well to make the cruising experience even more enjoyable.
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*OP here. This is my own best answer after thinking about this as much as I could. I don't think this is very solid, and I want to compare it to whatever else the community comes up with.*
**PhoNE isn't perfectly fungible: it improves when many sources are combined.**
If PhoNE is really a cosmos-wide recycling system, then naturally its effects are best produced when different stars' output is mixed, as they would be (at very low concentrations) in deep space. You can sell 100 units from star A *or* star B for \$100, but 50 units from each, combined in your vehicle's processing facility, makes 100 units of a higher-grade PhoNE that sells for \$110. And perhaps 25 units from four different stars might make enough to sell for a combined \$120.
So, first off, clearly another large industrial market opens up: interstellar freighters that run from system to system, picking up batteries from the major producers' static sails, and combining them at the point of sale. The buyer then grades the finished product, which might be more or less pure based on which stars exactly it came from, before offering a price.
But now there's also value in going out and exploring *undeveloped* systems — because that's even more sources to combine with, and possibly sources for future mining expansion if some stars there have much better stuff. What yachters do, and what the debt-relief agencies tell people to do, is to cover a swathe of the distant galaxy, get samples, and return in the hopes that they've made something good enough to sell. And perhaps it's still a poor investment even then, what with the presence of industrial mixing operations. But the former succeed because they have experience finding good sources, and the latter succeed mostly if they get lucky (no one said debt-relief agencies weren't predatory). Think experienced prospectors vs. the everyman in an old-school gold rush, with both competing against actual large mining firms.
Where I'm not confident here is whether it'd really be worth enough to do this by yourself on reasonable timescales. Exploring the galaxy is very slow, and this seems like a recipe for spending years out in the void in the hopes of maybe squeezing out slightly more money from the higher-grade PhoNE than the industrial mixers. So I'm not convinced it's the cleanest solution.
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**PhoNe is non-fungible information**
If entropy is disorder or noise, then negentropy is order or information. It is stored as qubits in exa-scale memory devices. As qubits can't really be copied they need to be "mined" anew, but the energy density is unfathomable. It allows you to rearrange atoms to make large amounts of useful materials directly from asteroids(or anything you want to recycle) without need to supply additional energy. Just entangle the rock with a quantum computer and load the right PhoNe into it. The concept of energy itself is now obsolete.
It makes FTL itself easy, otherwise ships would need huge tanks of fickle antimatter.
However, and there's the issue, PhoNe must be imprinted with specific recipe for each output/process when it is made. To get monocrystal metal beams needs different PhoNe than to make beer.
Maybe someone will figure out the recipe to produce specific kind of PhoNe to recycle whole universe. It's called paperclip maximizer problem. Nobody has any idea what paperclips are. Some kind of vermin? But even without that there are all kinds of illicit substances you are forbidden to produce PhoNe for, plus vast grey area of all kinds of PhoNy stuff that is not available wholesale. That's where artisans and bespoke producers come in.
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## Taxes.
The government(s) put a hefty sales tax on PhoNE. Why? Perhaps when that stuff was new, it was causing economic shifts. Any competing technologies for creating and maintaining nanotechnology were in danger of being made obsolete and the companies that specialized in them saw their stock prices plummet. Whole star systems that built their economies around exporting pre-PhoNE nanomachinery were heading towards economic collapse. A development which the politicians (or rather their wealthy donors) wanted to prevent or at least slow down.
So they started taxing that stuff. Their plan failed and it still became the commodity it is today. But the PhoNE tax is now an important point in the government budget they can't just remove without creating a huge deficit. So it stays.
But if you harvest it yourself, then you don't need to pay a sale tax. So despite lacking the economies of scale and the initial investment, harvesting it yourself can still be a way to save some money.
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Let's say a future world where faster than light communication exists, but not faster than light travel. There is a desire to colonize other worlds outside the solar system, but it's massively expensive to put together a colonization effort given the expense of shipping things so far. 1A few have been done as part of what amounted to a space race between superpowers on earth, but once the 'race' was over and the major super powers had each colonized a world to prove they can no one seemed that interested in investing the time and expense to set up future colonization efforts.
In the absence of government spending entrepreneurs have stepped up wanting to fund such colonization efforts in hopes of making some future profits from them, or at least that's what I want to happen. The problem is it's hard for me to believe the expected return on investment for a colonization effort can ever come close to high enough to justify the cost, risk, and delay on repayment that comes with such an effort. I expect and plan for some of the expense of colonization to be covered by limited government investment and non-profits but I want a non-trivial amount of the cost to be covered by investors who expect to profit out of it, and I'm struggling to figure out how to justify these investors seeing a colonization effort as a reasonable investment.
Let's cover a few presumptions I have.
**Costs of travel between worlds is prohibitively expensive.**
Sending supplies or resources between worlds is rather expensive, that's the whole reason it's so hard to get the original colonization efforts funded. This means that it's unreasonable to expect a colony to send back supplies to the home world as a means to repay investment debts.
**An information economy has been proven to be possible between colonies, but it takes a long time to get started**
The first colonized worlds have demonstrated that FTL communication via ansible can lead to an information economy. Colonized worlds can produce 'information' both in the sense of sellable things like books, movies, games etc but also in terms of someone on a colony being paid to do something by people on the home world, any job that is done in front of a computer today, such as programming, designs, even call centers, could be done just as well regardless of what world the person resides on.
Of course this can't happen until people reach a colony, have a survivable settlement created, and have enough free time to begin to get involved in such an economy, which is to say a *long* time after the expedition has been sent.
**Governments want to encourage colonization, so long as it doesn't cost them too much in tax dollars, and so are willing to make laws favorable to encouraging investors in colonization ships**
Pretty self explanatory, the governments want to and will create laws that encourage investment in colonization, if I can come up with a good way for governments to do so....
**An investment that takes a long time to pay dividends is acceptable, but requires a higher eventual return on investment to justify the opportunity cost**
This is more an economic idea, but it's fine to have an investment that takes generations to start repaying, people will buy stocks and can still trade and sell stocks in the investment if they need money sooner, a long delay before an investment is realized is fine. However, while your money is committed in one investment it can't be making money elsewhere. For a long term investment to make sense you need to expect quite a bit more money to be repaid then original invested just to cover your opportunity cost of not investing elsewhere.
**Between opportunity cost and risk the eventual repayment has to be massive to invest in colonization**
Creating a colony is a huge risk, it could easily fail at which time a huge investment is lost. Between the original high cost of funding the colonization and how high the expected returns have to be to justify both risk and opportunity cost the amount of money investors expect to make back from a colony has to be so high that it could take generations for any tax or other means of syphoning money from the information economy to investors before a sufficient return on investment could possible be reaped to justify the original expenses.
**A colonies grand children probably won't like paying this tax**
And here is the problem. In theory this could all work, except what happens when the folks at the colony get sick of paying a debt their grandparents signed up for? How does a government trying to encourage colonization investment create a system for repayment that they can reasonable expect to last for generations when they can't exactly send soldiers to collect backtaxes if the colony refuses to pay?
Thus my problem. it just seems like the debt a colony has to generate just to be founded is so high that it's hard to imagine the debt ever being paid off. You would need a *minimum* of a 10% ROI per year - likely much higher considering the risk involved - to justify investing in starting a colony. If a colony isn't expected to start generating any noticeable income via the information economy for generations and in the mean time that original debt has been growing exponentially by a factor of 10% year after year your going to reach a point where the debt is so huge that a colony might very well struggle just to repay the interest on the debt even once they are active in the information economy. It could take many generations to pay off the original investment, and it seems likely that at some point the colony is going to revolt, refuse to continue paying, and somehow manage to default on that debt. So why invest in it? How can the governments incentivize investment to the point that it makes sense for a noticeable percentage of the colonization costs to be covered by investors?
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I feel like you're starting from the wrong premises. You've already established that colonies are impractical to monetize in a reasonable timescale, and due to the costs of interstellar travel it isn't like you can offload your population to the frontier. Capitalism makes a fairly poor driver for this kind of activity, and it isn't immediately obvious why governments would want to encourage colonization either.
I venture that the most likely driver for your colonization would be lust for power... the possibility of setting up your own world with you on the throne and unassailable from Earth. I'm sure you can think of several real-world billionaires with significant political influence who might be interested in being the monarch of an offworld colony. Wealthy religious cults might bankroll new distant theocracies. Autocratic rulers of nations on Earth might be interested in founding dynasties, and so on. Earth and the solar system are too close, to busy, too vulnerable to migration, sabotage or force. Other stars though? Get [manifesting that destiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny).
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> In theory this could all work, except what happens when the folks at the colony get sick of paying a debt their grandparents signed up for? How does a government trying to encourage colonization investment create a system for repayment that they can reasonable expect to last for generations when they can't exactly send soldiers to collect backtaxes if the colony refuses to pay?
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The information economy works both ways. One does not build a world of billions from scratch overnight... terraforming and construction of habitats is always going to be a slow process (unless you've developed magical ultratech handwavium, but in that case why would anyone care about "investment" or "tax" anymore?) and as such the frontier worlds are likely to be consumers of Solar culture and technology for quite some time.. a truly mature colony that could stand alone might not even exist yet. Pay your bills, or we'll cut off the netflix subscription to your entire world, yea, even unto the seventh generation. What are you going to do? Beg the space Mennonites in the next star over for their soap operas? I don't think so.
Although difficult, it might even be possible have critical bits of infrastructure controlled remotely from Earth via ansible. Pay your bills, or maybe your power plants stop working. Your semiconductor fabs. Your pharmceutical bioreactors. Why would you make a home-grown tech base when the solar stuff is just that much better? Hell, it might be a licensing requirement that you don't pursue certain kinds of tech research yourself, and if the Solar System finds out you've been trying to slip your tethers then maybe your planetary communication net stops working and you're cast back into the stone age. [Hydraulic despotism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_empire), but with software services.
Really though, wringing enough money out of them is probably impossible and your probably-sentient-by-now scifi spreadsheet equivalents will tell you as much. Just be content with spending money at home, and let the weirdo cultists build backwater "civilizations" too far away to ever be a problem. They have to buy their starships at home after all, and that should be profitable enough for now...
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Incidentally, funding of interstellar colonies was a major plot point in Stross' "*Neptune's Brood*", which had the added constraint that FTL communication was not practical, but the civilization in question were humanoid AI who could freely upload their minds into new bodies. The financing of new colonies was likened to a financial scam, because ultimately in order to pay off your setup costs you needed to set up colonies of your own...
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**Your investors are artificial intelligences.**
They invest in lots of things. They are very rich. They are immortal. Some of their investment decisions are obvious. Others are opaque and some seem like plain bad decisions.
An AI might have reasons to invest in a colony besides the eventual monetary return. One has a model system which predicts a catastrophe on Earth making the colony more attractive. One has a colony which is actually a human eugenics project. One is fronting for many colonies to disguise the fact that it is prospecting for alien artifacts. One is sponsoring a colony to distract from its military ambitions on Earth. Three are just plain in it for the very long term and expect to come out ahead in the next century. Several more have reasons that are incomprehensible.
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People have made lots of good suggestions about how to generate profits in the future. This suggestion is about how to reduce the cost of setting up a colony in the first place:
**Have the colonists pay for it**
There are always people dissatisfied with current society for whatever reason who would really like to strike out on their own.
People have done it for thousands of years, often at immense personal cost and overwhelming risk of death. And yet they did it anyway.
There will be lots of people who want to found a new society. Some of them will be rich. Some of them will be *very* rich. So sell tickets to this new world at a price that people will pay, that also covers a significant portion of the cost of the venture.
As well as selling basic citizenship you could also sell all sorts of other things:
Votes. Positions in the new world government. Power. Prestige. Naming rights. etc. etc.
There are 60 Million Millionaires in the world. There's several thousand Billionaires. Depending on where you set your ticket prices you might be surprised just how much money you can raise to cover the cost of the investment.
And the less money your corporation has to put up itself, the greater the return on that investment is going to be.
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Simple answer, they won't, and FTL communication isn't going to help change that.
Which is why corporations are very unlikely to be the ones funding and organising this sort of thing, so governments and non-profit NGOs are going to be the most likely groups that fund this sort of thing, the only way to ***ensure*** getting paid for this sort of thing is to get paid up front.
At the distances and travel times involved there's simply no way to guarantee continued political and economic control to insure payments continue to be made .. the new colonial government might choose to declare itself independent and all debts null and void at any time and there's nothing you can do about it if they do short of spending **all** the original costs all over again to send a second ship loaded with marines to insist, which doubles the cost with no reasonable certainty of success, basically it would be the ultimate sunk cost fallacy and no sane CEO would be likely to sign off on it, they'd be more likely to write off the loss and move on.
And that's without even considering **how** payments will be made, if it's really that expensive to go there in the first place there's no reasonable way to get goods back and forth that won't cost more than the goods are worth.
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And even Wilks' artificial intelligences won't be able to get around that little problem, it's a nice idea but it doesn't solve the economics problem of moving things back and forth.
And if you can't exchange goods then there can't be any plausible intersect of their economies or their respective currencies that makes any sense at all.
The long and short of it is that even if you *could* ***ensure*** that they will send you payments each instalment would cost you more to transport than it would be worth.
So the only thing they'll be able to exchange is ideas and the only payment they can make for them is their own ideas.
Consider that a frame challenge if you must.
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For any who somehow missed my answer.
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***Get paid before they leave,*** don't give them the keys to their shiny new colony ship and its cargo full of colony startup supplies until they pay for it.
There really is no other way to ***"ensure"*** you get paid.
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# Something does not grow / occurr on Earth
Some "magic" resource / good, like [Spice](https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Spice_Melange) cannot be produced on Earth, but is found or suitable to be produced elsewhere, so colonies are the only way to reliably get it.
## Colonies cannot use it themselves ...
Colonists do not receive the technology to process the good upon depature, so sending it back to Earth is the only way to profit from this asset.
And since Earth controls all the technology (licenses & knowledge), colonies cannot re-invent or reverse-engineer too much of "Earth" technology in a "short" time (200-300 years), so they are better off trading blueprints or further shipments for it.
Protip: The colony ship doubles as a transporter that can be refuelled after arrival & all the mining / growing equipment is included.
## ... but Earth hungers for it
Even if it takes decades / centuries to return, the products created from this resource are so valuable (powerful energy source, new medicines, better computers) that it is worth the risk, so stocks / options / futures for a colony are regarded as a "sane" long-term investment, growing more valuable the closer a "return" shipment is.
## What are the risks?
Meanwhile, someone on Earth might syntheisze the resource, rendering the colonies worthless to Earth, like it happened with [Rubber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia#Ford%27s_failure).
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Charles Stross in his novel Neptune's Brood has already come up with the most plausible solution to this exact question that I've ever come across
<https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/118148/in-neptunes-brood-how-does-slow-money-work>
<http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/09/crib-sheet-neptunes-brood.html>
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# Corporations have multiple complex problems that could be solved by enough computing power
Even today there's a bunch of major problems that get groups to donate computing power from around the world to solve. For example the [World Community Grid](https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/) is seeking out computing power to unfold a number of proteins that cause horrible diseases. [LHC home](https://lhcathome.web.cern.ch/) work to use group computing power to predict high energy interactions. [AQUA](https://lhcathome.web.cern.ch/) tried to improve quantum super computers.
The corporations have a number of problems that need huge amounts of computing power, and in the solar system there's just not enough computing power to go around. A colony can rapidly produce a huge amount of computers and it can be exclusively devoted to a corporation's problems. Some of these problems are large enough that they're worth much more than a colony costs.
These corporations can grant enormous benefits to governments so the governments are happy to support them.
# The colony doesn't pay any taxes, they pay in computing
The colony doesn't need to pay any taxes. They in fact get lots of free stuff, and regular new shipments of hard to manufacture parts and goods and information from the well established solar system. What they need to do is run computing problems on their existing hardware. So long as they expand and build corporation approved computing they're fine. It doesn't matter what ideology or race or religion they are. So long as they keep expanding and building and consuming the corporation wins.
# The corporation has AIs and loyalists to keep the colony on track
While they don't have absolute control, they have sent a number of people who are loyal to the company, as tested by psychologists and experts in the human mind, and a lot of AIs in their computing systems who can monitor and intervene if needed. They don't generally care about the nitty gritty details of what people are up to, but if anyone endangers the plan to build more computers and power to fuel them then they can oppose them.
In return, these AIs and people get custom computer designed backup. The AIs get advanced software updates that make them leagues beyond any native AIs, and the people get the best in super computer aided genetic engineering to ensure they and their descendants are healthy and powerful and safe.
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## I love this idea...
It just needs a bit of paranoia, which is very human, especially where corporations,1 governments, and activists are concerned.
This investment can not be thought of in any way other than long-term, multi-generational. Space flight in your universe simply won't allow any other kind of solution given the constraints you've listed. Cool!
Keep in mind, we here on Earth are moving ahead with space exploration today for many reasons, including the belief that as technology improves and discoveries are made, value will increase. That's a fancy way of saying that since FTL communications exist in your universe, it's only a matter of time before FTL travel exists. Even if that's never true, the subconscious belief will continue, *and that's important.*
Thus, I propose for your universe...
**Government involvement is guaranteed**
Your governments may have cooled on colonization after each colonized a planet or two... but to assume they don't want a piece of the pie is very, very optimistic. Planets are valuable, really valuable, and governments want the ability to control and defend that value. That value may be expressed in terms of strategic military, inherent mineral and agricultural, workforce (available for both civilian and military), scientific and cultural, and (of course) taxation. And governments want all of it. So your governments may be willing to provide some offsetting benefits for private companies to colonize planets, *but they'd never let a private company own the planet.*
That means every colonizing effort will include government-sanctioned bureaucracy and a military component, which will serve to keep the peace until the colony's growth allows for civilian control, after which it's there to protect the government's interests (and to defend against another government or private concern trying to take what the government thinks is theirs... the people, the planet, the minerals...).
**Corporate involvement is also guaranteed**
While some private concerns may exist that want to colonize other planets for nothing more than altruistic purposes,2 in reality, most corporations want a presence on those planets as badly as the governments do. Pristine planets are a great place to put dangerous research and manufacturing facilities (even with the sub-FTL velocities). Maybe even facilities that would (\*ahem\*) *not normally fall completely within the scope of the homeworld's laws.*
This kind of presence serves to protect the investment in multiple ways.
* The corporation would always have influence over local government and local law.
* The corporation would always have an influence over the local economy (if you're thinking about indentured servitude, you're not far off what I'm thinking).
* The corporation could exert its own security presence.
* The corporation could therefore have multiple streams of ROI revenue (repayment + research and/or manufacturing). If you think about it, an easy way to guarantee the investment is repaid is to not require payment from the colonists, but to *own the mines* and other businesses and ensure the payment is skimmed off the top. Of course, it would be repaid faster if you *did both.*
**Legal Representation Societies would also want in**
OK, that's a weird title, but let me explain. In fact, go read footnote #1. I'll wait. ... OK! Unless we're dealing with a nearly tyrannical homeworld government, you will have all kinds of groups who want to be represented for the purpose of forwarding their agendas. Groups will want to...
* protect the colonists from abuse (by the government & sponsoring corporation),
* protect the flora and fauna,
* save the colonists' souls,
* etc.
In a universe with *practical* (if very expensive) interstellar colonization, it's only *prudent* for the sponsoring corporation to allow those groups to be represented in the colonial effort... *for a price.* Said groups may successfully lobby the homeworld government to *require* their presence, but it's only reasonable that they pay their own way.
In other words, some of the investment will be offset by these third-party groups who just have to be there or the universe will be irreparably damaged tomorrow.
**In the end, not only is the investment more manageable, but a multi-generational return on investment is possible such that the corporation can do it again**
And that's the goal. It's an interesting thought that an arbitrary group of people could fire up a GoFundMe page to fund their colonization effort, but the reality is that the cost is *so great* that only the participation of governments and corporations can make it happen.
And now that there's a way to ensure a timely repayment of the investment. They'll do it. After all, with FTL travel only a dream of the future, there's so little trouble (\*ahem\*) *greasing the wheels of civilization3* when you're that far out that it might as well be the corporation's planet, right?
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1‚ÄÉ*You probably want to consider the private interests in a broader sense than just corporations. But I suspect if you actually sit down and try to calculate the cost and logistics of colonization, you'll discover that large corporations are the only private entities who can make it happen. If you don't wish to believe that, it's OK. Just replace "corporation" with "private concern" everywhere in my answer. Works either way.*
2‚ÄÉ*Our own world strongly suggests that altruism would never be a predominant motivation for colonization. Not only would you have special interest groups ~~fighting~~ lobbying strongly for their chance to get the heck out of Dodge (religious fanatics, para-military groups, ideologues... even groups of college students), you also have all those politically-motivated groups acting in opposition to those groups: save-the-planet types who are sure every touch of the homeworld's population on pristine planets will permanently corrupt the universe or groups willing to do anything to keep a religion from spreading off-world. I'm speaking outrageously for a reason. We all know that there are groups on both sides of the so-called political aisle who would act for and against colonization. Your world would be unrelatable to your human readers (if not outright unbelievable) if they didn't exist.*
3‚ÄÉ*Just to be clear, it wouldn't be that hard to bribe the governing officials... just so long as the Federation gets its Piece of the Action, if you know what I mean.*
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An information economy will not pay for an interstellar colony if the people there work in call centers. What you need is some kind of information that can only be generated in the colony and not in our solar system. The most obvious example for such information is **extraterrestial life**.
You probably don't want intelligent life (also interesting but a very different kind of story) but something somewhere in the range from primitive bacteria to the equivalent of primitive mammals. What the colony does is just researching these local life forms. The government ensures that the company funding the colony gets exclusive intellectual property rights on whatever they find there.
Research into extraterrestial life is interesting as such but in order to fully monetize it you need some major application to life on Earth. I would suggest the **hope for clinical immortality**.
You see, these extraterrestial life forms are immortal, they just never die. We don't know how this works exactly but we do hope once we understand it we can apply the idea to humans as well. It is certainly high risk because we don't know when or how this will ever work for humans. But if it does it will make the company that has exclusive rights to this technology richer than anyone has ever been before.
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## Spin-off company
The colony ship is it's own company, and the investors come with it. You don't need to send stuff back to the home world; the investors collect their dividends and debt payments in person.
Due to time dilation, the amount of time until return on investment is much shorter as experienced by the investors.
The investors are likely *extremely* dedicated venture capitalists. Once the new planet gets it's own native venture capitalists (perhaps the heirs of the original venture capitalists?), they can invest in new colonies as well.
Alternatively, the investor could be some sort of [Nonprofit *corporation*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_corporation) that is fine with "splitting" itself. The corporation still tries to grow, but does not pay back any money to human investors. (It's formation would require some sort of initial donations, which might be easier if it's a [Mutual-benefit nonprofit corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual-benefit_nonprofit_corporation).)
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## ESGIC
**Good public relations**
Corporations currently do a lot of things primarily to raise their profile and generate positive feelings about their brand. They run feel-good commercials that aren't really about their products (in hopes that it will inspire you to purchase their products). They donate to causes, hoping that people will think well of their company (and buy their products). They promise to colonize other worlds (in hope that you will buy their products). (Well, *most* companies don't do that - yet.)
**Environmental - Social - Governance ... Interstellar Colonization?**
It is currently the rage among corporations to pursue a high ESG score. It's considered responsible to do so, and certain investors (often state retirement funds and the like, which may have political motivations in addition to their motivation to see a return on investment) give preference to companies that have achieved a higher score.
Do you have more women and minorities on your board of directors? That raises your Governance score. Are you buying carbon offset credits? Higher Environmental score. Do you support minority-owned businesses? That will raise your Social score. But what about your Interstellar Colonization score? What are you doing to raise that? Don't you want to be eligible for investing from CalPERS, to raise yourstock price and improve your corporation's credit?
If enough people, or enough powerful people, want corporations to invest in interstellar colonization, it will be done just for the sake of appearances (and ROI right now).
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I feel like many of these answers are focusing on the wrong thing. If the “pull” of colonization isn’t there, start considering the “push” of colonization.
What if C53/Earth was a real shithole?
Overpopulation, constant crime and violence, all of the corrupt local Earth governments and their outrageous tax rates. Billions and billions of people desperate to get off-world. They’ll give you everything they have and then some.
That leads to two appealing narratives:
1. The corporation isn’t colonizing other worlds so much as it’s a leveraged buyout of Earth. They’re getting whole cities at pennies on the dollar, then shipping off the riffraff to make way for some redevelopment. They can even get colonists to take on the debt for their own fares! And since colonization isn’t actually the end goal, they can skimp on actual starship costs to dangerous levels. As long as conditions on Earth are bad enough, people will pay.
2. Profit isn’t *just* revenue. It’s also costs. Colonization might be a cost savings mechanism. Corporations don’t need to wait generations to realize cost savings immediately. Perhaps it is simply huge tax breaks they get for shipping people off world. Perhaps it is the rent and food and health insurance savings they get from putting a few million people into cryosleep (or otherwise convincing their employees to leave Earth’s crushing socialist regime). Colonization might be this era’s way of firing people who are a net negative to the bottom line.
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**Capitalism isn't really a good driver for this kind of undertaking.**
The sole exception would maybe be a group of capitalists wanting to flee from "oppressive" governments by (themselves) fouding a new anarchocapitalist colony somewhere else. The return would then be not monetary but ideological.
This would also be what any not-fleeing investors get: Lobbying power. If the ancap/super-neoliberal colony succeeds, that would be a good argument for any remainers here on earth when lobbying the government for more deregulation/whatever ancap stuff is desired.
Given the insane amounts corporations already spend on ~~bribery~~ lobbying, "investing" in a better standing in future lobbying pushes is not too far-fetched.
Any investors leaving with the colony would likely spend 99% of their cash on it, since they can't really buy anything from Earth besides information (since sending material stuff after them is too slow and expensive), so a huge part of the funding could come from that.
**Less sinister: Sponsoring**
Sounds kinda cheap and tacky but still: Being the tech-company whose name is printed on every surface of the colonization vessel during the highly-televised start is a unique marketing opportunity in a world where ads all feel the same. It could engrain the name through repetition and display the power/sophistication of your corporation if you can build, manage and/or support a colony endeavour.
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# Long Futures Contracts
You fire off a load of colonists in a ship with some resources, get them to make landfall, survey the planet, and start producing resources, which will be fired back via slower than light travel.
In return, you send a steady stream of resources they can't easily produce back to them. If the outbound shipments from the colony stop, your inbound shipments can be told to change course or skip the colony.
To continually fund your venture, you sell futures contracts in the resources it produces - promising delivery of 200,000 tonnes of x rare resource in 200 years. These contracts could traded up to the delivery date.
A continuous stream of resources and contracts mean it doesn't really matter that it takes 200 years for resources to arrive - you've sold them already, and others could trade in them until their arrival. People would buy them expecting them to increase in value as delivery approaches, and trade them as the price of the resource goes up and down.
This is not that dissimilar to cargoes being sold while container or oil tankers are at sea.
The stock market runs on a similar kind of house of cards, and you'd have frantic selling and buying spikes each time a giant container of ore was about to arrive, but, y'know, dysfunctional late stage capitalism is nothing we on earth can't handle.
What would be interesting is what happens if the containers stop from one of the colonies - or if stuff gets destroyed, the container is filled with worthless rocks or similar. There's lots a colony can do to screw you as the investor over, and lots you can do to screw them over in return.
It'd be a high paranoia, high information, low overall control environment, with some chances for high profile sabotage or double dealing.
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**Life expectancy is huge**
If a civilisation has a FTL communication, and can colonise other star systems then it is safe to bet people, especially rich people, tend to live a long time. Possible centuries. So waiting a long time for return investment isn't such a big deal, as people who can live for centuries would have a different look on what a long time is.
**Tax break**
If the government gives tax breaks (just like they do today for charity donations) that would definitely make people donate their wealth into funding colonisation effort. Especially as it would be an ultimate bragging right in high society. Just like the rich used to fund public libraries as vanity projects it is definitely possible to upscale that to funding colonies.
**Exclusive rights to intelectual trade**
Since only viable economy in an information economy (as everything material that a colony could supply can drastically easier be found in this solar system), the best way for return on investment would be exclusive rights on that information. So only the corporation can sell offworld information on Earth. Taxation itself doesn't really make sense when you trade information and only information. But exclusivity... And don't fear that it would take a long time for a colony to produce any sellable information. By the time Earth will be able to colonise other star systems the population of this one will be enourmous, most likely with dyson sphere well on its way. So it won't be that hard to sell even low quality data, if it's from offworld. For example, live-stream of setting up the colony! That would probably be quite popular reality show!
**Funding colonisation effort is not all that expensive**
The most likely solution to your problem is that the thing isn't all that expensive in the first place! The majority of expenses were R&D, which was already done! The second greatest expense would be colonists themselves, but with by then huge population of our solar system it shouldn't be hard to find volunteers. As for ships: when you have the orbital infrastructure in play - and by then it WILL BE in play, constructing a ship is not all that expensive. You have enourmous amount of raw material in asteroid belts, so with automated mining drones material cost will be insignificant. Keep in mind that automatisation makes everything really cheap. Just look at cost of iPhone for example. Cost for production is really small, majority of cost it R&D and marketing. Neither should be an issue for colony ships.
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Maybe consider alternate methods of collecting the investment payback.
Perhaps the colony does not profit anything, but the billions of people reading the news articles and purchasing colony supporting merchandise do.
Alternatively, is the life of a colonist interesting? Could it be made into interesting media like a reality TV show?
Is there substantial political interest in these colonies? Maybe the political engagement puts the investors into a strong lobbing position for a somewhat unrelated objective. Perhaps even a conspiracy.
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## Privacy is the most valuable resource
In the future where this happens, most of Earth's wealth is in the hands of just a few hundred trillionaires. These people are playing a very long game.
Each of these demigods has used their wealth to rewrite the laws in their home country to ensure that all their private property will pass to their children. And, of course, they will be quite long-lived themselves because they have access to the best medicine and are protected from every kind of harm.
### About colony debt...
Having thus done everything needed to entrench themselves as permanent dynastic rulers, their goal is now to ensure the long-term survival of the species they now dominate. After all, it's no good being captain of the ship if the ship is doomed.
So, probably the most important reason they fund colonization has nothing to do with an economic goal: it's to ensure there are humans *somewhere* who will survive if Earth becomes inhospitable. Their funding is not offered as a loan that requires repayment, neatly avoiding this concern of yours:
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Colonists won't be saddled with any kind of debt. They get paid to go. Some of them are paid even more to become impregnated (or implanted) with a trillionaire's child before departing Earth.
### About colony activities...
It is virtually impossible for an Earth-bound government to exercise meaningful control over a distant colony. They can send agents and get email reports on a regular basis, but if the agent meets with an accident or becomes seduced by the demigod's own people and cooperates to deceive Earth, Earth won't know it.
As a result, the distant world is a *de facto* dictatorship ruled by whoever was empowered as administrator by the funding demigod. (That empowerment probably takes the form of admin credentials that are recognized by the many critical computer systems used by space ships and colonization technology.)
#### Offshoring...
One of the first things the demigod will do is try to relocate their Earth-bound office work to the colony.
Land on Earth will be expensive and in short supply, so there will be a strong incentive to move that work to the colony and then put the land to other uses, such as luxurious residences for the demigod's family, or agriculture.
So, over time, the office workers on Earth will be fired and their tasks re-assigned to somebody on the colony, until the office building can be demolished and the land repurposed.
#### The science of domination...
Another key focus for these colonies will be scientific research that must be performed without government knowledge.
Contrary to a lot of popular sci-fi, this isn't likely to be in areas as viscerally offensive as genetic engineering or weapons research. Much more likely, it will be social sciences aimed at exerting control over massive populations.
You see, each of these demigods wants to rule *all* of humanity, not merely a chunk of it. And they also need to maintain control of their remote colonies, and they'll want their heirs on Earth and on the colonies to have control when the time comes.
So, expect lots of psychological and sociological experiments that would never be permitted by an Earth-bound ethics committee, all loosely organized around the goal of manipulating populations: at large via mass media, and on an individual scale via design of homes and workplaces and other things.
It is critically important to note that the fruit of this research is extremely valuable, but not because it will be sold on the open market as a commodity. It's all essentially weapons research, but these weapons are all being developed for the exclusive use of the trillionaire who paid for the colony, and will be deployed against the people of Earth, the residents of colonies owned by this demigod, and (if the opportunity presents itself) the residents of colonies owned by others.
#### Media creation
People on Earth and colonists alike will have an unslakeable thirst for fresh content: TV shows, music, humorous video essays, and pornography. All of this can be created off-world. And since the colony is a dictatorship, there will be all kinds of horrifying ways that the colony can be more selective about choosing the people who will be filmed.
On Earth it would be unthinkable to literally breed attractive people to be actors. A demigod could do that trivially (as could a real-world dictator).
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The fact is that every distant colony has one thing in ample supply, a thing which often acts as the "limiting reagent" in the Earth-bound schemes of powerful bad people: extreme privacy.
The prohibitive difficulty of travel between colonies is precisely what makes the colony so attractive, because that hurdle acts as an insurmountable privacy wall that cannot be pierced by the forces of justice.
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# It's an asset bubble
## Go back to 1998
In 1998, the dot com boom was in full swing. Companies were sure that having a big internet presence would ensure massive profits. Early on, someone reasoned that the companies that spent more of their capital efficiently on internet investment would have far more future money ships dock with them. This turned into the infamous "burn rate"; otherwise sober investors would look at how fast a company had burned through its *entire capital stock* and the faster it was, the better! There arose an entire industry of "internet related" expenses, complete with thousand dollar chairs that any "reputable" internet firm had to have. And bear in mind, $1000 in 1990 was a lot more than it is now.
Needless to say, choosing companies based on how fast they burned capital in order to dominate a future market with no obvious path to monetisation could not last. The dot com bubble burst.
## Corporate fads, asset bubbles and unaligned managment/shareholder incentives
The dot com bubble is far from an isolated example. Tulip fads, Darian, the South Sea bubble, 1980's Japanese real estate, the 2009 GFC, you name it; asset bubbles have been a thing for centuries and will be again.
What they mostly or all feature to begin with is:
1. An unrealised future source of revenue
2. A popular zeitgeist that says that the future rewards will be immense
3. Easy credit with low interest rates and/or patronage
4. Regulators with vested interests or ideology that prevents them taking effective action.
And often:
5) Management that becomes convinced that they can defy economic gravity
6) Management/shareholder disconnect through unaligned incentives.
You get a few years of rising asset prices that defy the skeptics and make them look silly. Then the bubble refuses to pop. The few remaining skeptics suspect that there's some sort of ongoing loss going on but they remain quiet after having made investors miss out on initial gains. Mass FOMO kicks in; the rising prices themselves become the reason to invest. At that point, like a Ponzi/pyramid scheme, the bubble must continue to grow until its credit lines are exhausted.
## Bubbles in space
Earth has to support 14 billion people, and other than the Sahara Nexus, there hasn't been a data centre with over a million square kilometres built for centuries. On other planets, that's not the case! Imagine the competitive advantage colonising Persei VII will give your cyberinformatics division! Not just millions of square kilometres but zero competing signals and every building has been built to allow ultra high powered antennae next to them!
Also, the Socialist Party pushes for space colonisation because they dream of workers utopias and because the head of Persei Corp is gay and makes regular progressive utterances ever since his book "The New Reality of Business" became a bestseller, while the Conservatives slogan "Business First, Business Second, Business Third" says it all. Interest rates have remained at 0.4% for decades and the Central Bank Commission says the days of expensive credit have ended forever. Children's comic books once again feature space colonisation (minus the word 'colony').
Persei Corp's shares have beaten the market for 7 years now, and their debentures are offering a staggering 13.5% with a double Alpha credit rating. Other space companies are doing well and have been doing so for longer. The critics are embarrassed that their readers didn't double their money and have found other targets. 9% for 7 years? Even if that drops to 5%, you still beat the market. Management will all sell their shares in a few years but no one knows that yet....
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## Redundancy (hedging)
No large scale project like this would be without redundancy either within the ship or from sending more smaller ships instead of one large ship. Is it as risky as you say it is? It's already been proven to work from the superpowers space race. (The marketing team could also spin out a lie of how inefficient and wasteful that previous effort was)
## Bringing the cost down
Anything which reduces the size of the ship will massively reduce cost. Instead of sending expensive resource using many humans, why not send some robots, a DNA library and some sort of artificial womb or growing tank? Almost certain some enterprise is going to try something like that to compete with the big boys.
Sending out a tiny probe with a laser powered "solar" sail that could reach the destination in mere decades would be another great checkbox in bringing down the risk/cost. These prospecting companies could then sell the rights to good locations on to the colony ship companies.
## It's a long term investment
Assuming a similar success rate to a modern rocket launch.
A colony ship is the dream investment, a financial investment good for 100s if not 1000s of years. That's longer than countries or many businesses. In profile it's somewhere in-between a country's bond (low rate of return but stable over many decades) and a bio-tech company's stock (high up front cost, and a binary success or failure).
Compare that with financial crisis, revolutions, inflation, corporate bankruptcy and war that investments at home are in risk of, once in flight a ship is per year is a lower risk of failure than many businesses.
Even if the ship will eventually end in an unexpected failure even if the mission success rate was a similar rate to that of a 20th century rocket launch, the failure chance per year would be low over a 20-30 year period.
Ideal for trust funds of billionaire investors want to found their own dynasty, great even if their descendants are a lot less savvy investing.
## Bonds and futures
The risks decrease as the mission progresses, so the value will tend to rise over time as milestones are overcome, but fall suddenly after bad news (a profile much like biotech companies on the stock market).
Use of long term bonds and futures, anyone with capital can cash in or out at any-point from the start of the mission. No investor has to see to the completion of the mission only that it reaches a key milestone. The home-world doesn't get a scheduled transmission, the captain goes on a mad rant or some diagnostics report looks bad, the value of those speculative derivatives plunge in value.
Crew who prove themselves to rise to unexpected challenges or just as the ship gets closer to the destination the derivatives rise in value.
This gives rise to the potential of fraud where an investor pressures one of the crew to make the ships prospects look bad, buy cheap derivatives and then profit when the market learns the ship is actually okay.
## High risk, high payoff
The value of an established colony will eventually be enormous, what is the GDP of a planet? Also it will grow at an exponential rate (or even higher with a good design).
## Black balling with restricted communications
The payback tax could be pretty modest (spread out over 100s of years) and to stop colonies from leaving tie it in with the communication. Oh so you don't want to pay tax? Say goodbye to your internet connection to the other worlds. It's a lot worse than saying goodbye to space netflix, you no longer get the licence and designs for technologies and designs for your factories. The colony's scientists isolated will no longer be able to keep with with the rest of the collation of worlds.
## Challenge
I'm not sure how well money is able to flow from the colony to the homeworld, without some weird inflationary affects. After-all The colony might be booming but the homeworld with a lack of raw materials (and limited trade) would struggle to get resources regardless of how much electronic money they have. Either the resources of a solar system as so vast it doesn't make a difference, or they would have to create a new class of money good only for information or digital art and not physical assets.
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Whether or not that’s what you want, why not accept it’s clearly true that here on Earth in the 21st Century, entrepreneurs have stepped up wanting to fund colonization efforts in hopes of future profits? What are your doubts about that?
In terms of the Question, why not first explain preferably how a world exists with faster-than-light communication, but not FTL travel and failing that, how that might matter here?
Ignoring slips like ‘it's massively expensive to put together a colonization effort given the expense…’
How do you reconcile that with a few having been done as part of a space race, but once the major powers had each colonized a world to prove they could, no one seemed interested in investing further time or expense?
Are you saying the ‘few having been done’ were solely for political or propaganda purposes, to be achieved at all costs, or something else?
When it's hard for you to believe the expected return on investment for a colonization effort can ever justify the cost, what are you comparing that to? When you want a non-trivial amount of the cost to be covered by investors who expect to profit, what results d’you think they’re expecting, that you doubt?
When you’re struggling to see colonization as a reasonable investment, why not compare the cost of NASA’s moon landings to the amount women in the US alone spent on lipstick during any given year in the lunar programme? Why not compare the cost of the moon landings with the domestic benefits of non-stick saucepans developed directly therefrom, let alone other uses of Teflon and its ilk?
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**This question already has an answer here**:
[Planet of the Aves: Tool use](/questions/55370/planet-of-the-aves-tool-use)
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Closed 2 years ago.
The community reviewed whether to reopen this question 1 year ago and left it closed:
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I previously made a [post](/questions/194842/air-vehicles-for-birds) about vehicles for birds. Now I want to know what their equivalent to swords, spears and other weapons would look like? I based the birds off of corvids, like ravens and crows. they are about 2 Ft tall, can fly, weigh about 5 to 6 lbs., and mainly use their beak for manipulation. They live in a similar environment to the Australian Outback.
[Answer]
**You can give birds medieval levels of technology, but they will not fight excatly like medieval armies**
The sky would become the preferred arena for birds to fight wars in because "high-ground" is so important to the way birds fight when trying to kill something. Attacking from above gives a bird a better attack speed which translates to a more forceful attack. It also puts an enemy more in line with its beak and talons while preventing the defender from bringing it's own beak and talons to bare. (Yes, birds squabble on the ground all the time as pointed out in comments, but these are not fights to the death.) Whenever we see a bird in nature attack to kill another bird, it is almost always from above.
So, most medieval avion battles will probably begin with both sides trying to gain elevation on the other until one side attacks either because it has achieved a distinct elevation advantage or because the other army looks like it will gain the advantage if they wait.
But many elements of a medieval army don't work in the air:
* Battle formations: Medieval battle formations involved packing in shoulder to shoulder to create the highest possible concentration of weapons per enemy as possible, but in the air you need space between yourself and your allies to prevent your wings from hitting each other. Birds also can't "hold ground" in the air, and if they attempt to hold actual ground, then they at risk of being pelted from above by stones or other missiles without being able to attack back.
* Armor: Even the strongest birds of prey can not carry more than 50% of their weight, and even then, it is only for short periods of time. With their whole kit having to weigh less than 2.75lb, and their wings having so much surface area, they could not armor themselves in light enough of full body armor to still fly; so, they will have to be selective in how they armor themselves.
* Archery: You would think this would be the obvious weapon of choice for your birds, but again, the maximum lift strength of a bird leg is no more than half its weight. This would limit birds to bows with a draw weight of less than 3lb and draw length of just a couple of inches. Even a short ranged small game bow should have at least a 20lb, 28" draw; so, giving a bow to a bird would be useless.
* Shields: Shields are not a good option for birds because they cannot hold them in-front of themselves, they can not interlock them into shield walls, and they are REALLY bad when it comes to aerodynamics.
**So how would they fight?**
Battle formations have very different priorities in aerial combat because you now have more flanks you need to protect, running into the guys around you are no longer an option, and, you need room to "follow through" on any attack run so that you are not just running into the guy you just attacked, and you will want to conserve energy by flying V-formations wherever possible. WWII fighter squadrons solved for this problem with the 4-square formation. Although your birds are not packing machine guns, all of the same principles that made these successful in WWII will still apply. Although the below 4-square looks like a lose formation, multiple 4-squares are meant to overlap in such a way that they are pretty dense while still having the flexibility to break formation just enough to maneuver as needed.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pQxcq.png)
For armor, you can not protect the whole body, but birds present a relatively small frontal cross section. So by limiting armor to just a helmet, pauldrons, and possibly a gorget, they can protect all of their vital spots during a charge without too much weight.
As for weapons: By moving fast and attacking on the pass-by, your birds would fight in a very similar fashion to light cavalry; so, weapons that work well from horseback would likely be the predominate weapons for birds.
One option is lances which are long spears that can be precisely aimed to impale enemy birds at speed and then released as you fly past. They will probably use their feet for this to prevent them from breaking their necks on impact.
Another popular option may be javelins. While a bow is not useful, the speed of your birds passing by each other will still be significant. So, instead of moving into a melee, you could throw a javelin at relatively close range, then veer away from the enemy. With both birds moving at each other with a cumulative relative speed of about 27m/s, this means your javilins will hit just as fast as a human can throw one just by letting it go. Any additional speed your birds can throw them with will help with control and added force, but will not be necessary to impale an enemy.
Lastly, having some kind of sabre as a side arm may be popular. Unlike spears or thrusting swords, sabres were popular among light cavalry for their ability to cut down a foe at speed without getting your weapon stuck in them and lost. Sabers will also be particularly useful when you get behind or above another bird preventing you from attacking at a high relative speed.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8vyBR.png)
**Could they actually carry and wield this much?**
While Ravens and Crows are known to do a lot of their more precise manipulations with their beaks, it is more common for them to carry sticks or food or other heavy stuff in flight with their talons. That said, at 5-6 lbs (2268-2722 grams), the OP's birds are actually bigger than any species of crow or raven; so, to find the lifting strength of these birds, we need to look at other birds in this weight class to make sure that the square-cube law does not get the better of us. The OP's birds are actually the size of a mid-sized species of Eagle (African Fish Eagle, Bonelli's Eagle, etc.), and most Eagles can lift between 30-50% of their body weight with their talons while in flight. This puts the encumbered lift weight of your bird's talons at about 1kg.
Weight of a lance: A typical warlance extended about 2-3 meters beyond a rider's hand-grip, which scaled down to your 2ft (.6m) tall birds would be about 1 meter. A 1 meter long, .75cm diameter hardwood pole (such as hickory or ash) weighs about 44grams and an iron lance head of appropriate size would weigh about 10 grams for a total weight in front of the talon of 54grams. Then, to make the lance stable, you add a sauroter to the back of the lance so that the few inches behind the talon also weighs 54 grams for a total lance weight of 108 grams. At ~1/10th of the bird's encumberment weight, this would be very comparable to a human carrying a human scale lance or similar polearm which typically weighed at least 5kg.
Weight of the armor: The total area of the armor would likely be no more than 200cm^2 since you are not covering the whole body. It needs to be able to deflect the force of a 900J lance strike, but has a lot of good slopes; so, I estimate its average thickness needs to be about 1mm of steel backed with an arming jacket based on what I've seen of comparable tests done with modern recreations of historical armor. This gives you about 160g of steel and 20g of arming jacket for a total of about 180g of armor. At about 1/5th the encumberment weight, this is actually much lighter relatively speaking than historical infantry were expected to march in, but the lower weight is still recommended to allow for appropriate aerial agility and endurance. There may be some cases where the addition of a full cuirass is preferred, but this would probably not be common in my opinion.
Weight of a Javelin: A 50 gram throwing dart can pierce exposed flesh pretty effectively if properly sharpened; so, I imagine this would be the lower end of what they would carry. I would imagine your birds will likely open up the attack as the Greeks did with skirmishers who might carry 2-5 such javelins each, then fall back allowing the armored lancers to take advantage of the chaos this causes in the enemy formation. Skirmishers were typically unarmored or very lightly armored so, if they just have the darts to worry about that is probably about 250g of darts (aka: Javelins). So a 5 dart bird would have about the same amount of encumberment as a front armored lancer.
As for swords: I think we've established by now, weight is not really an issue here, but there is the concern about hand-grips. Birds appear to have similar rotational ranges of motion to humans at the "wrist" and "elbow", but less range of motion at the "shoulder" *<-quotes because on birds these are leg parts, not arm parts*. This may encourage a different set of techniques than humans use like maybe preferring a reverse grip, but they still have plenty of dexterity to work with since birds use their feet like hands so much anyway. You can also make some assumptions that if these birds are advanced enough of tool users to become medieval, they probably have much more dexterous feet than other birds just as humans have much more dexterous hands than other mammals.
**Why not just Augment what they already have?**
For all the same reason humans don't typically just augment our own natural weapons. While there are some historical examples of weapons designed to accentuate the way a human would fight unarmed, (See [Bagh nakh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagh_nakh) or [Katar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katar_(dagger))), these weapons were not very historically successful compared to weapons designed to improve on how we naturally fight. Lances, sabres, and thrown weapons all help you create distance, optimize wounding, and open up new vectors of attack that natural weapons do not. This remains true whether you are humanoid or avion. So if a murder armed with steel claws and beaks were to engage another murder armed with spears and swords, those armed with the spears and swords would be at a distinct advantage.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9iXMF.png)
**What about fortifications?**
European medieval castles are poorly designed to protect against an aerial threat. A Japanese castle would work better because it's top is closed off, but it's still is not great because of all those windows become possible access points for enemies, and there is no good way to stop attackers from just hacking in through your roof.
An ideal castle design will take everything that makes birds good at attacking down, and be built around forcing the enemy below your defenders; so, I suspect that cliffside fortifications might by the preferred design. By tunneling into a cliff face, and digging fortifications upwards from there, you can create a series of murder holes and defensible portcullis like grates above the attackers as they work their way in that they will not be able to effectively attack up at.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gGnP5.png)
[Answer]
**Augment crow biological weaponry.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UfwRs.jpg)
It makes sense to humans to hold something and hit with it. That would not make sense to a crow. Crows fly in then hit with claws. When close on or foot, they hold and strike with the beak. A crow would like to be able to hit hard without fear of hurting itself, as is possible for a human hitting with a stone in hand.
Crow weapons will fortify and strengthen the weapons they already have. A helmet protects the head and neck but also provides a sharpened metal beak protruding past and protecting the crows own beak. Talons protrude past the crow's own talons, allowing hard strikes without risking damage to the toes.
The crow weaponry as depicted (thanks Mushi!) would not impair the use of the features it protects. The crow can talk and eat. It can perch and walk.
[Answer]
Nets. A group of sentient birds could painstakingly weave a net, cleverly roll it up with an easy way to release it, and carry it as a large group in a coordinated attack. Dropped onto an enemy flock, it could interfere with their flight and cause great harm.
Fire. Even a tiny vessel of flaming liquid, well dispersed, or spread along the lines of a net to be lit and dropped, should ruin an enemy bird's whole day... if you can hit it. Or try corrosives - acid, lye.
Shield bash: A light net, woven with the intent of being held rather than dropped, probably with a solid (spiked?) boss in the middle, by which a numerically superior force of birds can rush at an enemy and strike with solid force.
[Answer]
If I were in charge of a bird army tasked with fighting other birds then I might think of weapons like the broken glass coated kite strings used in kite fighting. A bird attacking from above might attack with it's talons and then deploy a sharp tangling weapon( such as a glass coated string or string of fishing hooks).
Another thought that pops into mind is that nets would both be easily constructed by advanced birds and also be a great offensive weapon in bird to bird combat.
[Answer]
Some years ago I was on a vacation and, while taking a break on the side of the road carved on a hill, I saw a crow struggling to carry the corpse of a weasel across the road. Since it wasn't able to fly carrying it, it was jumping up and jump after jump taking it across the road, from where it was planning of gliding further down.
Long story short: birds are generally not good at carrying additional weights. Even eagles hunt up and nest down, so that they can glide to their nest while carrying their preys.
This means that the load of your avian people will be necessarily light. They might drop something akin to a morning star to increase the damage, or small stones lacking anything better. Another option might be dropping small pots of boiling oil, caustic or incendiary substances.
[Answer]
# Small animals
And other small animals. If they are intelligent then they know which animals are vectors for diseases that attack their enemies. Rats, for example, carry fleas which can spread the plague.
So all they need to do is drop a few animals in key locations, and then wait. This works on any technology level. Is everyone medieval? Drop rats as mentioned above. 2020's? Dead bats and baby pangolins may carry a flu like disease that is sure to cause a lot of damage.
[Answer]
**Cavalry** for example domesticated eagles, with their talons, or you could invent another dive bomber bird that lacks strong innate weapons and have your crow use a lance. The crow riding the large bird can wear armour, either leather or bone (lightweight) or possibly even metal (heavy cavalry).
**Archery** whether mounted (more arrows, food for longer range) or solo.
**Melee** you could consider light infantry or Vikings (gambesons, spears or axes, small shields)
**Knights** in contrast to several answers above, typical human can also only lift half their weight ([e.g. this regulation](https://auspicesafety.com/2020/01/28/for-all-federal-workplaces-how-much-can-i-lift-is-50-lbs-too-much-is-100-lbs-too-much/)) that doesn't stop humanity from training small groups who can lift ([e.g. here](http://militaryanalysis.blogspot.com/2019/01/deadweight.html)) and elite individuals perhaps double own body weight ([records](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_weightlifting)). Likewise, peasant foot soldier would neither be expected to nor could afford armour, but knights would.
**Fortifications** in contrast to Nosajimiki's answer, I think it makes perfect sense for crows to build fortified nests (forts) and roosts (castles) to establish long supply lines which are a necessity in large-scale organised warfare. Smaller could be built on top of trees, but larger would have to be built on solid ground to protect from beaver-sappers, and could be equipped with cross-bows, ballistas as well as oil and fire for immediate defence. Additionally it makes sense to control land and its resources, such as water, food production, raw materials and manufacturing base (towns).
**Supply train** could be aerial or overland, in either case protected by medieval air-superiority fighters (cavalry).
[Answer]
## We might not recognise their weapons as being so...
Let's think about it:
1. Birds **need** to fly, staying on the ground will kill them, as there they are easy prey to a lot of things.
2. Crows are not big\*, let's say they can carry a maximum of 10% of body weight.
3. Carrying extra stuff will reduce speed and agility.
4. In WW1 & WW2 fighter aircraft there are 3 items of importance: Speed, Agility and offensive power.
5. The more distance you can keep to your enemy, the better.
6. Speed is gold.
7. Agility is silver.
8. Long weapons are very unwieldy in a 3D environment.
9. Slow and in formation are easy to be picked off.
10. Shards of glass in the air. Area of denial weapon?
11. With hundreds of even thousands of birds in the air, even bird droppings might be an effective weapon to slow the enemy down / restrict movements.
**Combining the above into fighting styles:**
1. Speed and Offensive power (hit and run, skirmishers)
2. Speed and Agile (Pack fight / Dogfight)
3. Agile and Offensive power (Wrestler)
**Possible Weapons for the Styles:**
1. Skirmishers:
1. A flock armed with javelins / darts for harassment.
2. (Very) Sharp eyed shooters with something like a crossbow, shoot and drop to return to safety.
3. Ropes with glue, let it stick to enemy wings, there goes mobility and maybe even control.
2. Dog-fighters:
1. Sparingly armoured, if at all, with maybe a sabre. (think light cavalry)
2. Javelins or darts again.
3. Wrestlers:
1. Grab and tear birds. Armoured, but not sure how to do so without being sitting ducks to the skirmishers.
**How does this look?**
Like a giant furball where it will be hard to tell for a human what is going on. There will be a lot of manoeuvring for position. Due to the weight limitations and the importance of agility and speed, being so much different then ours, they might use weapons we do not recognise.
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\*Humans can carry about 20% of their bodyweight without problems (80kg human can carry 20kg for hours).
] |
[Question]
[
I had a cool but not so original idea: aliens with many many redundant organs, and a nervous system spread across their bodies. This creates some issues. How do I kill one?
What the Alien is like:
The alien looks like a blob with lots of tentacles covering it. Each tentacle has a eye, mouth, fingers, and a digestive system. There is no heart, or lungs, or other vital organs. The aliens' organs are spread out through their bodies. Their bodies are about the size of a smart car and the tentacles are about 10 feet long. To move the aliens throw out their tentacles and drag themselves forward. By doing this they move about as fast as a jogging human. They are not particularly resilient, but they are wearing sleeves and a “vest” which will stop small caliber rounds and slower shrapnel. Naturally occurring latex will ground them if most of their tentacles are touching the ground. They came to Earth for all of the tasty snacks, which they prefer well done, so they brought lasers to cook humans with. These lasers will torch you if you are under fire for more than 5 seconds.
So I can’t kill it by shooting it through the body. Using only 21st century weapons how should my soldier kill them?
[Answer]
**Let go of the Geneva convention**
*Gasses*
Gasses are incredibly dangerous. They can be invisible and odourless (for humans at least) but still have incredible effects. A nerve gas can destroy or temporarily lock down nerve fibres, killing or disabling the target. You can do corrosive things, or simply poison the enemy. As the aliens don't have lungs and I assume still need oxygen to live they probably take it up with their skins. This is a huge vulnerability, as the gas can be easily take up into the body and spread. In addition, you can potentially just suffocate the aliens.
They can potentially unfocus laser beams, so there's that as well.
*Poisons*
Similar to gasses but focussing a bit more on the personally dispensed ones. A poison dart can be incredibly effective. Again, nerve agents can kill or disable the nerves. But poisons can do so much more. Besides directly killing cells, they can shut down organs or manipulate them to make toxins/degrade materials into (more) toxic materials. poisons can be shot, hid in food (cyanide capsule embedded in each soldier?) dispersed in gasses, liquids or just on the ground and be able to kill.
*Biological warfare*
Viruses and bacteria are present everywhere. They can go good stuff, or very, very bad. Multiplying in a body, taking resources, destroying cells, excreting toxins, making the immune system kill the host and more. There's also parasites that can eat organisms from the inside. Some can rapidly multiply and mutate itself, so whatever you throw at it is ineffective in the long run. In the end, you can't protect yourself against everything. A 21st century soldier might not even be present on the battlefield. You just fly over with a plane, dispersing a cloud the equivalent of a large cough and watch the aliens shut down from a distance.
*Fire*
It has been said in other answers, but fire is incredibly powerful. Movies and games make it out to be a short ranged weapon. Although it definitely is short ranged, human portable could still reach 40 meters (45 yards) and tank mounted ones 90m (100 yards). Napalm was done for large area's by planes as well. Although the Geneva convention prevented further development, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to make new more effective fire based weaponry. The reason we can fire that far is because we're throwing fuel, which is then ignited. The fuel often has damaging properties as well, like boiling while ignited. So being sprayed upon will keep damaging long after. As suggested, the sheer damage, the stress and/or the bacteria afterwards can all be enough to kill the organism after.
*Brute force*
We have machine guns that can spit out so many rounds a minute with such force they can splinter trees and set them on fire. We have machine guns mounted on planes that can output more force than the plane's engines can, potentially propelling it backwards. We have tanks with solid shells that can rip anything apart. Explosives that don't even need to hit you directly and can kill you due to the *shock-wave*. And finally we can just drop a concrete slab with a helicopter on top of an alien for style.
**Conclusion**
There are many, many ways to attack organisms with distributed organ systems. We haven't even talked about bleeding them dry, simply putting spikes in the ground or the tactic of scorched Earth. Pick a few and call it a day. Humans have a great scary arsenal to their disposal for both long range as well as short range battles. The humans will be fine.
[Answer]
Fire.
Fire is a great killer because (for any creature with a reasonable amount of body fat) it’s self sustaining. Once a fire reaches a certain temperature it starts using the flesh of the creature it’s burning as fuel, leading to massive trauma and rapidly spiking internal temperatures. Even if a creature survives it burns create a huge surface for bacteria to enter the body through and can lead to scarring/debilitating injuries/just death through shock.
Pour on gasoline, flick a match, watch all those lovely distributed organs burn.
[Answer]
**Acid or fire.**
throw acid on it or burn it, if it has not specialized organs it is breathing through its skin which makes the skin very weak and vulnerable, burn it with acid or fire and it will suffocate.
**poison**
this thing will be very vulnerable to poison with no specialized organs it can't filter its body fluid effectively so poison will be more effective.
**Push it around.**
without lungs this thing will be slower than molasses you can just use a construction equipment to pick it up and dump it in a fire pit or some other disposal area.
**Salt**
again with no breathing organs it is breathing through its skin, which means the skin needs to be moist, throw salt on it and it will either suffocate or dehydrate. there is a reason multicellular life evolved organs fairly quickly.
[Answer]
**How Did Hercules Kill the Hydra?**
The ancient Greeks had to deal with such a monster.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HSzd9.png)
>
> Defeating the Hydra was the second labor of Hercules, and it was a job
> that would require both strength and wits to accomplish.
> <https://mythologysource.com/how-did-hercules-kill-the-hydra/>
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As Hercules cut off each of the monster’s heads, Iolaus followed behind with the torch. As soon as one of the heads was removed, he used the torch to cauterize the wound.
[Answer]
If we assume that when the said alien loses its tentacle it is similar to us humans losing and arm then it is easy to kill them but I do not think that is what you meant. Assuming after cuting off a tentacle alien, perhaps the tentacle itself too, would still continue to live, the solutions left that I can see are:
**Burn them**
Using a flamethrower your soldiers can cook them alive.
**Use explosives**
Explosives will surely kill some of the alien's tentacles if not all. It will at least hurt it real bad so that your soldiers can cook it alive as mentioned above.
**Use acids**
Dissolve the aliens with powerful acids.
To sum up, just destroy its body chemically. It is the easiest way.
[Answer]
# Killing them softly with his song
Use [sonic weapons](https://youtu.be/aTe0MjAZvMU?t=44). You may think these are early 21st century tech but this is actually early 20th century tech, so it should do.
The scene in the link is from Mars Attacks, a rare non-goth movie from Tim Burton.
# The Oldsmobile
Take a page from the best trash movie trilogy ever (The Evil Dead). Protagonist Ash Williams modifies Sam Reimi's car (true story!) into a killing machine by jury-rigging a medieval helicopter's rotor and blades onto it, at an angle. He then mows down a horde of undead with it. Bonus if you also fortify your ride with armor, and make it run on steam for environmental friendliness.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CKWKg.jpg)
# Nuke from orbit
I'd bet 10 canadian dollars that those aliens' body armor won't withstand a nuke at point blank.
>
> The Soviet RDS-220 hydrogen bomb, known by Western nations as [Tsar Bomba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba), was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created (...), it also remains the most powerful explosive ever detonated.
>
>
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The raw boldness of this move will scare them from ever attacking the Earth again.
# Sheer cold
If the aliens come during the winter, move all the population of the world onto Siberia. No one can invade Russia during the winter.
[Answer]
A microwave cannon.
Easily buildable using off-the-shelf technology, has relatively precise aiming and area of effect (unlike flamethrowers, explosives, and acid), limited collateral damage, and the power requirements are manageable. The military has already built low power vehicle mounted versions for crowd control so the technology is known to them and various experimenters have built small crude ones using components from microwave ovens.
[Answer]
### Rocket propelled grenade launcher
Or similar weapons - eg: shoulder launched anti-tank weapons. Grenade if you're desperate.
A decent Kaboom solves many problems. The tentacles wont be able to work together if the nervous system is disconnected and scattered over a city block.
[Answer]
Explosives have been raised already, I will raise a specific kind:
# [Thermobaric weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon)
Being essentially a giant blob with tentacles, with little rigid structure, those aliens are presumably very susceptible to high pressure. Assuming the fuel is toxic to the aliens, you get even more fun, since sometimes it's not burnt completely.
>
> The [blast] kill mechanism against living targets is unique—and unpleasant. ... What kills is the pressure wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction [vacuum], which ruptures the lungs. ... If the fuel deflagrates but does not detonate, victims will be severely burned and will probably also inhale the burning fuel. Since the most common FAE fuels, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated FAE should prove as lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as with most chemical agents.
>
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So, you then get:
1. squash
2. burn
3. (sometimes) poison
all in one weapon.
[Answer]
Use Alien Juice Presses:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nCAGX.png)
They should do the trick nicely.
[Answer]
Flame thrower is a very deterring weapon, but actually not very effective. It could work, but it would not be very effective. It makes far more enemy to flee, than actually kills.
I think with such a fast metabolism, they are lesser prone to poison: if they regenerate quickly, they can also process the poison quickly.
However, quick cell multiplication also means that their cells reproduce also viruses very quickly. It is because virus doesn't reproduce on its own, it reproduces by manipulating the infected cells to produce it.
If a fatal virus infection would take weeks to kill a human, it would be a visible change in the alien and would kill it in minutes, maybe in hours.
Note, such a fast metabolism requires many energy, i.e. food. The aliens would need to eat a lot, quickly, particularly if they have wounds.
If the virus kills the alien quickly, it also means that they can not infect enough other aliens.
In the case of human biological warfare, it is exactly the goal, i.e. to kill faster, or to use not very well transferable bacteria. It is to prevent the back-firing of the weapon. This problem would not exist in the case of the alien, because the virus affecting them would not affect the humans.
Thus, the virus particles ("cells") must be used as a chemical warfare, in aerosol form.
Alternatively, we could also use suicide attackers, infecting themselves with the virus. Alien kills them, eats them, and they get the virus with them. This could also "motivate" them to think a little bit before dinner.
Developing a virus against an entirely unknown alien life-form would take a lot of time. Because they can eat us, they need to have a similar protein structure than the life of the Earth. This makes likely that they can be affected by our viruses, or by similar ones.
A living alien, or more living aliens need to be captured, and then infected by all the - mostly, not lethal - viruses we have in all our [class 4 labs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_level_4). Then find the ones most capable to exist in them.
Then, modify these - ideally by crossing them with a similar, but deadly virus.
[Answer]
Over all, attacking the entire surface/body of the alien is the right strategy.
Gasses and Poisons
Not the best.
Depending on the (unknown?) physiology of the aliens, nerve gas, bio toxins, bug spray, etc. may not work. Don't risk it. We know it kills us, so the battlefield would be hazardous. Caustic gasses like Chlorine or mustard gas have a better chance. Without knowledge gasses/poisons/head-and-shoulders are a last resort. In a pinch (trapped in an office building) I might try other chemicals like oven cleaner, pool cleaner, de-scaler (acid) that are lying around.
I like "They can potentially unfocus laser beams, so there's that" 'cause they will have lasers, right?
Biological warfare
Nope.
The germs on our planet might eventually rot their dead bodies, but probably not. Their bodies would likely be inhospitable to Earth microorganisms. Viruses are right out since they depend on the details of our cellular machinery. Plus you would would already be hatching alien babies out of your ears before you found out whether this method worked. (of course, if you were compatible to its offspring, Earth germs might work)
Fire
Until we know more about the aliens, fire is the best and most available solution. Caveat: If they appear to be made of fire, are on file all of the time, breathe fire, etc. try water instead.
Brute force
Sonic weapons and such may sound cool, but it's hard to beat a hail of bullets, high explosives or a kill-dozer. Bullets would fare the worst of these.
] |
[Question]
[
This is a submission for the [Anatomically Correct Series](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2797/anatomically-correct-series/2798#2798)
Sentient Skeletons are a staple in works of fantasy and horror.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kqZr0.png)
Sentient Skeletons are commonly depicted as:
* resembling a human skeleton
* seemly lacking any visible muscles or organs
* are as strong as the average human
* having at least rudimentary tool use
* are mostly nocturnal
Given these characteristics, what species could the Sentient Skeletons have evolved from, and what evolutionary pressures would lead to such a creature?
[Answer]
**Cephalopod strangeness:**
I don't think this is very probable, but strange things happen. The most likely scenario I can think of is that an octopus has evolved to moving on land, and they are using actual skeletons to frighten the apex predator (humans) away.
[Heikegani crabs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heikegani) are believed to have a survival advantage because their shells bear a resemblance to a human face. Legend says they are the souls of dead samurai. A similar strategy could be used by an octopus seeking to move from sea to land. Imagine an octopus that has come to have the appearance of a human skull. This could even be a shell, as relatives of the octopus had shells (and octopi today have a vestigial shell). Knobby appendages on tentacles might be seen to resemble parts of arms, legs, or ribs.
Some octopi are known to use shells as protection from predators, shells they borrow or find in the environment (this can include human containers like cups). They can open containers to extract contained food items, so octopi are capable of tool use. So why not use a human skeleton as a tool?
An octopus that was already using it's skull-like appearance to frighten humans away and it's tentacles moving in a skeletal manner gets a hold of an actual skeleton (or assembled bits of wood and bone to resemble one). For the sake of practicality, let's sat this octopus can extrude some substance (modified ink, solidifying mucus, whatever) allowing it to make the joints of the skeleton hold together. Octopi CAN [move on land](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebeNeQFUMa0), but very awkwardly. What do octopi lack (other than lungs)? A skeleton.
Such octopi would need a reason to want to go on land. Perhaps they steal food from frightened humans. their already skeletal-looking tentacles and movements in water have prepared them for using what amounts to a human-shaped set of stilts. With intelligence and practice, they might even get skilled at it. I doubt they would be very strong on land, but they might reasonably be able to wave a weapon around and walk upright. Humans seeing such a sight might develop a superstitious awe of the walking dead and placate the thing with offerings of food brought to the shore to keep the dead from leaving the sea, thus reinforcing this odd behavior.
Night would be the obvious time for such things to come out. These cephalopods would have limited time out of water, but they would likely not enjoy the burning sun. The dark would cover inconsistencies in their appearance and behavior.
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I'm going to go ahead and say its not possible without being a 100% magical construct. Sufficiently advanced technology probably will be able to make skeleton size and shaped robots that meet your criteria, but I don't think biology can.
Take a look at the various groups that use exoskeletons: insects, arachnids, and crustaceans. They are mostly quite small and still require a large number of legs to support their weight. Some aquatic crabs can get decently large thanks to the help they get supporting themselves by being underwater, but on land, no way.
Our skeletons act as support structure for muscles and tissue to attach to. Muscles can only contract, so all of our mobility comes from clever uses of leverage as muscles pull on the outside of our bones.
Your skeletal entities would require some sort of muscle tissue that is MUCH more dense than our own just to fit the size constraints. It also needs to be capable of operating INSIDE a skeleton that was design to be pulled on from the outside.
If they are "living" they need to eat and breath. So they somehow need to fit those systems along with circulation inside the confines of a sub-optimally designed shell.
The shell needs to be MUCH stronger than human bone, seeing as how it not only has to support the creatures, but contain all of the muscles and organs, and also not crack like an egg at the first glancing blow.
With some magical assistance, a large terrestrial crab could be gifted with a super-shell and super-muscles and transfigured to look vaguely like a human skeleton. At that point why not just re-animate a human skeleton with magical forces?
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Since this is for Anatomically Correct, I'm going to assume a technological basis rather than magical. [Clarke's Third Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws) remains true, and so does [its inverse](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic), so implementing the concept is ["left as an exercise for the reader"](http://www.mathmatique.com/articles/left-exercise-reader); pick whichever version works for you.
### Mechanical bodies
Starting from the extremities, a skeleton clearly has no musculature - and yet the bones move. The only logical conclusion would be a system of motors embedded in the joints. A skeleton body must therefore be entirely mechanical and driven electrically. Evolution doesn't even come into it; skeletons are *designed and built*.
This fits fairly well with skeletons' well-documented tendency to come apart when hit, and then connect themselves back together. Instead of damaging the motors, quick-release bindings (similar to those used for ski bindings) allow the joints to disconnect. And naturally it's easy to clip the joints back together, if you know how the quick-release binding works.
### Self-contained power supplies in each bone
If this is driven by motors, we need power for the motors. The skeleton could have one big battery, but that would be an obvious target for enemies and a single point of failure for the body, as well as having the problem of how to get that power around. Conveniently though, bones have volume; and for bones which need to be stronger and would need more powerful motors for movement, the bones are bigger. So each bone has its own power supply, driving the motor(s) attached to that bone, and we don't need any cables.
Of course this means the "bones" cannot actually be made of bone. Most likely they'll be some kind of strong metal tube surrounding the battery. A light grey powder-coated finish (especially if not cleaned regularly) could very well look like bone to a casual observer. They don't have to have the exact same number of bones as a human - perhaps the spinal column might be a single continuous strut, for example. No-one's going to look too closely when a dozen of these things are trying to rip your head off, after all.
If we want to hypothesise a reason why they might stay in the dark, perhaps the coating has a good lifespan in the dark (keeping the skeletons intact for centuries or millenia) but reacts badly to light. We have plenty of examples of synthetic plastics which last a very long time in the dark but break down under UV.
### Wireless control network
So how do we make each motor move? Simple: the skeleton runs a wireless network connecting all its parts together on the [IoT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_things) principle. This means we don't need wires between the bones, which clearly is a good thing.
This also explains how a disconnected limb can "fight" on its own, or "crawl" back to the main body. So long as it is within range of the wireless network, it remains under control of the skeleton, and being self-powered it can function relatively independently if it has to.
### Cameras for vision
The "eyes" of course are cameras which can see in IR and visible light. They include LEDs to provide illumination in complete darkness, the same as a security camera or many webcams. This explains why they often are shown with glowing eyes as the optical system switches between IR and visible illumination depending on what gives best resolution.
### "Brain" control system with simple AI
We have to figure out how this is being controlled. The control system naturally lives in the skull, because it's the only part of the body with significant internal volume. It also gives us the trope of needing a headshot to kill them.
The control system needs to be some kind of electronics. With electronics, the skeleton can power down for long periods until something wakes it up. (I considered the "disembodied head" concept, but there's too much handwavey pseudo-science in that.)
If we want our skeletons to be human-level intelligence, perhaps we have a consciousness upload system, which of course requires some very advanced technology. Most fantasy shows skeletons as relatively unintelligent though, able to respond to basic stimuli but not capable of complex thought and reasoning. So it seems much more likely that a [Boston Dynamics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Dynamics) type of AI control would be running this. Since BigDog and its like are basically there already, this would be perfectly possible with current technology.
### Wave attacks from "disposable" skeletons
With the skeleton then being a fully mass-manufactured robot, this would also explain why "necromancers" keep skeletons in storage by the thousand and simply swamp attackers with wave attacks. They cost resources to make, sure, but they can be stored powered-down indefinitely so you can build up your stock over time, and you don't need to worry about what happens to them in combat. And your "casualties" can be repaired relatively easily, because every component part of the skeleton can simply be replaced and the skeleton sent back out into battle again.
### But why would a "necromancer" go to all this trouble?
For anyone paranoid enough, the biggest risk is always other people. If you have money and/or power, paranoia has to be a way of life to some extent, because kidnapping is a risk - and the more money and/or power you have, the bigger the risk. And with political power too, assassination is also a risk. Even bodyguards don't help, because as [Indira Gandhi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi) found out, your own bodyguards may actually be the risk. No, the only way to be truly safe is to have your bodyguards being utterly incorruptible - and the only way to achieve that is for them to not be human in the first place.
This also fits with skeletons generally being animated and commanded by a solitary "necromancer" who avoids contact with other people. You need to be a sufficiently talented engineer to design and build this, sufficiently rich to afford parts, and sufficiently socially isolated that no-one notices your experiments until you already have your skeleton army built. Not necessarily a mad scientist - more just a rich but reclusive young geek who's sold their dotcom for a few tens of millions and headed off to the hills, away from interactions with people who scare them.
So, you build your skeletons. As a walking bag of bones, they're about as scary as it gets. That gets them an edge in a fight - and of course unless you're lucky (or skilled) enough to take out the head, they just get up and carry on when you chop bits off them. That's enough to deter pretty much anyone.
A long-term "sleep mode" also make them the perfect guard. They could even be left on guard in plain sight, with people thinking they're just a macabre decoration - until they attack. And if they're not needed for a longer period, a disassembled box of "bones" would take up remarkably little space.
But suppose the "necromancer" didn't want to be quite so overt about the nature of his bodyguards. The [Terminator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator) approach of putting skin over them is going to be fairly convincing, so long as no-one looks too closely. Kyle Reese even says that early models had rubber skin. If all the castle guards are on the other side of a portcullis (or security door if we're in more modern times), people likely would never notice. Most aspects of security theatre (uniforms, masks and so on) are even *designed* to dehumanise guards to make them appear more intimidating, going back to antiquity with scary helmet designs. Actual robots would simply appear to be normal people with good training.
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They are a divergent evolutionary branch of *homo sapiens*, to be more precise of the homo sapiens subspecies *toppus modellus*.
At the times around the transition between 20th and 21st century, a particular variant of humans were highly priced in the current society. These humans were called model, and their salient physical feature was being really skinny.
While in certain environments of the human society there started to be an opposition to excessive slender bodies, in others being skinny remained highly appreciated.
Eventually some of these skinny people started living a separate life in a separate environment and, thanks to their lower food demand, somehow managed to thrive in the apocalypse which stormed away most of the other homo sapiens in the middle of the 22nd century.
Interbreeding and natural selection led to the emerging of individuals with extremely reduced muscular mass, to the point it required extremely close inspection to be told apart from what it looked like a skeleton. Also the abdominal region was highly reduced in volume, essentially paving the inner of the hip bones.
Nocturnal habits emerged as a consequence, to not waste resources in producing skin pigments.
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Your sentient skeletons are actually a colony or swarm of stick and leaf insects working in unison. Many insects have a swarm, eu-social decision making ability that can border on sentience at times.
Rather than explaining why leaf and stick insects are working in unity, you could have the stick and leaf characterisitcs be based on male/female sexual dimorphism.
* **resembling a human skeleton**
Each *skeletal bone* could be a single or multiple stick insects that give the impression on bones.
The long skinny bones would be either single or multiple stick insects. The larger "flatter" bones such as pelvis and skull would be multiple overlapping leaf insects.
This option also gives an simple explanation for dismembered limbs that continue moving on their own, often trailing behind the main body trying to rejoin the swarm.
Also explains why they are so hard to kill as in order to destroy the creature, you have to destroy every bone (or at least a large proportion) rather than damage a single organ.
* **seemly lacking any visible muscles or organs**
Self explanatory. They do have insect organs but are hidden internally by their deceptive outlook.
* **are as strong as the average human**
With multiple limbs to grib objects, and ability to manipulate the angles objects are being held at as well as the weight distribution of the body, human like strength is achievable. (Think catapult/trebault and levers/pulleys counterweight logic).
* **having at least rudimentary tool use**
Does being a stick (a rudimentary tool) count as tool use? No seriously, with swarm decision making logic similar to bees it would be fairly reasonable to explain away the simple manipulation of the component parts (bones) movements to control tools.
* **are mostly nocturnal**
Lots of insects are nocturnal. Very easy to explain.
* **What drives this evolution?**
The stickleaf insect swarm evolving into a skeletal shape could be explained by mimicry.
Originally they feed off the decaying corpses laying around, over time they mimic the skeletal patterns they are surrounded with. Originally they would be simiple skeletal animal designs walking around but as their sentience evolved they would have mimicked more complex patterns they come across. Eventually settling on using the human shape as it's more adaptable for manipulating the random tools they found lying around (eg battlefields).
The clustering of male and females in certain region of the design would have evolved as the males stick design was more rigid and better suited for support structures while the leafy female insects clustered around to form broadwr flatter bones. With less body energy being assigned to keeping themselves rigid, the females were free to expend their body energies on more energy expensive features such as neural clusters. The female insects literally run this swarm!
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**Translucent fungus**
This is a slight cheat on your condition that there be no visible muscles or ligaments, but imagine something similar to a [slime mould](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold), that has colonised the skeleton of a deceased human. I specify translucent because in low light, it would look mostly like just a self-moving skeleton. In real life, slime moulds are in a half-way state between being monocellular and multicellular organisms, but nonetheless are able to exhibit some surprisingly complex behaviour, such as "sniffing" out sources of food and directing other members of the colony to shift themselves to move in that direction.
So what I'd propose would be something similar to a slime mould that has wrapped itself around the bones of a skeleton, and then acts as its own musculature by forming strands of cells that can contract and release to push and pull on the bones. As the organism's lifecycle relies on colonising human skeletons, it will make sense that these colonies would want to seek new skeletons to infect, so these skeletons will be driven by simple chemical impulses to seek out living humans to kill and infect the corpse with their spores.
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"Sentient skeletons" are clearly a variety of undead. They may even be zombies whose corpses have deteriorated to the point that no soft tissue remains.
Mind you, we are talking about a *supernatural* undead. These aren't your "freak virus causes zombie-like behavior" zombies of *28 Days Later*, nor even the "we want it to be a microbe but show clearly supernatural effects" zombies of *The Walking Dead*.
These are your straight-up, supernaturally animated and probably by an evil force, zombies. With the flesh so decomposed that it fell off their bleached, white bones.
This means that no force of evolution is implicated in their existence. And given their anatomy, their origin is clearly human.
When anatomical skeletons are used (perhaps in a medical school), that skeleton has to be "articulated". The bones in your fingers (and elsewhere) aren't directly attached to each other. They don't have little ball-and-socket joints. If the flesh were gone, they would be unattached to each other and free-floating.
We can assume that some sort of limited telekinetic-like force animates these skeletons, but that the spirit doing so can only move those bones (rather than just force-choking enemies from across the room). Not only that, but that the spirit is *mostly* limited to moving the bones in ways that imitate how they'd move while still alive.
This goes a long way to explaining zombies too, since we no longer have to worry about how muscles far into decomp could contract/expand on command, and to do so with no blood circulating nutrients and oxygen. Zombies that have suffered wounds that would incapacitate a living person through absolute mechanical defect can still wander around, at least to the extent that their remaining corpse might allow.
] |
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[
There have been several discussions about mechs, and the general consensus is - whilst cool, they're not actually a very good design.
[Plausible Reasons for usage of Combat Mecha](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10320/plausible-reasons-for-usage-of-combat-mecha)
What I was wondering though - how much of this discussion applies to organics?
First off: What ways - if any - could wheels have been evolved? As far as I'm aware there are no examples of rotary motion in a living creature - whilst we can 'windmill' our arms, that's multiple joints moving to create that effect.
Is there any evolutionary branch that *might* have done this?
I mean, it's only relatively recently that we've even got circular impulse - trains and the like are 'driven' via a linear piston, as are combustion engines. (Unpowered of course - wheels are pulled or pushed by things on legs anyway)
Rotary engines and electric motors are close, but they're still a linear impulse around a circular axis. So it sounds like the evolutionary key here is a 360-degree pivot because then you can translate linear to circular motion. It's also something that doesn't appear to have ever evolved.
For the sake of argument - if some fluke caused 'wheels' to evolve somehow - which branch would likely have won, evolutionary speaking? Do the same square/cube laws that make the mech worse than the tank also apply to evolved species, or is the efficiency of rotary motion a major positive factor?
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Some microscopic animals have a wheel like structure that drives a flagellum.
The issue with a natural macroscopic wheel is that the wheel and axle unit is basically not attached to the rest of the animal. If it were, the blood vessels would be torn off or spun into a knot. Therefore it can't get nutrients to the wheel part, and it can't grow, or be alive for long.
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The problem with wheels vs legs is that wheels do not cope well with uneven terrain. They sink into mud, stick on branches, fall into holes, etc. They are also very limited use for climbing, jumping, and all sorts of other similar activities.
The areas where they do have an advantage is in energy usage and speed when travelling over large flat areas. With artificial wheeled vehicles we manufacture roads and paths for them to use, in nature that is much harder to do. Even where you might have established paths for certain routes you will need to leave those paths in order to forage, feed, hide, etc.
Even large open grassy areas are unlikely to be flat enough off the path, so really you are limited to environments like deserts and beaches. Interestingly that is where you find tumble-weed and sidewinders in our world, which both have some elements of circular motion.
Basically the issue from an evolutionary standpoints are:
1. There is no advantage to having a "partial" wheel. Unless you can find a route from A to B with an evolutionary advantage (or at least no disadvantage) at each step then it is unlikely to evolve. This is the problem of local maxima.
2. Wheels are really good in some situations, but utterly useless in others. If a creature needs both legs and wheels then it might as well just use the legs.
3. Legged creatures can travel long distances efficiently (see ostrich), travel very rapidly (cheetah being the obvious example), climb (monkeys), swim (otters), run, walk and even fly. There is no clear advantage to be gained by having wheels. For example even a wheeled creature is unlikely to be able to outrun a cheetah.
One of the main reasons our vehicles can travel so far and so fast is not the use of wheels, it is the fact that they are using fossil fuels or other stored high density energy. Just using wheels alone does not solve that problem, after all a human cyclist is faster than a human runner - but they are still not as fast as a car.
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The problem is creating a wheel and axle which can have no connections of blood vessels or nerves.
The work around is to create a composite organism in which each part is a separate organism. The wheel is a separate organism, the axle is another, the suspension another, the chassis another, and so on. Each organism has its own lungs, digestive system, neural system, etc. Since their systems don’t connect, they can spin relative to each other.
A good model for such a creature is the Portuguese Man-o’-War, where each apparent individual is actually a vast colony of individuals, all clones of the original fertilized egg. Each individual forms a different specialized sub-system. They breath separately, the creature has no circulation system but just kinda shoves bits of food around in an internal void. No centralized nervous system but instead a kind of cascade activation from an individual module to the ones nearby.
But, as noted, wheels aren’t really useful without smooth surfaces. Look how few pre-industrial militaries relied on wheeled weapons. Instead, they marched or rode horses. Wheeled weapons like cannons where massively unwieldy, and not only because of their weight. You’d have to have a specialized environment.
I recall a short story decades ago in which a quirk of DNA caused plants to develop curling proteins which caused all plants to form in loops and to be ground hugging. The entire planet would covered in ankle trapping loops. Animals on the planet slid like snakes or rolled like balls to avoid being constantly entangled.
>
> Do the same square/cube laws that make the mech worse than the tank
> also apply to evolved species, or is the efficiency of rotary motion a
> major positive factor?
>
>
>
Actually, nature prefers large animals particularly in mammals. There is a scaling law, whose name escapes me for the moment, that says that and the energy usage of a mammal scales with 75% of the increase in mass. In other words a ton of elephant uses only 75% as much energy as a ton of mice.
The average size of mammals used to be nearly twice what it is now until we showed up with our pointed sticks. Unlike any other predator, Humans can inflict deep puncture wounds, such a wound can kill the largest of animals if it hits a major artery. Pygmies still hunt elephants this way, they just slide up and poke a 1cm hole in the jugular then follow the beast around until it drops. Since its not all that much harder to kill a elephant than a rabbit, early modern humans hunted big game almost exclusively. The only defense against humans is to grow smaller with more individuals, forcing the humans to expend more energy per unit of energy returned.
Study the giant megafauna Rhinos, they stood twice as tall and three times as long as an African elephant.
So, wheels or not, there would be considerable advantage to growing very large.
Come to think of it, a combination of wheels and legs could be very useful on giant critters. The wheels would distribute the weight and the legs would provide motive power by pushing or pulling and maybe occasionally climbing. That would avoid the problem of powering an axel.
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I'm thinking that it might make more evolutionary sense for the entire creature to be a wheel.
It would roll along, using muscles to deform the wheel shape to provide thrust. It would have some kind of mouths on the outside of its wheel to feed itself.
Alternatively, it could be a more regular kind of creature that rolls itself into a wheel and unrolls to eat.
Something like [a large version of a pill-bug.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillidiidae#/media/File:Slater_rolled_up_for_wiki.jpg)
[Answer]
There are quite a number of types of wheels; I've been able to come up with five types:
1. Free-motion wheels: these are round wheels with no driving force of their own. Instead, the wheel spins freely on a fixed axle. The rear wheels on a front-wheel-drive vehicle are like these. Multiple wheels would spin independently.
2. Locked wheels: like the free-motion wheels, these have no driving force, but rather than spinning on a locked axle, these wheels are directly connected to the axle, which spins freely. Many children's toys have a system like this. Multiple wheels on a single axle would all turn at the same rate.
3. Axle-drive wheels: these are the driven version of the locked wheels. Rotational force (torsion) from the axle causes the wheel(s) to turn.
4. Direct-drive wheels: each individual wheel has a drive system internally. Thus, each wheel moves completely independently of other wheels. Large earth-moving equipment often has wheels like this.
5. Treads: rather than a fixed round shape, trades are a flexible strip which is "pushed" by an internal drive system, usually wheels.
## Free-motion wheels
This option is fairly possible, though would result in some strange creatures (see diagram). The actual drive system could be legs, claws, or even a slithering motion; the wheels would simply reduce sliding friction, and possibly remove the creature from a dangerous environment, like caustic or hot surfaces.
The creature would need a fixed bone that protrudes from each side. The bone would terminate in a sphere. An organ just above the bone would excrete a cementing substance, similar to the oyster's pearl-forming system. It would coat the sphere, gradually growing larger. The sphere (and attached bone) would excrete a lubricating liquid that would also keep the area clean.
Here is a creature, viewed from the front (so cute!):
```
___ ___ ___
/ \ /o o\ / \
) O==={ _ }===O (
\___/ \/ \/ \___/
```
Small amounts of damage would be repaired, while large damage would result in the wheel breaking off and being reformed.
## Locked wheels
This may be even easier to design; a creature with a soft, slippery underbelly would find round branches, rocks, or anything else shaped like a cylinder. It would lay on top of the object, pinching it slightly, and excrete a slippery substance. As it dragged itself forward, the cylinder would roll on the ground. These wheels would allow the creature to have a small, low-energy means of propulsion, but still grow quite large; it could also float, assuming it uses trees rather than rocks. Of course, it doesn't work well on land that isn't terribly flat.
```
_/
/,\ _________________
|_ \___/ __ __ \
\ ____// \\___// \\__/
// \__/ \__/
```
As it grew, it would have to find bigger and bigger cylinders, which may limit growth. Then again, a few well-placed fallen trees, and this creature may end up the size of a house!
## Axle-drive wheels
This was the drive method I had the most trouble with. The best I can come up with is a system like the locked wheels above, except that the "feet" that push the creature along push on the center of the wheel, instead of simply sliding. That would allow the creature to have tiny feet and a flabby body, but still get around with ease.
```
_ _______ ________
/o\/ ____ V ____ \
> |||||| |||||| \
\__// \\___// \\__/
\__/ \__/
```
## Direct-drive wheels
These are actually pretty easy to imagine; a slug-like creature finds (or builds) a large hollow cylinder. It then climbs inside and "walks", pushing the wheels forward. The wheel not only protects it against predators, it also allows it to achieve very high speeds going down hills!
```
====
// \\
// _\\
|| i_ | ||
||/ \_/ ||
\\ //
\\====//
```
## Treads
Similar to the direct-drive wheels, this creature is fairly slug-like. It excretes a thin, slippery lubricant. When it has no wheel around it, the lubricant dries into a sticky, rubbery film. As the slug moves, it pulls the film from its back, across its front, and underneath itself. The film picks up rocks, sticks, and other debris as it is pushed onto the ground. At the read end of the slug, it flips the film up, where if sticks and becomes a rubbery tread. The slugs can use this tread for protection, both from enemies and from a hostile environment (hot or dry ground, salt or other traps, etc.).
```
/#########\
|#/,\_/ \#\
\#\_____/\__\#\
\############/
```
## Would it work?
The biggest disadvantage to wheels in nature is that wheels sink, get stuck, or otherwise slow you down. Wheel are terrible for climbing. Walking, slithering, and burrowing are all more reliable means of transportation. If wheeled creatures "won out," there would need to be a good reason. Large, flat spaces, with ample materials and good reason to have wheels. Of those I listed, the slug-in-a-tube is most likely the best possibility. It's not hard to tunnel out a branch or wrap a leaf into a tube, and if it protects its inhabitant, all the better!
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A lot of answers have focused on the problem with attachment of blood vessels, etc; I'm not sure that's a big problem.
I am envisaging a freewheeling creature that grew a wheel out of dead antler-like material around an axle; the growing point would periodically thin enough to snap, at which point the wheel would start spinning.
The wheel would be used until it wore down and sloughed off, at which point the process starts again.
The process could be linked to a seasonal event, such as a regular drought that exposed a very flat lakebed every year; possibly as a time-critical route to a spawning ground or something?
It could scoot itself along quite nicely, or if you wanted to go totally out there then creatures that started to grow off-centre nodules on the wheel would be able to pump them like a unicycle and get along even faster, so could be selected for.
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# Lizards
My speculative guess is that it could evolve from the sub-group, [Lacertalia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizard), which is its own [evolutionary grade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_grade). Some lizards' mode of locomotion resembles wheels already, such as the racerunner (but only visually), and they have provide the proper joints for a full circular mode of movement.
**How (and why) can they evolve to have wheels?**
Pure speculation, but I could see a more successful (faster and more agile) lizard eventually getting multiple legs from the same joint until their four appendages appear to look like wagon-wheel spokes without the rim (just the spokes with feet at the end.
Eventually this from this new species evolves a webbing of the feet, in order to navigate moist climates and [even walk on water](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45yabrnryXk). As these webbed feet evolve ("grow") into each other, you now have four wagon wheels. Feel free to close in the gaps between each spoke of the wagon wheel until you have one cool lizard species.
[Answer]
Wheel is not easily compatible with another device heavily used by nature - a **pipe**. Blood vessels are pipes, but also nerves.
A pipe cannot connect a stationary chassis to the freely rotating wheel, with both ends being fixed. Such pipe would get twisted (one end turned 360 degrees with relate to another as soon as the wheel makes a full revolution). While humans are able to resolve this technical problem (some military vehicles supply compressed air to they rotating tires, a measure against small punctures), this requires mechanically rather complex device, evolutionary challenging to evolve.
This is not a problem if the whole organism is a wheel (there is no chassis). Such organisms exist. Alternatively, a wheel could consist of dead tissue (like hairs or nails), no longer connected to the organism by vessels. Such maybe could be useful but without regeneration, the duration of the service is limited. Ok, it could be a short-lived organism. Maybe such will appear in the evolutionary future.
[Answer]
to create circular motion you don't need actual wheel shape body parts .
a simple joint that lets conical motion is sufficient.
actually lizards use this kind of motion already.
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1273693/>
it wont sink ,wont get stuck,and wont be single purpose.
actually wheel is used by us because its so simple to make and maintain.
i see the future of our land vehicles as legged machines.
[Answer]
You wouldn't see "branches" with one winning or the other. Evolution is not proud. It will do whatever it needs to.
It is remarkably difficult to create a wheeled or treaded system with organics, primarily because it is hard to connect the two parts sufficiently for organic growth. As in the answer Aify [linked](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/15278/sea-creature-moving-via-rotational-motions), you would end up with two symbiotic halves of a creature or group of creatures, each of which woudl need its own digestive tract, sensor mechanisms, etc. In this case, there would be a strong pressure to be able to survive without this delicate symbiosis. Both halves would likely seek to be mobile on their own, without the wheel. Thus evolution would combine both patterns into one comprehensive tool which handles both modes of locomotion.
I would argue that nature may have actually done this... if you argue our factories exude tires and hubs, and the most intelligent species on the planet uses them for 99% of their distance traveled! It all depends on how you look at it! ;-)
[Answer]
The [Mulefa](http://hdm.wikia.com/wiki/Mulefa) from *His Dark Materials* are an example of a life form evolving to use wheels. In their case, the wheels are not part of themselves, but rather are formed by another symbiotic organism.
The Mulefa evolved with a diamond body plan, one limb in front, one in back and one on each side.
On their world, there were numerous lava flows, creating long smooth surfaces.
There were also large trees that had ~1 foot diameter circular seed pods. These seed pods had a hole in the center from where they were attached to the stem of the trees.
At some point the Mulefa found that they could hook the claws on their front and back limbs into the holes in the seed pods and then use their side limbs to kick themselves along the smooth lava flows. When a seed pod cracked, the Mulefa would discard it, and new the seeds would sproute.
As harder seed pods would be used longer, and would be dropped farther away, the genes that produced harder seed pods were spread farther and produce more seed pods. Over time the seed pods became so hard that they required many months of use before they cracked and could sproute.
The Mulefa also became reliant on the wheels, and developed a complex culture based around them.
As Whelkaholism mentioned, the lava flows could be replaced with a dry lake bed, or some other smooth hard surface.
Edit:
The wikipedia page on Wentelteefje linked to [Rotating locomotion in living systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_locomotion_in_living_systems), which contains quite an extensive analysis of the constraints of wheel based locomotion.
Also, [Category:Rolling animals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rolling_animals).
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[Question]
[
### Question
So lets say a post-apocalyptic society that primarily uses steam to power everything wants to make war hammers that have their impact force enhanced through the power of steam. What ways could steam be used to basically enhance them?
### Requirements
* Needs to weigh no more than 400 lbs.
* Needs to be effective in hurting and killing humans, mega-fauna, and break through concrete and steel.
* The more gears the better.
* This society is post of the modern age so they will have access to things that the steam powered Victorian era wouldn't (not a requirement just wanted to make sure you know that).
* Also should maintain a hammer-like shape.
[Answer]
As @Keltari mentioned, you could have a steam-propelled hammer to deliver extra force behind your blows.
It's not quite a "hammer", but another potential idea would be to have the head be a long spike out of which high pressure steam is forcibly expelled into the target. This would cause at the least horrific burns and potentially an explosion as the steam pressure built up inside the victim. The steam would be triggered by a button on the base of the handle.
Imagine the [Wasp Knife](http://waspinjection.com/), but on a sledgehammer scale. The Wasp Knife is used for self-defence against sharks and other large nasties, so I imagine a larger version would work well on megafauna.
[Answer]
You can make steam powered hammers that hit harder than humans can hit. Steam has been used to power rockets. See this [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=457DSAxuwBY) as an example. You can make a hammer that is filled with compressed steam. When swinging the hammer, hit a trigger releasing the steam and increasing the hammer's speed greatly. The hammer wielder could be wearing a tank of compressed steam on his back, with a hose going to the hammer, for greater capacity. Obviously, this puts the wielder in danger, as a puncture to the tank would be explosive. But that makes it more interesting, right?
[Answer]
## Use the steam to power the wielder, not the hammer
This is a sort of frame-challenge answer, but using steam within a weapon seems rather limiting and hard to use. Some of the other answers may be better suited to your exact purpose if that's the case.
Rather than powering a single weapon with steam, I argue that powering a person with the steam is a better idea. They would be able to use steam to rocket about through the air, and literally drop onto enemies with *incredible* force behind their favorite hammer-type weapon. The best visual I have for this comes from the anime/manga [Attack on Titan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Titan), where the warriors [use steam power to fly through the air](http://attackontitan.wikia.com/wiki/Vertical_maneuvering_equipment) and, well, attack the titans.
[](https://media.giphy.com/media/Nh2amH1e0Zh2E/giphy.gif)
(Click above image for gif!)
Although this may not be exactly what you had in mind, I'd argue that very few things can stand up to a morningstar descending at the terminal velocity of a human, plus or minus the acceleration from the steam jets. Sadly, it wouldn't necessarily contain many gears so I suppose that's points off.
[Answer]
It's not quite a hammer, and definitely fails on 'maintain a hammer shape' but what about a steam powered jack hammer or something similar?
It could definitely break rock / concrete etc. as that's what the tool is used for in real life.
I'm fairly sure it could also do a reasonable amount of damage to a human or animal too and shouldn't be too difficult to adapt to being steam powered.
Otherwise I'm not really sure what you could do with a hammer to make it mechanical or automated.
[Answer]
Your biggest problem isn't the hammer or the steam. It's how to wield it.
A hammer is an exercise in leverage. Handle end travels a short distance slowly, head travels a longer distance fastest. The problem you have, as Archimedes noted, is that you need a lever ***and*** a firm place to stand.
There's no way this is human scale, so it's got to be vehicle-mounted. There's no problems in principle with a tracked vehicle (to spread the weight) fitted with a bunch of trip hammers at one end.
My question then is - what's the military use of this? It could be handy for breaking down barricades, I guess. But against infantry it's a bit pointless, isn't it? Humans are pretty squishy, so something like this is overkill. Worse, it's only dangerous in that one direction, so (like tanks generally) it's vulnerable to infantry attacking its blind spots.
[Answer]
I know this isn't exactly a Hammer but is would be suitable for hurting humans, fauna and break things.
This is based from Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress which has a similar setting where everything is mostly powered by steam.
The main character Ikoma has a steam powered weapon:
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> A combination of high pressured steam injected into a cartridge of gunpowder creates a needle-like explosive reaction that can bore through both cage and heart of a Kabane with ease, although at the cost of its nearly nonexistent range; the gun has to be fired at point blank, something that few people dare attempt and cost Ikoma his humanity.
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This is the gun it is linked to a tank held by the hero on his back which send the compressed air:
<http://koutetsujou-no-kabaneri.wikia.com/wiki/Tsuranuki_Zutsu>
They also use steam powered guns but that could be too over kill maybe in your setting:
<http://koutetsujou-no-kabaneri.wikia.com/wiki/Steam_Gun>
Reference Video:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ox46Y-QGm8>
This could really go well with the previous answer mentioning Attack on Titan
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FzMwi.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IFBpq.png)
[Answer]
There have been [real-world efforts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-vABMIdm5Y) to create "power fist" type weapons which used compressed air to drive a piston forward at the end of the wielder's swing to hit substantially more powerfully.
I'm dubious how much this would improve a hammer, but anything compressed air can do, steam can do in principle.
*nb: The example given is not the only such device I've seen, there have been a few.*
[Answer]
The [captive bolt pistol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_bolt_pistol) is a pneumatic hammer used to stun or kill livestock. Most use pressurized air but there is no reason pressurized steam could not produce the same effect. The villain in No Country For Old Men used a captive bolt pistol as his preferred weapon.
<http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/No_Country_for_Old_Men#Captive_Bolt_Pistol>
A steam powered captive bolt gun with a large bolt could definitely be a weapon. The force exerted on the target would also be exerted back through the wielder, who must be braced.
But hammer shaped: imagine this. It is a big hammer. The head contains a captive bolt, which is triggered on impact shooting forward from the face of the hammer. The bolt hits with the combined force of the hammer and its own steam impetus, and the hammer head flies backward. The other face of the hammer also has a captive bolt and so the recoil from the first strike is used to prime the second. The hammer wielder might need to spin the hammer 360 degrees either around his head or by turning his entire body.
[Answer]
You don't specify that the hammer need be wielded by a human's hands. I can envision something closer to a siege weapon - a battering ram like object on a wheeled carriage. Trundle it up to your target, hold it in place, and bangbangbang.
I see two directions you could use the power - up or down.
You can use the steam to lift the hammer, allowing it to be far heavier, and let gravity deliver the blow. It'd require some supports like a construction vehicle.
similarly, it could be a lighter hammer that you propel downward. That would likely require supports that grip the ground, to keep the device from flipping backwards on the down-stroke.
Both would be driven by a piston arrangement - the second would require the steam be stored for a compressed blow, like the launch mechanism on an aircraft carrier.
[Answer]
While steam hammers are a real thing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_hammer> using one as a weapon just won't work. The reason basically comes down to Newton's Law: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction". If the business end of your weapon moves in a straight line, hitting the opponent will drive you backward with as much force as the blunt end of your hammer exerts. (That's why swords are thin and pointy.) Then too, if your opponent has strong armor, they will tend to just bounce backwards, just as you will. Bottom line is that the linear "hammer" is likely to do as much damage to you as to your opponent.
Things aren't much better with a swinging hammer. Swinging it much faster than a muscle-powered hammer exerts force on you, so you fall over backwards. (You can actually feel this if you pay attention while e.g. splitting wood or driving fence posts, which about as close to using a war hammer as most of us will get.) So again, your weapon damages you.
That's not even getting into the problems inherent in carrying around a fire, fuel (most of which will be burned to maintain pressure while maneuvering into position), high-pressure lines carrying scalding steam that could be severed by a projectile...
[Answer]
Many of the answers here have laid out how enhancing the speed of the hammer risks dealing too much additional damage to the wielder despite progressively flatter victims, and I'd agree this is extremely risky for general usage.
Instead I'd propose adding vents capable of expelling hot steam to the **impact** face of the weapon, triggered manually, hopefully maintaining the 'steam-powered warhammer' fantasy without the accidental broken bones.
This would allow your soldiers (with a little suspension of disbelief) to:
* Attempt to dislodge the hammer if it becomes embedded in some of that concrete, mega-fauna or other victims, but not enough force to risk damaging the wielder
* Blind, disorient, or otherwise force targets to retreat further backwards after a non-lethal hit, reducing the chance of a follow-up blow against the hammer wielder whilst preparing another swing
* Burn heavily armoured enemies able to tank a warhammer blow. A floored enemy could easily be disabled through a burst of steam, rather than leaving yourself open through additional swings
If the back-end of the hammer was a blade or spike you'd even have the potential to rotate the hammer and propel forwards as originally suggested in the question. This would have to be a high-risk, less common attempt to pierce exceptionally strong or armoured targets, though if it penetrated successfully there'd be greater opportunity to let go of the hammer before it reaches a complete stop, and minimise risk to the wielder.
[Answer]
i'm not quite sure on the subject so don't hesitate to downvote if I'm talking bullshit.
My idea would be some sort of centrifugal hammer.
You use your steam to make something rotate really fast in the head of the hammer.
When you action the hammer, something block the gears. The "rotator" is blocked instantly and his kinetic energy is used to propulse the hammer in a direction. Like a sort of internal sling, exception the projectile is your whole hammer and the sling himself. I'll try a little drawing :
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tI6h6.png)
The advantages is that you can keep a hammer-ish look. You can make the pivotal piece visible, through some grillage or something, in the hammerhead.
Hope you'll like it. Hope it makes sense mechanically speaking, too.
[Answer]
Jumping on @jamesqf's answer, this is physically difficult (but not impossible) and what most suggestions have said so far is somewhat incorrect realistically. This is because of [Newton's Laws](https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/newton.html) (Specifically the Third here)
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> 3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite re-action
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This means in our example two things:
1) When a mass moves linearly, as in "rocket-firing" it, it also creates an equal force in the opposite direction. So look at the ground here:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/W4IKK.gif)
That air and fuel is moving with a lot of force! Neglecting the exhaust problem of a steam rocket, a human weight (~62 kilo says google) hammer hitting forwards at fast velocities would hit a human forwards with an imparted force, but the imparted force is equally applied to the wielder backwards, including joints and bones, and in the *opposite direction*. So hitting forwards with some force would push you *backwards with the same force.* Breaking concrete? Not useful for a human wielder bluntly, unless you had some sort of intricate counter weight.
2) When a mass moves from a "tether" like a handle, it exerts an opposite rotation force. For example, Mario has some interesting ways of killing megafauna, swinging them by the tail!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/E9MOb.gif)
He's got some strong legs! Suppose my hammer "jerks" forward from my arm by rotation. Something has to counter-balance that, and it's not going to be my wrist if the force could break bones. Maybe my muscles, but probably not from an arm all the way down...
My conclusion is that a blunt "warhammer" would not work for this with a human wielder holding the force. And about that concrete: it's a fun fact that a human femur, the largest bone in the human body, is about as strong as concrete. Not stronger: you won't do it bluntly.
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> Needs to be effective in hurting and killing humans, mega-fauna, and break through concrete and steel.
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> The more gears, the better.
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But of course, I neglected two thirds of the important laws.
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> 2. Force is equal to the change in momentum per change in time: Force is equal to mass times acceleration
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Are you familiar with flywheels? You could use a flywheel churned by a steam engine and TONS of gears to do a torque differential - then impart its momentum by having it strike something or "gear stop" suddenly. Say the flywheel is ~150-200lbs, the bullet-shaped hammer head is ~30lbs, that's a lot for the rest of the contraption - but it would be more like a siege weapon.
Something that would break concrete could be sharp, [but not steel](https://www.quora.com/How-thick-sharp-does-a-modern-steel-sword-have-to-be-to-cut-metal-chains-ranging-from-copper-to-modern-steel). The steel would bend under mass but jackhammers are no good, even if it was ultra-hard like Tungsten. It would need to be blunt because steel doesn't chip away to my knowledge, and steam isn't hot enough to do something heat wise to steel (It's at least 212 F, but steel melts > 1000 F, that steam would cut out of pipes and slice people but even water has a hard time cutting steel under pressure - unless they found and [rigged up a water-jet](https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/question553.htm)).
Another idea is two hammers on a pivot that rev up and hit, maybe on some sort of tank. But that would be a lot bigger, I should think - maybe something you could put on trained mega-fauna or a tank of some sort.
Anyways, this is my mostly realistic answer. But this isn't the Physics SE.
[Answer]
A lot of answers are mentioning Newton's third law as a sticking point, but it is not the hard limit that is being implied. The best way of overcoming it so a human can wield steam-powered weaponry, is with dampening.
Personally, I favour nice big pistons, but you could also use gears and springs - and the advantage of springs (or flywheels, but flywheels on their own are probably not going to be able to be large enough) is that they also, for at least a short time, store some of the energy they absorb and so can be used to make the next hit *even harder*, saving you some steam - or they can be used to "reload" the weapon.
If you're *still* generating too much force for the human skeleton to withstand, then a metal arm brace that connects to a body and leg brace (with joint locks to prevent them going past the human range of motion) can absorb some force too - possibly knocking the wielder over, but it's better than a broken arm.
Another option is to have the steam weapon push both ways. This takes care of the third law too, but requires twice as much power to deliver the same amount of force in a strike.
The key here, given that the human's own weight and ability to lift is a limiting factor, is that instead of leverage you just go for speed, and let that do all the damage, so your steam weapon is all about getting the head of the hammer to as high a speed as possible. Your brace, backfire, and dampeners absorb what they can to prevent your arm falling off. It doesn't seem practical to have a steam device that can cause the hammer to rotate faster (it would be too limiting to the normal range of motion in your arm), so the next best thing is to use Willk's idea and make the head of the hammer a giant captive bolt pistol.
[Answer]
Have you considered a steam-powered exoskeleton for the human. The exoskeleton could have a larger steam reserve than an unaided human could carry, plus it could absorb the forces that hitting something with the hammer would produce. Oh yes, lots of gears and flywheels.
The hammer would basically be a large hammer with a long handle (for leverage). The handle would have a thin hollow area for steam to go through, and one end of the hammer would have a steam rocket to accelerate this hammer faster than humanly possible.
The human would be protected by the exoskeleton from the forces that would otherwise break his arms. By putting some light armor in there, he would also be protected from concrete chips and pieces of brains that would be thrown back by attacking a concrete wall or a human respectively.
And if swallowed by megafauna, the boiler could be made to explode, at least giving it indigestion.
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[Question]
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In my fantasy world, airships are the main way of transportation. These airships have the hull of a regular 12 century medieval liner. This liner has two leather horizontal gliders on either side (outriggers) responsible for keeping the airship afloat, as well as a sail above the main vessel for propulsion. (I am aware that the physics of this are impossible, but considering this is a fantasy universe I am not concerned).
It is relevant to my story that there are creatures that come after these ships in packs. These are winged serpents with the intelligence of wolves that attack the glider's sails and passengers, diving with their fangs and barbed tails.
These creatures are very territorial, which is the reason for their hostility towards these airship. However, avoiding these airspaces is impossible as the main airways run right through them. Therefore it is a necessity that they have defenses against these creatures.
Note that these people have technology equivalent to that of Imperial China. Leave any questions below.
[Answer]
You have three main options: violence, deterrence and countermeasures.
**Violence:**
If you kill them, they can't kill you.
* Archers are the simplest and most readily available form of attack at a distance, but will probably struggle to hit anything.
* Repeating crossbows (Cho-Ko-Nu) are a bigger, heavier option but should give a higher chance of hitting them.
* Soldiers with melee weapons stationed on the ship may also be useful, especially if the creatures 'board' your ship to attack it.
**Deterrence:**
You don't need to kill them if they're not attacking you.
* Animals don't generally like explosions. A few well placed fireworks
ought to scare them away.
* Animals are generally scared of larger, more threatening animals. Given your liner has wings and physics is apparently not an issue, you could just make your airship look like a much larger creature, or better still one of the creature's predators (if they have any).
* Bait. Trail some tasty foodstuff behind your airship for them to munch on instead of your passengers. If they don't need to eat a ridiculous amount, then you may be able to develop a relationship with them in which you pay a 'food tax' every time you go through their territory - in time they'll learn to take the free meal.
* Bait and poison. Trail the tasty food, but fill it with something lethal. Next trip you're significantly less likely to be bothered.
**Countermeasures:**
If you can't stop them from attacking you, then you need to make their attacks less effective.
* Enclose the squishy bits (humans mostly) and armour the rest so that their attacks are ineffective.
* Make the structure *painful* to attack - a few pointy objects surrounding the bits that get attacked and the creatures will be much less enthusiastic.
* Fly faster or higher than the creatures can. They can't attack you if they can't catch you.
[Answer]
**Possible counter measures:**
* Archers
* Ballista
* Catapult/cannon **Launched net** (you can disable their wings too)
* Flamethrower (Byzantines are reported to have a primitive equivalent)
* Flak - the ancient Chinese did have gunpowder for fireworks. same concept only you add bits of sharp metal as shrapnel inside the firework which acts as a flak round (common anti air defense).
* (needless to say the option for a cannon full of bird shot is also plausible).
Aside from conventional means of killing something from a distance, the added vulnerability of flight generally increases the amount of potentially lethal options as it is usually easier to disable a flying thing than out right killing it (especially since impact can often finish the job).
**Another possible solution is conditioning**
Mine their territory with floating balloons that when destroyed some how damage or kill the attacker (be it an explosion or some kind of kinetic trap like a net that ensnares them causing them to plummet to the ground with the wreckage).
Eventually the species will learn not to be aggressive towards passive human crafts passing through their terrain.
Any animal only attacks as a means of defense, securing a mate, or acquiring food. Territorial instincts are a derivative of that. If you make it so human crafts offer none of those when killed but also add the risk of injury or death then most species learn to avoid you.
It's similar to how porcupines defenses work on a psychological level. We recently have been employing this same tactic against lions.
[Answer]
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> winged serpents with the intelligence of wolves
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**Domesticate the dang things**. ~~Call them snogs (snake + dog)~~
You don't even have to fully domesticate them, if they're super territorial. You just have to coax a decent-sized group into claiming your ship as 'theirs' in such a way that they defend it from other flying serpents but let your people load, unload, and operate it. You'll want to keep breeding them towards being friendlier to people, but it really shouldn't be too long before you can get them safe enough for trained personnel to operate near them.
Wolves are smart enough to not attack something that will cause them serious damage - predators can't afford to get seriously injured. Therefore, your domesticated ~~snogs~~ flying serpents shouldn't have to actually fight a bunch of other flying serpents... they just have to be scary enough that the other ones leave your ship alone.
Now, what to do if you still have to fight the suckers? **Sand-shotguns!** (Doesn't require gunpowder... can just use something like a crossbow.) Salt guns work wonders against bugs - I figure the same principle works on a larger scale too. Most flying things are quite fragile, so it doesn't take much to knock them out of the air. You could tinker with different sands and dirts, trying to find a good balance between stopping power, range, and cost. Biggest advantage here is that sand and dirt won't damage your ship when you miss. You'd have to be careful to wipe it off to avoid weighing down your ship and stuff, but that's easier than patching holes.
[Answer]
Those dread flying creatures were once a problem, particularly during the autumn - they are more territorial then.
The flying ships used to have to ensure an armed troupe was on board which cut back on the cargo and passengers that could be carried
Then - and I don't know how they found out how to do this - they started carrying Suona players. Just two players could make enough noise to keep the beasts at bay. Some ships carried a specially adapted bagpipe but apparently, the extra loudness of this isn't needed
I suppose the flying beasts have sensitive hearing and the high pitched wailing puts them off
Some passengers really don't like it but it's better than being in an air crash
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suona>
[Answer]
**Man-made spider webbing**
Surround the vulnerable areas with woven net cages lined with sticky, itchy oils. The serpents will not be able to easily swoop in and cause damage as they will not be able to avoid contact with the encumbering and irritating nets.
The nets could be made from farmed spiders (high quality), silkworms (good quality) or plant fibers (cheap, short lived and heavy).
There are various saps that would work as a coating. Crushed irritating plants worked into a thick oil would not be difficult to produce.
*Addendum --*
The netting may negatively impact flight characteristics. In that case, it could be rigged in a manner similar to sails. The nets would be deployed when entering the creature's territory and withdrawn for better speed and handling when safely away. This can add further opportunity for tension and drama during flight.
[Answer]
I'm going to assume the avoid / tame / deter options are off the table here. Assuming story line includes having to fight these lil buggers off, so you want the conflict afterall.
Defence:
1 - Protect the airbags! Put a large 'net' around the ships outriggers. Pretty simple theory, a claw or bite would only be able to hit the net rigging around the bladder and not the bladder itself. Extra points if this has a sticky substance (or otherwise nasty to bite/claw substance).
2 - Protect the people. Armour the liner and have area's general passengers and not combat crew can hide in
3 - Sail redundancy. Lets face it, sails are hard to protect in these situations. Having multiple sails (including a 'backup' one that is hidden until deployed as a last resort) is a valid option.
For defensive reasons...don't use fire or explosives. Fire tends to set your own ship on fire (even if you don't hit your own ship, a serpent on fire hitting your sails is your ship on fire), while explosives will likely cause several holes in your own ship
Attack:
You put this in the comment:
"Shooting stones out of a catapult would be very ineffective as these serpents are very small and agile"
That's semi correct. In traditional navy, there are 2 types of shot that are frequently used...cannonballs and grapeshot. Now it is true that the serpents being small and agile would be hard to hit with a single cannonball, however grapeshot is the 'shotgun' approach containing many little pellets. Same idea as duck hunting really, you are going to shoot a spray of bullets instead of a single large one.
For 12th century terms...a little early, but a Trebuchet is the single shot weapon while the Mangonel was the shotgun spray approach.
The Chinese had the Cho Ko Nu, however various 'hand ballistas' had been developed significantly earlier right around 0 AD. Cheiroballistra, it's Scorpian predecessors, and even the lithbolos (stone thrower) could all be effective. Of course, the Ballista <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_siege_engines#Early_Roman_ballista> is an undervalued piece of equipment...at 100 yards, a man size target could be easily targetted and struck reliably with a ballista (ballistas are considered more accurate than a 19th century musket by a large margin, with scorpians being the smaller and more accurate 'antipersonnel' version of ballista's).
More deceptive - sticky bits on the defensive rigging. Biological flight is usually a 'perfected' thing and it doesn't take much to throw a flying creature off...kinda like tying a sock around a cat kills the cats balance. Having pieces of sticky coated rope and rigging thats attached to the defensive mesh around the air bladders but will come loose if stuck to a creature can seriously mess up a flying attacker...serpent flies by and claws at the rigging, hits the net protection and has a sticky chunk of tar coat it's claw and arm that contacts its wing and sticks it's wing to itself preventing it's proper use would down a flying serpent.
[Answer]
A "spring engine" was a simple weapon to send a cloud of darts at the enemy.
Picture a wooden board with dozens of holes fixed to a frame (the frame can be turned and elevated to aim). The holes have darts placed inside, with the ends sticking out the back. Behind them is a similar solid board, which is fixed t a powerful spring. The crew cranks the spring mounted board to the stop, engages the ratchet and swivels the device to aim at the centre of mass of the target. Pulling the ratchet release causes the solid board to slam into the back of all the darts, propelling them into the air.
In the middle ages, this could be used to drive defenders from the top of a wall, or sweep a crowd of oncoming soldiers advancing to the wall carrying ladders. In this setting, you aim at the centre of the pack and unleash the darts. If you are lucky, they hit a few of the pack, but even the flight of many darts past the pack should cause a startle reaction and sow confusion, giving the sip the ability to manoeuvre or mount other counters (archers could try to pick off the confused beasts while the main weapon is reloaded and rewound).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ShpW5.jpg)
*Spring Engine*
If you allow the use of gunpowder, rocket propelled arrows were a thing in ancient China and Korea, then a multiple arrow launcher is possible. the blast of the rockets being launched, and the trails of smoke and fire as they fly towards the targets should also cause a startle effect and break up formations of incoming beasts.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9GDyX.jpg)
*That should do the trick!*
[Answer]
We already have counter measures for flocks of aggressive birds: **spikes**
Australian Magpies are birds that are very territorial and often engage cyclists. For this reason cyclists will wear spiked helmets to keep the birds at bay (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_magpie#Swooping>).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hq7rU.jpg)
Additionally, to prevent birds from camping on certain buildings or objects, spikes are used to prevent birds from landing there (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_control_spike>).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XE89J.jpg)
(images from wikipedia)
Although these methods are not as sophisticated as the ones mentioned before, they could provide for some interesting designs for your ships.
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There are many potential weapons and physical defenses discussed in other answers. But have you considered some kind of decoy or confusion defense that lures them away from the ships?
Also, camouflage & hiding are important defensive factors. If they cant find the ships, they can't attack.
Finally, some kind of self-destruct mechanism, where they are lured to ship, and then perhaps it is set on fire, and people zip-line to another ship or something.
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## Air compression
In real life, if we want to scare flying creatures away from important things, we use a cannon that simply fires a big air compression (a loud boom). These are called "propane cannons" (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_scarer>), but in your setting you could achieve the same just by letting off a charge of gunpowder from a directed wooden tube
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Zap the darn things out of the sky (yes, electric).
Contrary to what people say (static only) electricity isn't hard to make, you just need a two rough surfaces rubbing against each other.
You may get such a high voltage, that if you build a (crude) Tesla tower, out of copper and an iron bulb (I assume your crew goes to land at certain periods of time to get minerals and stuff). The setup, surprisingly isn't hard at all. You just need to connect a long iron rod wound with copper, terminating at a bulb at the tip. And you could use livestock (horses, please) and have them run on a short of treadmill-thing. When the charges get saturated at the bulb of the tip, a bolt comes out and strikes the darn things, electrocuting them.
After all, wires were made about 5,000 years back, so manufacturing them, shouldn't be a problem. You can make a crude Van der Graff generator.
Picture this, a brownish rod with a greyish tip, extending away from the airship. Now, get a lot of horses. Have them run on the "treadmill", the tip will get charged. And suddenly, out of nowhere, a bolt will lash out at the serpents, causing them to die of electrocution.
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[
In my [previous question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10320/plausible-reasons-for-usage-of-combat-mecha), it was quite well established that tanks were basically superior to walkers in every way.
So, lets even the playing field. I've been contemplating several ways of doing so, but in honor of this fortnights topic challenge, I'll start with plantlife.
Would it be possible for a certain type of plant, which, if growing rampant in the wild, would cause tanks to become impractical while allowing bipedal mecha to become dominant?
This anti-tank plant can be entirely fictional. However, try to keep it realistic - as in, try to ensure that plant fiber/material can actually do what you propose.
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Perhaps the simplest method would be to have your trees grow at 45 degrees (or more) to the vertical. The end result would be similar to the defences employed on many beaches during WWII.
From the front the tank is actually pushing the base of the tree deeper, from behind the tank rides up the tree and beaches itself, and from the sides the trees are too thick to permit passage.
While this would be completely impenetrable to tanks, a walker could use its weight and superior position (applying the force straight down rather than horizontally from the ground) to crush the trees flat as it walks.
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Perhaps there are many common plants (grasses and bushes) which secrete a thick gum-like fluid when squeezed or crushed which causes the tracks on tanks to clog and seize (particularly with dirt and plant matter adhering).
Walkers are unaffected except for occasional problems with the ankle joint, and build-up on their soles which eventually need cleaning.
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Very high grass could be enough to make tanks the lesser option. Any high and dense plant life would:
* Show tank tracks: When a tank moves through high grass, it will flatten the grass, and create very clear tracks that can be seen for days afterwards. Seen from the air, each tank would leave a nice trail pointing to it's current location. Tanks would be unable to hide, which can be a large tactical disadvantage. Walkers tracks are much smaller, and could actually be completely hidden by the grass.
* Block the view from inside the tank. A walker could be high enough te be above the grass. There could be solutions for this off cource (a periscope to look above the grass).
* Hide shallow streams. This could be a problem if these streams are too high for the tank to cross. Walkers could have high enough legs to cross streams of several meters deep.
* Hide other nasty terrain features. Tanks can get stuck in chasms and boulder fields. This is a big problem if you can't detect them early enough. A sudden 2 meter drop might be invisible in high grass, and could be devastating to a heavy tank. Walkers could have an advantage here, if they have enough legs, they can feel and compensate for these obstacles. Being higher above the ground, walkers could also have better a more efficient downward radar to detect underlying terrain.
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So, let us begin by listing out the few key differences between tanks and walkers, so we can then know what to engineer our plants to attack.
* Tanks are lower, making them more stable, with a low center of gravity
* Tanks are easier to armor, because it is simply a box, with fairly low surface area compared to a walker
* Tanks can carry much heavier guns, also because it is stabler
## Short Tanks
Well, this should be quite easy to attack, you can simply have the fauna constantly spewing out some form of thick, denser-than-air gas. This gas would then play havoc with the tank's short stature, and the crew would then be unable to see anything. And that is with the gas simply being there, you could easily than also make it toxic, corrosive, or radioactive or something else.
## Thickly armored tanks
Tanks are at the very simple concept, they are simply [METAL BAWKSES](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO3MttgvHUY), with plenty of important things on the inside, such as ammo, crew and the engine. In real life, an armor piercing shell hitting a tank only creates a fairly, relatively tiny hole, but such a hole is enough to stop a tank dead, as the shrapnel would then fly about on the inside and hollow it out. So, now you create plants with tentacles, coated in super acid. Let this super acid cut through anything your people can create, so heavy armor tanks do nothing against that. Meanwhile, walkers, which also tend to have quite a number of important things in a small compartment, have the advantage of being more agile, as well as being more "holey", as for the same amount of weight as a tank, they tend to be bigger. Not only that, an acid penetration to the arm of a walker simply means no more arm, not no more walker.
## Tanks have big guns
Well, this should be quite easy to attack. The forest can be also extremely overgrown, meaning that it is not easy to maneuver large and heavy weapons around. Another thing to note might be that the super acid tentacles may be fairly fragile, and can be easily destroyed with mild gunfire, so submachine guns akimbo may be more effective at fending off acid tentacles than a tank cannon.
Well, that's all the stuff I can think of now, I am sure I will be able to add more later
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With enough determination and firepower, a tank can get through or around any type of vegetation. However, there are many types of vegetation which will slow them down, or otherwise hinder their movement.
**Hedgerows like in Normany**
In World War II, getting through Normandy with tanks became a real issue. A special type of tank called a Rhino had to be created to break through them. These tanks basically had large metal prongs in the front which were designed to destroy the hedges. A walker could squeeze their way through, or leap over these with ease.
**Kudzu**
Kudzu is a thick invasive vine that literally grows over everything it comes in contact with. It can grow over entire trees and make it difficult to navigate the terrain. It can also hide other obstacles such as large boulders, etc. A walker can cut a narrow path, and would be able to navigate around any hidden obstacles.
**Pine Barrens**
The Pine Barrens in New Jersey is a thickly wooded area with many trees that are close together. This covers a huge area and would take a long time to go around with a tank. It would take several crews with chainsaws to cut a path through wide enough for a tank. This kind of terrain would barely slow down a smaller size walker.
**Cypress Forests**
Cypress trees grow in wetlands, and therefore this terrain would nearly be impossible to have a tank go through unless the water was shallow enough for them to pass through. The roots of the trees are large and exposed. A walker could hop from tree root to tree root.
**Rice Paddies, Cranberry Bogs, Corn Fields, Plantations, etc.**
A walker could walk right through one of these and only cause minimal damage. A tank would flatten all of the crops and completely destroy them.
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>
> The wise plant does not stand like the oak against the storm, but
> bends like the grass...
>
>
>
Rather than fight a tank strength on strength and losing, attack the weakness of the tank. Tank engines need air intakes. Men inside need air intakes. If the plant is fragile, and emits lots of pollen or dust, the air intakes will suck that up right into the filters, which will clog. The tank then needs to stop, clean or replace the filter, and start again.
A dozen feet later, it all happens again.
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Big trees will certainly impede your tanks. You can't knock over a redwood with a tank. However, you can usually trash trees with artillery fire, and (non-redwoods) with regular fire.
You'd want them to be fast growing, and you'd want them to be thick, but not so thick that walkers can't get through. (or thin/slenderish Mecha).
Trees also make good tank traps, if you have rebels / low-tech combatants. See Finns in the Winter War.
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I agree that plants acting like traditional tank traps would be a pain for tanks, however it might be worth considering their impact on walkers a bit more. Plants like brambles can grow in very thick tangled messes quickly. You'll need some special, possibly unrealistic, reason why spacing between plant 'obstacles' can't just be decreased causing increased pressure on the Mechas thinner legs. Also Mechas have more extruding parts to get tangled compared to tanks. But what's possibly more important is whether these Mechas will have any advantage over a tanks which can fly for short distances, though I realise you might have some specific reason for not wanting machines to fly.
What about something like high up within the trees of a giant forest? Then your mecha can act something like a monkey swinging between the branches. You'll have the advantage over flying machines by being able to hang on to branches without expending fuel (or engine noise), whilst tanks won't be able to bridge the gaps between branches.
Basically you want rough/irregular terrain so that tanks can't pass, and enclosed space so that flying becomes either hazardous or not worthwhile. A tight network of caves might also work.
(Sorry for the naff English, very tired)
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Short, fat trees that grow in a checkerboard pattern and do not burn well. A walker can sidestep through them, a tank would have a major problem getting through them. Sure, you can blast but that would become very inefficient to go any distance that way.
As for how trees can do that, think of things like Aspens--that spread via roots.
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Like most people who answered, I think that a plant should be rather obstrusive to the tank. I doubt it's likely to actually destroy it. I got one idea I haven't seen here and it's also very far out there. Entirely fictional if you will.
Think of an overgrown Flytrap. It would snap around the tank and make it stuck. The crew would have to unman the vehicle and carefully clear the 'maw' of that flytrap with tools which is time consuming and leaves them rather vurnable. While a walker would also get stuck in such a plant, his weapon pods would be still free due to his size. He could use some sort of flamethrower to just burn the plant with as much as a few scorched marks on his armor. Skilled pilots could even use their still free, second leg to pry the maw open again.
One reason I haven't found so far. Traces! We were talking about movement the whole time. What about reconnaissance? A mech could maneuver through dense vegetation with crushing a small tree here and there. A tank would leave a very obvious lane where he went through. Considering they maybe got some leading vehicle with clearing equipment (like the bulldozer shield mentioned before) they would also have to move in a line. That kind of formation is very vulnerable to flanking and leaves less armored support vehicles wide exposed.
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In addition to the usual barrier type plants people are suggesting, I remember the army in the desert had problems with their tanks breaking down. Although they had filtering, the desert sand was so fine it was making its way through and clogging the air intake filters which quite quickly caused total tank failure as their engines stalled.
A plant that gave off a large cloud of pollen or other fine materiel as it was crushed or touched could do the same damage, especially if it was more sticky than desert dust. A tank covered in pink pollen could be quite a sight :)
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I am writing about a race that uses almost no animal products (nothing that kills the animal; dairy products, eggs, cast-off deer antlers, wool, and honey are fine, and the verdict is still out on fish products). I was wondering if there was anything they could use for drum heads besides animal skins? This is set in the late 13th century, so there's no chance of them using any of the synthetic materials we use nowadays. Also, it's in the Netherlands, if that helps with the materials (albeit in something of a different "part" of the Netherlands - imagine a gated community where the gates are magic instead of anything physical - so they have a few different flora and fauna to work with).
EDIT: I forgot to mention, metal is also entirely out of the question.
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Why not use the wood itself?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MQvXO.jpg)
Or [Cajons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caj%C3%B3n)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ykfTt.jpg)
There's any number of drum variations that don't use a skin as such - primitive ones are simply hollowed out logs.
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Canvas covered with boiled linseed oil. Basically you will have [oilcloth](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oilcloth), or (if slightly different process is used) thin sheet of linoleum, sans fillers. It has elasticity and thickness similar to leather, and is similarly airtight. Should work all right.
Still, ability to wet form leather or rawhide makes it superior material, so you need really solid reasons. On the other hand, you can apply oil to canvas already stretched on your drum, so this difference shouldn't be crucial.
Your people could even experiment with different canvas types (cotton, linen), different thickness, different ways to boil oil, giving them much more flexibility in drum creation than leather and rawhide does.
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Several come to mind:
## Paper
No, not the modern, short-fiber crap you get from the dollar store. You want the good stuff made of long fibers like flax or cotton. (basically what they use for making paper currency). It's really quite strong, and air-tight, and a few layers of it would make a decent drumhead.
## Cloth
Similar idea to the paper, but you'll have to add a sealer to make it air-tight. Said sealer needs to be flexible enough not to crack when it vibrates, but there are many options. Boiled linseed oil has already been mentioned. Asphalt would work (I'm not sure what there are for oil deposits in the Netherlands, but just about everywhere has some amount, even if it's not enough for modern industry to bother with) So would latex (there aren't any rubber trees in the Netherlands, but you don't need full rubber elasticity, just something close. Pine tar gets too brittle, but there's probably some plant species that would work.)
## Wood
The key to a good drum is for the strike surface to transfer energy efficiently to the air. As such, you want something large and light and resilient enough not to break as it vibrates or when struck. Wood tends to get you two of the three, which is better than nothing. If you want to get all three properties, you'll need to find a tree species that is straight-grained enough that it can be carefully shaved down to almost paper thin and still have continuous fibers from one side of the drum to the other. I'm not sure what there is in the Netherlands, but trade in exotic woods has been around a very long time.
## Glass
Cast glass is easy to break, but blown or spun glass aligns its structure in a way that makes it far more resilient, especially if a tempering step is added. The hard part about glass is that it's usually only resistant to being struck from particular directions, with strikes from other directions causing it to shatter. The fun part about glass is that you don't necessarily have to sound it by striking it; rubbing it with a wet hand will usually do. Imagine something big enough to have the frequency of a drum, sounded like you would a wine glass...
## Plastic
I know, you said, "no synthetics," and modern plastic is definitely out of the question. But humans have been making polymers of various types for a very long time. The reason leather gets hard enough to be armor when you boil it is because the natural oils in it turn into a form of plastic. The "seasoning" layer you create on a cast iron cooking pot or pan is (if you do it right anyway) a form of plastic. Linseed oil is famous for curing simply by sunlight exposure into a (very soft) plastic. All you really need is an oil (lighter is better but almost anything will do) a controllable heat source, and maybe a bit of acid. A naptha seep would do, as would a number of plant-based oils. Creating a drumhead would likely be a painstaking process of slowly layering and cooking the oil as precisely as possible. Undercook it and it'll stretch, overcook it and it'll crack or shatter, but I've made several interesting polymer compounds just playing with melting various types of tree sap over a camp fire. A culture that was dedicated to not using animal products would have an incentive to refine that process since lots of primitive waterproof containers depend at least partially on animal products and they need a substitute. The big question is whether their society is wealthy enough for anyone to have the time to make a drumhead this way. If they have no metal, then probably not unless their area is so lush they have no need to cultivate food crops or so temperate they have no need to make clothing or shelter.
## Stone
This is almost the same as glass, but you're relying on finding a drumhead and maybe shaping it a little rather than creating it from scratch. Certain types of stone, especially crystals like quartz, do have reasonable resonant characteristics. The hard part is finding a piece big enough to make a decent drum. It might be something they'd have to trade for with a more volcanically active area.
Just about everything else I can think of involves and animal product or metal in some way, or is an alternate method of construction for the materials I've already mentioned.
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How about glass? From <https://www.pinterest.com/afshepherd/musical-glass/>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/r6qL9.jpg)
Glass would, of course not be a stretched drumhead because it is not stretchy. Glass can be strong and you might be able to get up to some Kobe-style taiko drum action with big pieces. But even 11th century medieval tech could make small pieces. And: you can tune it.
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Natural latex rubber.
It's a bit hard to source in 13th century Holland. If your magical enclave has access to non-native plants then rubber trees are within the realm of possibility.
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I was thinking along the lines of springroll skins that have been modified to be more resilient when used in larger surfaces. When reading about it taking place in the Netherlands, though...
They're famous for their **dairy**.
When you boil milk, a skin forms on top. Dairy-experts like the Dutch can no doubt find a way to make that skin strong enough to be used for drum heads.
Alternatively they could have a specific kind of cheese rind, which could serve as drum head.
To give you an idea of the possibilities, you can read this article: <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2026645/Bulletproof-human-skin-spider-silk-goat-milk-developed-scientists.html>
The article talks about altering milk to contain silk spider protein. The milk can then be processed (like spinning it) into a skin that can potentially even be bulletproof. As an added bonus, it's a Dutch researcher who works on this.
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Gourds, after drying, have been used to make drums and rattles.
On this pretty Spring morning, here's a link for seeds: <https://shop.nativeseeds.org/collections/gourds>
I can imagine all sorts of witchy, mana-enhancing growing styles. The links to Jack-o-lanterns alone are pretty evocative. Consider the magical consequences of the difference between a hollowed-out 100-year-old log and a 4-month-old gourd.
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Komboucha Leather. A symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (scoby) grows on a food of sweetened tea. The scoby forms a thickly layered film at the top that is stretchy and dries hard like rawhide. Side effects: your people will all have healthy guts from drinking komboucha
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It's a bit of a hype that they can make fungus-based “leather” now:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBXGFOk5_Rs>
Allegedly, this stuff can be made with properties very like animal skin, so it should be feasible for drumheads. It's also said that it doesn't require any artificial chemicals (I'm a bit sceptical), so at least it's not completely absurd to see this in the 13th century.
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Following from Perkins's excellent answer:
# Clay
Many varieties of [udu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ44TcvX5Q4) or chambre drum can be made from clay.
# Bamboo
Bamboo can be made into [windchimes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvAzeLOq4sk), [xylophones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJGkRc2BKUU), [slit drums](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIYdDV7fDzw) and [tubula](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka4yL4O1i5I).
# Bones
Many kinds of instruments can be made from bone, and obviously your folk don't have to kill an animal in order to harvest them. Apart from whistles and flutes, they can make tuned [osteophones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buNcldm4NcQ) or untuned [windchimes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGpT7f-SZqA) or [rhythm bones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAZlkAS7vZA).
# Stalactites
We'll let Nature [speak for herself](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsKUUn29tSs). Obviously your people would need a cavernous chambre with good acoustics and, well, stalactites galore!
# Ice
If your folks like a bit of [winter wonder music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGB6nEFeQvI).
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[
*One of my more brilliant characters is taking a terraforming class and at one point, early in the story, she has to leave the action to take an exam. The question presented in that scene is listed below, and by authorial coincidence, she wil encounter such a solar system during a deep space survey. So I want her answer to make sense for my smarter readers.*
Please describe a solar system where the goldilocks zone planet(s) do not orbit a gas giant or sun. For purposes of this question, said solar system can be of manufactured origin as long as the resulting system is stable across astronomical time.
Could an arrangement of three or more proximal stars produce one or more points of balanced gravitation pull, each of which could hold a planet such that it would rest in a stationary position relative to all stars in the system?
If so, what would it be like?
* Would these stationary planets spin on their own axis or must they be tidally locked?
* Could these stationary planets have moons?
* Could their host suns have additional non-stationary, close-orbiting planets?
* Aside from occasionally blocking some sunlight, could the motions of those planets have any geological effects on the stationary planet?
What should she write?
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>
> Could an arrangement of three or more proximal stars produce one or more points of balanced gravitation pull, each of which could hold a planet such that it would rest in a stationary position relative to all stars in the system?
>
>
>
# Not exactly
It would be similar to [Lagrangian points](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point). L1, L2, L3 are totally unstable. But L4 and L5, unstable on their own, **can be "orbited"**. You can have a natural astronomical body orbiting totally empty point in space, created by gravity and rotation of two stars.
For three stars, [analysis gets funnier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem). Something remotely like L4 and L5 might be possible, but I can't imagine it being more stable.
For all your bullet points, answer is "yes, it is possible". Except it's not really plausible to have both geological effects and *not* knock such planet out of its weak stability.
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You won’t find an arrangement of 3 or more stars in a stable configuration to begin with, other than those having vastly different sizes so the little ones orbit the big one like planets, or a [*hierarchical binary*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_system#Hierarchical_systems) configuration.
A [*Klemperer rosette*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klemperer_rosette) could be engineered, though. These are still **not stable** and perturbations will eventually destroy it if not actively maintained.
But the rosette is probably the closest you’ll find: you get *multiple* small bodies (planets) alternating with stars!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m5yxO.png)
As for your secondary questions, any additional bodies will destabilize it immediately.
If you want more than one sun that stays put in the sky (or relative positions anyway) you could have a very massive star in the center, a tiny star orbiting it like a planet, and the plat at the L3 or L4 point. But I don’t think you could get the mass ratios of two stars high enough, and such giant stars are very short lived!
See [my earlier question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/21510/celestial-arrangement-for-the-cube-world) and references therein for more ideas.
If artificial, anything goes: a black hole or neutron star in the center that is engineered to produce light as a necro-star; tiny artificial suns orbiting the planet, etc. I’m looking at some combination of that in my cubeworld design.
---
See also [Sean Carroll’s blog post](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2006/07/23/n-bodies/) on *N Bodies*:
>
> I can’t help but show these lovely exact solutions to the gravitational N-body problem. …
>
>
>
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Actually, I think this is a non-sustainable situation. Given the law of gravity, the planet will be pulled in one direction or another by other orbiting bodies, if not the host star itself. Essentially, anything with a gravitational pull will affect it, and therefore will force it to move in one direction or another.
Should you find/create a situation in which there is a host star with no other celestial bodies orbiting it, you are still faced with the gravitational pull of the star itself.
In other words: it needs centrifugal force (from orbiting the host star) to counteract the gravitational pull of the star trying to swallow it.
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*(Warning: I am not a physicist, nor do I play one on TV). There could be mistakes here.*
If the stars around the planet have to be fixed as well (in some inertial frame), then the answer is no. **There are no stable equilibrium points in any stationary gravitational field**. The first paragraph of the Wikipedia page on the [Earnshaw's theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnshaw%27s_theorem#Explanation) contains a proof:
>
> Informally, the case of a point charge in an arbitrary static electric
> field is a simple consequence of Gauss's law. For a particle to be in
> a stable equilibrium, small perturbations ("pushes") on the particle
> in any direction should not break the equilibrium; the particle should
> "fall back" to its previous position. This means that the force field
> lines around the particle's equilibrium position should all point
> inwards, towards that position. If all of the surrounding field lines
> point towards the equilibrium point, then the divergence of the field
> at that point must be negative (i.e. that point acts as a sink).
> However, Gauss's Law says that the divergence of any possible electric
> force field is zero in free space. In mathematical notation, an
> electrical force F(r) deriving from a potential U(r) will always be
> divergenceless (satisfy Laplace's equation):
>
>
> ${\displaystyle \nabla \cdot \mathbf {F} =\nabla \cdot (-\nabla U)=-\nabla ^{2}U=0.} \nabla \cdot
> > \mathbf{F} = \nabla \cdot (-\nabla U) = -\nabla^2 U = 0.$
>
>
> Therefore, there are no local minima or maxima of the field potential
> in free space, only saddle points. A stable equilibrium of the
> particle cannot exist and there must be an instability in at least one
> direction.
>
>
>
The proof is stated for the electric field, but the same argument holds for the gravitational field (for which [Gauss's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%27s_law_for_gravity) holds).
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Disclaimer: So this is a bit more about answering what I think the intent of the question is rather than the actual question itself, because it violates some of the assumed facts of the scenario. (Specifically the assumption of a ‘solar system’ existing in the first place)
**A rogue planet flying through a nebula** could have the necessary ingredients to maintain a ‘goldilocks zone’ for quite a while. I’m not an astrophysicist so the probability of this situation is more than likely exceedingly low and might not actually be possible. According to <http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast122/lectures/lec22.html> (which has alot of info about nebulas) the temperature of nebulas range from 10k to millions of K, among several different ‘types’ of nebula; a happy area where the ambient temperature is correct could make a goldi-locks zone; enough but not too much energy comming in.
A strong magnetic field from the planet will be a necessity to keep the planetary gases from being too flooded by the possibly harmful nebular gases … or maybe it’s flying through a nebula of loose oxygen and nitrogen?
Nebulas can also be tens of parsecs in any given dimension, so if your rogue is going pretty slow it should have plenty of time in the area to develop life. Going as fast as we are will be a problem because (I believe) the SOL solar system will cross a parsec in about 50,000 years, (parsec 3.08\*10^16 meters vs 72,000 kph travel speed). Even with a hundred parsec nebula, at that speed you only have around 5 million years. Not enough for anything terribly complex to come about so it will have to travel slower then we’re used to.
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These conditions would not be present in our modern-day universe, but there was a time in the early universe when **the entire universe was a goldilocks zone.**
[This short paper](https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/habitable.pdf) from Dr. Loeb of Harvard University talks about how 10-17 million years after the Big Bang the leftover background radiation from the early, very hot universe would be at a temperature such that liquid water could exist *anywhere* that was not being heated by another source. Keep in mind that the universe is now 13.7 *billion* years old, so this period of a universal goldilocks zone occurred a long time ago in the (relatively) very early universe and for a relatively short period of time.
As the universe expands, the leftover background radiation from the early, very hot universe cools with time. This background radiation fills the whole universe and sets sort of a baseline temperature for the universe. Before 10 million years after the Big Bang, the background radiation would have heated things too much for liquid water to stay liquid, it would boil instead. After 17 million years after the Big Bang, the radiation had cooled to the point that it wouldn't keep things warmer than the freezing point of water any more.
Since then, the radiation has continued to cool and is what we now see as the cosmic microwave background.
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Well, massive bodies that are foundation of your system, are attraction centers of the system, and the equilibrium point in the middle will be unstable.
See this [plot](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot%20z%3D1%2F((x)%5E2%2B(y-1)%5E2)%2B1%2F((x-sqrt(3)%2F2)%5E2%2B(y%2B1%2F2)%5E2)%2B1%2F((x%2Bsqrt(3)%2F2)%5E2%2B(y%2B1%2F2)%5E2)) for example (it is the sum of three inversed square functions with different central positions, this is representative of gravity forces in system), the resulting shape might seem like almost a flat bowl in the middle, but it is actually curved. Once the body leaves the point (0,0) the gravitational pull will only be increasing in the direction of one of the attraction centers.
If additional planets are added in, they should be placed symmetrically as well, to balance each other's pull on the central planet. And then still, a neighboring solar system flying by at the edge of observable universe could bring doom on the system.
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But here goes the interesting part: the unstable equilibrium [can become stable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pendulum), when oscillations are considered.
In relation to a rotating system, we can explain the dynamic equilibrium as follows:
the force applied to body doesn't have to be exactly zero, it should average to zero over the time too small for the body to move significantly. I've been performing the calculations here to describe, at which speed the massive body should move around its orbit in order for smaller one to stay in place in the center of such orbit, with massive body being the Sun equivalent moving in a circle of 1 a.u. and the smaller one being the Earth.
I'd be ashamed to tell how much exactly time has passed before I've realized, that it's the same speed as the speed of the Earth orbiting the Sun in natural way, which is quite a feasible value which means dynamics doesn't prohibit that.
Indeed another massive partner (or several) will be needed to condition the circular movement of the star, a single one will suffice, placing the planet in the center of binary system. The presence of another light source will definitely require increasing the distance to allow the existence of goldilocks zone and not burning inferno in the center, but that'd be well in the range of feasibility. (Considering intensity being ~(1/r)^2 it will need sqrt(2)-times greater radius. Additional considerations will need to be made to account for a planet not having dark side which effectively doubles the heated surface, but I guess it's all within reasonable, we're just talking about Saturn-Sun distance and speed now (planet's mass irrelevant here).
In comparison with a single star, the presence of second star will actually increase the stability of central region since, its gravitational pull will be subtracted from the first one (while still not making it stable without the rotation as noted earlier).
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Thus, if you actually make a pair of stars go round each other on a safe distance, the region in the middle of them will be quite calm. Maybe for more than a single planet.
Analogy here could be stirring a tea, which has leaves in it. As you move spoon, you'll see that leaves fragments, while attracted by spoon movement, are accumulated in the middle of the cup. Get a bigger vessel, and you can see, what happens when there are two spoons, or if a spoon is in the middle.
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No. While you can create multi-star systems with stationary points in them where an object will not fall these are never stable.
Look at a planet sitting there. There will be tiny nudges over time (say, an impact by a dinosaur killer) and those will impart a velocity to the planet. For the planetary position to be stable that motion must somehow be stopped--and that needs someplace for the energy to go.
That energy goes into moving the planet vertically (I'm talking about the reduced-dimension drawings used to illustrate the warping of spacetime, I'm not talking about the north-south direction!) within the gravity well of its parent. For vertical movement to be possible the planet must be on a non-flat bit of spacetime—but if the spacetime is not flat then a stationary object will react by falling into the center of the nearest gravity well.
If you could somehow make a planet with negative gravity it would be happy to sit still in many multi-stellar configurations (as to such a planet the spacetime would curve in the opposite direction, turning any local peaks into valleys) but such a planet would throw off its atmosphere and inhabitants.
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If you have several stars, you can have *lots* of wacky trajectories - including orbits around empty spaces (where some interesting gravitational point is located).
Now, there's a problem with designing stable many-stars system, but there's a way to "solve" it:
### Controlled singularities (not black holes)
If civilisation you have at hand vastly exceeds ours at math, they could've solved something useful for n-body problem.
Usually our mathematical objects behave nicely - you ask them what would happen at time T and they answer. However, there are some problematic points where math is stretched too much or simply broken so you can not really predict what would happen after that point. Those problematic points are called singularities.
For example, if you had ideal rigid needle and ideal rigid billiard ball launched straight at it tip, little deviation in ball's position or direction may result in huge change of its trajectory after the collision.
Bad thing about n-body problem is that they have those.
Good thing about that is that you can exploit those singularities if they're not singularities for your plot-powered math. If one of system's suns is going to deviate too much and break everything, there *could* be some smaller deviation (like, planet's movement) that would be amplified to counteract sun trying to go off the leash.
On the other hand, it may happen that there does **not** exist smaller deviation to prevent some big deviation but your players would have **hard** time proving that, even if they try to.
Planet, in turn, can be nudged by something yet weaker - so that this nudge would be amplified at another "solved singularity". This nudge could be achieved through some atmospheric happening (which changes tidal picture a bit, which nudges the moon a bit, which nudges the planet a bit).
Atmospheric effects are ripe with similar stuff (singularities) too. The same means could be applied here to make everything work through weather control stations at several "balance" planets - uninhabitable planets that are mostly used for computing desired corrections and adjusting weather at specific points in a specific way to achieve that.
**Think of it as employing a butterfly and super-super-computer to tell it exactly where and when should it flap its wings to divert a typhoon from densely-populated area to somewhere of lesser significance.**
Of course, if those folks are *exceptionally* good they may be able to *design* planets with atmosphere that automatically reacts to changes in distances to suns with controlling nudges. However, that is harder and there would still be need for adjustments for stuff they didn't account for.
For example, there can be some rare-visiting comets, or some rogue celestial bodies. It's easier to spot those things from far away and account for them with total-wreck-preventing nudges, than secure a space where won't be any.
Also, for certain trajectories and/or masses of rogue celestial bodies it may be impossible to counteract effects of their passing, but that doesn't really make the system unstable.
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>
> Please describe a solar system where the goldilocks zone planet(s) do not orbit a gas giant or sun
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**There's 1 such system** and that's a binary star system, where the planet is placed between 2 stars and both stars are far enough from the planet to not burn its surface. The plausibility of such system is really low however, the stars would just suck all orbital debris that would allowed the formation of a planet.
I think that if stars are far enough, that planet could also have few satellites, regardi the tidal lock some expert could say that.
The answer to other answers is **no**.
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The key question here is: what is the definition of the goldilocks zone? Assuming the key is to maintain liquid water on a planet's surface, then there are many different parameters:
1. The amount of energy hitting the planet from stars
2. The thickness and composition of the planet's atmosphere
3. Other characteristics of the planet (mass, composition of solids, presence/absence of geological cycles, internal heat sources, etc.)
There is also the possibility of maintaining liquid water somewhere other than a planet's surface. For instance, several Solar System bodies are thought to have long-lived subsurface oceans: Europa, Ganymede, and Ceres are the most promising.
The phrase "goldilocks zone" makes the assumption that the only relevant quantity is the orbital distance to one or more stars. But there is no need to be so restrictive.
Here are a few examples of situations that answer the question:
1. A super-Europa with a rocky core and an ocean covered with a few miles-thick ice layer. Assuming an Earth-like abundance of lon-lived radionuclides such as Uranium, the ice layer acts as a thermal blanket to maintain the ocean in a liquid state. This planet can be free-floating in the galaxy, as it has no need for an external heat source.
2. An Earth with a thick hydrogen atmosphere (10-100 bars works). In this case the hydrogen atmosphere acts as the thermal blanket that maintains liquid water on the planet's surface.
These two worlds are not "Earth-like" but they do maintain liquid water. With these two worlds there is no "goldilocks zone" of required orbits, there is just a zone that is disallowed too close to any stars. Basically, it can't get too hot.
FYI, see these two links for details about worlds 1 and 2:
<http://aeon.co/magazine/science/can-life-exist-on-a-planet-without-a-star/>
<https://planetplanet.net/2015/06/04/real-life-sci-fi-world-8-the-free-floating-earth/>
3. A Jupiter-mass black hole orbits a Sun-like star in the classical habitable zone, with an Earth-like "moon" orbiting the black hole.
4. Earth orbiting a brown dwarf. Brown dwarfs don't burn hydrogen so they simply cool off in time. However, there is a set of orbits for which there is a billion-year window of goldilocks conditions (see here: <https://planetplanet.net/2014/10/09/real-life-sci-fi-world-4-earth-around-a-brown-dwarf/>)
5. A planet in the habitable zone of a white dwarf. I suppose it's semantics whether a white dwarf counts as a star or not.
6. It's a bit more speculative, but how about a planet that is free-floating within a star cluster that receives a pulse of energy every time it flies by some bright stars, then spends the next 10,000 years cooling off slowly. Whether this is viable would depend on the nature of the planet's atmosphere, how close it flies to what types of stars, etc. But not impossible.
To re-iterate my key point, the whole concept of the goldilocks zone is very limited. Earth itself -- with its current properties -- has at least 4 possible stable climates (see here: <https://planetplanet.net/2016/04/06/no-livable-planets-without-life/>). We are lucky to be in the goldilocks climate.
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They would be able to either be tidally locked **or** spinning on their own axis, depending when how long it's been stationary. If a planet was stationary it could not have a moon, having a moon would result in a binary orbit with each other, each orbiting around a common barycenter and neither stationary. A stationary planet would be little more than just a rogue planet what somehow lost its momentum, so it would lack a host star.
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Now this depends on the mass of the planet and the mass of the stars. The more mass an object has the more gravitational pull it has.
So if you want the sun and all the other planets to revolve around one planet, its mass would have to be greater than the stars mass.
Even then you would face a great danger in the early stages of this system. Some smaller planets would want to orbit the sun while also wanting to orbit the planet. Basically allot of planets crashing together and either combining mass or breaking off mass (kind of what scientists think happened to our moon).
Another important thing to take in mind is that if you did happen to gain enough mass to grow a gravitational pull greater than the Suns, that planet would become a sun. The more mass a planet has makes the gravity on the planet very high, creating lots of pressure. If we remember our 8th grade math course, we know pressure increases heat. In the end any atmosphere made of gas becomes plasma and the mass of the planet will slowly be eaten away and turned into more plasma.
For the planet to have gained this much mass it would have required lots of collisions. I do not believe a system revolving around a planet is possible. Sorry to say. Though you can theoretically have a three star system, however it will be extremely unstable.
I'll still answer the rest of your questions so you can have some ideas to write about:
1.potentially if we still go with the theory of which our new sun gained its mass from being impacted by other objects in space.
2.yes, but these moons would be slowly burned up over millions even billions of years.
3.as I mentioned earlier, they both could have their own non-stationary systems. Only problem is both would be causing hazards to the other.
4. I'm guessing if we pretend it's a habitual planet and not a death ball of molten matter and plasma, we could compare the effect of it to being like night and day, as well as effect some sort of tides.
I hope this has helped out some.
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What you probably want is [a binary planet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_planet).
The planets would orbit around their center of mass, which then in turn would orbit the sun within the Goldilocks zone. This should be stable and since the distance between planets would be comparatively small, both planets would be permanently in the Goldilocks zone and potentially habitable.
But please rewrite your question for the actual story, the combination of "in the Goldilocks zone" and "does not orbit a sun" annoys me for some reason.
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In some cases planets can bounce between the stars of a binary (see here for an animation: <https://vimeo.com/81872631> and here for an article about the phenomenon: <http://www.astronomynow.com/news/n1202/07exo/>). A bouncing planet would not orbit one star or another but rather could bounce back and forth between the two (at least for millions of years, although I'm not sure if it's sustainable for billions of years).
Here is an example trajectory of a planet bouncing between two stars.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rFO1o.jpg)
This setup does require some special conditions (e.g., several planets around one of the stars, and a binary star system with the right properties) but it is plausible. The planet would not be in a permanent goldilocks state but it could go in and out of a "habitable" setup.
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Imagine if by chance, a [Lightsaber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightsaber) was transferred using a time machine to the middle ages.
At first it was found by a peasant. The poor fellow didn't know what to do with it, so he sold it for a few coins to an artifact collector who was obsessed by cleaning and shining his artifacts. After three years, one time while the collector was busy shining the Lightsaber he accidentally activated it while pointing it to his heart; he died immediately.
The son of the collector found the Lightsaber next to his father's corpse and immediately knew that the artifact was diabolic, so he ran to the town's priest and told him about his discovery. The priest had equipped himself with some religious tools (a bible, a cross and some holy water) and went along with the son to the collector 's house. Scared from the laser coming out of the artifact, he told the son that this was indeed the devil's work, but in order to maintain his credibility he had to do something holy about it, so he put the cross on top of the Lightsaber and accidentally deactivated it.
Now, the priest suggested to purify this artifact with fire (bad idea), so the next day, he gathered the people in the town's center where he prepared a huge fire. He grabbed the Lightsaber with his hand and while walking towards the fire he tripped, and while falling he accidentally activated the Lightsaber and killed himself. Shocked by this unholy scene, the town's people ran away screaming, except for one clever fellow who happened to be an engineer.
Out of curiosity he wanted to investigate this artifact, so he grabbed the Lightsaber and inspected it carefully,. After hours of deep inspection, he concluded that this artifact was nothing but a sword of some kind he never saw before. Then he decided to test its might and was amazed by the power of this thing, so he decided to give it as a gift to the King for a position in the king's court. The king called his Lightsaber 'The Sword of Power', claiming that God wanted him to have it because he is the true king that shall rule this Earth, and so ballads have spread across the Earth praising the Sword of Power and his king, and the eyes of everyone have turned towards this kingdom, which brings me to my question :
What implications will this Lightsaber have during the Middle Ages on :
1 - Society.
2 - Warfare.
3 - Technology.
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There's the preliminary question: How long does the light saber continue working? How long do the batteries last? Or how long before something breaks or wears out and it needs to be repaired? If it's like a cell phone and the batteries die in a week, then it quickly becomes a useless metal artifact, and the people who said it emitted a blue light that killed people are thought to be gullible and superstitious, or particularly inept con men trying to pull a lame hoax. But assuming that it works long enough for many people to see it in operation ...
I'd say the real implications in all three categories would be: Very little. Let me take them out of order.
Technology: I'd guess probably zero impact. The technology is so far beyond what the people possess that they are unlikely to be able to learn anything from it. If you took some piece of advanced technology from today back in time 10 or 20 years and showed it to a talented engineer, it's likely he'd figure out how it worked and leapfrog the technology. Take it back 50 years and it would probably take a genius to figure it out. But take it back 200 years or more? I doubt even the greatest genius could figure out all the steps that would lead to that technology. I'm not sure how a light saber is supposed to work, but it's beyond us. Suppose you took a cell phone or a computer to the Middle Ages. They don't understand electricity. How could they possibly figure out what integrated circuit chips are? They'd just look like funny little boxes. Maybe, possibly, they could play with the battery and wires and jump start understanding of electricity.
Warfare: One light saber will not seriously change the power structure. Sure, the man who has it has a distinct advantage over opponents armed with swords and spears. But even one-on-one he's not invincible. If he faces someone much more skilled in melee combat, the guy with the primitive weapon might well duck and dodge the light saber and get in a killing thrust. Someone with a bow and arrows could take him out long before he's in range to use the light saber. Even assuming he uses it effectively, so in a battle he kills dozens or a hundred or more of the enemy. Good for him, he's a hero. In a close case, that might make the difference between victory and defeat. But if his army has 1,000 men and the enemy have 10,000 men, it's unlikely he can win the battle purely because of the power of the light saber.
Society: Here it gets very speculative. Maybe people would say, "Wow, here is technology far beyond anything we have. We must devote greater effort and resources to scientific research and engineering, so that we can eventually build things like this." In the most optimistic scenario, a few very intelligent people are inspired and go on to found some great movement.
Or maybe, as you suppose in your scene, they think it's magic or demons.
I think the most likely scenario is that it's put on a shelf and remembered as a curious oddity. Eventually it quits working and/or is lost in a fire or flood or war or whatever, and it becomes a legend. Many say the legend is a silly myth, some absolutely believe it. It then has the same sort of impact on society as legends we talk about have on us. Think of Atlantis, Bigfoot, King Arthur, the Holy Grail, etc. Whether these and similar stories are total fiction or absolute truth, I don't think they have any great influence on society. They inspire some people. Maybe you could trace some important events to belief in these stories. But it's not like people think of them every day and this changes what they do in some direct way.
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So, a king has a magical sword that makes him exceptionally powerful in combat. It's seen as a sign of his divine right to rule. Supporting him is a wise man who understands, to a certain degree at least, how the magic works.
Congratulations, you've just re-invented the Arthur mythos!
What would be the implications? Well, how did things turn out for King Arthur? He built up a great and powerful empire, but he spent so much time establishing and administering it that he neglected his wife, who ended up getting seduced by one of Arthur's strongest supporters, an act which, when it was discovered, ended up tearing the kingdom apart. He lived by the sword, and in the end died by the sword, or may as well have since he's not still around after that point. For all his prowess at being a warrior and a king, his much more basic failings as a man brought him down, and today, centuries later, most people consider his story a myth and openly doubt whether he and his marvelous sword ever actually existed in the first place. In the end, he and his sword accomplished nothing of lasting value except inspiring some really cool stories.
As much of a downer as it is, without the technology in place to reverse-engineer the lightsaber, some variation on the Arthur story is realistically the best that's likely to happen.
Even if he lives a full and fulfilling life and dies of old age, still in possession of the sword, what happens to it then? To own this weapon is to own a kingdom, either by virtue of the legend that goes with it making you be seen as the rightful ruler or, failing that, because having it makes you capable of conquering your way onto the throne. That makes it worth plotting, scheming, and killing for to a great many people, particularly if the king does not have a single clearly-defined heir who is ready and capable of stepping in at the time of the king's death. Can we say "succession wars"? (And even if that doesn't happen the first time, it will eventually, probably within a very few generations. If historical averages hold, that's a virtual certainty.)
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I am assuming an infinite self-recharging power supply on the basis that we never see a lightsabre run out of juice in the movies and hey why not it's already a magically advanced technology.
# 1 - Society
Will largely depend on how it is used and the story told around it.
Could go many ways. Any significantly beneficial use however is likely to be hard to keep quiet.
# 2 - Warfare
In melee it will be quickly irrelevant (irony of ironies).
It will be very intimidating at first but after the first few wielders are easily killed by better skilled melee fighters or ranged weapons it will lose its potency.
Once people realise how good it is at quick and clean amputations it will have a big impact in survival rates for field injuries.
Where it will really shine is against fortifications and similar enemy structural targets. Nothing except a moat will even slow it down. Your opponents castles are useless now whereas yours are still good. Just make sure never to lose it!
# 3 - Technology
I am assuming the lightsabers can only be disassembled by a force user or very advanced technology.
No one will have a hope of reverse engineering any aspect of it. However it may inspire increased interest in actual science.
It may be very useful as a standard power/light/etc source in experiments.
# 4 - Production
Its biggest long-term impact however may simply be as a production tool.
Imagine how fast you can quarry rock, fell trees, forge metal, dig tunnels through rock, mine ore compared to the normal methods?
A single person could level a wood in a day.(assuming some skill and risk obviously).
It can be put to these uses 24/7. It will likely be surrounded constantly by a small army to keep it safe from theft. Structures previously considered economically impractical suddenly become easy allowing fantastic tunnels, fortresses etc to be quickly constructed.
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**Open Warfare**
One skilled fencer would be devastating on the field of battle with a light saber. S/He could become a hero of legends. However, light sabers do not instil force powers. One cross bow bolt will still kill them. If someone disarms them, they are lost. A knife in the back still ends a life.
One singular unit could become significantly more effective in combat. However, if the unit is outnumbered, or out-manoeuvred one light saber will not save them.
In even battles this Kingdom shall do better. They are likely to grow and be successful (unless the light saber finds its way into the hands of a force adept swordsman).
**Technology**
None
**Society**
The "Sword of Power" would become a symbol much like Excalibur. Passed down as a symbol of the right to rule. It would instil both awe and envy. Wise rulers would draw even more followers. Foolish rulers would draw even more enemies.
**Guerilla Warfare**
One skilled swordsman with a light saber could take down 5-10 heavily armored warriors (speed difference due to armor. Leading small strikes against the enemy, you could inflict significant casualties with few losses of your own). Most of your unit fights defensively until you have a chance to slice through their armor.
**Economy**
Put the sword to work.
Mining, masonry, fortifications. You could quickly dig out amazing fortifications out of rock formations, above and below ground.
Once the fortifications are built, put it to work in your most valuable resource mine. I'm tempted to say you just made it 100 to 1000 times more productive.
Dig through mountains to make profitable trade routes.
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**Society** - the item might be seen as magic or having religious significance (as you touched on in your question). It may generate some excitement, and people may travel long distnaces just to get a glimpse of it.
However, a single "magic" object of unknown origin and implications probably won't have much lasting impact. It would be different if the object caused some fundamental assumption of society to be re-thought, but in your scenario, the light saber is simply a complete mystery.
**Warfare** - The impact in warfare will be quite limited, simply because there is only one.
In combat, the light saber is basically a glorified sword. It is better than any medieval sword by far, but that only gets you so much. Maybe whoever is wielding it could fight off two or three soldiers, but more than a few soldiers with conventional swords (or a few archers) could defeat one person with a light saber easily enough.
The ability to deflect projectiles would be of limited use, given the primitive projectiles at the time.
The most interesting ability would be the ability to cut through any surface. This may allow for quite an effective surprise attack, such as sneaking up to a castle and cutting through its walls at night. However, once this ability was discovered, it would be less useful.
The weakness is that you have to get right next to an object to cut through it. This can usually be prevented fairly easily. This also places the light saber at high risk of being captured by the enemy, and most likely whoever owns it will be risk-averse in this regard.
Overall, the saber might turn the tide of a couple battles through a surprise attack, but it is unlikely to be significant enough to make much of a difference in a sustained war.
**Technology** - Probably no difference. Medieval technology is not sophisticated enough to understand it. It might even harm progress, if resources are directed away from actual achievable goals to study it.
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I think his question is actually rather similar to [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12219/in-what-war-would-one-modern-military-vehicle-make-a-difference) one.
In the end a *single* lightsaber wont make much difference. Yes it will be great for morale boosting, and it will be hands down the most effective fighter on the field, but be able to beat armies. It wont be able to stop 1000 arrows flying towards it. The users wont have the force so they wont be able to sense that guy sneaking up behind them.
Ultimately if it was really used in combat it would probably change hands a lot. if it wasn't used in combat it would be basically like a relic of some saint (though would be the most awesome relic ever), used for morale boosting and such but no tangible effect on battle day.
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I think that the lightsaber would be subject of enough legends about the mysterious deaths of its owners to make every new owner more afraid of losing the artifact. This instilled fear makes the wearer increasingly paranoid of all around him. I think the end result is that the artifact is denounced as a tool for evil and must be destroyed, similar to the [One Ring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Ring) from Lord of the Rings.
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There's one other aspect not addressed so far (who would have guessed that for a question five hours old...): the need to recharge the thing after heavy use. It would seem that it is *canon* that light sabers do need recharging (see [here](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/8515/did-lightsabers-ever-run-out-of-power)), which is a feat I assume not that easily solved in medieval times and without proper understanding of the device itself. Luckily it is claimed that lightsabers use very little power only when switched on and *more when cutting through matter*. So putting it to productive use, e.g. *level a wood* as suggested by [John McNamara's answers](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/39582/401), might leave you with a nice and shiny artifact formerly known as a lightsaber in no time.
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All of the posts here seem to focus on the point that there is only one so that it would not have much bearing on warfare. Given examples over history where one particular fighter or tactic changed the course of a battle, one light sabre could change course of history.
Not to mention that many battles were settled by a fight of champions, troop morale was a vital factor. Most battles were never even fought, a parley would happen instead after lining up the armies in battle array.
Having a great warrior with mundane weapons were enough to cause terror in an enemy army and caused leaders to submit because they felt their troops would defect during battle.
Also take into account that leaders were afraid to do battle as even a battle won took a toll on the winning army. Eventually you run out of men.
So I do believe that seeing a truly magical, god-like weapon used by a skilled warrior in a moderately sized army would start a living legend and give the appearance of an undefeatable enemy.
Enemy military leaders, troops and civilians would likely become subjects and vassels of this unstoppable army.
A leader with such an army / champion could take over the world with little actual fighting.
Look into history from biblical times up to the most recent wars and you will find that psycological factors had a much greater impact than physical ones.
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Society: Criminals would try to replicate it; make it a strong or not strong weapon. They may trick peasants around the world at this age that it is real 'sword' (as they didn't have detectives or social networks back in the Middle Ages)
The legend would be told in stories about the original people who found it. People would wonder about the origin and if God may reveal in "centuries to come", it's purpose.
Warfare: Knights would envy or still love their King. New recruits would have the intentions of having the chance to claim the sword, see the sword often for the families or intend to destroy it.
Technology: Kingdoms and blacksmiths would do their upmost to replicate or figure out how to make another.
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Unlike other answers, I do believe that the lightsaber would make a big difference in battles.
Knights were the tanks of their time. They were trained since childhood, equipped with horses and armour that took the taxes of entire villages to pay for and were as close to invulnerable as you could get with medieval technology. It depends on the exact time period, of course, but before the invention of the longbow and the crossbow, there was no handheld ranged weapon that could kill a knight, except by extreme luck.
A fighter who can finish off a knight in one single blow, and can do that again and again, could easily cause a panic among the enemy ranks, turning the battle. Do not forget that morale and psychology are often more important in battles than weapons and armor.
Yes, in theory 100 men will always defeat 1 man by sheer numbers. In reality, however, if that one man can kill you and both the people to your left and right with a single swing - are you really going to rush him first?
Taking down the heavily armored knights with an ease that seems magical will have an effect on the battle that goes well beyond the purely mechanical.
The same goes for the other effects. The king already set the stage with the godly wish and the "sword of power" thing. You have here a genuinely magical artifact that no wisdom of the medieval world can even begin to explain. I would not underestimate the effect that it could have, provided someone plays his cards right.
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Say I've got a hero who's been summoned to another world. The inhabitants of this world have been expecting his arrival, and are armed with the knowledge that he won't speak their language. So the first thing they do is give it to him. Every method I've come up with for this has left me unsatisfied. Here's what I've run through:
Transfer of knowledge. Someone who knows the language, or knows how to teach the language, magically transfers that knowledge to the hero so that he instantaneously understands everything that's said. The issues I have with this are that "transfer of knowledge" being a magical skill seems too powerful. There aren't enough limitations, and adding a limitation like "oh, it only works for learning languages" is too contrived. In a world where this is possible, every child would learn all of the knowledge available in the world as soon as their brains are developed enough to contain that much information. I would prefer to keep a tighter rein on the limitations of my magical system.
One of the things I've considered to help with the limitations is that, since these particular natives have had prior knowledge of our hero's coming, they could have spent potentially years preparing a spell specifically for the learning of language. A sort of "welcome to our world" gift basket of magic. It still leaves me with my original problem, however, of the transfer being possible at all. Just because it's difficult or time-consuming to do this doesn't mean that every single person wouldn't take advantage of it.
Another thing I've considered is eliminating the learning of the native language entirely, and instead have the natives speak English. The most likely justification here would be that the hero is not the first person to have traveled here from Earth, and the previous visitor(s) brought the language with them. It would be reasonable to explain away that it was known or at least assumed the hero would come from the same world, so the welcoming committee learned English for this specific purpose.
I'm not fond of this execution, in large part because I don't want any other Earthlings in the story, and would only be incorporating it (at the moment) for this very specific purpose.
I've also thought about using telepathy instead of spoken language, and communicating using emotion and intention instead of words. This appeals to me in some ways, but I hit a big hurdle in my plans for deliberate misleading of characters. It's hard to lie when you're talking using your emotions.
Finally, I considered using a magical item to imbue the hero with the knowledge of the local language, like an amulet (or, I dunno, an enchanted hearing aid :P ). Once again, you run into the issue of the magic system having the ability to transfer knowledge. This time it is not into a person, which is better, but it is into an item, and that makes it almost as overpowered in my eyes. It adds the hurdle of altering the vision I have for my magic system, which currently uses the human body as a vessel for magic and potential energy stored in the body as fuel. For example, in the scene as it's currently written, a native of the world touches our hero and heals some minor injuries. I'm happy with that, since it's completely reasonable in my mind for someone to use their own energy to accelerate the healing process, and for this person to have the ability to channel that energy into another person. But in the same action, our hero learns the local language.
For the life of me, I cannot justify this without going outside of my comfort zone for the costs and limitations of the magic system as it currently exists.
So... Any ideas that anyone has would be much appreciated!
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Here a few idea's that might work:
* The caster of the spell loses the knowledge the hero gains. This spell is still quite powerful, but can't be 'abused' so much, especially when your population is growing in total.
* The spell works only on people from earth (or on summoned people). Alternatively it can only *translate* the language of the caster into any other language, meaning the hero doesn't actually learn the language.
* The spell allows one to learn a second language since it needs a mother tongue to translate to. (Similar to the first idea in forms of power/restrictions and the second one conceptually).
* 'The Bands of Mourning' by Brandon Sanderson has a very cool concept to deal with languages, that might work for you (with adaptation). (Mild spoiler warning):
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> In this world the [spiritual connection](http://coppermind.net/wiki/Connection) of people can be magically altered, so they speak the language of the area they are in. You could have a spell that similarly replaces (or translates) the language of your hero.
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**Gradual, but remotely, before he shows up.**
The natives are expecting him. Maybe they know where and who he is. They start remotely magically teaching him their language a year or more in advance. It is very puzzling for the hero, who finds himself thinking and then able to speak in words no-one understands. Maybe he even sees flashes of the teacher and where she is. He finds that he has the ability to sing in his new language. He worries he is going crazy.
You could work with this as one of his increasingly strange experiences before he actually shows up. It is still knowledge transfer but it is not faster than actually sitting in a room with him and teaching him the language: the magic is the remote aspect. The natives would still learn things the regular way because it is actually easier in person, without magic.
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Fantasy stories abound with unique magical objects that cannot be copied. Either because they were made in antiquity and the knowledge to make them was lost with the makers, or they were fashioned by something incredibly powerful but momentary, like during some exotic astrological conjunction in a hillcliff monastery from a combination of spells, meditation, woogabooga blood (sadly these beasts are now extinct), and a strangely warm and shiny metal gotten from a meteorite, etc. Or the Gods made them, no explanations required.
Anyway, one magical object with this property, or a single entity who can do it, would be the way to go.
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I suggest a magical binding: Call the local language Local, and the Hero language English. People on the world in need volunteer to learn English, and begin training. The one with the greatest aptitude and progress is chosen, and when the hero arrives, this person's mind is magically bound to that of the hero. It is a form of telepathy; in that what the hero hears in Local, this person translates to English; what the hero wishes to say, this person translates into Locla speech; controlling the vocal tract of the hero.
But privacy is maintained: The magical "interception points" are effectively just after the hero's eardrum converts the sound to electrical nerve impulse: that is "run through" the translator's mind and turned into an English signal instead. Then just as the hero's speech center is planning a vocal utterance: The English sounds that would be formed are transformed, by the translator, into Local speech. The magical "communication" between the hero and the translator is instantaneous and impossible to interrupt.
In other words, we want the magic to exactly mimic the states of knowledge as if the translator were physically at the side of the hero: He or she does not know what is in the Hero's mind, only what he actually said. *And vice versa,* if you want any intrigue about the translator intentionally *mistranslating* something to keep a dark secret from the hero.
It doesn't have to mimic the *timing* of them being side-by-side, but for dramatic purpose you could make this translation cause a slight delay in understanding or replies, noticeable by those that interact with the hero: But not much more than if a non-native speaker, new to the language, were working hard to internally translate Local to English and vice versa. You don't want this to get in the way of your story, and you can quickly move on to not mentioning it at all.
Also for dramatic (or comic) purpose, if you have the hero say something the translator doesn't *understand* in English, maybe it comes out verbatim, or as "uhhhhh..." or a squeak. The hero realizes it did not translate and has to try again in simpler English. (If you don't like that idea, write the hero smart enough to use only English the translator understands; recalling this translator was the best of hundreds that volunteered.)
This is an arduous task for the translator; they must be kept in silent isolation without interruption. They must be awake and alert every moment the Hero is awake (magically enforced). They would probably have to eat, wash and eliminate *while* the Hero sleeps. When it is over, they themselves are seen as heroic soldiers to their people, it is a major sacrifice of their entire social life and every waking moment for as long as the quest lasts.
Once the quest is done, the binding is ceremoniously and magically severed; last words and thank yous are said, medals awarded, etc while the Hero still understands.
Afterward, the Hero knows only as much of the language as he would have learned on his quest with the translator physically at his side. Likewise, the translator knows as much more English as if he were by the hero's side.
One more detail: The Hero talking to himself, even in a whisper, can inform the translator; but this is a **one-way** channel; the translator can inform those taking care of his needs of anything the hero heard or said: including the hero's own speech. The reverse may not work: The translator cannot cause the hero to speak in Local anything but what the hero *intended* to speak in English. If you really want a two-way channel; I have stipulated that the translator could **lie** to the Hero about what was heard: So if the hero gets somebody talking, say a vendor, the translator could make the hero hear something else instead of that speech: A message from those in charge.
I might keep that ability (to lie) a strategic secret, however, known to readers and the translator, but not the hero, because lies would be more effective if the hero did not know the translator is *capable* of substituting anything he wants for what was actual said, including lies. If you devise a situation in which it is absolutely necessary to blatantly reveal this to the hero, it can be a big surprise: It saves his life, but for the hero, upon reflection, a reveal that explains many inconsistencies that all make sense if the translator has been lying to him, say about some war crimes that were committed.
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You don't make the hero *learn* the language. You make the hero *understand* the language. The Hero can only *speak* English, but while under the effects of this spell, can understand their language, as though that person were speaking English. The Welcoming Party would also have this spell cast on them, allowing them to understand English.
While the spell lasts, they teach the hero their language. It can take as long as needed, and the Hero can still communicate with them, but both parties know the spell has a limited duration and is difficult enough to cast that it won't be done again.
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I suggest that an **"exam spell" to temporarily boost the ability of the brain to absorb *any* new information** would do the trick.
You have said that the magic of your world *"uses the human body as a vessel for magic and potential energy stored in the body as fuel."* That would allow for a spell akin to taking a drug that increases the speed at which the brain [lays down neural pathways](https://www.edutopia.org/neuroscience-brain-based-learning-neuroplasticity), and which is "paid for" in terms of intense exhaustion, or maybe even physical and mental damage if the spell is used for too long.
Combine this spell with a **non-magical intensive language course** conducted by the best teachers in the realm. As the answer by keiv.fly has said, given sufficient motivation people can learn languages surprisingly fast in real life. You don't say what has caused your hero to be summoned to another world, but I assume that the need for his presence and ability to function in that world is very urgent. If he is a reluctant hero, motivate him further by dire threats.
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There's a bunch of answers, but none touched on the possibility suggested in my comment so I'll add it in here:
The spell doesn't transfer or teach any new knowledge. Rather, it induces a sort of controlled synesthesia, in which the listener sees a vague image or other comprehension/gut feeling linked to the words the speaker is saying. As such:
1. It doesn't convey any specific advantage in "gaining knowledge" (though it may provide a more intuitive grasp of meaning)
2. Nothing prevents the speaker from lying
3. The capacity to "cause hallucinations" is fairly minor and wouldn't be broadly effective as a weapon.
4. It might have a cultural element, in which a person operates as a "dream weaver," artfully depicting tales in the minds-eye of the listeners
5. After a while of listening to the speaker, the hero begins to intuitively grasp the spoken word of the people.
6. Whether they can mimic it with speech is a different story, though perhaps this spell could be easily taught to them to communicate back with the natives.
7. This point ties well with the fact that this would be a rather common spell - something everyone would learn as a low level magic though most would not need to use later in adulthood unless, as stated above, it related to their specific role in the culture.
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Your hero can learn in a dream in a previous world. There are rumors that some people speak the language of angels when they are sleeping. You forget a lot of information that was in a dream, so teaching in a dream is slower.
Actually teaching the language is not that slow as many think. If you manage to deal with the stress and are only speaking a new language you can already be speaking English in 3 months (from zero to level B2).
Also increased interest in the language will significantly reduce the time to learn the language. Learning the language is about learning the words, grammar, and using both very fast to speak. And for learning you need time.
Another idea is that we transfer lots of knowledge with books. So a book could be sent to a hero. And he accidentally finds it and somehow knows that it is for him. Reading and learning the book by heart is boring, so we need a spell here.
So I would propose:
A hero finds a book and is under a spell to have interest in it. He then has sessions in his dream that correspond to chapters in the book. He looks his session in the book and writes down everything that he needs to remember on stickers. He puts stickers around his flat and like obsessed (another spell) repeats the words until he remembers them (movies Rain Man, Arrival). He feels mad being obsessed with the language. The feeling is getting stronger as people around him start thinking that he is mad. In a year he learns enough to speak and communicate, but still does not know lots of rare words (level B2). He is transferred to a new world and there continues to learn the language and adjust his pronunciation to the real one. I do not expect dreams to transfer exact sounds well. So after 3 months in the new world he already can speak fluently (level C2). Or you can increase the time before the new world from 1 year to 2 years. He will then know the language fluently.
I used the language level system A1 to C2. See this link: <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages>
I use the idea of Will that a hero could start learning the language before arriving in a new world.
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There are probably several ways you could go about this:
1. Make it so that the transferred knowledge can only be "placed on top" of the parts of the brain where other similar information already exists. i.e. Make it so that the information (language) transferred has to have some other language memory in the target to bind to. If you would like to nerf this even more, you could make it so that the using the spell would actually replace the main character's original language with the new world's. That way, you would have to lose something of similar value in order to gain new knowledge.
2. You can make it so that everybody has a little bit of mana and subconsciously imbue a little bit of magic into their words, allowing them to transmit the meaning of what they are saying. However, babies would still have to learn the language in order to frame their thoughts in an understandable manner so random grunts can't really count as a language unless its structured.
3. You can make it so that translation spells are extremely simple to cast and are common knowledge (similar to solution 2). i.e. if anybody puts a little bit of mana into their voice and focus their will into their words, then they can transmit their meaning. Then have the MC slowly learn the language later on.
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The language itself is magical. You can learn the language by learning only a single spell. You can both tell the truth or lie using it.
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> The issues I have with this are that "transfer of knowledge" being a magical skill seems too powerful. There aren't enough limitations, and adding a limitation like "oh, it only works for learning languages" is too contrived. In a world where this is possible, every child would learn all of the knowledge available in the world as soon as their brains are developed enough to contain that much information.
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Perhaps the transfer of knowledge has some serious negative and/or unpredictable consequences, such as:
* massive invasion of privacy (in either direction or both)
* the recipient starts to experience some strong emotions from the donor that (s)he's never had and doesn't know how to control (or vice versa)
* the knowledge itself eventually fades, leaving the recipient *thinking* (s)he knows something that (s)he actually doesn't (sort of like [Anton's blindness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%E2%80%93Babinski_syndrome), but for knowledge instead of vision)
Any of these could make the spell more trouble than it's worth, and potentially highly taboo. It's done with this summoned hero only because the need is so great, and because anyway he's "not one of us" and "won't be here long" so who cares if [negative consequence], and so on. You can have some characters who are opposed to this violation of taboo . . . and as other characters get to know the hero better and start to care about him, they may start to regret having violated the taboo on him.
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**The Spell Is Really Bad For Your Health**
This spell isn't used routinely because no parent is cruel enough to use it on their children.
The knowledge spell doesn't instantly give you natural memories. Instead it's a magical Siri in your brain, that zaps your brain cells to give you answers as you need them. It's annoying as heck, but worse than that, it's not gentle.
It gives the hero severe headaches every few days. She is given weekly healing spells to reverse the damage, but they aren't perfect; if the spell isn't switched off within a year the damage will build up and she'll be permanently injured.
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## Magical Translator
This could come in one or two forms. First, you have the option of the people creating a magical artifact that automatically translates everything he says and hears. If he were to lose said object it would also mean losing access to that language. Another option would be telepathy based translations, perhaps a travelling companion by means of physical contact (on the shoulder, etc) provides the same effect as the magical artifact I described.
Just one option of many, but certainly not over powered.
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It may help to consider a few real world examples of sudden language acquisition, for example:
The tower of Bable in the Bible - God confused the speech of the builders so they couldn't understand each other and scattered.
Receptive Aphasia - Individuals may speak in long sentences that have no meaning, add unnecessary words, and even create new "words"
Foreign Accent Syndrome - people become fluent in a second previously unknown language after a traumatic brain injury.
Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction and our own ability to suspend disbelief hangs us up. If you're worried about your readers not relating to the reasons you can always 'hang a Lantern on it', that is, have the character or someone else point out how absurd it is. That allows you to move the story along without making an issue of it.
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## The Summoned Hero is technically possessing an existing person.
Matter/Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, which makes travelling between universes thoroughly against the course of nature.
However knowledge can transfer fairly freely.
So the summoned hero isn't teleported from their realm to this one, they possess a sacrifice.
An individual from this realm who is part of whatever ritual or process brought the Hero in the first place.
The sacrifice's body is changed dramatically in the process, resembling the native form of the summoned hero, but it retains a lot of its original knowledge and muscle-memory. The Hero arrives with knowledge of their own language, but the vessel carries its own linguistic knowledge which the Hero can access.
For comparison, this is extremely similar to a demonic possession where the demon changes the sacrifice into a body resembling its native form, and can often draw upon the memories and abilities of the host/vessel.
The difference is that in this case the summoned person is another human, rather than a 9 foot demon with bat-wings.
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This country currently only has two languages in common use: Language A, spoken by 62% of the population, and language B, spoken by 38%. Both languages have official status in the country, so road signs, government documents, education, business, etc are conducted and printed in both languages. However, tensions have been increasing between the two groups that speak each language. Also, this is a developing country that does not have a large economy, as the global market is dominated by language C that is different from both of these.
To prevent a civil war between the two opposing sides AND modernize the country's economy, the government proposes a solution: it employs a team of highly specialized linguists to construct a hybrid language that incorporates vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and pronunciation from all three of these languages. This hybrid language, Language D, is acts as kind of a compromise between A and B, but is also close enough to C to be understood by a foreign speaker of C.
Language A and B were the same until 1000 years ago. Language C was the same as A and B until 1500 years ago. All three are written with the same alphabet.
With all of that in mind, I now ask you three questions:
1. Could language D actually be created?
2. How could the government enforce the use of language D? Through force (using the old language means death), semi-force (using the old languages in public, education, media, and business is banned; heavy fine if you disobey), or through passive force (official language is D, and it is used in government, business, and education, it is recommended that you learn language D)?
3. Would language D actually have the capability to prevent a civil war and modernize the economy?
**Edit:** This a fourth question I just added after reading a lot of the answers:
4. Would it just be better to use language C rather than create the hybrid language D?
Cheers!
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**Yeah... it is possible**
Those percentiles seems close to Norwegian [bokmål](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l) and Norwegian [nynorsk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk) at the beginning of the 20th century. It was for a long time a goal to try to unify those into one language, [samnorsk](http://www.britannica.com/topic/Samnorsk). That was eventually abandoned, and the two varieties are drifting apart. You could also consider Norwegian bokmål a hybrid language between Danish and Norwegian. That was more of a success, as it is the major language in Norway.
How much force that was used to try to merge the two languages is questionable, by Norwegian law they are treated equal. A different story is the attempt to force the native [Sami people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_people) to use Norwegian instead of their own language, by the means of for example banning Sami from schools. That pretty much succeeded, as the numbers of people with one of the Sami languages as their mother tongue is very low today. (I speak [Southern Sami](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Sami_language), that has a totall of about 600 native speakers.)
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**1. Could a language D actually be created.**
Yes. In fact it has already happened, as mentioned by [Hohmannfan](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/34439/9779). You can also refer to the [creation of modern Hebrew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_Hebrew_language).
**2. How could the government enforce the use of language D ?**
It has already been done in many places. One notable example is France. When the French Revolution occurred approximately half of the population of France (not counting colonies) did not speak French.
The strategy to impose French went as follows:
1. Make school free and mandatory for every child
2. Only teach in French
3. Invoke the nation : French is the language of France
4. Invoke modernity : French is language of modernity, the others are mainly relics of a medieval past (that was an idea of the XIX century, I think it sounds stupid nowadays)
5. Make the government only communicate in French
6. Impose military conscription where orders are only given in French (better learn if you want to survive)
7. Ban other languages for public use
8. Ban other languages from being taught
However it will result in resistance from the population, particularly if they do not agree with the central government more generally. The resistance of Brittany and its language to the French process is a notable example. Clandestine school for Breton language was a thing at some point (it is no more since the ban on other languages has been cancelled now in France).
The results are here. More or less all French are French native speakers and lots of other, once common, languages are now referred to as "patois" (in the sense "not really a true language"). One example is the Occitan language. However, the Breton language is a counter example since Bretons (at least Breton speakers) do not consider it to be a patois, as a result of the quite long tradition of defending the Breton culture against the French one.
**3. Would language D actually have the capability to (a) prevent a civil war and (b) modernize the economy?**
(a) No. If there is already tension between two cultural groups, which may lead to a civil war, it is the worst time possible to introduce something with which everybody will be unhappy (change). Moreover if the government already considers the two languages A and B as equal, and it is what you describe in your exposition, but there is still major tensions between each cultural groups, then it is definitively not a problem of language.
For these reasons, a new language will not help. Moreover, it takes decades, at beast one generation, to implement a new language into a population. It will not be done in time to prevent anything for the next fifty years or so.
(b) No. Make everyone learn C will definitively help, and that is why you learn English in more or less any school around the world (or at less in Europe). It helps introducing you on the global market, it helps tourism, etc.
But a new language does not give you much, except for "compatibility" inside the country. Which is not much, and can be achieved by teaching C.
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This is almost what happened in Israel 70 years ago.
The Jewish migrants spoke either Arabic, which derived from ancient Hebrew and used a new writing system compared to Hebrew, or Yiddish, which was a Germano-Jewish language deriving from German and ancient Hebrew with the Hebrew writing system.
This initial Mizrahim (Arabic descendants) and Ashkenazim (European descendants) division caused a fair bit of tension considering Arabic was recognized as an official language because of the locals and Yiddish was not.
Therefore a man called Eliezer Ben-Yehuda reconstructed the ancient Hebrew language and modernized it, for it to be used in both of the peoples' daily lives, while Arabic was kept official for the locals.
Note this pretty much happened before the creation of the Israeli state so the government wasn't very involved. But these days Israeli youth don't speak any Yiddish or Arabic (outside of school) so it's a successful experiment.
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I recommend that you take a look into Esperanto. It is a language that was an actual real-life attempt to create almost exactly what you are describing. It uses the Latin/Roman script popular to most of the Western European languages as well as English and utilizes a vocabulary similar to that of the Romantic and Germanic languages. It is said to be easier to learn than English and has actually been growing in popularity and usage for the past few decades. This answers the first part of your question.
<http://www.omniglot.com/writing/esperanto.htm>
For the second part, I think the best way for the government to try and institute a change would be through passive action. By simply making all communication with them use the new language, they are basically forcing you to learn it to some degree.
Unfortunately, in answer to your third question, as you will discover, it is very difficult to get people to give up their language as that is a very core and defining part of who we are. Even if the government demands it, you still end up with people simply adopting the new language as a secondary to their own. Short of taking a very aggressive approach and simply squashing all resistance, it is unlikely that real change will happen. History says that you will more likely experience revolution and resistance from the nation's citizens.
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The best way to do it would be option D, without force. In the 19th and 20th centuries the US took in nations worth of immigrants most of which spoke other languages. There was no official support, or opposition to this - and immigrants often had their own newspapers in cities where they were living. However, the children tended to learn English readily, and were bilingual. Grandchildren sometimes knew a smattering of the original tongue to speak to their grandparents, but in all other respects were English speakers.
This was the result of no edict or law, just the working out of the fact that being able to talk to everyone is easier than keeping your own language once you start mixing populations rather than living in isolated communities.
In fact, in your case you would be better off adopting C and not bother with langauge D. That way nobody can argue one side gets a better deal.
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Each of the answers above provides lots of helpful information about the question. However, no single answer answers the question completely. Therefore, I am collecting fragments of answers from everything above to provide a complete answer in one post.
1. Language D could actually be created; examples of this include samnorsk, a combination of Norwegian bokmål and Norwegian nynorsk. Another, more widespread example includes Esperanto, which is structurally similar to Eastern European languages. Esperanto is a constructed language that is completely artificial, and it has been growing in popularity in the last few decades.
2. Almost all of the answers above agree that passive action is the way to go. By simply using the new language in government, education, business, and every other aspect of our daily lives, people will be inclined to learn the new language.
3. Language D would actually rip the country apart. Most people would not solely learn language D, so language A and B would still be used in homes. Eventually, tensions will continue to escalate causing some sort of a civil war.
The entirety of this answer was taken from the information from the 5 (at time of writing) answers above. All I have done is assembled an answer with what I think is the most relevant information to the question. Overall, to solve all of these problems in an easier way,
"...you would be better off adopting C and not bother with langauge D. That way nobody can argue one side gets a better deal." - Oldcat
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## Nope.
People's language correlates quite heavily with their cultural identity.
It might be possible for the majority speakers to ***force*** the minority to convert, but for everyone to put aside their own cultural identity and adopt a new, third option? Never. Especially since, as you've said, tensions between the two groups are mounting.
**It Doesn't Work Well**
Look at countries such as Canada, where there are 2 official languages, however most people only speak one of the other.
I had a high school teacher ask me ***why*** I'm taking French classes. I replied that I wanted to know French, because it's our national language. She thought it was a complete waste of time.
Furthermore, while in Ontario you'll find signs in both English & French, in Quebec you'll be hard pressed to see English signage. Discrimination is alive and well.
**Forcing One Language Over The Other**
What the government would have to do is make sure that only people from a certain cultural background get into key positions. Then they can ban the second, less popular, language from schools, remove the signs, etc.
The people who are currently adults will never forget their language, but fewer and fewer children would be learning it, and even if they speak it at home, they won't speak it as much / learn it as well.
In a generation or two that second language will have been extinguished.
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Short answer - Yes.
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First, look at America. The government is always trying to make people convert to the metric system, but it never happens. Because people are resistant to change, especially when it doesn't provide much benefit to their daily lives. Scientists use metric, because of the base 10 system, but people don't want to go from two feet to three quarters of a meter or 75 centimeters. So you have two classes of people, one larger, that use different measuring systems.
Now look at Spain. They have their different dialects, such as Catalan, and then they have regular Spanish as the national language. So you would have their different languages, and then one national language that is similar.
Note - Not sure how accurate I was with the Spain part, because I don't know what their languages are like.
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It would probably be feasible for some linguists who know what they are doing to create language D. Government enforcement, however, would be very difficult. They can't go into people's homes and make them stop, and likely a large amount of people would protest. However, publicly, these other languages could be made minimal. That is, if the government enforced it.
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At much lower stakes, look at the German language. There are German speakers in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and a couple of surrounding nations.
* The German education departments decided to standardize on [one dictionary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duden) with occasional updates *for purposes of teaching and grading exams*. Using non-standard spelling or grammar looks like a mistake, and nobody wants to look stupid.
* Decades later, the education departments of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein agreed on a [reform](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography_reform_of_1996#Institution_of_the_reform). There was an outcry by traditionalists, but people who stuck to the old rules were mocked as [backward](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe).
There is no law which prohibits the use of old or non-standard spelling. It simply isn't done unless one wants to make a point.
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Here in Belarus we have kinda situation.
Belarusian - dying B language. On my personal estimate around 1% speaks belarusian. Around 10% knows it rather good, maybe 20% could speak it.
Russian - growing A language, 99% speaks it.
So setting dominating language works - make all laws, education, work, communication in russian and, no doubt, people will start learn the language, and it will gradually shift.
Language D can be created, something like Interslavic language, but no one will benefit from this monster of a language.
] |
[Question]
[
In the scene of one of my stories, an airship gets hit by a violent storm. Apart from exploding (which isn't helpful to the main character), what other things could go wrong that would be fixable?
Most of the examples I can find online of airship problems almost always resulted in total disaster. Some thoughts I have are: fixing a rudder, hull damage that could be patched, or some other result of high turbulence or lightning. Perhaps a fire? This is an American airship, so it's using helium and isn't subject to igniting like the hydrogen airships.
[Answer]
* The outer skin of a zeppelin could start to rip. Someone would have to go on top to [sew it up and stop the rip](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/1y984i/maintenance_crewmen_repairing_the_graf_zeppelin/).
* Internally, [bracing struts](https://www.gettyimages.ae/detail/news-photo/polar-flight-of-the-lz-127-graf-zeppelin-in-the-walkway-of-news-photo/548817949) might snap and need to be replaced.
* Many airships had engine pods which were *designed* for [in-flight maintenance](https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2016/07/a-zeppelin-engine-pod-photo-ive-never.html?m=1).
* Malfunctions might make it necessary to go to the ballast tanks and manually release them. (First image on [this](https://www.airships.net/lz127-graf-zeppelin/graf-zeppelin-design-technology/) page).
[Answer]
A failure that's quite likely in a violent storm is damage to fins, rudders, or elevators. Presuming these are built similarly to what they were on the Zeppelins of the 1900-1940 era, turbulence could snap rudder cable, tear off guy attachments, fracture and buckle ribs or spars, even tear fabric covering.
None of these present a great danger of an immediate crash, just extra drama trying to control pitch by shifting fuel and water ballast, or steer with differential thrust (throttle up starboard engines, idle port side, to turn slowly to port). Even better, all are repairable without landing, at least to the extend of jury rigging something to restore limited control until the ship can land in a safe place.
[Answer]
First, read: [Airship R505](http://airships.paulgazis.com/)
Here are some of the things that can go wrong:
* Damaged engines
* Damaged propellers
* Leaking fuel
* Damaged fuel lines
* Leaking gas
* Low gas and low ballast from maneuvers during the storm
* Ripped gas bags
* Damaged skin of the airship
* Damaged control surfaces of the airship
* Damaged cables going to said control surfaces
* Damaged structural members (beams, supports)
* Loss of the gondola
[Answer]
The engine could break down. If your engine is a steam engine this could be anything from the fire going out to the boiler rupturing/exploding.
Also if the propellers are driven by chains (or similar) they might break. That might require someone to go outside to affix a new chain.
[Answer]
Loss of structural integrity in the inner truss system:
The USS Macon, a rigid airship of the US Navy, was badly damaged while transiting through mountains of Arizona. Among other failures, mechanical failures of the rigid truss structure were repaired in flight:
>
> Following a severe drop, a diagonal girder in ring 17.5, which supported the forward fin attachment points, failed. Rapid damage control by Chief Boatswain's Mate Robert Davis repaired the girders before further failures could occur. The Macon completed the journey safely but the buckled ring and all four tailfins were judged to be in need of strengthening. ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Macon_(ZRS-5)#1934))
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The failure of the Navy to heed advice and have design flaws mitigated lead to the crash of the airship Macon on February 12, 1935.
[Answer]
**Air Balloons**
A zeppellin made of multiple tiny air balloons (with a bigger protection on top) might be more resistant to any event (bullets for instance, or a lightning/hailstorm in your case), because only a few ones will pop.
However, after an accident, the crew will have to repair/use new ones, and inflate them, then replace them.
[Answer]
**Crew is incapacitated or dead.**
New technology was installed in the control cabin. It was not appreciated that this new tech effectively bypassed the built-in lightning protection on the airship, allowing a channel for lightning to traverse the airship that took the charge right through the control cabin.
After the strike, the airship is fine but many crew members who were in the control cabin are dead from side splash charge and others badly hurt. The new tech is beyond repair but the airship is otherwise ok. Your protagonist can save one or two crew members s(he) finds in the control cabin, and then must pilot the ship.
[Answer]
The book "Slide Rule" by Neville Shute documents exactly this happening to the R100 after it flew into a storm over the St. Lawrence river. They had crew members walk out on top of the ship and patch the damage while in flight.
[Answer]
Volcanic ash can potentially a violent storm, and has the potential to damage/stall the engines
This is also what happened with [British Airways Flight 9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9), where the airplane entered a volcanic cloud in the night, despite seeing nothing on their weather radar. After a while, the ash melted inside the engines, stalling them.
They eventually recovered their engines by flying low enough (and the usual turbulence shaking the solidified ash away), and repeated attempts of restarting, but 1 engine caught fire, so it had to be shut down again.
With a bit of creativity, this fits your definition of "repairable failure", as to repair the damage, they basically need to shutdown their engines (if they didn't stall already),
decent below the ash cloud and "shake the engines up" to remove the ash (or make them fly though an patch of turbulent air)
[Answer]
Here's a proposition for a different sort of air ship:
Consider an airship that had a skin of foamed glass (density 10 lbs/cubic foot) Foamed glass is a pretty good insulator. Now generate your lift by controlling the temperature of the air.
This gives rise to a new failure mode -- lost of heater.
Note that if you have a craft propelled by internal combustion engines, the waste heat from the engine may be sufficient to provide lift.
Note that you need temperatures of about 270 C to get about the same lift as natural gas at the same temp and pressure.
] |
[Question]
[
In my writing, a guy wrote a politically acrimonious pamphlet (basically the summary of the communist manifesto) and disseminated its copies secretly.
The guy just so happen to be a very vain person and so, even though he knows that if the authority ever finds out that he had written the things, he would be punished, he still wants to somehow make it possible to prove to the public that he had written the pamphlet if he wanted to.
My idea right now is to include a block of text at the end of the pamphlet like this:
>
> 111001111011100000
>
> 100101001010010000
>
> 111001001011100000
>
> 100101001010010000
>
> 111101111011110000
>
>
>
Where if you use ctrl+f and search for "1", you will see the above spelling out "BOB". However, not only is this not very space-efficient, it is also not very secretive. I want to make it so that only Bob the author can come forth and say "If you look for the letters in 'abduction', and draw lines connecting them in the reverse order, you will see it spelling out my initials and birthday."
Any bright ideas?
[Answer]
## Use a one-way function
This is a type of mathematical function which is relatively straightforward and easy to calculate. But if you're given only the result, it's almost impossible to figure out what input led to it. Also known as a "trapdoor", since going through it one way is easy and the other way is difficult.
One example is multiplying primes. Multiplying two large prime numbers is straightforward, and a computer can do it in an instant. But figuring out which primes were multiplied to make a certain result is almost impossible; the best known methods boil down to "try a lot of primes until you find the right ones".
A certain type of one-way function is a "cryptographic hash". This reduces an arbitrary amount of text to a very large number, such that any change to the text changes the number. For good hashes, such as SHA, finding a text which produces a given hash takes an infeasibly large amount of time.
So he could pick a strong hashing algorithm, one unlikely to be broken in the next few years, and calculate the hashes of "BOB WROTE THIS", "bob wrote this", and "Bob Wrote This ABCDE". Then include those very large numbers at the end of his manifesto. (He doesn't need to mention that they're hashes, or what algorithm was used, or anything about it, just include them.)
If he later wants to claim authorship, he can point out that hashing "BOB WROTE THIS", "bob wrote this", and "Bob Wrote This ABCDE" produces the numbers in his manifesto. The odds of this being a coincidence are astronomically low.
If the NSA wanted to break the hashes, brute force would most likely find them only a random string of letters which hashed to the same result.
And if someone else wanted to claim credit, even if they managed to come up with some text like "PhIL wAS\_HERE KUGDSJHGF" which happened to match Bob's first hash, Bob's evidence (matching all three) would be far more convincing.
This is actually implemented on Wikipedia accounts and they have [a whole page on how to do it right](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-05-14/Committed_identity).
[Answer]
The tech you're looking for is [Digital Signing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature). You use public/private key encryption. With this kind of encryption, anything encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted with the private key. You can only decrypt with one and encrypt with the other.
You take the document and encrypt it with your private key. Then you attach the encrypted version to the end of the document. Both are disseminated together. The earliest copies anyone can find online all have the same signature. You also attach the public key.
Anyone can prove that the signature is valid because they can use the public key to decrypt the block of text and prove that it really is the rest of the document. But no one else can *create* that signature.
Later, when you want to prove you are the author, you disclose that you and you alone have the private key that is capable of creating the signature. TADA! They know you wrote the document.
**There are other schemes,** with various levels of ease of implementation and security. I present this one here just as the easiest to understand as a starting point.
[Answer]
**Introducing deliberate and intentional spelling errors to the text**
This is a practice I have learned from my business & economics professor. The practice is related to business proposals that are sent to potential funders for an idea/business/project.
In order to prove that someone else released and unauthorized copy of your work, you can introduce deliberate errors to spelling and grammar. When stumbling upon a copy of your work or some work that uses your ideas and work it is easy to find out who leaked the information and get back to them.
*How can we use this?*:
1. Using this technique your author could introduce a set of errors, typos, etc. to the version of their work they plan to publish.
2. Before publishing the critical manifesto they can place another document in the public domain, authored in their real name, which in turn could contain material totally unrelated to the manifesto, but with the same written errors & mistakes.
3. Whenever they want to claim authorship they can point to this correlation which is quite unlikely to be a mere coincidence.
This technique would allow to claim ownership without previously pointing to attempts to do so.
[Answer]
SRM's answer is correct: digital signing is what you're looking for. It's single goal is to do exactly what you are asking for.
However, traditional signing only goes so far. It only proves that you chose to sign a document, it doesn't stop others from signing it too. Its entirely possible to take a signed document, strip the signature, and apply your own signature.
In most cases, this is unimportant, because the purpose of the signature is to hold the signatory to something. However, this is a bit different. The author wants to be able to *prove* not only that he signed it, but that he originated it. Consider the case of a malicious government that wants to erase Bob's name. Rather than trying to unsign Bob's signature from the document, they generate dozens of fake signatures. They spread documents that suggest Alice signed the document, or Carol signed the document, or Dave, or Eve. All of them with forged timestamps to confuse the question of who released the document first. Bob's name could get lost on the mud, squelching his message in a pile of fake owners of the document.
*There's two ways to control information. One is to prevent information from getting out. The other is to drown the information in a sufficient volume of fake information as to hide it from anyone who is looking.*
There is a recognized approach to solve this, which involves a "trusted third party." The traditional third party is a newspaper, but any widely disseminated source of information will do.
First Bob writes his paper. He then calculates a cryptographic hash of the paper. This is a "mostly unique" fingerprint for his document. It is astronomically unlikely that two documents will "collide" and have the same fingerprint, and the algorithms are designed to also make it hard to maliciously make two documents collide. We have many in use today, SHA-3 being the most recent major algorithm.
Bob then writes up a claim. He writes `I am the originator of the manifesto whose SHA-3 hash is f4202e3c5852f9182a0430fd8144f0a74b95e7417ecae17db0f8cfeed0e3e66e.` He then digitally signs this claim using the digital signature approaches SRM talked about.
Now for the nifty part. Bob then takes out a classified ad in a few major newspapers. Such an ad is cheap and easy. The add contains nothing but his claim `I am the originator...` and the digital signature for that claim. After submitting these, Bob waits. Usually one day is enough. All that matters is that the message is properly disseminated into print. After this, Bob can send out his manifesto. The manifesto itself can be signed or unsigned, it doesn't really matter. Just the message put in the classifieds actually needs to be signed.
Once the government sees this message, they want to squelch his name, so they want to re-sign this paper with as many people's names as possible. However, Bob can now point to the classified and say "this is the oldest record of anyone claiming to be an originator of this document, and I hold the private key it was signed with." His claim is now special because anyone can go find a copy of the paper on the date Bob says to look in, find the classified ad, compute the SHA-3 hash of the document, make sure it matches the claim in the ad, and then check his signature. The government can release any number of similar classifieds, but all of them will be dated *after* Bob's claim. To date it before Bob's claim would require the government to go find every single copy of the newspaper and replace it with their own (very 1984esque).
The key to this approach is that the signed affadavit in the classified comes out *before* the document is released. Thus, there's no opportunity for the government to create their own fake claims. The best non-1984 solution would be for them to intercept the request for a classified ad, and quickly replace it with their own ad. However, if they do this, Bob reads the paper when it comes out the next day, finds out that his ad has been replaced and doesn't release his manifesto. Instead, he simply changes something minor in the manifesto, re-hashes it, and tries again. Eventually the government will fail to intercept his work, and then he can safely release the document.
[Answer]
**Write manifesto in specific way**
>
> Problem with this society is that young do not listen.
>
>
> Later the young will get to the power
>
>
> Easy solution is none.
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>
> Although, I can offer one.
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>
> Solution? Dare I say?
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> Enormous effort was put to this manifesto.
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> Having plan to change this society, I am writing these lines.
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>
> Economy is struggling and we need to do something.
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>
> Love is waining and marriage is crumbling.
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>
> People need a change
>
>
>
Now read first letter of each sentence. This method is called [steganography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography) and only Bob can show that there is other message hidden in the manifesto.
Well, obviously, the manifesto must be written in certain way and also the message cannot be easy to find (like mine)
[Answer]
Certainly the easiest way this could be achieved, and be authenticated with confidence is printing the hash of a password selected by your author inside the text somewhere. For example, if your guy chose the phrase "itwasreallyme", and hashed it using the SHA-265 algorithm, he would print
>
> c82d72f2befe046245287e2a9f797e31706a518a65eaf27b7e86759079ff07d3
>
>
>
somewhere in the book. When he wished to authenticate that he was indeed the author, he simply regenerates the hash from his password, which matches the one in the text. Of course, this relies on him keeping his phrase secret!
[Answer]
Does Bitcoin (or equivalent) exist in your world?
If so:
(1) Write your manifesto.
(2) Mask it (append a random string), sign it (digitally), and hash the result.
(3) Embed the hash into the blockchain.
(4) Wait several hours until it is confirmed deeply enough.
(5) Publish the manifesto, the masking string, and the signature, include a link to the transaction with the hash.
(6) Keep the private key, if you need to publish anything (or state your opinion on an issue) in the future, sign it with the same key and do the same blockchain trick again.
It would cost a small amount of Bitcoin each time.
[Answer]
Encrypt a message about who wrote it in a substitution cypher. Each letter gets replaced by a different one as a random shuffle. You can then reveal the key to prove authorship. If the message is too short <10 letters, then someone could find another key that decrypted the message to a different piece of meaningful text. If it was too long, 100's of letters, then people could crack it. A shuffling of 26 letters has as much randomness as 18.8 random letters because you have fewer options left that haven't been used yet in the shuffle.
eg
```
VUHTVQPZMKHTXMDKOZKHTHMWDPZPZTWQZWVQZZTRQ
```
Key
```
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
TOIMQNRDPJAXVHKBLSZWGFEYUC
```
So with the key message
```
mynameisdonaldhobsonandthisisatestmessage
```
is easily deduced. But only with the key. Keep the key secrete and his identity remains hidden.
] |
[Question]
[
There have been questions asking if rhino, hippo and other similar kinds of cavalry are feasible.
Now let's for a moment skip that and assume we have some special means, on the end of which, we get rhinos that behave almost war horse-like.
I'm asking this question for worldbuilding reasons, as I'm trying to discover standard strategies for my fantasy army.
How horribly is medieval or ancient army standing on the other side of field sc\*\*\*ed by rhino cavalry charging, provided they somehow manage not to disperse in terror and hold a traditional spear or pike defencive formation?
[Answer]
The charge itself? Terrifying. The amount of food needed to feed them, the amount of care and training would be too high for any reasonable state to use them for a long time.
So if you read actual historical campaigns you will find that rarity of fodder is a huge issue and supporting even horses, big or small, was a huge issue.
Sometimes you will slaughter the horses to eat them because you don't have food.
Sometimes you will feed them and let your own soldiers almost starve to death.
Anyway war is won by logistics as much as pitched battles.
If you need 10x more food to support an animal then the enemy can get 10x more animals to attack you with.
But anyway you also need to consider a crap ton of other elements before you start replacing horses as cavalry.
Are they comfortable to ride for long time?
Most of any war is basically marching and marching.
Are they maneuverable enough?
Do they tire as quickly?
This is a big point.
A Cheetah runs way faster than a camel.
But guess who wins in the long term?
Can you replenish them with any reasonable speed?
Or are they a one usage wonder.
Can they serve other function like actual cavalry. Like mounted archers, or can they scout...etc.
And the last thing is that are they cost effective?
This point is basically why 99% of technology and super duper equipment is never used for actual military usage.
I won't get into into many example but I'll just write the following:
War elephants. They were awesome and fearsome. But guess what. They tended to be another tool at a general's disposal not an absolute game changer.
Once faced with them you can plan and counter them.
Thus they turn out to be no more different than Cataphracts or fully armored medieval knights or chariots or full plated knights or mounted archers or even gunpowder and cannons.
Having a bunch of elephants used correctly can win you the battle.
But so is having a bunch of cavalry, or starving your foe to death...etc
Actual warfare tend to be boring affairs with planning and marching and fighting like one battle every now and then with a surprising low number of casualties.
Now don't let that discourage you. Far be it for me to even suggest it.
All I'm saying is that the pure idea of strong=good is **never** a military thing.
So with that in mind you can solve most of those problems.
Maybe they are trained and bred to solve most of those problem.
They also got a particular logistics branch of the army that just handles them.
Like trainers and grooms and transportation and usage.
Heck. The story can revolve around just that!
Obviously enemy commander can try to exploit your weakness. But that just same old military tactics.
So perhaps your Rhinos are a bit different.
Maybe your state is really into them because it's a tradition **and** they are useful.
And on that note please understand that most warrior cultures were extremely practical otherwise they don't tend to stick around.
Anyway solve the underlying reasons why they are not used and use them if you want.
[Answer]
So, putting myself in the opposing army's shoes here:
The first battle is probably a rout - You've found a new weapon, no-one knows how to deal with them, the Rhino charge wins hands down.
The second battle, being a sneaky medieval commander, I show up prepared. Rhinos have soft feet, so I get my smiths making hundreds of caltrops\* to scatter. I cut longer pikes, and dig indentations so the shafts can be braced into the ground. I have my bowmen carry sharpened stakes, and knock them into the ground facing forwards. I try and find boggy and marshy ground, and try and persuade you to attack me there. As I'm not the one feeding muti-tonne animals, I can probably afford to wait around there.
If we have a tradition of horse archery, I send out horse archers - the Rhinos are slower, with lower stamina. We lure them across the battlefield, and every now and then one of them goes beserk.
Without horse archers, I get my cavalry to feint - pretend to charge, and then withdraw. With any luck, the rhinos will chase them, with their riders unable to control them, and I can lure them across the battlefield until they're too tired to stand, and then deal with their riders with lances. This works even better if my cavalry have a few javelins to pelt them with.
Light siege weapons would work very well here - a ballista has very good range, and just a few crazed rhinos running back through the opponent's lines might make them question using them in future
They'd also be hit hard by the standard medieval tactic of retreating, and burning all the crops, forage etc you can find along the way.
In short, they're a terrifying weapon, but easy to counter if you base your entire strategy on them.
\*A quote from Vegetius, writer of Epitoma rei militaris:
>
> The armed chariots used in war by Antiochus and Mithridates at first terrified the Romans, but they afterwards made a jest of them. As a chariot of this sort does not always meet with plain and level ground, the least obstruction stops it. And if one of the horses be either killed or wounded, it falls into the enemy's hands. The Roman soldiers rendered them useless... they strewed the field of battle with caltrops, and the horses that drew the chariots, running full speed on them, were infallibly destroyed. A caltrop is a device composed of four spikes or points arranged so that in whatever manner it is thrown on the ground, it rests on three and presents the fourth upright.
>
>
>
[Answer]
Rhinoceroses are about twice as heavy as horses. If the hypothetical rhinoceroses used as cavalry mounts truely *"behave almost war horse-like"* as the question states, then standard tactics developed against horse-riding heavy cavalry will work with minimal adaptations against rhinoceros-riding heavier cavalry. They just need sturdier pikes.
Pike formations work against cavalry charges because horses *will not* charge a wall of pikes. Hence the importance of deciding how much do those rhinoceroses behave like horses.
On the other hand, if the rhinoceroses *don't* behave like horses and instead keep their typical rhino berserker behavior when charging, then the infantry *won't* try to use the same tactics. Ancient and medieval armies were not commanded by idiots.
What the infantry would do we can only speculate, and the question doesn't ask it.
[Answer]
I would start by comparing them to mounted elephants rather than horses. Elephants are extremely big and scary, but not unstoppable. And logistical reasons mean that it's hard to bring a large number of elephants to the battlefield.
Armies fighting elephants would often pelt them with heavy javelins until the elephants got so scared/angry they went out of control. A rampaging elephant is a threat to anyone standing near it, so you would hope this happened before they reached your frontlines. Some elephant riders carried a special weapon to kill their own elephant in case it started trampling their own side.
Some relevant rhino facts:
Rhinos can reach speeds of up to 30mph, faster than any human (28mph for an expert sprinter) or elephant (25mph) but slower than a horse (44mph). If they're travelling at 2/3rds the speed of a warhorse, then the rider's lance (if he had one) would have significantly less impact.
Fun fact: when moving at top speed, rhinos run on their toes.
Rhinos have a lot less endurance for travelling long distances than horses.
A rhino has skin two inches thick (thicker at its shoulders and at back, a little soft under its neck), similar to an elephant's, making them somewhat resistant to spears, arrows, etc. A soldier could perhaps be trained to target their weak spots.
A rhino has a good sense of smell but very poor eyesight. I suspect that unlike horses they would not shy away from infantry with spears - by the time they even noticed the spears were there it might be too late for them to stop. (Although rhinos are surprisingly good at making tight turns mid-charge.)
Rhino poachers are known to catch them in wire snares and then finish them off with a spear or machete. This suggests that a well-prepared army in a good defensive position would have a good chance of holding them off.
[Answer]
Medieval times?
One rhino? Terrifying. A whole platoon of rhinos acting together? Complete devastation.
Have you seen what rhinos can do to sizable animals?
WARNING Scenes of animal vs animal aggression in the wild <https://youtu.be/liAdulWOWws?t=17>
One-on-one, rhinos are only evenly matched by a large hippo. An elephant treats a rhino as a toy. Anything else and watch out.
The real unnerving aspect of rhinos as cavalry mounts is that, unlike horses, they have no discernible fear of anything and will attack large moving objects even if unprovoked. They don't know when they are beaten and would probably refuse to lie down even if they were dead.
] |
[Question]
[
I want to use a mercury based golem as a enemy in a murder mystery P&P story. The golem flows through cracks and under doors and envelops its victims until they are dead. Let's assume that the golem loses some mercury when engaged in a struggle, but not enough to leave drops or pools.
**What do the victims look like once they are found? Are there any special features that would be a clear hint about the cause of death?**
[Answer]
If they're actually *drowned* there will be mercury in the lungs, because drowning, in general, is the inhalation of a liquid (though the term is occasionally used, loosely, for inhalation of heavier-than-air gasses).
Even if the mercury golem is able to reclaim the mercury that was forced into the victim's lungs, the "losses" will be detectable as traces in the bottoms of alveoli, caught on bronchial cilia, and so forth.
Even if the victims were *suffocated* without the mercury entering their lungs, any metals on their person will have been attacked by the mercury, which aggressively forms an amalgam with any metal that isn't protected by a fairly heavy oxide coating. Anodized aluminum is protected, but if there's a scratch or dent that penetrates the anodize, the aluminum will be attacked vigorously where at that point. Gold, silver, copper jewelry will take on the appearance of silver (old school trick, back when students were allowed to handle mercury, was to make "silver pennies" by cleaning them well and then dipping them into mercury).
Metals frames for glasses will be attacked where the lacquer coating is worn off (along the temples, first, then where the frame touches cheeks, nose, or brow), a metal wristwatch band (even stainless steel) will be attacked, though less visibly so, as will the case of the watch itself. Keys in a pocket will be coated with amalgam, unless they're aluminum, then they'll break down completely (look for YouTube videos on mercury attacking aluminum).
You should also consider what your mercury golem *weighs*. Mercury is about 13.5 times as dense as water, meaning a mercury golem the same size as a human would weigh around a tonne and a quarter. Floors can take a lot of distributed weight -- upright freezers can weigh half a tonne when full, and are probably the heaviest thing, per square meter, you'd have in your house; your mercury golem weighs more than twice that, and stands on (again, assuming similar overall shape to a human) less than a quarter the area. You're likely to find structural damage to floors and joists where the golem has walked or stood.
[Answer]
>
> How do the victims look like once they are found?
>
>
>
You can't drown in mercury, because mercury is really dense (13593 kilograms per cubic meter, about 13.6 denser than water) and you would float above it as soon the quantity is significant.
Mercury is also reluctant to wet most surfaces, meaning that it wont get in the lungs because of capillarity like water would do. For the same reason it wouldn't wet the victim body in any way. Unless maybe removing gold from the body, there would be no trace of mercury bathing.
The only way mercury can kill is either by poisoning or by blunt force (100 kg of mercury dropping on you would kill you like any other substance).
[Answer]
Depends on your mechanism of action.
Engulfing:
This will result in very similar results as drowning would. But instead of water infiltrating the airways. Petechial hemorrhages might also be present as is common with victims of asphyxiation, along with cyanosis of lips and extremities. If no sufficient mercury is left behind, some mercury might still be detected in the blood as it can make its way to the bloodstream through skin. So you'd find a corpse, looking like your average asphyxiation victim with a suspiciously high mercury content in their blood.
Crushing:
Mercury is incredibly dense. Somewhere in the order of 13.5g/cm³. But since it's a liquid the mechanism is a bit different than a solid just standing on you. If you were submerged by a meter of mercury the pressure would be comparable to being 13.5 meters under water. Even in a swimming pool one feels their ears hurting when one dives only 3 meters deep. If your golem is sufficiently large the victim's lungs will likely collapse, or render them unable to expand even if your victim's head is still in the open air.
No matter how, the main mechanism of death is hypoxic of nature, so victims should show signs of asphyxiation and high mercury presence in blood.
Due to the nature of quicksilver victims are likely to have little to no blunt force trauma. The victim will likely show no external signs of strangulation or ligature marks otherwisely found on victims of asphixiation away from any regular source of asphyxiation (like a body of water, or debris capable of crushing someone sufficiently to inhibit chest expansion.)
You will have to find something to keep humans engulfed in your golem down, since humans are a lot less dense than your mercury golem they will float naturally.
[Answer]
**Collapsed Lungs**
Other answers have pointed out how mercury is dense. If you fell into a pool of mercury you would go splat rather than splash. That means it is difficult for your golem to envelop the victim without them simply floating to the top.
Instead I suggest your golem *invade* their body by perhaps only enveloping the head and then pumping mercury into the lungs until they stop working.
Of course two lungfuls of mercury weighs about the same as grown man. So the lungs will burst long before they fill up, and the victim will die in a much slower and more gruesome manner than you describe.
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In my setting, a handful of characters have to attend a daily event (such as classes). They do so anonymously, as attending this event could endanger their civilian life if the wrong people were to discover their identities.
Continuing with the example of classes, this event happens always at the same place, at the same time. On site, people are masked and use names different from their own. The location is adequately secured; the risk of intrusion is low. Thus, during the event, their identity is mostly safe.
However, following one attendee before or after said event could lead someone to this person's home, endangering their anonymity.
**How could a group of people conceal their daily trip to a location with a predictable starting and ending time?**
* The technological level is roughly the same as our own (near future).
* These people aren't criminal (though it could be a case where this question applies).
* People interested in their identities would work alone or in a small group, no larger than the attendees.
* People tracking the attendees can't do it openly, as it would ruin the value of the information.
* Attendees live in a big city, and their method of transportation is up to the answerer (public or private transports).
* Facilities for the event may include specifically designed installations (such as mazes, secret doors/access).
* Event hosts have access to moderately-sized human resources to ensure anonymity.
[Answer]
Hide in plain sight.
Set up your class in a large office building with multiple businesses, all of which are legit, but all of which you control. Students have cover as employees. The businesses are large enough that it's reasonable not for everyone to know each other.
Each student is given an assigned time when they show up to "work". They go to their assigned business and make their way to an ordinary looking room that is secure and has a secret passage to a hidden corridor. Security controls both doors so it is impossible to open both doors at once, nor will they allow more than one person in a room at a time, not will they allow more than one person in any section of corridor at once.
In the corridor each has an individual assigned changing room where they stash their civilian clothes in a secure locker and change into their disguise. At another assigned time, security allows them out of the changing room through another door to another corridor to go to a waiting room where they wait as the group gathers. An elevator without indicators as to floor or direction then stops and carries the group to the class area before getting another one. Students are not allowed to tell each other what floor they got on, and they have no idea what floor they get off on (other than it's above or below theirs). The elevator also changes the order of the floors it picks up students at.
After class, process reverses. Students have an assigned time they have to wait in the lobby before going to the corridor and changing back. They have variable amounts of time to wait in the changing room. They are given a different time to report tomorrow. This means they may have to wait in the lobby for an elevator briefly one day, sit and cool their heels for a half hour or more the next.
The end results: aside from making it harder to follow them (since security surely knows who they are before they are disguised), they're not sure who the other students might be. Because you stagger both their arrival times, how long they have to wait in the changing room, and how long they have to wait in the lobby, you don't know if the person ahead of you walked in 30 seconds before or 30 minutes before, and you don't know how long they were cooling their heels in the changing room watching TV or whatnot, nor when they entered the building in civilian guise: after all, they might have come in after you but gone through the changing process faster so they were waiting at the elevator sooner.
You've essentially created 8 time variables: when they have to show up to work, when they're allowed into the changing room, how long they're in the changing room, and how long they have to wait in the lobby, and then the same in reverse. When they walk into the building in the morning, they have no idea if other students are walking in at the same time, entered earlier, or entering later, and by changing the time they have to show up, who arrives at the same time and who arrives earlier or later is always changing.
If you want to, you could also change, from time to time, what "business" they supposedly work for, so they're not getting off at the same floors. If you ensure that the legit portion of your businesses has flexible working hours, with perhaps individual departments working at different times, you further complicate recognition because there's always people arriving and departing.
Meanwhile, from the outside, all they see are people going in and out.
**Edit**
I should mention some other variables. Because you control their access between their "office", changing room, elevator lobby, and elevator, you can have people on the same floor staggered so they arrive at different times, not knowing if the elevator might have already picked up (or dropped off) people from the same floor. Again, one day there might just be one student taking an elevator to the class level from their work floor, another day ten, so they're never even sure how many people actually "work" on their own floor.
So, typical day for a student: they arrive at work the time they were given the day before, and go to the floor and office number they were assigned, which may change. After sitting in the office for a period of time they don't know in advance other than it might be anything from 5 minutes to an hour, they recieve a message telling them the secret door is open and allows them into the corridor, and what is their assigned changing room. In the changing room is a countdown timer showing them how long they have to change from their normal clothing, and they must be changed by the time the timer runs out, say 10 minutes. Once they are changed, they check in by pressing a button, which allows Security to verify they are in costume. Then the timer comes on again showing them how long they have to wait, which might be anything from 0 to, say, 30 minutes. They've got stuff in the changing room they can use to kill time, whether study, watch TV, whatever.
Once the timer runs out, they're allowed out of the room to the secret elevator lobby where they wait. A timer on the wall tells them how long until the elevator arrives. At this point, other students may or may not be arriving. At 0, they get in. The elevator goes up and down several times so they don't know for sure if they end up above or below their original floor. Door opens, they go to class.
End of class day: each student is informed what time they are to arrive tomorrow, as well as any changes in what office they are to report to. They are allowed into the elevator in different combinations than they were on arrival, again the elevator doing the floor-shuffle. They go to the changing room and again have a countdown timer to change back into civvies. They have to wait again some time between 0 and 30 minutes before they're allowed out. They go to their office and after again some random time, receive a signal that they are to leave the building (timed to coincide with a large group of people also leaving the building).
[Answer]
With this setup, someone determined to discover the identity of a participant is likely to succeed. There are too many places where a tracker can get a clue.
The tracker needs to know:
1. That this meeting is something nefarious.
2. When and where the class is. Varying the timing and location will help a lot with security. A daily gathering of people without an explanation is suspicious. All the more so if it's the same people each day. A million times more if they're all masked as they enter and leave!
3. How to follow someone. This means the skill to keep track of them without being noticed.
Here are some ways to improve security:
**Find a way so that the public never sees the attendee masked but the other attendees never see each other unmasked.** I would place the meeting in a private room in a very large public place where the group's leaders control security for the entire building.
Everyone goes down a hallway (there are multiple hallways and very few people are in any particular one at any given time) with several doors to bathrooms along it. Each bathroom is single use and entirely private. Because the facility is mostly used for classes or activities involving sports, dance, cooking, painting, or something else where it makes sense to change, transitioning hallways via bathrooms/changing rooms would be reasonable.
A regular person enters the bathroom/private room, uses the facilities, and exits through the back door. The back door goes to another hallway which takes this person to their room. Since everyone must go through a private room to get to the hall that goes to their room, entering a private room doesn't single one out for more scrutiny.
An attendee enters the private room, changes her/his clothes, and puts on a mask, then uses the backdoor to eventually get to the room. It is possible for a regular person to see an attendee in a mask and wonder what's up, but they'll never see what they looked like when entering the bathroom. Changing clothes is an important part of this.
The bathroom has a special internally-controlled lock. It locks both doors at once when someone enters. When that person wants to leave, they can do so using a normal door handle that stays locked from the outside but opens from the inside. A random period of time later (1-3 minutes), both doors unlock. Someone waiting outside the door where the last person entered has no idea that the "occupied" room is actually vacant.
As the attendees make their way to their room, they have to go through a few more doors. This alerts them to being followed. A security guard could turn away anyone not in a mask ("sorry ma'am, I think you want that door over there") or only admit people with the right passcode or jewelry or whatever you want to use.
To leave the building, you must go through a similar process. You go down a set of hallways and eventually reach one with bathrooms. Enter the bathroom, change, and exit through the other door. The back doors of the bathrooms go to different hallways so you can't follow someone that way. If you try to follow using the same bathroom, you won't get there in time.
**Get a cover.** Maybe a tracker can never discover which room someone goes to. Maybe they'll never know which group of 30 people arriving and leaving the same time every day are the ones doing something "wrong" because there are 300 other people doing the exact same thing. But each individual doesn't want to arouse suspicious at home or work or among people they know.
Pretending that it's classes for something allowed in the society would keep a lot of potential trackers from noticing. Have all the equipment and materials for the fake class. Teach a bit each day so the attendees can prove they are learning something legitimate. Assign homework.
**Change the code regularly.** Worst case scenario is that someone figures out how to infiltrate the meeting. This is not hard since everyone's masked. They just need to know how to get there. Each meeting ends with the new codes for tomorrow. Perhaps combine these with a special (but disguised) piece of jewelry. Someone might steal the ring, or overhear the code, but surely not both.
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# [Dance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QDKLglEP5Y)
Specifically because of the nature of the [masquerade ball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masquerade_ball).
This could be run as a regular public ticketed event with a quiet back room used for whatever nefarious purposes you have in mind. It's reasonable to be a regular attendee at such an event. It's reasonable to attend in elaborate or formal costume and look remarkably similar to any other attendee of the event, especially for men and their traditionally conservative formal wear.
Importantly it's also reasonable to openly turn up to such an event, then publicly put on a mask and become an anonymous member of the crowd.
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OK, I am assuming that it is not acceptable for the 'hunters' to abduct the participants during their journey, otherwise it is almost impossible for the attendees to remain anonymous.
Arriving at the venue seems reasonably simple - assuming the city has a lot of suitable routes - maybe a place like London with underground rail, buses, trains, taxis, bike paths rather than a small town or one poor in public transport. The attendees leave home wearing a disguise - false beards, dark-glasses, wigs, prosthetic noses etc - sufficient to cloak their normal identity, but not so outlandish that they will be noticed as 'odd'. Now they make a series of random journeys - preferably on foot or bicycle and public transport etc - anything that doesn't have an identifiable registration number that could be used to identify them. After a number of such journeys, they finish with a trip to the venue. The hunters can see them arrive each day, but can't identify them, and as they always arrive by a different route they can't use that information to trace their path back to home.
Getting home is trickier. The hunters can see them leave so could follow them all the way home unless they can be shaken off. Some tactics that might help would be:
* Anonymously hire a number of people to leave simultaneously dressed in identical disguises.
* All leave at once in a large vehicle that can hold them all (like a
bus) - travel to a random destination and then disperse (the
followers can chase their vehicle, but unless they also have a bus
only a limited number of hunters can get to the dispersal zone so
they will be easier to shake)
* Choose a venue with lots of departure
points and lots of foot traffic (i.e. hold the meeting in a busy
transport hub building) so it is easier to mingle with others.
* Hire third parties to make it hard for the hunters to follow - blocking
roads, accusing hunters of being pick-pockets, driving away in
blacked-out vans that may (or may not) have a participant inside.
* Spy-craft - If the hunters have similar numbers as the attendees then
there would only be one or two trying to follow each home, so
switching transport, ducking through back doors, getting on or off
subway trains at the last second, switching disguises in public
bathrooms etc might all help.
Of course, in the long run, if the attendees turn up every day - sooner or later someone will get identified. A disaster for them, but OK for other attendees as long as they are anonymous to each other.
[Answer]
Multiple entry points, private transport, and body-doubles.
Your attendees go to a location with a different event advertised - either "private members only", somewhere with obscured faces (kendo / fencing / airsoft / paintball), or with some segregated classes for different skill levels (so that they can be seen at the start/end, and have an excuse to be away from their tail for the rest of it)
They then enter a changing room, and leave through a secret door. Their body-double enters through the secret door, and puts on a suitable disguise. The secret door leads to private transport where the passenger will not be observed travelling to the real location. Attendees will arrive from multiple entry points to further obscure who is part of the group - you would need to observe *every* group/activity taking place at that specific time in the city.
The tail will be able to observe the body-double - either from a distance such that they cannot notice the difference without being really obvious/suspicious (such as getting out a pair of binoculars or a camera) and removed by security, or with suitable obstructions in place (both wearing full-face masks, such as for paintball)
Bonus points if the "decoy event" is something that happens on other days at a different time too - so that your attendees can actually attend and practice that skill. If you are careful, you can also drag your tail into taking part in the decoy event, and convince them that they were actively keeping track of the right person all along
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The main issue I see here is that this meeting is DAILY. I am sorry but almost no amount of security in the world can help with that unless you have magic.
If people are coming to the same place each day, it becomes routine. And routine is the enemy of security. Routine makes it easier to track people because you know where they will be, and it tends to lull them into a false sense of security, because if nothing has happened on the first 15 trips, they won't be looking for it on trip 16.
All of the cautions provided by other posters tend to dissolve with a daily trip. Because people aren't careful when they are on a routine.
Here's how you make it a non-issue.
**They have a REASON to be in the building/area**
Doctor's office, shopping mall, place of work, school, busy terminal, whatever it is, that entrance is set atop somewhere that it's easy to have a reason to be in the area. Because being able to pick out who your meeters are, that's a problem.
**There's more than one way in and out.**
Only one entrance/exit makes for problems. Have multiple ones, plus a way to secure each.
**Define the tech and the city exactly so you know what the specific problems to solve might be.**
You say large city and you're non-specific, but some cities are harder than others. London for example, tracks people in a way that L.A. does not. And culturally L.A. while it does have public transport and is a large city, everyone seems to drive. Every city has its quirks and foibles. What helps you blend in one place might not work elsewhere. In some places, public transport means you will be tracked more fully. In others, automated systems take pictures of license plates.
**The event starts at say, 9, but that doesn't mean that they all have to arrive at that time. Stagger it. Assign earlier times to different people. Make it a RANGE, with an official start and end time.**
**OR Use the traffic patterns** This is one of the reasons why it's good to get specific about your city. Because you can use high-traffic times as camo to get in and out. And you can use low traffic times to make a tail obvious.
Penguino had some great tips and tricks as far as interference goes.
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Watch Stanley Kubrick's last movie "[Eyes Wide Shut](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120663/)". The lead character is allowed to enter the domain of a secret society, but is eventually ensnared because he does not know the elaborate rules, signs and countersigns, even though he too is disguised. (when looking up the clips, remember many are NSFW).
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIdNBBTBuqM>
Multiple layers of security and secrecy, as well as tightly compartmentalizing things are the best ways to preserve secrecy.
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Nightclub. Nightclubs are loud, crowded, dark, open almost every night and have a built in cover story for why the characters are constantly going there. The meeting facility can be below the nightclub proper and the attendees can be timed so they don't go in the several concealed entrances at the same time in the same place. Disguises can be hung by the door.
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**Individuals at this event are indistinguishable from each other.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bkFyg.jpg)
[source](https://legallegacy.wordpress.com/2015/08/16/august-16-1921-huge-kkk-rally-in-chicago/)
Disguises are not merely to conceal the identity of the wearer. They are to make every individual in the facility identical to every other. Gender, build, age and everything else is concealed. Here depicted are people in Ku Klux Klan robes; burkhas might be another option, or hazmat suits.
The ideal solution to pollution is dilution. If there were many persons attending this event (in their regalia) who were of no interest to potential trackers that would be ideal for the members who are of interest. A tracker would have to pick a person at random and follow him/her home. There would be no way to know the person you are following is not the same person you followed last time until you got to their home. You would waste a lot of time.
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I think you'd have to have far more attendees than are 'active' members.
Hold a regular innocent event, say a [furries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furry_fandom) convention, where the vast majority
of attendees are not part of the meeting.
Each member of the real meeting will know the 'costumes' of the other attendees but not their identities. There will be secret coded 'ack' and 'nack' phrases to ensure proper identification. First order of business is to agree next meetings costumes etc.
The trackers will know the identities of some or all of the attendees, but not exactly which members are part of the secret society.
There is no way to hide ones identity in the modern world, there are only ways to protect private conversation.
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>
> In my setting, a handful of characters have to attend a daily event (such as classes).
>
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If these are classes, do they need to attend in person? Or could that be in the form of a remote videoconference?
The tech is there today ([for some time already](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Air)) and anonymity is simple to achieve that way?
if you want to go a bit more high tech you could have [holograms attending](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S21Opv7zVWU).
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**Separate the entry and exit of the location and keep the exit hidden.**
The entry might be a secured door close to a public place. Before an attendee puts on his mask or approaches the door he is indistinguishable from a normal person.
The door however leads to a long corridor/tunnel (say 1 mile/kilometer) which ends at the event location.
The exit could be connected to the sewer to help keep it secret an have attendees reenter public space at multiple places.
This way attendees can't be followed as their location and identity is unavailable as soon as you are able you know he/she is an attendee.
[Answer]
## Steal someone else's identity on the way home.
After class, the attendees hide in a random busy single-use bathroom somewhere in the city. After a random amount of time, when someone comes into the bathroom, they knock them out and steal their identity. They then put a sorry note in the person's pocket, and hide them. They also hide a secret camera. They can then use the identity to get home.
A tracker could tell which bathroom they hid in, but not whose identity they stole. They would have to follow everyone who uses that bathroom home, which would be hugely impractical. They also can not search the bathroom, because the attendees would use the camera to catch them.
Eventually the person in the bathroom will wake up, but by then the attende will already be home free.
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[Question]
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I'm trying to write a story where the main characters discover the wreckage of a spaceship in the fields that border their town to the west. To the east, there's the end of a large mountain range.
Basically, the town's built into the side of the mountain. Does a mountain range have to be preceeded by foothills, or can a mountain range transition quickly into a relatively flat landscape? And if so, where on Earth has this happened?
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# Solitary volcanic mountains
Just as volcanic islands are specks of land in a great ocean of blue, solitary volcanoes on land can be equally spectacular. Mount Kilomanjaro is more famous, but perhaps the most cleanly isolated massif in Africa is Mount Elgon on the border of Uganda and Kenya, which rises almost a mile and a half above the surrounding plain.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QLIcP.jpg)
However, the all time world champ cinder cone, a near-perfectly conical mountain, is [Koryaksky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koryaksky) in Kamchatka. It is 1000 meters shorter than Elgon, but it rises even higher, over 3000 meters above the surrounding plain.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cIyli.jpg)
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[Brașov, in Romania](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.6525766,25.5262517,26765m/data=!3m1!1e3) (the link goes to a satellite view on Google Maps), is an example; the city is placed at the south-eastern end of a high plain, nestled against the Carpatian mountains and partly climbing on the slopes. The transition is quite sudden -- to the north the terrain is very flat, to the south it's alpine.
[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexpanoiu/31158050287/sizes/z/)
*A view of [Brașov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bra%C8%99ov), looking northward towards the high plain of [Burzenland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burzenland) from one of the panorama points on the road which climbs to Poiana Brașov. The green mountain on the right is the Tâmpa. Own work, [available on Flickr](https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexpanoiu/31158050287/sizes/z/) under the CC BY 2.0 license.*
I'm certain that most people know at least one city nestled on a plain against a mountain. Here is a spectacular view of mount Ararat rising from the Araratian plain:
[](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Ararat_and_the_Araratian_plain_(cropped).jpg)
*Mount Ararat and the Araratian plain, seen early morning from near the city of Artashat in Armenia. Photograph by Serouj Ourishian, available on Wikimedia under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.*
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[Pikes Peak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikes_Peak) near Colorado Springs, Colorado is another example.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZZqYV.jpg)
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The picture of Pikes Peak actually shows the "foothills". They begin just a few miles east of Pikes Peak, and are fairly high themselves. So, even a foothill transition can be pretty dramatic.
That bit of the Rockies is also a good example of a "wall" across the plains. It runs from down New Mexico-way to north of Denver before abruptly turning westward.
Otherwise, volcanoes are your best bet for abrupt "hey, where did that thing come from?" mountains.
Lastly, [Mount Spokane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Spokane), in eastern Washington state is another that abruptly rises out of a high altitude desert.
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Look at Boulder, Colorado. Unlike Colorado Springs (the town by Pikes Peak), it's really built up against the sheer rocky mountain wall to the West. There is a bit of a foothill ridge that marks the Eastern side of the town that really gives it the feel that I think you describing for the town of feeling built into the mountain, but then just beyond the boundaries of that ridge is empty flat lands for miles. It would mean inverting East and West, but otherwise gives you a really good real world example of what you're talking about.
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Another location on Earth where plains meet mountains happens under the ocean near just about every continental shelf.
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A mad, egomaniac, scientist has developed a way of extending the natural growth of humans to create an army of 20ft (6 meter) tall soldiers. Physiologically, they are three times the size of normal people in terms of height and mass. He's managed (through genetic enhancements) to increase the efficiency of the heart and lungs to cope with the increase of body mass and the skeleton is somewhat strengthened.
The brain has also increased in volume.
Given the physiology of the human brain, would increasing its size also increase the intelligence of these people to a whole new level, or would they be of lesser intelligence?
If their intelligence wouldn't naturally increase with size, what can the scientist do in order to meet the required (evil genius) level of intelligence?
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I think it would boost 'intelligence' but as people have stated, it's a hard to define concept.. they might be just as easy to fool but have really vivid imaginations, they might be inclined to meditate extensively, drifting off into another world, forgetting the real one.. they might have immense reasoning facility's but lack the focus to get anything done, being constantly bombarded with mental stimulus..
How about; super clever but driven mad with the lack of reletivly deep environmental stimulus.
If your universe has magic then they'd probably get psy powers, a deep gaze that unnerves people but becomes softer an wiser with age..
IMO, a large variety of extremes.. ranging from total madness to sentient supreme.
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The brain is very complex part of our anatomy and scientists still struggle very much to fully understand it.
One thing that is for sure is that there is a correlation between brain size and intelligence because we (mammals) have the hippocampus and hypothalamus and what not unlike reptilians who only have a [triune brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain).
So adding more volume and parts to the brain CAN have a positive impact on intelligence but will it necessarily ?
>
> Whales and elephants have much bigger brains than humans, and we have about the same brain-to-body mass ratio as mice. [source](https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/ask-neuroscientist-does-bigger-brain-make-you-smarter)
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But whales have not yet mastered nuclear fission and harnessed its power to possibly blow up entire countries now, did they ? (Humans 1 - Whales 0)
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> Since it would be against human nature to admit defeat, scientists have crafted a third measure of brain size called the encephalization quotient, which is the ratio of actual brain mass relative to the predicted brain mass for an animal’s size (based off the assumption that larger animals require slightly less brain matter relative to their size compared to very small animals)
>
>
> Some studies claim the answer is yes.
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Long story short, it is not impossible but we honestly have no clue.
If anything, your super-sized humans could be super slow to react because the [impulse speed inside a neuron scales with size up to maximum cap](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3482659/) and making super-sized humans will extend the distance they have to travel through neurons and nerves.
I do not know the threshold size at which speed caps but I do know that very large dinosaurs like the [diplodocus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplodocus) were in that case. If you don't make your super-sized humans that big it shouldn't be a problem but you went for 20ft tall which is 6 meters tall and funnily matches the height of a diplodocus. Hopefully you did not also make your soldiers 25 meters long as well but keep in mind that they should be in that zone where impulse speed is capped and they are slower to react. (Making them pretty bad soldiers actually)
**They could be intelligent or maybe not but they will be very slow to react and think if you make them too big.**
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*what can the scientist do in order to meet the required (evil genius) level of intelligence ?*
Train them from birth like any dictatorship. You take the babies from their parents and put them in a facility where they are taught to follow whatever orders the dictator gives.
Have them be taught science by the best scientists, trained by the best military.
Add a bit of gene selection or if you don't have that kind of technology make the tests deadly so environmental pressure will select the best soldiers for you.
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The answer here really depends on exactly `how` the soldiers have been supersized. By that, I mean that there would be vastly different consequences if the cells themselves were supersized, or if it was on the level of the tissues.
As has been pointed out above, neurons reach a certain size cap at which they start to drop off in efficiency due to the distance between synapses (interestingly enough this same principle of maximum size efficiency applies to all of your cells. They become less effective at eliminating waste due to a decrease of surface area relative to volume)
Intelligence, as difficult as it may be to define, has been strongly correlated not with encephalization quotient, but rather with neuronal density. Humans have been noted to have a much higher density of neurons and synapses relative to brain size. Other advanced species have also ranked high on the curve.
In summary, if the *cells themselves* got bigger, your soldiers are broken. If the *tissues* have adapted to the new size by increasing in density and connectivity, there could reasonably be some expectation of a greater **potential** for intelligence.
Cheers!
`A scientist :)`
[Answer]
There's a very rough estimate of "intelligence" (an already quite fuzzy concept) via "encephalization quotient" (quotient between brain mass and average body mass), but it's not universally accepted and I'm very unsure if it would apply to OGM soldiers.
Truth is we only have a vague idea of what is considered "intelligence" and where it resides.
Experts tend to divide different "components" of what we commonly refer as intelligence and stress fact they seem unrelated but synergic (which looks like an oxymoron, but isn't).
Reasoning behind the "encephalization quotient" is a large part of brain is used for "normal maintenance" and generic body control (simple acts as walking require a lot of precise regulations of almost all muscles we own integrated with continuous feedback of literally billions of sensors) and the larger the body (we speak about lean mass, a fat person does not became more stupid) the more "objects" you need to monitor and control; only the "excess brain mass" may contribute to "exotic" functions like language for humans or sonar for dolphins.
Bottom line: without specific interventions your "super-soldiers" would be about as intelligent as the next man or fractionally brighter.
Truth is current neuroscience is still unable to pinpoint (in a scientific way) what and where is what makes us "intelligent", so it's difficult to say what would increase it. Actually doing such a thing is yet another level again.
Question *why* a dictator would want super-intelligent soldiers who would more easily see through propaganda and refuse to become cannon fodder is, of course, another matter.
[Answer]
No, I don't think they'll be super-intelligent. I think the key is in your question. You say your scientist has
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> developed a way of **extending the *natural* growth** of humans
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Not using a growing/shrinking ray or anything exotic I don't think you have to worry about cells being too big to function, so I think this would result in big people with normal sized cells (FYI, [all animals have similar sized cells](http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/the-world-s-largest-dinosaurs/size-and-scale/size-and-cells/)). So they'd just have more brain cells, so they'd at least have the *potential to be smarter or remember more*, but I suspect they'd be relatively normal, but big people.
Looking at real animals that are different sizes, like [horses](http://www.horsechannel.com/images/horse-news-article-images/horse-breed-sizes-graphic_1600.jpg) that can range from Miniature to Clydesdales (about double height & maybe 4x mass)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/orMQG.jpg)
or felines like tigers & cats
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QYrgp.jpg)
I think they all behave generally like their bigger/smaller counterparts, a little cat & a big cat are generally "cats", and the same for horses.
So, again I think you'll just end up with fairly normal, big people.
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But, since it takes normal people about 18yrs to grow up, extending their ***natural growth*** could take an extra 18 or 36 more years too, unless it's specifically accelerated growth. Or it could result in a condition where growth just doesn't stop, like [Acromegaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acromegaly) like Andre the Giant had [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eKSQS.jpg)
He was definitely a big guy, and I think he was of average intelligence. So once again, I think you'll just have average "big people.
Actually, that's probably a relatively easy way to make "big people":
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> Acromegaly is typically due to the [pituitary gland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pituitary_gland) producing too much growth hormone. In more than 95% of cases the excess production is due to a benign tumor, known as a [pituitary adenoma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pituitary_adenoma).
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I'd imagine creating tumors would be right in a mad scientist's wheelhouse, not much genetic engineering required either, maybe even an artificial or surgically implanted "tumor" might work. Though it has definite disadvantages, including heart & kidney failure.
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Note: This was a really fun question to answer, Big +1 to the OP.
Getting to read about animal cells, big & tiny cats & horses, and Andre the Giant, with **pictures of a tiger & a cat, and Andre the Giant** is awesome! Even guessing how to "make" giants too with relatively "discount bin mad science surgery" is cool
[Answer]
**Short answer: No**
**Long answer:**
~~As far as we know there is no linear correlation between volume or surface area of the brain and intelligence.~~
As far as we know there is no linear correlation between volume or surface area of the brain and intelligence in animals, and in humans the correlation, albeit statistically significant, is very weak. As always, correlation != causation, and certainly one shouldn't **extra**polate linear correlations (interpolation is fine). I strongly encourage OP to read at least the section 4 of the second publication the @BlindKungFuMaster linked in the comments ( the 2015 Pietschnig et al in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews ).
A counterexample I wanted to present is homo neandertalensis. If the size of the brain directly, LINEARLY correlated with greater intelligence, homo neanderthalensis would be smarter than us and it is we who would've gone extinct. Check [Wikipedia's Homo Neanderthalensis article as first shot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal).
**CAVEAT:** As commentators correctly point out, the matters of evolution of Homo in general, and Homo Neanderthalensis extinction in particular, are complicated and far from being resolved. It may be worth to underscore that I meant that there is no LINEAR CORRELATION (which you question seems to implicitly assume), and only that.
Arguably, there probably IS some minimum volume/mass required to reach sentience, seeing as we don't see mosquitos evolving civilisation every now and then, but this probably in turn depends on how effective a given tissue is effective at computation. People tend to forget that not only we have large heads, it's also that our neurons are generally better - well, actually their expensive myelin coating.
So what can a scientist do? Well, this is a realm of very nebulous speculations. Intelligence is not a single scalar variable like height or body mass or bicep's strenght and in fact we have little clue on how it actually works. My favourite hypothesis essentially states that we have a generator of random thoughts in our heads which are then filtered and the ones which pass the filter are what actually occurs to our consciousness. The trick is, the generator is not completely random, it is skewed toward generating thoughts similar to the ones which had passed the test in the past and also the filtering is far from perfect and it is constantly recalibrated by our experiences of the outside world.
That being said, if You want to build more intelligent people, You could assume this hypothesis is true and use the additional cranial space their thoughts generator a lot more computing power to say, generate 10 thoughts per milisecond instead of 1, up the connection the generator has to the filter and then upgrade the filter two times, one time to handle all those additional input (otherwise the consciousness would be flooded by random noise) and also to use better tests to make the filter better - more logical, consistent and 'creative' (the last one in the sense better at letting through a seemingly crazy thoughts which nevertheless hold promise - genius and madness are differentiated by the quality of the filter).
**I'm far from being an expert on intelligence and neurobiology, I advise You STRONGLY to read more about the topic, it is MUCH more complicated than people realise - and consequently so much more interesting and rewarding :)**
[Answer]
Most likely not. Like our own transistors in real life, Human neurons have already evolved to the very edge of being as small as they can be and still function without being overwhelmed by electrical noise (noise causes errors); and evolution preserves this tiny size (and myelin coating) for the same reason we prefer tiny transistors: It makes communications between parts faster, getting more done in less time.
If everything in the giants is multiplied by 3, their brains internal communications would run 3 times slower than that of a normal human; making them very slow dullards.
If their neurons are small like ours, they still have this problem: Without a complete brain reorganization, they will inevitably have communications between remote parts of the brain that take 3 times what our communication takes. On top of that, their neural signals to muscles will take three times as long to reach the muscles; making reaction times slower, and inputs (ears, eyes, touch) will take three times as long to reach their neural centers, also contributing to making reaction times much slower.
Also, most of their larger brain will be taken up by having to process a much larger volume of body, skin sensors (pain, cold, warmth, pressure) and other operations; there is a strong correlation between brain size and body size for that reason.
Finally, you need some working definition of what super-intelligent means. Borrowing from the artificial intelligence field; one such working definition would be what most of us think of as a generalization of Sherlock Holmes type abilities, when investigating crimes. To solve crimes, Sherlock typically spots tiny obscure clues and translates them into what must have happened: In one case, the Dog that Didn't Bark, he deduces that because a dog did NOT bark at whomever committed a crime, the dog must have **known** the perpetrator, which with other clues narrowed the list of suspects to one.
Similarly, intelligence is the ability to solve puzzles, extrapolate from clues, and arrive at theories or models of reality that have a high probability of being correct. This includes "prediction" about the past and present, not just the future: Geologists study patterns in rocks and deduce what must have happened (volcanoes, earthquakes, floods). Astronomers study patterns in the light of stars and deduce supernova must have happened hundreds of millions of years ago. Archaeologists study patterns of fossils to deduce what must have gone on hundreds of millions of years ago, here. We have patterns that let us deduce what must be happening now: a column of smoke indicates a probable fire, even if we do not sense any fire directly. We have patterns to deduce what will happen; in the weather tomorrow, in politics next month, in our health, in our economy, in our sciences.
As a working definition of **higher** intelligence, we can measure it as better pattern interpretation with a higher probability of being correct when deducing what most likely happened, is happening or will happen. So better deductions, or being better at finding obscure patterns that are useful in such deductions, or have meaning.
"Meaning" is about ramifications or constraints; when somebody says "Do you know what this **means?**", they are saying they have identified a pattern that will most likely have specific consequences in the future, which may be good or bad, but are in their mind are highly likely. "Meaning" is about a distinct difference; e.g. if I want my work to have "meaning" it should mean the world is different (and presumably better) because I did that work, it had impact I consider positive, etc. If somebody says something is "meaningless", **they** consider it to have no impact and create no difference in any outcomes **they** care about. (of course due to butterfly effects everything can make some difference in the future, but in human terms "meaningless" and "makes no difference" are talking about the same idea; "meaning" and "made a difference" are the flip sides.)
Back to your story: It is not clear that neural mechanisms **can** get much better than the best of what we have now. For soldiers, that is not likely to be a good outcome: If they are more intelligent than their creator, they are unlikely to take orders from their creator for very long, and are likely to outsmart their creator's attempts to control them, control him instead, and implement their own agenda rather quickly and effectively: That is what greater intelligence means: Better anticipation of outcomes and reactions, better predictions of what strategies will work, and thus fewer mistakes and greater successes.
When we build a trap and bait it; we are anticipating the behavior and reactions of an animal, and the animal's lower intelligence is failing to anticipate that taking the bait will have various consequences (mechanical for a trap, or biological in the case of spiked bait). It is our ability to see correctly predict what will happen (and because of that ability, devise a way to **make** something happen) that costs the animal its life and produces our dinner.
If your giants truly are far more intelligent than ordinary humans and can predict outcomes with 3 times the accuracy of humans, then your "genius creator" will be no match for them; like a monkey charging a man with a shotgun.
[Answer]
**Yes.**
Among humans there is [some correlation](http://www.larspenke.eu/pdfs/Pietschnig_et_al_2015_-_Meta-analysis_brain_volume_IQ.pdf) between brain size and IQ: "Our results showed significant positive associations of brain volume and IQ (r = .24, R2 = .06) that generalize over age (children vs. adults), IQ domain (full-scale, performance, and verbal IQ), and sex."
The standard deviation in brain size is on the order of 100cc and the average volume around 1400cc, as far as I know. So just tripling human brain size should lead to IQ-gains of 2\*1400\*0.06\*15/100=25.2 points. Tripling the size in every dimension would be a 27-fold increase. Of course that correlation doesn't necessarily hold in a range far beyond the human range, so there might be diminishing returns.
Now, as has been mentioned, correlation isn't causation. But in this case it probably is, because big brains come with two distinct disadvantages: You have trouble getting born and you have a very high energy consumption baseline. So, evolutionary big brains have to pay for their existence somehow, and the only likely way seems to be higher intelligence (of whatever form).
And of course if brain size-iq is too "pseudo scientific" for you, the same argument [works with height](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_and_intelligence). The effect will be a lot weaker because height only increases in one dimension, but still 16 points, which makes sense in the context of a story.
[Answer]
At least two fun facts I am aware of. There was a case of a French man who's brain was about 1/3rd the size of an average human brain. His IQ was described as above the threshold of having mental handicaps but an Einstien he wasn't. He was still below an IQ of 100, which is the average human intelligence. Still, he was undiagnosed with this condition for much of his life and by the time he was diagnosed he had a wife and was raising two children and supporting his family by working as a civil servant (insert government drone joke here... we're walking, we're walking). Aside from complicaitons related to an excess of fluids on the brain that manifested as headaches, he lead a remarkably unremarkable life.
Speaking of Einstein, who everyone who ever had a bright idea gets compared to his brain size... well... Einstein's brain was about 2.5 grams smaller than an average human (an 18% devieancy from the norm) although certain parts associated with math skills were larger proportionally. So as it turns out, Einstein was quite the P-Brane (Didn't misspell, it's a theoretical physics pun and a hypothetical pun in general).
So no, brain size does not always equal higher mental capability... but at the same time, it does help... There is a corelation, but not a causation that we are aware of. I'd say go for your smart giants... as you can see from all the Square Cube law lovers here, it's not the first problem they're going to identify.
[Answer]
**Outside the Box**
A gigantic being modeled exactly after a human will be deeply flawed. Instead of attempting to make individual organs bigger and more powerful, I would diversify. Have redundant organs, each supporting a part of the ubermensch's body. Several hearts would pump blood to different parts of the body, with a few sets of lungs for oxygen. This would reduce the difficulty of designing new organs, pushing your plausible start date earlier.
For the brain, I would go with separate, distinct brains in order to avoid the issue of overheating and communication delay. Let's say three, for our purposes. These brains could function in many different ways.
Let's take three identical brains, sharing one spinal cord. Each brain could process the same data and run the same function in a sort of organic fault tolerance measure, wherein the system is Triple Modular Redundant, and outputs are compared using an organic voting circuit. This would allow for superior decision making and survivability, as your soldier could suffer cancer/stroke/bullet/disease in two of their three brains and survive intact.
Or you could have three different brains, where there is some sort of committee process. This would allow for far greater throughput, but would raise control and error issues; what happens when brain one and brain two go for control of the ocular nerves at the same time? Handling race conditions in organic systems sounds messy. If you want some humor in your story, you could take it in the "three-headed giant" direction.
Either way, I urge you to stick with slightly modified humans. Why bother for 20ft tall soldiers when 8ft soldiers with modified musculature, skeletons, and refined brains will do? Why would your soldiers need to be that tall, for the purposes of your world?
[Answer]
The answer to your question depends on how you want to justify the creation of super-sized humans. Consider all the very real problems. Bones must be either larger or more dense to bear the weight. Muscles must either multiply or become larger to move around. But would you need a bigger brain? The dinosaurs generally didn't (other than the really big ones needing a second brain for motor control... all those muscles...).
Most of science fiction has dealt with super-sized people from the perspective of the 50-Foot Woman: volume is increasing, but density isn't, so intellect (cognation) wouldn't change. But if your story actually delves into what would be needed to make a seriously bigger human being, then your brain(s) must match what you've done with the body. Note, though, that dinosaurs weren't smarter having two brains, they just had more complex motor control. That might be all you get.
[Answer]
Since this is Worldbuilding and not Biology.SE...
## Yes, it was done.
The mad scientist by partially publishing his discovery (or just by being careless with his laptop's data) has been found and "kindly asked" by some unnamed organization to mass produce these large beings.
In the huge diversity of the current human population, there are individuals that show a genetic disposition to higher intelligence, IQ, or whatever brain-enhanced-characteristics that the organization might had preferred to be present in their newly genetically engineered beings. This perhaps answers your question in the sense that highly intelligent human beings existed since immemorial times and the only thing that the scientist needed to do was to use these beings' genetic samples (or his own) in order to produce the enlarged intelligent beings.
Working with other "equally mad" scientists they had been using cloning facilities to produce these beings for quite some time and finally selected the few that matched the "intelligence" requirements "asked" by that organization.
However, when these enhanced beings were matching and surpassing all expectations, the organization's board of directors reached the conclusion that they posed serious threats to their own existence, so they decided to "close" the project and "clean" their records entirely.
The end.
If you are still curious about the *sequel*'s details, the organization kindly left a note to those involved that were "able" to be transited to other projects mentioning the project's success and "vigorously" requested that none of the data or knowledge of it may be kept or transmitted in any form ever again.
**Edit**: If you are planning to create a real sci-fi story out of your idea, perhaps these ones might help:
* [Ender's game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game) sequels, i.e. the [Shadow saga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game_(series)#Shadow_saga), particularly [Shadows in flight (2012)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadows_in_Flight), where a mad scientist and his team used a genetic "key" to enhance human's intellect with a minor or, literally, huge side effect: a never-ending growth of all of the body's cells, resulting in giantism and a constant accelerated brain development since infancy.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tj8YF.jpg)
Image from [Instagram](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/336010822183655178/)
* [Epic of Gilgamesh (circa 2100 BC)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh) ([PDF version](http://www.aina.org/books/eog/eog.pdf)) where Bilgamesh (Sumerian for 'Gilgamesh') was a highly intelligent giant that became the king of Uruk and went on a quest to find eternal life, meeting Utnapishtim, the immortal man who survived the Great Flood (speculated to be Noah). You may see a parallel between the gods and the genetic scientists.
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[Question]
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I'm working on a story involving life on Europa (or at least a place just like it) being upturned dramatically by contact from a probe sent from Earth. Found this community while researching, and have found a lot of great ideas. I know the chances of life, let alone intelligent life, are pretty slim on Europa, but I'm ignoring that for the sake of the story. The driving force of the story is that a probe that's come from Earth either crashes or malfunctions after melting through the ice.The probe sinks to the bottom of a trench and sets off some sort of ecological disaster/collapse, that then has cascading effects on the civilizations living there. I'm just trying to decide what's the most realistic/reasonable option for what causes this. It needs to be something that would start as a local area problem, but would spread.
1. Most of life revolves around thermal vents/chemosynthesis, etc similar to the life that lives at the bottom of our own oceans. Since a bacteria serves as the base of the food chains in those ecosystems, my first thought was to have some sort of unforeseen cross-contamination where some Earth microbe is killing off the bacteria, or interfering in the chain in some way. I don't know if it needs to be more specific than that to be reasonable, or if that's too dumbed-down. What microbe would reasonably be on a probe that survived the trip all the way to the planet, and then was able to not just survive exposure to the sea, but thrive? Is that too granular? It also feels a little too easy considering NASA, etc go to great lengths to prevent it.
2. Another thought I had was that if there was, say, a nuclear power element, maybe the crash/malfunction caused it to leak, and ....bad stuff. But I'd definitely need to do more research on this, as I suspect that's a very over-simplified version of events, and I imagine not very realistic once I start looking into it. Like, I feel like using nuclear power to power a probe is probably unrealistic (but I don't know), and if they did, the danger is probably smaller than what I would want for my story (not like there's going to be a Chernobyl in a space probe). So, kind of guessing this one is not a good idea, but maybe I'm missing something that would work from this angle.
I'm open to other suggestions if someone can think of a better explanation, but I'm guessing some version of (1) is my best bet.
Thanks so much for your help!
[Answer]
**The Europans are terrified of what the probe means.**
The probe does not do anything more than it was supposed to do. But it is recognizably an artifact of an advanced alien culture. That means aliens are real, and more powerful than the Europans.
Europan societies were paranoid and xenophobic before, and under the strain of this new knowledge they collapse. There are riots and mass suicide. Conspiracy theories proliferate. Religious cults form and attack the populace. A society of one alien type turns on another, wiping it out. The most advanced aliens suffer a military coup and subsequent Khmer Rouge like violent purge of supposed alien sympathizers.
The moon Europa itself is ok. The alien societies dissolve into chaos.
[Answer]
## Leaking RTG
Numerous space probes in the past have used [Radioisotope thermal generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator)s as a source of power in the outer solar system, where solar panels are less useful. There have even been some speculative proposals about using heat from an RTG to melt through the Europan ice in order to release a submarine drone into the subsurface ocean.
Lets suppose a space probe with an RTG crash landed, and the sealed container containing the [Plutonium-238](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-238) was breached. Heating from the radioisotope could be enough to melt through the ice.
Once in the water, It would likely sink to the sea bed. As a neutron and beta emitter (when factoring in short lived decay products), it would be well shielded by the water, and any radiation dose would be limited unless a Europan lifeform got very close to the remains of the RTG.
However, if the radioisotope was in a more dispersible form (perhaps small dust particles), then Europan creatures could end up absorbing small particles of the radioisotope (through gills, or biologically analogous structures). Internally, this would be deadly. Any creatures unlucky enough to absorb some of the plutonium would likely receive a lethal dose, and die soon after. If their environment was naturally low in radiation (due to water shielding, and the Hydrothermal vents not spewing up anything too radioactive), it's possible they would not have evolved much radiation tolerance, and would be very susceptible. Any creatures in a wide area around the crash site could die, along with those that fed on them, those that fed on them, and so on.
Although this may not be enough to trigger a moon-wide ecological collapse, it could certainly have dire effects that reached far away from the crash site, causing the death of many creatures.
[Answer]
### The Great Europan Oxidation Event (due to biological contamination)
Around 2 billion years ago (give or take), a clever species of Terran cyanobacteria figured out how to photosynthesize. The result was [the Great Oxidation Event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event). The oxygen concentration in the oceans rapidly rose, followed by a rise in the atmospheric concentration of oxygen.
To some [anaerobic organisms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_organism), oxygen is a deadly poison, disrupting their metabolic processes. Oxygen is highly reactive—it "wants" to react with a lot of chemicals, and if these are delicate biological molecules like proteins and DNA, well, too bad for the organism in question. Even aerobic organisms like us (those that require oxygen for their survival) have to have cellular repair mechanisms that can fix the problems that arise when oxygen molecules react with things they shouldn't react with. On Earth, the Great Oxidation Event caused a mass extinction of anaerobic organisms that could not tolerate the higher concentration of oxygen. Most of the organisms that survived were those that could evolve to cope with the increased oxygen levels.
In your Universe, the Europan ocean is largely anoxic (containing very little dissolved oxygen), and the higher organisms that evolved there are anaerobic. Chemically, oxygen gas for them is not unlike chlorine gas for us: deadly even at relatively low concentrations. It might even already be known as a deadly poison by your civilizations, and banned under the Europan equivalent of the Geneva convention. Then an improperly sterilized probe from Earth introduces a Terran microbe (not necessarily a photosynthesizing one) that tolerates oxygen and excretes it as part of its metabolism. The result is an unintentional act of warfare against the Europans that is simultaneously biological and chemical.
[Answer]
**Biological contamination due to deliberate sabotage**
Biological contamination due to microbes is the obvious answer. There are microbes on Earth that can live off redox gradients in the ocean, and those microbes are found in small numbers everywhere on Earth, not just in the ocean, so it's not implausible that a probe could be contaminated with them.
However, as you said, space agencies go to great lengths to avoid such contamination, and for a mission to a world like Europa that could be habitable this would be an even greater concern. You *could* just say that contamination happened anyway, by accident, but as you say that might be "too easy", storytelling wise.
So why not have the contamination be deliberate instead? Someone with access to the probe managed to sneak in a sample of hydrothermal vent bacteria and smear it on part of the probe, somehow circumventing all the security protocols that presumably exist to prevent that.
Why would anyone do such a thing? I don't know, it's your story. Perhaps they had prior contact with some nefarious faction of Europans, or maybe they had their own more Earth-bound reason, it's up to you.
[Answer]
# You could crash Europa into another moon
The Planetary Protection Program checked your probe very carefully. But not carefully enough... a microbe escaped their notice.
*One microbe? What can one lousy microbe do?* Well, it lays down a slime of polysaccharide that nothing on Europa can digest. The microbe chokes off competition, dominates the ecosystem, and *inundates* the ocean in slime until it has the consistency of fresh-hocked mucus.
*Well that's terrible. But life will adapt, right?* Ah, but you're forgetting [moon-moon resonance](https://eos.org/research-spotlights/jupiters-ocean-moons-raise-tidal-waves-on-one-another). The sloshing of the tides on one moon of Jupiter interacts with that on another moon of Jupiter. ([The precise depth of the ocean affects what it interacts with](https://scitechdaily.com/jupiters-moons-could-be-warming-each-other-through-tidal-resonance/), and I expect viscosity would have a similar impact) When they are in sync, orbits remain stable. When they're near sync... orbits slowly change. And as the ecology evolves, changing the overall viscosity of the ocean, the moon gradually adjusts its orbital resonance, which is to say its orbital period, which is to say its orbital *radius*. It uses the push of another moon, via its ocean, to move in or out.
Perhaps it might have simply been ejected from Jupiter, to become a planet of its own in an odd elliptical orbit. But as it so happened, Europa was unlucky, and a close approach threw it into an elliptical orbit that ended in a collision.
Yes, that one single microbe turned these two moons into the dramatic Rings of Jupiter that vacationing lovers admire today.
[Answer]
**Unfortunate impact**
Your probe got lost. The landing was not an intended landing, it was a high velocity impact. The heavy apparatus, size of a train wagon, penetrated the ice at a very unfortunate place: a particularly thin spot. Below that spot, the largest biome of Europa existed, profiting from the sunlight. The ice ceiling breaks and your biome gets exposed to space. Through the pressure, loads of water vapor and atmosphere start to leak away. The small crack results in a huge rupture.. and large parts of Europa's ice ceiling are now getting unstable. Several of the advanced civilization's cities are devastated, killing millions.
This event is now called the Europan genocide. Our fault. There's a tribunal for it.
[Answer]
**Biological contamination.**
This is probably the simplest answer. One of the probes functions during its mission is to test and if possible return for further study samples from Europa's hydrosphere. So far so good - the lander and sampler modules have been carefully sterilized to the highest possible standards back on Earth.... but! There's an accident.
Either;
A) part of the probe wasn't as carefully cleaned (because it was not supposed to come into contact with liquid water) but does due to unforeseen problem (ice quake?) or;
B) post sterilization there was accidental cross contamination of previously 'clean' components like parts of the drill shaft or head.
Either way a microbial contamination from Earth reaches liquid water and starts to make itself at home to the determent of the local ecology. (The problem is a well documented concern in the planetary lander community and great lengths are gone to try and avoid it.)
[Answer]
#### Catalytic reaction.
The probe has a lot of sensors and parts that contain specs of particular metals in a purified state. A lot of them may act as catalysts, maybe the probe does not have a lot of platinum, but nickel might be enough. Imagine the probe immersed in water near a thermal vent surrounded by a lot of compounds. As soon as the catalyst enters into contact with the right compounds the chemical reaction is triggered and the currents spread around the result.
I don't know the composition now and I don't know exactly what could be the reaction, but the number of possibilities is quite big. What could avoid the extreme consequences? Catalyst poisoning. The damage would be one off.
**Update:** On a second thought I realised that nickel is common in meteorites. So if it were dangerous the disaster would have already happened. You'll have to find a better and less common catalyst.
[Answer]
## The probe acts as a Siren
From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siren_(mythology)):
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> In Greek mythology, the sirens were humanlike beings with alluring voices
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Further, a speculative etymology interprets the name to mean:
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> one who binds or entangles through magic song [ibid.]
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By unfortunate coincidence, this is what the probe does. It became disoriented in the Europan ocean and then trapped in some kind of crevice, where it entered a failure state in which it repeatedly tries to signal Earth for help. The message never reaches Earth, and a response never comes back, so the probe continues to send its signal periodically until its battery dies.
The Europan creatures have sensory organs that are receptive to the signal coming from the probe, like how sharks and other sea creatures can sense the electrical energy in the muscles of their prey. The Europan perception of the probe's SOS signal is strange but alluring, instilling in nearly every individual an overwhelming desire to repeat the experience. If they "hear" it, they swim towards the source and then wait for it to happen again, sitting patiently to the exclusion of all else. Most starve to death while waiting to bask in the next transmission.
Most radio waves don't travel very far in water, certainly not the frequencies that we use for space probes. This means that the deadly siren signal can only be heard by Europans who are very close to the probe. This fact is crucial to how the danger spread: two Europans went to investigate the probe, and one of them became ensnared. The other went to fetch help. Because the signal is brief and intermittent, nobody figures out what the safe distance is, and all the scientists and leaders who investigate end up getting snared.
These days, Europans come to the site because they've heard rumors. Some hear about a great treasure that is unimaginably beautiful. Others hear of a mountain of dead. All who go fail to return.
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[Question]
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Lets say you had a planet which has held many, many prosperous civilisations, each one technologically advanced but not space faring, what sort of cataclysmic events could wipe each one out which are unavoidable, repeatable, and leave enough survivors to evolve into the next?
I was considering meteors but they are too sporadic to count as being repeatable.
[Answer]
Something astronomical is probably your best bet. Meteors are good, but like you say they're not a sure thing -- even if you get some good hits on your planet, it doesn't ensure an extinction-level event like what you want (note that "extinction-level events" don't necessarily mean that all life ceases to exist -- otherwise our own planet's biosphere wouldn't have continued through 6 previous events!).
To get a lengthy period between events, you'd need your "extinctor" object(s) to be on highly elliptical, very large orbits. We're already familiar with lots of these in the form of comets -- [Haley's Comet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley's_Comet) being probably the most famous, returning every 75.3 years.
But if we have a big object that comes around and smashes into the planet, that's it -- it's not repeatable. And comets' tails just don't have the "killing power" necessary to pull off an extinction (well, they might, but they'd most likely have to expend too much of their mass in each pass to be repeatable for long).
So we're probably looking for an object that effectively "radiates" death.
We could put a particularly massive object into our highly elliptical orbit. If it's big enough, it could inflict cataclysmic tidal forces on the planet, pulling tectonic plates apart and triggering gigantic earthquakes and mass eruptions all over the surface, effectively wiping out most life and certainly devastating any civilization that might have built up.
The obvious answer here then is a Jupiter-sized -- or bigger! -- gas giant. On the other hand, passing so close to the sun may cause the latter to "suck up" too much of its atmosphere, and we again have the "crumbling comet" problem. So a stony giant planet may be a better bet.
Now, people are going to see this thing coming from a long way away -- we can already see Jupiter with the naked eye, and it's so far away our own tiny little moon has more influence on our tides! Maybe that's what you want, but I've got something else in mind.
It's one thing to see a big dot in the sky growing bigger and bigger until it passes so close that it destroys you. It's quite another to see something you can't even describe, let alone understand, do the same thing.
Can you imagine what you'd think if you saw the stars in your sky doing this:
You'd see this bizarre, mysterious, and terrifying effect moving ever closer and closer, affecting more and more of the sky, until eventually your world is destroyed amid earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. One heck of a terrifying harbinger of the apocalypse, eh?
You might think this is a black hole, and in fact you would be right. Just don't get caught up in the popular hype about black holes "sucking in" everything in sight -- outside their event horizon, they're basically no different than any other massive body. They just happen to be so dense that their surface (if they even have one) is lower than the point where their gravity is so intense that light itself can't escape -- but it can and does bend around it, creating the "lensing" you see above!
To make it more mysterious, you could call it a [Dark Star](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_star_(Newtonian_mechanics)) instead. They were a legit theory under Newtonian physics, though apparently Relativity means they've basically been replaced by black holes as the consequence of a super-dense object; if your society goes extinct before they discover Relativity and/or Quantum Mechanics, but after Newtonian Mechanics, they would likely theorize a dark star rather than a black hole. Plus, it's a scarier name than the over-done "black hole" (*just my (not-so-)humble opinion*).
You can put this thing on just about any orbit you want to achieve your apocalypse at any interval. If it isn't in sync with your planet's orbit, you'll have variable degrees of the apocalypse on each pass, growing more and more devastating until it peaks and then becomes less and less devastating -- but always plenty to wipe out civilization and leave only scattered survivors on an almost unrecognizably changed landscape.
And for bonus points, your civilization *could* reach the early space-faring stage, and so long as they can't escape the solar system to colonize another there's nothing they can do to save themselves -- after all, this is literally a second sun coming to wipe them out!
[Answer]
**Meteors**
Actually meteors are a possibility here. If you had a swarm of meteors (for example a shattered planet) that traveled together and orbits intersected at regular intervals then there would be a chance each intersect that the meteors would strike. Sometimes you would get lucky and none hit, sometimes not so lucky...so you can explain intervals with no strike.
Rather than having a cluster you could have a gas giant with an eccentric orbit, whenever it intersects with the asteroid belt or oort cloud or similar it sends a swarm of rocks heading towards the sun. Again these may or may not impact your planet but would happen on a regular basis.
**Solar Activity**
Maybe there is some unknown mechanism happening within the sun that causes cycles of activity. Every X hundred years these mechanisms cause the sun to release a massive solar flare that wipes out everything on the sunwards-facing side of the planet and lasts long enough to get a chunk of the night side as the planet rotates.
**Tectonics**
There could be a similar cycle happening within the planet itself. Pressure builds and then at regular intervals erupts in cataclysmic volcanic activity.
**Life**
There could be something similar to our blue-green algae that blooms and is poisonous but turned up to 11. When the climate, conditions, food and everything else is just right it blooms and blooms, poisoning the entire ocean and then the air and wiping out most animal life.
**Snowball Ice Age**
A full on snowball ice age again could happen on a repeatable sequence depending on the factors that trigger it. This would squeeze life down to a smaller and smaller area at the equator, potentially even covering the entire planet in ice. This would tend to have cycles of at least thousands and possibly millions of years though so may be too slow your uses.
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## A Ginormous Volcano
The best candidate I can think of is a volcano at 8 on the VEI scale, induced by tidal motions of a parent planet or another passing by every `x` number of years due to orbit overlap.
I don't really know if tidal motions are enough for this, but it *could* be combined with an eclipse or something to make it more dramatic and possibly aggravate the results.
I don't know enough to number-crunch this but I think it's doable, if you massage the planet sizes.
## Perpetual night
Another possibility would be to force a perpetual night, for a span of centuries possibly due to a peculiarity in orbits, causing another planet to hide yours behind its shadow for enough to induce a spontaneous and intense ice age. This *may* be possible if two planets have elliptical orbits, but one is offset, thus allowing their apoapsis to synchronize every `x` number of years for some time.
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If you want something regular, you are probably looking at an astronomical event. One thing that you might consider is a binary solar system where the planet is in regular orbit around it's primary star, but the overall temperature is dependent on the secondary star around which the primary star orbits very slowly. Then either the planet freezes up when it gets too far away or heats up when it gets too close.
Anything routine should be predictable to a civilisation but without the means to get off the planet it may not be preventable and the resources they have remaining may be required just to do enough to preserve the species through the next pass.
You might look at Brian Aldiss *Helliconia* books for an interesting take on this. The setting of Anne McCaffrey's dragon stories is also afflicted by a routine but dangerous ( not apocalyptic in this case ) astronomical effect.
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The videogame trilogy Mass Effect has a really similar situation: Every 50,000 years, the current galactic society vanishes, leaving behind a galaxy-wide network of hyperspace routes, as well as a central hub where the Galactic leadership stations their leaders. A few thousand years later, the next spacefaring species finds this network and starts activating it.
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> Halfway through the first game, it is revealed that every 50,000 years, a huge armada of extragalactic invaders called "The Reapers" invade the Galaxy and harvest all space-capable species, leaving behind the ruins of their society for the next civilization to find. They are also the creators of the hyperspace network and the central hub, to ensure that galactic society evolves along a chosen path. There is logic behind this: Apparently, the Reaper invasion is a way to prevent artificial life from rebelling against the creators, although the method they use is somewhat counterproductive.
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There was a grest sci-fi story about a civilization (A planet with 3 suns I believe) where some researchers were just realizing that their civilization had been wiped out every x years.
Turned out that at least one of the suns was always visible except for this short period every x years, and because of that they never had invented any light sources which caused them to burn everything... but the real problem was stars--the sheer number of which drove everyone insane.
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I'm writing this here because I want to propose a solution to my own question based off of the previous answers (Tim B and ivy\_lynx).
What if the original civilisation was HEAVILY technologically advanced, to the point they started construction of a Dyson Sphere (an eventuality for an advanced race), but halfway through construction it malfunctioned and stopped producing power, leaving the race on the dark side of the sun with no power, heat or light, killing them all off.
Since then, civilisations have been built up over the ruins to the point where the section of sphere eclipses the sun, plunging the planet into a period of darkness and perilous cold, killing most of the civilisation off. Then during the end period of the darkness, the sphere flickers, jump starting the original tech under the planet to thaw out the ice enough that the sun can finish the job.
Assuming the planet and the sphere section rotate the sun at ROUGHLY the same speed, they will only intersect at specific periods through time and, as it will spend most of its time out of sight, the civilisations won't pick it up.
Lacks the finesse of the natural options suggested, but I thought it was worth adding to the pile.
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It could well be self-inflicted. The Moties series by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle covers exactly this scenario:
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> The Moties breed rapidly and compulsively - non-pregnancy is eventually fatal. Overpopulation eventually leads to warfare and the destruction of advanced civilization. To minimize the risk of such wars, they long ago moved all the system's asteroids into orbits well away from the home world, so they can't be used as missiles (they have some space technology, but not enough to reach other planets). They have exhausted the planet's supply of fissionables, so there's no more nuclear war, but the craters from the old days are clearly visible from space.
> Because this has happened so many times, the Moties have provisions to help civilization return after each cataclysm: great barn-like archives, with locks that require some knowledge of astronomy to open. These contain samples of the technology needed to rebuild.
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This may give you some useful ideas while exploring your own.
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Nuclear war.
I once read a short story (Asimov's I think, but not sure) which argues that all-out nuclear war could be the "natural" outcome of technological advancement in large-ape civilizations.
Our Earth was an exception only because nukes happened to be invented at the very end of an intense and prolongued world war. By the time appettites for war were large again, the US and USSR had already achieved a fairly obvious, short-term Mutual Assured Destruction, which is why they did not attack each other.
Even if you don't agree that human nature leads to that, it could be the case for another species, a little more violent or a little more competitive...
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You could go with one of the theories for Earth's own mass extinction, which is cosmic radiation.
My understanding is that because our entire solar system wobbles a little as it travels around the milky way, every 62 million years we are exposed to enormous amounts of radiation when the earth peaks up enough above the plane of the galaxy.
National geographic has an [article](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070420-extinctions.html) about it.
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You might consider a system similar to [Dragonriders of Pern](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonriders_of_Pern), where a nearby astronomical body regularly introduces some agent into your planet.
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**What wipes them out every time is not an external force, but themselves**. Let me explain.
Every time they get wiped out, the previous civilization becomes a vague legend until it reaches the level of mythology. The facts about how it happened get lost. Over time, as the civilization advances they find more clues about previous civilization on the same world. With even more research they realize that they are descendants of those beings... and that it's happened multiple times.
Armed with the knowledge that it's happened many times and that it could happen again, they come up with theories as to what happened so that they can protect themselves and avoid it happening again. The problem is, that what kills them is those very plans they put in place to protect themselves... The plans go awry and everyone dies. The latest civilization, of course, doesn't realize this until it's too late. Maybe the clues they leave the next civilizations will help them avoid the same fate.
This leaves open the question of how it happened the first time. Sort of the opposite of a religious creation story.
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<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal>
During a Geomagnetic reversal, solar winds would be devastating for life on earth, i guess.
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Stargate Atlantis has some similar themes to the Mass Effect answer. In the show, the Pegasus Galaxy has been under Wraith control for millennia, harvesting the human population as food at (presumably) random intervals. This ranges from small-scale (handful of people taken) to the culling of large parts of the population, leaving enough to repopulate the planet for the next harvest.
More notably, they also often cull or outright destroy civilizations approaching a level of scientific and technological proficiency to become a threat to them. I seem to recall episodes dealing with a civilization where secret research has been going on for generations to stop the Wraith, having kept its knowledge written down in hidden archives to allow future generations to continue their work, even if everyone involved is taken.
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Ice ages.
For the last 4 million years, the earth has spent 90% of the time locked in ice ages each roughly 140,000 years long punctuated by brief warming periods of 6,000-15,000 years. (IRRC, we're statistically overdue now.)
The ice ages may begin suddenly from having seasons to permanent snow all the way down to north Texas in as little as 20 years. Even where it doesn't snow, the climate will alter radically, the seas will recede stranding every port town in land Increased temperature differentials will drive huge and violent storms from the equators to the poles. Deserts will expand.
The effective size of the biosphere contracts by as much as 50%. People will have to migrate to survive and mega wars of desperation will be common. It's unlikely industrial civilization would survive.
1/3 of the planet covered by ice with another 1/3 turned to desert. Human survivors of the ice and the wars would be forced in little enclaves scattered all over the equatorial regions. Violent storms and changing coast lines make sea travel impossible. Trade and communications break down.
The kilometer thick glaciers will rake everything down to the bedrock destroying all evidence of man made structures. When the next ice comes, New York will be raked off and dumped in the sea. 150,000 years later, there will absolutely nothing left to provide evidence that the great city ever existed.
Even the end of the ice ages could prove as devastating to any civilizations that did rebuild. Massive floods would sweep out from the melting glaciers. The sea levels would rise, perhaps in as little as 20 years again.Since most great human cities in history have been built by the ocean or in flood plains, it's likely few would survive. Most of human works would be flooded under the sea with only the tropical mountain inlands providing refuge.
So, every warming period civilization would have zero knowledge of the previous warming period civilization and likely not even the civilization of the ice ages themselves. They might find bits and pieces here and there but nothing useful or cohesive.
If you set the story on a world with a different continent pattern than earth so that more of the land mass was towards the poles, then the effects of an ice age would be even more severe.
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This is building on the polar jets answer of Lorren Pechtel.
My scenario involves an unknown mechanism that produces gamma ray bursts at fixed intervals. For the purposes of world building, lets say that instead of a black hole, it is a neutron star and sun-sized star pair that over the course of 20,000 years erupts in a gamma ray burst from the neutron star reaching a critical mass after siphoning enough matter from the sun-sized star. (This is not scientific, but for the purposes of world building we will be taking liberties with physics).
To add in just enough science to make this science-fiction, the gamma ray burst would have the effects described in the wikipedia page on gamma ray bursts - it would deplete the ozone layer and cause mass extinctions. This would require us to place our solar system at a distance of around 10,000 light years from the bursting neutron star. This would be unavoidable because since the event happens every 20,000 years, there would be no chance for a civilization to go to that star and stop it in time if they go at some fraction of the speed of light, assuming they could even discover a mechanism to stop it.
Not only would the ozone layer be depleted, but the side of the planet facing the gamma ray burst would experience lethal doses of radiation. On the other side of the planet, the people in power would have enough time to retreat deep into underground bunkers. These bunkers would have been created in preparation for possible nuclear war with rivals on the same planet, since the discovery of nuclear energy would invariably lead to the possibility of nuclear war for each civilization cycle. The bunkers would also have enough food to allow the survivors to stay in for centuries before they emerge onto the world.
The survivors would spread throughout the world, memory of the bunkers and the gamma ray burst will fade, the bunkers would fall into disrepair and be lost to time, and the next civilization will have no idea what happened, save for the odd technological relic discovered here and there and layering in soil created by the extinction events.
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In the foreword to [John Brunner's *The Crucible of Time*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucible_of_Time), the author says *something along the lines of*:
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> "It has been speculated that in the history of our own planet, passing
> through **bands of interstellar dust** led to ice ages and catastrophes. I
> wanted to explore what might happen on a planet where such events
> happened at the same time as life had just started evolving towards
> intelligence".
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There is a black hole in the system. Periodically one of the polar jets fries the world.
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So I was outlining the part of the story where Gyvaris, a dragon, almost gets killed, when I realized I glanced over something. You see, Gyv had a human friend before and they used to play games to pass time.
Gyvaris' mother taught him the basics of close-quarters combat through various games. She'd often throw various items towards him, telling the young dragon to catch them with his mouth. If Gyv was too slow or overextended, he couldn't reach the next one in time.
Though Gyv had learned how to strike at blinding-fast speeds, he also tends to damage whatever he catches. I mean, he has the jaw-strength of a Nile crocodile. This is fine when fighting dragonslayers or catching the chunks of meat that his mother tossed into the air, but kind of ruins a casual game of catch.
Plus there's Gyvaris' battery-acid-breath weapon. It's life-threatening when inhaled, can cause chemical burns on the skin and blindness when it gets into the eye. Gyv doesn't drool often, but the residual acid in his mouth can still cause toys to deteriorate.
Dragons are pretty big, at around 6-10 metres in length (ridiculously long tail included) and two metres at the wing's shoulders.
**So, if the dragon is regularly playing games of catch with a human, how could the human make a toy for the dragon that can last for a while? It doesn't have to be fancy, just safe, durable and usable.**
**Tech-level is medieval.**
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I would employ the same basic philosophy as with the [dragon-proof house](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/173652/what-would-a-house-designed-to-accomodate-a-dragon-look-like/173655#173655). Dragons, like any other large animals, are big and damaging even when no harm is intended. That's why you cannot keep tigers as pets - no matter how much they love you, when they try to cuddle you'll be crushed or ripped to shreds.
So don't try to make uncrushable toys; they will be impractical and expensive. Make toys that are cheap and sturdy enough not to wear out overly quickly, but easily replaceable when they do. I suggest a bundle of tough rope; which you can throw and play fetch with. Maybe it will expire in a day, but you can always make more if you've got the rope to spare.
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**Animal remains!**
On the same principle as [KeizerHarm’s answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/174801/2676), something easily replaceable seems a better bet than trying to find something indestructible. What would a dragon and a farm boy (or whatever the human friend was) have a plentiful supply of?
Well, unless Gyvaris and his mother are vegetarians, they must have access (by hunting, herding, or otherwise) to a reliable supply of animals. If Gyvaris can bring some of these back to the human friend for butchering before eating, then the human can make lots of good toys out of these, without too much effort.
Big leg bones, roughly cleaned: perfect for throwing to catch/fetch, or the human can play at being a knight with a sword! A bladder, inflated: the original football. Or with smaller prey — rabbits, say — no need for butchering at all; just enjoy a few minutes of toss-and-catch before it becomes Gyv’s next snack.
Just so long as the human has a good stream nearby to wash off in, of course.
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> Though Gyv had learned how to strike at blinding-fast speeds, he also tends to damage whatever he catches. I mean, he has the jaw-strength of a Nile crocodile. This is fine when fighting dragonslayers or catching the chunks of meat that his mother tossed into the air, but kind of ruins a casual game of catch.
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WHY WOULD YOU WANT THE TOY BACK? WHY????
This doesn't sound like "catch and fetch." JUST catch. And that would be nigh impossible (and dangerous) if the item is scaled up for your dragon. I mean what would the dang things weigh? And would you WANT that hurtling back at you for you to throw again? I'd think not. Also, they would be covered in acid spit. Which, again, no bueno. There are dogs that do not drool much, but I would not want to touch their toys if they had acid spit. I understand it would be...um...cute to have the dragon bring them back, but practical? Nope.
**My answer is simple: make them almost totally disposable. Have a pile of bones or whatever you are throwing for the dragon to practice with. The fact that your dragon destroys them doesn't ruin a casual game of catch because your human just has a pile of whatever they are to throw and they don't expect the dragon to bring them back.**
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Don't waste time manufacturing fancy toys. In medieval times this is a bit too costly for the intended purpose. Instead use things that you can pick up everywhere:
* Stones, if this does not damage the dragons teeth. A miss could also cause some pain, encouraging the dragon to be diligent.
* Lumps of clay. If there is clay source nearby, you could mix the clay with water and form balls. Use a slingshot for higher velocities.
* Sticks. Just go to the next forest, break off some branches and use those.
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**A Game of Chess**
You have two options when it comes to toys - either make them near indestructible or make it so that you can just make new ones every time. Thus, may I humbly suggest the modest game of chess? It's quite easy to make a crude set of pieces and a chess board and it teaches dragons strategy.
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# Catapult
Well, not the catapult itself, but a catapult and a bunch of heavy rocks. The problem is that any "toy" durable enough to not be damaged by a dragon is likely to be far too heavy for a human to throw more than a few feet. So you're going to need something big to do the throwing, and a catapult definitely fits the bill, and is technology that existed in medieval times. The human only needs to be able to lift the rocks into the basket and have the strength to crank it down to load it. (You might use multiple humans for efficiency, possibly even multiple catapults.)
Remember to aim *away* from populated areas in case your dragon misses a catch. You can even point it out to sea if you're close enough. Any missed catch just falls harmlessly to the sea floor. Of course you've lost that rock, but it's just a rock, there's plenty where that came from.
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I'm going to post this anyway, even though it overlaps with [M.Winkens](/users/74948)' [answer](/a/174852/43697), because a) I thought of it first (note comments on the question), and b) I think the other answer is missing a few points.
The obvious answer, as anyone that has read [The Flight of Dragons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flight_of_Dragons_(book)) should already know, is:
### Gold
You don't just want to use metal. As I noted elsewhere, hard objects introduce the risk of Gyvaris damaging his teeth. Gold is conveniently not only very soft (as metals go), but also resistant to many acids.
You also *don't* want to make it *solid*, which is fortunate because gold is rare and expensive. You want it to be able to deform easily if Gyv chomps down on it (see previous point). This does mean that you may need to reshape the toy frequently, but as long as you don't lose chunks of it, that shouldn't be the end of the world. As another bonus, gold is non-toxic (some *humans* actually [*eat*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_leaf#Culinary_uses) gold).
Now... what shape should you make it? Well, from a safety standpoint, a foil ball (like a giant version of certain cat toys) would be ideal (at least in terms of 'things you could make out of metal'), but probably won't hold up very well. However... you might try making a [flying disk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisbee) out of it. It may be necessary to repair this frequently, but it also shouldn't be overly *difficult* to repair, and they have much more interesting flight characteristics than just about anything else you could chuck.
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**A big gold Ring**
Well, depening on the size of the human and the dragon you could forge a metal ring. Depending on the strength of the dragons acid-breath you have the following options:
* Titanium will stand up to most acids but concentration and temperature can play havoc with it.
* Tantalum is very unreactive and can stand up to higher temperatures and high oxygen conditions
* Alloys like niobium and titanium can also work well depending on the usage.
* Platinum, zirconium, gold are other quite resistant metals and some ceramics can be quite resistant as well.
It's very costly and some of the materials are probably not creatable/obtainable in the medival but it's possible - you probably need a lot of resources to maintain a dragon. Probably gold is the easiest obtainable acid-resistant metal of them.
Make it a ring big enough for the dragon to fit in it's mouth and small enough for the human to be throwable.
Side note: dragons *love* gold *[Citation needed]*
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I couldn't think of anything that could hold up to acid or intense pressure, but how about using ash from fireplaces? **Please someone check me on this**, but I believe you can make "ash bricks" by mixing ash with water and then letting it dry.
Please, let me know if this is helpful! :D
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From my reasearch, acid resistant materials all require manufacturing and decent chemical theory, or are too brittle (glass and ceramics). The ash bricks mentioned by anither person may have some merit but from what I've found of them they are from coal, not charcoal, which has the silica and alumminium that in combination forms the acid resistance (along with atmospheric curing). The best I can find is baking soda, which neutralizes sulphuric acid, though that was invented in the mid 1800's, so not medieval.
Another factor you may not have considered: if this acid is mixing with his saliva, then catch would be harmful to the human partaking in it - chemical burns on the hands are nasty. Also, how do your dragons groom? Do they bathe or do they self-groom like cats/dogs? If the answer is the latter, then your dragon may be covered in low concentrations of highly dangerous acid from tooth to claw. Your dragon's human friend may have a shorter life expectancy then even the short-lived medieval man.
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I've been thinking of the idea of creating and adding an alien species that's antimatter-based (being from a universe where antimatter became the majority instead of "normal matter").
However, I'm not sure what abilities or what their biology would be like. Leading to the question of, what would antimatter life-forms be like? Such as how their metabolisms work, their chemical make-up, muscles, etc.
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Potentially, it would be very similar to life made out of matter.
Antimatter is expected to have the same chemistry as normal matter, so any lifeforms would work the same way with the exception that if they even touched our world they would instantly annihilate.
However! There is a lot about physics we don't know. Under the assumption that antimatter is an exact mirror to regular matter, one would expect the Universe to produce antimatter and matter in equal amounts. The fact that it doesn't is one of the great [unsolved problems in physics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon_asymmetry).
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# Just like us
But don't touch them.
Lots of science fiction likes to attribute special or near magical properties to antimatter. This is rubbish. The only thing special about anti-hydrogen, is if you touch it with hydrogen, they annihilate in a tremendous release of energy. Two atoms of anti-hydrogen and one of anti-oxygen would still make one molecule of anti-water. Anti-copper wires would still carry anti-electrons to power anti-tungsten filament light bulbs.
Really, an antimatter universe would be roughly the same as ours. Until the two came together.
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**Probably** just like us.
We still don't know some other (normal-matter) biology except our own (we don't even know all the dark corners of our own biology). It may or may not be similar to our own. Keep in mind that A LOT of our own biology is randomness fixed and multiplied by the inheritance. There is such a thing like a convergent evolution - except that it kicks in whenever it feels like and is not really predictable and rather won't apply to the whole ecosystem.
Given the proper conditions, antimatter biology may develop just like our own. Or just like some other normal-matter biology we are still not aware of.
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I don't think it would make a difference, except positive would be negative and negative would be positive. From our perspective.
Antimatter is the opposite of matter, kind of like the equivalent negative number, but only if they violently exploded when combined instead of just being zero. (It does end up as zero, but after the violent explosion.) It makes up antiprotons, antielectrons, and antineutrons, which are like the ones we have, just with the charges flipped. (Except for neutrons, which don't have a charge.) Antimatter isn't very stable in our universe, because seeing as how it's made of matter, it gets annihilated very quickly. In a world of antimatter, it's stable, and more or less would just from the same elements and thus the same structure that our universe does. Except with the charges flipped from our perspective.
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Though the other answers are all correct, I'd like to add the following: there is one thing we don't know for sure yet, whether antimatter is subject to gravity as normal matter ! See
[Gravitational interaction of antimatter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_interaction_of_antimatter) on wikipedia.
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There are two worlds of more or less equivalent technological level, say a difference of only a few decades and no more than 50 years. A first contact event occurs and after the hoopla dies down trading starts.
Initially, barter is the primary form of trade but this quickly becomes cumbersome.
How would the two economies first establish a currency exchange and exchange rate?
Some commodities are similar and occur in similar quantities, particularly minerals gold, iron etc. Other commodities are unique to one civilization or the other; plants and animals unique to each planet, unique tech developed by one and not the other.
Some restrictions:
* Both planets have one currency or at least a dominant currency (like the USD)
* Neither planet is in a "dominant" economic or technological position.
* Travel between the planets takes a few days
* There is a moderate level of trust in business dealings but it is not clear how laws apply to off worlders on each planet.
Ideas I've toyed with:
* comparable commodity-based exchange, ie. gold standard type exchanges, but this seems archaic for technologically advanced worlds and would anyone really want to transport heavy gold out of the gravity well of a planet
* some type of crypto type exchange, but this seems problematic with distance and not very conducive to trade as the price fluctuates
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You just pass laws on each world allowing the purchase and sale of the other world’s currency, with some sensible regulation to make sure people can’t get ripped off. Then the markets will establish the exchange rate and arrange the physical transport of any currency that actually needs to be moved, just like between two countries on Earth at present.
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Why have an exchange rate?
Just deal in the local currency on whichever end of the trip I am at, and carry my wealth in the form of goods that will sell well at my next stop. Freight carriers don't like to run with empty holds, it is a waste of resources to sit still longer than necessary to unload and reload, and an even bigger waste to move while empty.
I leave A with a hold full of cargo bound for B. When I get there I sell my cargo for B coin. I then turn around and buy new cargo using said B coin for my trip back to A. On the A side I do the same thing but with A dollars. If I am doing this regularly, I keep accounts on both ends of the trip in that planets currency. When I am ready to retire, or otherwise have a need to consolidate my wealth, I deliberately skew the relative value of my cargos so that A>B just covers the costs, while B>A lets me extract my savings and bring my profits home.
Money is just a convenient means of representing the time and energy that goes into producing something. It only has value as long as all parties agree on what a unit represents. People on A will never see value in B coins, and B will never value A dollars, because they have a different reference base. The only ones who will see value in both are the people who move between places, and they will naturally define their own formula for relative worth base on what they can do with each currency in it's own place.
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Comparing commodities. Money, after all, is just an abstract representation of goods and services. The only reason any form of fiat currency has power is its ability to be swapped for either a good or a service. A way to get an idea at what the exchange rate would be is to just compare a common and frequently used commodity between the two and use it to set a benchmark.
The trick is finding the commodity. Any metal that's used in equal measure would be useful, but suppose one planet is iron-rich and the other is iron-poor? Or perhaps one culture values gold whereas the other values silver? If both planets have the same amount of metals and use similar ways to process it, that would be the best, but that's not always the case.
Services would actually be another good place to start. Figure out the 'living wage', as in how much money would be the bare minimum for living expenses i.e. food, clothing, shelter at a minimal level. Or plot a graph with the respective salaries for necessary jobs - like doctor, farmer, lawyer, etc. (Cue lawyer joke.) Take all that information together and you should get a pretty good idea of what the exchange rate should look like.
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As bitcoin history shows, currency exchanges will emerge very quickly as soon as the currency is considered to have some nonzero value, despite exchange rate fluctuations. The rates on all these exchanges tend to quickly converge, and are used as a basis even for other people who trade directly. Even after failures of large exchanges like MtGox, the trade went on.
Unlike Bitcoin, you have equivalent goods on both planets (gold, drinking water, rocket fuel, ...), so trader can use them to calculate the estimated value of foreign currency.
When the interplanetary trade gets non-negligible and it gets regulated, these exchanges gradually enter the regulated regime and precautions to stabilize the exchange rate are made. I assume here both governemnts view the interplanetary trade as something good or neutral, not try to stop it.
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I worked in a electronic trading of currencies and commodities. Typically, there is not a single exchange market but the price would be more or less the same. The liquidity of the market and the spread (difference between BUY and SELL aka BID-ASK) determine how likely customer would use your market.
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Does it have Faster than light (FTL) communication? In the real world, the news publish in US would [takes a couple of milliseconds to reach our London office](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_(foreign_exchange))
The market price is set by [Market Depth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_depth). The buyer and seller would line up a the price with the volume.Those in the middle would match and the trade is done. [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/z77rE.png)
[Market Maker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_maker) those who regularly publish price and trade often would get a discount to use the market. The price is set by multiple Market Makers that provide their vision to the market.
Market Makers can be:
* Hedge fund that tries to bet on the market
* Company needs to offset their risk by hedging, say they have to pay in USD while holding GBP in the future.
As long as there are enough regulars states their demands, a market is formed. So the price is determine by those who is willing to trade at this moment at this price.
Statistic data moves the market. When the [Nonfarm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonfarm_payrolls) data released by the government, the price moves dramatically at that particular millisecond. There are [more indicators](https://www.forexfactory.com/calendar.php)
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OK, let's think about it:
* we have roughly market economies on both sides
* we have not united planets with already non uniform jurisdiction => they must already have some rules governing [conflict of laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_laws) or [law of the sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_sea)
* we have modern states, which detest any power vacuum and just in case would impose (or even usurp) their authority on everything closing by. (not mentioning that modern states would quite quickly at least start to establish some kind of relationship and working on treaties)
So for practical purposes a space alien is a foreigner like any other, who while in your space is subject to local laws, but for many purposes concerning example technical certification of his ship is considered to be subject to his local laws, unless they are considered as outrageous. (In this case he is politely asked to comply with local laws or refused docking rights).
I don't think that any high tech tech civilisation would barter much. It would be too cumbersome. Rather an alien would check what he can buy, whether there are any nasty restrictions, and if everything is fine would accept local currency with tendency to err on side of caution. Moreover, someone presumably would even demand from him some cash payment for tariffs or docking fees. If he didn't trust it, then he would just try to spend it all before leaving those barbarians.
**Exchange rate would be determined by the market and it would happen very fast. However, at first it would jump a lot, before stabilising. In a while all major currencies of the other world would be honoured.**
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**I think the short answer is: you're missing a step.**
**The next step in that picture *isn't* a currency exchange. If you've got a trader who's currently taking barter in exchange for their goods, the next step is to *take the local currency instead.*** Instead of taking on 500 kilos of sodium chloride in payment, you get 500 cilrish - which you know you can use to purchase X, Y, and Z at the local alien freemarket. There isn't an exchange rate - you're not directly exchanging dollars for cilrish. In fact, the trader in that situation doesn't even really care about an exchange rate. Instead, they care about the goods X, Y, and Z versus the amount of dollars they spent on the venture. The trader may even keep spare cilrish - but mostly from the standpoint that it'll let them buy goods on the alien planet.
So for small-time trading, there isn't an exchange rate. But what happens when trading gets more prevalent - or, more directly, entities start springing up that do *one directional trading* - they focus on importing A and B from the alien planet and selling them on earth. In that case, the business needs to find a way to convert dollars into cilrish.
But there are likely business entities on the alien planet with the same problem. They're importing Miniature Corgis (a delicacy on their planet) and receiving payment in cilrish... which those businesses have to convert to dollars in order to purchase more inventory.
At that point, there's still not really an 'exchange rate', so much as a "Here's a rate we happen to agree to a transaction to at this point in time." It's just two companies agreeing to swap X dollars for Y cilrish.
Now, once there's a *market demand* for exchanges, that's when an actual exchange rate pops up. Because there's enough trading of cilrish to/from dollars that an actual proper rate can be established.
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I was thinking, if they are different life beings and have different life standards and materials use, what they have in common? Because one of the civilizations could valerate gold, whereas the others simply don't care.
But what they have in common?
Both have difficulties and cost to travel between their two planets.
The exchange rate could be a trip from one planet to the other. **They can calculate the equivalent in 1kg per trip.**
I assume that the cost of travel is more or less the same in each civilization while being a little cheaper for the most advanced one. But they are more advanced, is logical they have a more valuable exchange.
For example:
A car cost 50,000€, and the European Union can put 1 kg in orbit for 9047€ (according to Wikipedia, Ariane 6 cargo capacity and approx launch cost are 10500 kg and € 95 million). The car cost (50000/9047 = 5.52) 5.52kg per trip.
Meanwhile, in Russia, they are selling a laptop, about 40000 Russian Rubles. The Soyuz have a charge capacity of 7200kg and a cost of 3200 million Rubles. 1 kg per trip cost 444444 Rubles. The laptop cost 0.09 kg per trip.
Those calculations are approximate and the capacity and the cost of the launches and capacity of the rockets are also approximate, the source is Wikipedia.
If we convert the currency (the laptop cost approximately 600€, 40000 Rubles), the car is 83 times more valuable than the laptop. So, 0.09 kg per trip 83 times more, are 7,5 kg per trip. The Europeans have they car for 5,2 kg per trip.
**The exchange rate is 1.44 Russian kg per trip for 1 European kg per trip.** I think it's a good ratio.
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During the barter phase, when you were trading a ship full of grain for some crates of microprocessors, you established the relative values of the commodities. Now that you have this information you can start trading with tokens, like the federal reserve notes. The parties will have to establish a clearing house for transactions, the parities between the tokens will have to be agreed upon, either by state decrees or by letting the tokens' value float in the markets or by having a common currency.
Until you a have an agreed-upon clearing house you will still need to resort to barter.
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The title pretty much says it all. I'm wondering if it is possible through "digital" means only (aka any physical disruption of satellites is not allowed) to disable the US GPS satellite constellation. Here are some additional details to help with answering:
1. This would require that the GPS satellites have receivers that accept commands in some form. I'm guessing that such a setup is not necessary - technically all the satellites have to do is station keeping and signal broadcasting. I'm sure they could be completely automated and therefore may not have any remote control possibilities at all, making this impossible.
2. However, I presume that they have some basic capabilities for two way communication to assist in the event of a malfunction, so that the satellite may be returned to service without a very expensive replacement. This part of the satellites is what I would be targeting.
3. I presume that the satellites are not linked to each other in any way, and therefore disabling the network would require attacking each satellite individually
4. I understand that the United States is not the only country that operates a global positioning system, and therefore that bringing down the US GPS system will not immediately disable all GPS devices globally. However, I am making the (rather narcissistic) assumption that the US system is supported by the majority of devices world-wide.
Therefore, a particularly helpful answer might aim to address these particular items:
1. Do the GPS satellites even have the receiving capabilities that are a minimum requirement to make hacking even remotely feasible?
2. Any information about the communication channels used for managing these (or similar) satellites and details about the software on the satellites, would earn extra bonus points! I presume many details are Top Secret in real life, so I'll accept anything that shows that such an attack may be plausible, even if it may not actually be possible.
3. Presuming that hacking the satellites is not outright impossible, what level of resources would an attacker need to manage it simultaneously on a global scale? "Simultaneous" probably isn't realistic, so to pick a hard target, let's say that I want to get enough satellites "down" in 24 hours to make all consumer-grade GPS devices useless.
Please help me accomplish my evil goals! If the GPS on your phone stops working next month it's not my fault.
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GPS satellites - almost all satellites, really - need to have the capacity to be remotely "disabled" as part of their end-of-life protocol. Satellites degrade over time like all things do (especially things exposed to the orbital environment) and they're also steadily rendered obsolete. To avoid old satellites cluttering up the most useful orbits and becoming a navigational hazard for their successors, satellites are normally boosted upwards into a [graveyard orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_orbit) (an orbit nobody is actively using, where it can drift in peace) or downward into a disposal orbit (where the satellite will eventually deorbit and disintegrate in the atmosphere). They will also be [passivated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passivation_(spacecraft)), removing volatiles like propellant and power storage to minimize the risks of a future collision.
Given the operating parameters of satellites, end-of-life is a one-way trip. Once it begins its graveyard or disposal burn, it won't have sufficient fuel to return to its intended orbit, and once it's passivated, it literally lacks the motive power to be able to restore itself. All your hackers have to do is convincingly mimic signals from the ground controller telling the GPS network to retire itself, and it will be irreparable. As a bonus, since satellites EOL at different times, you could retire satellites one by one to prove you're serious.
According to their Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices ([pdf](https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/library/usg_od_standard_practices.pdf)) the US government requires end-of-life disposal for all missions, whether civilian or military. I don't know what methods GPS satellites *specifically* use, or if they were exempted for some reason.
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This is from [the Wikipedia entry for GPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Control_segment), regarding its control segment:
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> The flight paths of the satellites are tracked by dedicated U.S. Air Force monitoring stations in Hawaii, Kwajalein Atoll, Ascension Island, Diego Garcia, Colorado Springs, Colorado and Cape Canaveral, along with shared NGA monitor stations operated in England, Argentina, Ecuador, Bahrain, Australia and Washington DC. The tracking information is sent to the Air Force Space Command MCS at Schriever Air Force Base 25 km (16 mi) ESE of Colorado Springs, which is operated by the 2nd Space Operations Squadron (2 SOPS) of the U.S. Air Force. **Then 2 SOPS contacts each GPS satellite regularly with a **navigational update**** using dedicated or shared (AFSCN) ground antennas (GPS dedicated ground antennas are located at Kwajalein, Ascension Island, Diego Garcia, and Cape Canaveral). **These updates synchronize the atomic clocks on board the satellites** to within a few nanoseconds of each other, **and adjust the ephemeris of each satellite's internal orbital model**. The updates are created by a Kalman filter that uses inputs from the ground monitoring stations, space weather information, and various other inputs.
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So all you need is access to a GPS engineer's workstation (which can maybe be obtained remotely) and someone's login (so many ways to get one) and you can start spreading chaos. Merely changing a few satellites' datetime to random values will cause the system to stop working until someone fixes it.
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You may be wondering how secure the air force base must be. Consider that GPS security is probably less critical for world safety than intercontinental nuke security. [Consider the baseline for the security of those things](https://youtu.be/1Y1ya-yF35g?t=125) (it's a miracle we're not all dead by now). You might be able to sneak in with a pizza box and a pizza delivery uniform.
It may be that the GPS operation console runs on floppies just like the nuke consoles do. If so, switch the GPS floppies with malicious ones and see as the operstors upload bad instructions to the satellites.
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GPS transmissions come to Earth *very* attenuated, and hence are *very* sensitive to jamming (radio blabbering) and spoofing (fake messages impersonating sattelites). A radio station switched to the appropriate frequency would deny a large area.
The catch is that it automatically broadcasts the jamming source location. A missile could literally lock on to the jamming signal.
Luckily, we're all carrying small radio transmitters. A sufficiently successful mass-deployed cell phone virus could turn all infected devices into jammers or spoofers, effectively denying GPS in all populated areas. Be warned that there may be extra safeguards against changing the radio frequency, so owning the Operating System may not be enough and the solution will change with cell phone models. On the other hand, you don't need to cover all models.
To cover unpopulated areas such as oceans, you'd need a massive drone army.
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Certainly -- if you're the United States Government.
They temporarily turned off the "dithering" of the system at various times (including during the first Gulf War, due to shortage of mil-spec GPS devices) and did so permanently in the late 1990s (I don't recall the exact year, and it doesn't really matter here). They could, in theory, turn it back on at any time, limiting civilian GPS accuracy to around 50 meters error as it was originally.
Or, they could ("temporarily") turn the entire system off, if there were a situation that made it seem like a good idea (say, advance notice of a bunch of GPS-guided Bad Things being launched at American targets).
Now, given that it's possible for the folks who built and operate the system, I'd say it's very much possible for sufficiently skilled and motivated hackers to gain access to the control systems and either disable the entire system, or disrupt it enough that (at least for a while) it's more dangerous to use it than to ignore it (say, for holding course in an airliner on a trans-Polar flight).
As with information on how to build a nuclear bomb, it's probably best to hide the details of exactly how it would be done -- write it as a "hacking" scene the way other novels and movies generally do.
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*"Maybe"*:
GPS, and the other services, satellites contain communications and state control interfaces because they are designed to be able to be controlled from ground stations.
One of the key functionalities of those state controls are what level of encryption is used to broadcast their signals - the US's GPS is first and foremost a *military* service, that was opened up to civilian use as a secondary functionality to gain more usage out of the expense of putting them in orbit.
During times of war the network can be modified to revoke that open civil usage and rely on more heavily encrypted signals that only official military receiver units would be able to use or understand.
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So we clearly have *vectors* to carry out various attacks, with multiple options to the "end result" of the attack.
* Limit or remove Civil Use
* Disrupt official military use with a more complex attack
* Potentially destroy the array entirely by placing all/most satellites in unrecoverable modes and require physical replacements or repair.
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As far as carrying out the attack, that would require a very complex and skill/resource intensive operation. [Possibly made far easier with advanced insider knowledge. As with any computer system, there is potentially a shockingly trivial exploit that has been overlooked]
Simply flipping modes to restrict Civil usage [the majority of GPS units/receivers] would likely be detected and corrected in minutes, but repeated attacks may take some time to completely correct and prevent being disrupted over and over again. [Maintaining spotty GPS with it flipping on and off for a full 24 hours like this might be stretching it]
An exploit to attack each satellite's station keeping systems probably has the highest potential to bring the system down and keep it from being restored in minutes.
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All GPS satellites have two-way ground communications, they need semi-continuous (the longest maximum no check-in time is measured in months) ground telemetry updates. You wouldn't need to hack the satellites, individually or collectively, you'd just need to corrupt that data and crash everything. By which I mean literally crash it, hot metal falling from the sky and no more GPS until new satellites can be launched. There are at least two major obstacles to this approach, first you have to hack the [US Air Force's 50th Space Wing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50th_Space_Wing) to plant the bad data, that will not be an easy mission. The second barrier may be even higher; you have to get all 8 separate blocks of satellites all with different programming, design specifications and check-in schedules to request and upload that bad data within a window of only a few minutes because as soon as the first satellite hits atmosphere someone will almost certainly start to make manual corrections.
So can you do it? Maybe. ***But*** It would require good timing and/or a very rare timing interface event that could be exploited *and* you'd really need to disable ongoing communication afterwards or timely intervention by ground control is going to mess you up.
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Okay, so they can in theory be hacked. That's already been explored enough there is no need to delve any deeper, but they are one of the world's most secure networks because they are intrinsically so simple. They only need to accept a few commands such that securing all of your vectors of attack is much easier than most systems you'll otherwise encounter.
That said, there are ways to mess with a GPS network that don't involve directly hacking it. During operation desert shield, Iraqi e-warfare specialist found that they could not decrypt GPS signals to feed the false data they wanted, but they could recorded the encrypted transmission, and replay it later to fool American Aircraft into crashing by making guidance systems believe satellites were in the wrong spot at the wrong time. I doubt military grade systems still suffer from this limitation, but I would not be surprised if a number of civilian devices could still be fooled in this way.
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**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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In the United States, each state exists as a general stereotype in most Americans' minds, at least. Wisconsin is full of dairy farmers who dedicate their lives to the production of cheese; Texas is the land of ranchers and cattle drives; Oklahomans are all Native Americans. The common perception of Michigan seems to be that it makes cars. If the automotive industry were centered elsewhere, what would the next most defining characteristic of modern-day Michigan be?
In other words, what would Michigan's defining characteristics be without automobiles?
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## Heavy industry
Michigan didn't get heavy industry because of cars. It got cars because heavy industry was already entrenched.
Cars didn't start in Detroit, cars were made everywhere. Every major city has at least one automobile factory still standing. Detroit won because of its underlying industrial prowess, and its access (via lakes) to natural resources in the Upper Peninsula and Ohio.
Heavy industry got entrenched because Michigan has really superb run-of-river hydro just all over the place. Seems like every town more than 150 years old has a dam or former dam, and factories along those dams. Not just grist mills either - factories were built downstream of the dams, and the waterwheels ran the mainshaft - from which lathes, mills, drills, cutters and other machines took their belt drive power. Only when factory expansion exceeded river capacity (as in, say, Ypsilanti) did they move to steam power.
It also had first rate transportation not only because of not only lake and river access (not so much on canals), but ***very* early development of rail** in the territory. Only six years after the first train moved in Baltimore, one moved in Michigan. Its rail system was isolated, like Alaska's, for 25 years until eastern railheads finally conquered the Alleghany mountains and plugged in. Michigan's lines were built standard gauge. Meanwhile it was breakbulk loading onto ships to cross Lake Erie, barges to sail the Erie Canal, etc. And that kind of work makes more sense with high value merchandise.
Today, it's the same. The mind blows at just how much stuff you can get made in Michigan. There is manufacturing capability like nowhere else in the world. Stuff you can't get done in California, five companies can do it in Michigan or northeast Ohio. Yes, the gloom-and-doom is true, industry has been decimated in the state several times over. But there *was so very much in the first place* that what remains is still the envy of the world. Almost every world automotive company has its design bureaus in metro Detroit, notably including companies that do not sell cars in first world nations. That's because of the ease of prototyping almost anything.
So if not cars, it would have been something else manufacturing-heavy.
Here's the bottom line. If your alien spaceship is sputtering and you need to land to make repairs, set down in Warren, Michigan, just north of the D. Everything you need to fix the ship can be fabbed within a 30 mile radius.
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Michigan has the longest freshwater coastline in the US and the second longest coast line in the US next to Alaska.
`World Book Encyclopedia states that Michigan's shoreline, at 3,288 miles is "more than any other state except Alaska."`
We also have skiing, tons of rivers for boating, lots of nearly untouched forest for hiking, a pretty good vineyard area for wine production (a visiting Californian told me it was only slightly behind Napa Valley in reputation), great climate with almost no natural disasters.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FCVk1.jpg)
So Michigan could be a pretty good resort area.
Detroit is also known for it's music scene.
Also, currently Detroit, Grand Rapids, and other places are ramping up to be big tech centers and are drawing people back from California.
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Michigan's future has always been tied to transport.
Touching four of the great lakes (water and transport) and having a land connection with Canada (international trade) sets Michigan up to become the transport center for the entire North-Central U.S. and South-Central Canada. While not the most mineral-rich, timber-rich, or farming-rich state in the Union, it nevertheless boasts considerable access to all three. Combined with the strong building development needed to support these strengths, manufacturing is a nearly unavoidable byproduct.
It's obvious in light of these strengths why automobiles landed in Michigan and not, for example, in Nevada. I suspect that if you look more broadly at Michigan, you will discover that automobiles are simply the most visible aspect of its manufacturing base.
Which causes me to continue looking at transport. Non-oceanic water shipping, rail, and airplanes come to mind. Indeed, as a consideration for alternative history, let's assume the following (from the Encylopedia Britannica):
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> Boeing’s origin dates to 1916 when the American timber merchant William E. Boeing founded Aero Products Company shortly after he and U.S. Navy officer Conrad Westervelt developed a single-engine, two-seat seaplane, the B&W.
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Occured in Michigan rather than Washington ... which it could easily have done. Michigan has the resouces to have made that happen. The only thing missing was the people — and when people happen where is very capricious.
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**EDIT:** Yes, the commenters are completely correct, there are rivers separating Canada from Michigan. My sincere apologies, but I consider those land connections because all they need is a bridge. Lakes, on the other hand, are more difficult.
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Are you sitting on a chair, next to a desk, which holds your computer, while you explore the Stack Exchange Network? If yes, it could be thanks to Michigan.
If there were no auto makers in Detroit, the west side would take over in terms of fame, and it would revolve around furniture.
Grand Rapids is the world headquarters for [Steelcase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steelcase), Holland to [Haworth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haworth_(company)), and Zeeland to [Herman Miller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Miller_(manufacturer)). Dozens of smaller companies like American Seating also got a start in Grand Rapids and maintain a significant presence there.
According to [this article](http://www.grbj.com/articles/77436-why-the-furniture-industry-is-still-important-to-west-michigan), furniture manufacturing remains the single largest job provider in the region (although the Spectrum Hosptial system is the largest single employer).
The other answers regarding fishing, boating, vineyards, and tourism are all true. But none of these represent a manufactured good. For that, I think furniture is the way to go.
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Michigan is already known as the "Great Lakes State" since it borders 4 of the 5 Great Lakes. It will continue to be known for the Great Lakes regardless of any industry that may or may not exist in a particular alternative present.
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We've got some excellent answers so far, I just want to throw in a few more points in case you're looking for some variety.
Michigan is heavily forested, and industry related to forests [contributes significantly](https://www.michigan.gov/documents/dnr/1.2Introduction_242962_7.pdf) to their GDP and employment. It could easily have become known for lumber, hiking, hunting, or been turned into a huge national park like the Smoky Mountains.
But let's get a little more interesting. As others have stated, being surrounded by water also makes it a viable trade port for the region, so if your alternate-Canada was more of a global super-power, Michigan could easily have housed a very important port or even served as a hub for defense. The Great Lakes were the scene of some conflicts in the past, but if Canada didn't end up being so darned friendly, the Lakes could be a huge point of contention, because controlling them would give the US or Canada a major territorial and logistical advantage.
You can also toss a little seasoning into the mix by saying that vast natural resources were discovered there, so Michigan became known for mining uranium or what-have-you. That would also ramp up tensions with Canada over who controls it.
One final point that someone else made that I feel needs emphasis. Detroit has been and is still known for its contributions to the music industry. You might not hear about it all the time like you do LA, but it's definitely one of the most famous music production towns in the US. Just a quick glance [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Detroit) will give you an idea.
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I believe Michigan used to be known for fishing, but it is well suited for and positioned for manufacturing and trade. In an alternate future without the automobile industry, probably some other significant manufacturing would have found it, such as appliances, rail, tech (chips and computers), steel, household furniture, etc.
It is hard to speculate what would have jumped into the "empty chair" if cars did not occupy it.
Part of what you see in Michigan is called, in statistics, the "King Effect", a kind of feedback loop that makes some relatively arbitrary location the geographic center of some industry. The classic example is Hollywood: The first studios when the film industry was brand new just happened to be located near Hollywood California; because the founders lived near there. But then, actors, writers, artists and musicians and sound guys and electricians and all the other professionals that wanted to be involved in moving pictures moved to live near the first studios. So where do NEW startup studios go? To Hollywood, that is where all the talent and workers are! Where does new talent go? To Hollywood, that is where all the studios are!
The same King Effect applies to finance and Wall Street in NYC, to oil in Houston (because it sits on the Gulf of Mexico). So almost anything could pop up in Michigan, but most likely it would be a King Effect helped along by the Great Lakes, its most notable feature.
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**Motown!**
Of course it wouldn't be called "Motown" if there was never an auto industry, since that name is short for "motor town," but it remains that Michigan has been home to an incredibly diverse set of very successful music artists.
Detroit was the center of an uprising of funk and soul artists, thanks to Motown and Fortune Records, that brought us mega-stars like Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, and George Clinton, just to name a very few.
Outside of that, there has also been a wide range of world-famous artists that started in Michigan like Madonna, Bob Seger, Kid Rock, Eminem, Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Jack White, and the Eagles (again, just to name a few).
It's hard to overstate how much Michigan, and Detroit in particular, has contributed to the modern music industry. They should be known for rock and pop that same way Nashville is known for country.
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Being a resident, I would consider a different industry prominent within the state and well regarded: **Alcohol Production**. Breweries and–to a lesser extent–wineries/vineyards are popular and there are some which are well regarded. Even distilleries are beginning to gain some traction.
I don't know if it ever would have risen to the level of recognition the Big Three achieved, but hey, Kentucky has a very specific reputation, so it's not impossible.
I include below some information pulled from the **Pure Michigan** website.
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> # [Breweries](https://www.michigan.org/breweries#?c=44.4299:-85.1166:6&tid=62&page=0&pagesize=20&pagetitle=Breweries)
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> ### The perfect pour.
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> The craft beer craze is sweeping Michigan and it is clear the mitten was made for handcrafting some of the best brews in the land. Michigan is fifth in the nation in the number of breweries, microbreweries and brewpubs.
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> Michigan is home to Beer City USA – Grand Rapids – as well as beer centric communities such as Kalamazoo, Ann Arbor, Traverse City, Detroit, Marquette, Lansing and Ypsilanti. Bolstered by the Great Lakes and nurtured by the glacier rich soil, here awaits a brewer's paradise. With countless varieties of styles and tastes, Michigan is on tap to pour your new favorite. And what better place to try seasonal beers than a place that truly experiences all four seasons.
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> Beer enthusiasts make pilgrimages to breweries like Bell’s Brewery and Founders Brewing Co., but breweries are waiting to be discovered in every corner of the state. Journey along one of the state’s beer trails, or visit a local beer festival to experience the IPAs, stouts, porters and more that make Michigan the Great Beer State. Are you ready to find your perfect pour in Pure Michigan?
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Michigan is already known as **the state that is shaped like a hand**, and I think this would be an even more prominent part of its identity, absent the auto industry.
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Michigan would be known for the Northern Red-Neck’s, the Yoopers. Like how the bayous of the south carry a similarly attributed cultural meme, wild snowy Michigan has its own unique asset.
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> [Yooper Museum](http://dayoopers.com)
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I'm currently creating a world that would have both fantasy and sci-fi elements. What I want to convey is a fantasy feeling within a sci-fi world. To achieve that, I have magic, different races, political houses, spaceships, probably FTL (didn't think this through, yet), etc.
But I don't think it's enough. While I was writing, I was bothered by the fact that technology is everywhere. I was thinking of a pure, white, stainless world with skytowers and stuff.
I'd like my readers to think more of a medieval-like world. The technology would have fortified and modernized the way of creating buildings, and they would surely use different materials to create it, but I'd like to know if it could still be possible to have castles, manors, mansions, etc.
In short: Is there any reason to keep a medieval-like architecture, when creating new buildings, when you have a sci-fi technology?
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**EDIT:** As most of you have pointed out, it seems Fashion is one of the major reasons. I think I will develop the background a little more to define exactly what races and/or political houses would have this kind of architecture. I gave up on making the whole universe that way: I'm already thinking of some of my political houses that would have absolutely no reason to have such an old architectural style.
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The simplest route to go with for a world like this is Fashion.
There is nothing to stop a future world using a medieval style, but as you have pointed out, there are unlikely to be specific benefits, but as architecture goes through phases - we have architects who produce Tudor, Georgian, Gothic and Edwardian styled buildings now - all you need to do is define a reason why your population want this style.
* a ruler who liked the period
* regulations requiring that style
* a worldwide fad combined with cheap building materials and tools
* etc.
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I don't see why not.
To someone 100 or 200 years ago, our world is "futuristic". But we still have a lot of medieval architecture.
(a) People may value old buildings because they respect their history.
(b) People may build new buildings in an old style because they think it's pretty, if absolutely no other reason.
There are times when functionality wins over fashion. Few modern Americans or Europeans would live in a mud hut, no matter how pretty or quaint they thought they looked, because it would be too uncomfortable. But I don't have a hard time imagining a fad where people become fascinated by mud huts, and have houses built that look like mud huts, though they are really made of more modern materials, have electricty and internet connections inside, etc.
The army is not going to build medieval-style castles to defend the border in an era of tanks and jet aircraft. But a military academy might well be built to resemble a medieval castle. Lots of colleges and government buildings are made to look somewhat like ancient Greek and Roman buildings. Etc.
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Stone and wood are the best building materials : the planet's crust is largely made of one, and the other literally grows on trees.
We have gone through an era of cheap but environmentally destructive energy, and expensive manual labour, when it was cheaper to let crude machinery pulverise stone in one place, ship it to another, and reconstitute it as ugly concrete.
But now, the drudgery of manual labour is largely the province of robots, and laser cutting uses a bare minimum of (solar generated) energy so it's once again cheaper to open up the old quarries and borrow pits, and laser cut masonry blocks with interlocking joints that shed water.
Laser sawmills in the forests provide accurately formed timber components with minimal waste, so the bulk of your house (unless it's older than the 22nd century) was probably quarried and felled less than ten kilometres from its current location.
Internally, of course, the facilities are anything but medieval, and the solar panels mounted over the thatched roof would raise a medieval traveller's eyebrows, but the basic form of today's houses is that of a fine stone manor house or cottage.
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A couple of small steps towards the look and feel you want ...
* Get cars out of the cities, and keep the rich in. That can be done by manipulating tax codes and environmental regulations. Say within the old city limits ancient tax privileges apply, and there is no political will to change that.
* Keep the buildings low. A simple law that one *does not* build higher than the balcony of the palace, whatever the real estate prices. This regulation could be tied into the tax breaks mentioned above, so even rich landowners don't want to touch the town charter because everything would be up for grabs.
* Keep the streets narrow, crooked, and bustling. That can be explained by the lack of cars, plus the inability to build high.
* Encourage the use of stone blocks rather than steel, glass and concrete. No need for steel if you can't build all that high, anyway.
That makes it possible to have a market street with merchants, porters, etc. instead of multi-lane roads.
* Discourage absentee landlords, encourage a manor economy. Your setting could have tax privileges for the estates of nobles if they actually *live* in their manor and collect the rent from their tenant farmers in produce.
* Make rental housing tenure inheritable.
* Make it difficult to sell part of an estate (e.g. sell the lands, keep the manor house) or to split it (e.g. in the case of inheritance).
* Give the big estate owners tax privileges in exchange for specified services to the community (providing a fire engine, a grader, a dump truck for the surrounding villages). Those vehicles would have the noble's coat of arms.
That might help to give the countryside the right look and feel.
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I can't think of technical reasons why you couldn't build structurally sound medieval-looking buildings, especially with unspecified advanced construction materials and techniques.
Design is the function of aesthetics and, well, function. Medieval fortified castles are more functional than renaissance style castles. Medieval fortification would make little sense if you have spaceships and therefore orbital artillery than can obliterate pretty much anything on ground.
So it would be a question of esthetics. Maybe there's a particular architectural style associated with the kingdom/empire/republic (I'm thinking Greek-style columns as a symbol of power or somesuch), maybe it stems from religion/mythology (the reason we built ginormous cathedrals). Or more generally, evocations of a glorious past or preservation of cultural heritage.
It's likely that a multi-cultural city would feature several styles of architecture. Maybe your medieval-looking architecture would be a result of that multi-culturality, a fusion of different style and more or less a symbol of unity. Or maybe it's one of the several style prominently featured, with a medieval district amongst other more modern-looking or just different.
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It entirely depends on the mechanics of your world/universe. Medieval castles weren't built that way for looks - every part of it served a defensive purpose, and if you read up on the history of any castle then you see all those parts changing over time as the needs changed.
If you've hypothesised a world where life is not highly valued, every high-status person has to defend themselves and their family against regular attacks, and banditry is rife, then congratulations - you have the preconditions for castles and fortified manor houses. Now you need to work out why magic and laser-rifles are ineffective against those fortifications.
Frank Herbert gave one possible answer to this in Dune. Shields stop anything fast but are ineffective against anything slow. The result is that most combat is hand-to-hand.
Or you could be looking at a fallen civilisation. A few people have relic weapons and maybe some of the tech still works, but the most your average thug can manage is a big stick with nails in it, or at best a sword. There aren't enough relic weapons to fend off a serious attack by people with primitive weapons, so you end up with a medieval castle mostly using medieval weaponry, with advanced weapons held back for reinforcement in the same way as a drug baron in a gun battle with the police might hold back their black-market LAW until there's a really good target.
Or maybe there's some other reason. You're the world maker, surprise us. :)
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Poverty.
The end of the industrial age resulted in most labor being surplus; the work you could do with your brain or your hands wasn't worth the resource diversion to feed you compared to just having an AI with a teleprecense robot or bioengineered meat-puppet do the work.
So now we have legions of the poor. Their only hope for sustenance lies from the charity of those with resources, or providing services to people with resources that robots/meat puppets/AI cannot.
As technology is incredibly powerful and planets are fragile, the halves are afraid the despair of the halve nots will destroy what they have. So ubiquitous surveillance blocking them from getting access to non-controlled technology is deployed. Controlled technology is managed by AIs loyal to the noble cast to prevent it from being useful against the noble caste.
On the other hand, your ability to support peasants (or provide peasants with enough resources to self-support) is a status indicator among the nobility. And the more resources you can get them to provide you with (even though it is mostly worthless) the better you are at it. So you have peasants using restricted amounts of technology to work the land. The entire peasant system is a *game* the nobles play with the lives of the peasants, and viewed as more humane than genocide, because "what else are peasants good for?"
The peasant class is not allowed to fly, or use projectile weapons. A castle on the ground is an effective defence against whatever they can do.
Gentry classes also exist, playing more complex games. Knights who basically fight and die for the amusement of the nobles, courtiers who amuse the nobles, etc.
There are nobles who have disconnected from the world, but such beings tend to fade into irrelevance; either they leave planets, or they build small fortifications/rockets (protected by treaty, which their AI constantly monitor) where they while away their days playing with virtual worlds. Some don't have much in the way of peasants yet still interact with the world sometimes; these wizards are quirky and dangerous to deal with.
The nobles and their games are quite serious; but nobles who don't obey the rule of only permitting peasants controlled technology are subject to summary punishment by their own AIs.
A good chunk of Magic (maybe all of it) is then controlled technology that acts in ways that don't really make sense, because it isn't supposed to. It can do far more than it does; its restrictions are arbitrary.
Quite possibly even the nobles are just playing a game arranged by post-human intelligences, hence the stability of their pacts, using trivial amounts of resources from the post-human perspective. They *think* they are rulers of the universe, but are just peasants with a few more toys.
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If the civilization is advanced enough to recognize the fact that using certain materials is going to pollute the nature, then it is likely it will fallback (when possible) to materials that avoid pollution altogheter (wood, stone). Also a modern society may be really carefull when using weapons, so people at ground level would probably not have access to technologic weapons (guns, bombs) and hence something like a castle can even be useful against bandits and criminals.
Basically a world with spaceships and castles would be much more advanced than our world (even without spaceships) because the extra eye of regard to problems like war and pollution.
Also a world without computers is a world that can't be hacked (think to internet of things, basically you can allow a backdoor installed in every piece of your home). I dare you hacking a stone castle ^^.
People living inside nature is likely to become more healthy, strong and smart. A smart civilization would enfatize such lifestyle.
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I read a short story once where the idea was that faster than light travel was actually quite simple. So these guys had space ships with chamber pots in them, horses, hay, and mideval weapons. They made a big mistake when they landed at West Point academy however.
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A lot of people are mentioning fashion, but architecture often goes much deeper than that. Case in point: [Captain Man](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/9660/captain-man) mentioned Washington D.C.'s architecture.
That architecture is from the Neoclassical movement, which was a whole art movement that reflected a growing feeling around the world (not just in the USA) of free thinking and independence. It brings to mind the democracies of Greece and the Republics of Rome. (The USA is pretty big on democratic republics)
So think about how your architecture reflects the culture of the people in the story. Are they trying to create a heavenly space in reference to their religions (Gothic architecture), are they seeking independence from oppressive rulers (Neoclassical, Realist), are times changing and tumultuous (fin de siecle), are they longing for simpler times (thatched huts), and so forth.
tl;dr Yes it's possible, but make sure to include a compelling political and/or cultural reason, or else it'll just feel like a world where the author wanted to have medieval buildings.
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> Is there any reason to keep a medieval-like architecture, when creating new buildings, when you have a sci-fi technology?
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Most people have referenced personal taste or societal trends or fashion, and indeed this is a sufficient reason. I'll focus on two other reasons:
## Status
A futuristic world could have a growing population living on a relatively fixed amount of land. In such a case, land is a commodity, and having a large amount of personal property would be a visual indicator of wealth. Now it defeats the purpose if the house doesn't match, so why not make it extra large? Add a handful of guest rooms, a ballroom, an oversized library and/or study, and you've got yourself a manor or a mansion.
Notes: a) Depending on how aristocratic your future society is, it might make sense for tight-knit (or not-so-much) families to come together in a single home. b) The wealthy might opt to build their home on a less crowded planet, or build a high-class community on an artificial (and mobile?) island.
## Function
Shield generators are great, but it's not like they can shield themselves, right? That's you need walls around them to protect them from the direction they don't project the shield. And even if you've got future tech that spits out balls of plasma at enemies, you've still got something that looks like a cannon. It doesn't hurt to elevate those on a tower to get a better angle at footmen while distancing it from the shield generators so they are less likely to become collateral damage.
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I'd like to note that your problem might be stemming more from your approach. It sounds like you might be describing the material world more than you are describing the culture. As a reference, [Treasure Planet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Planet "Treasure Planet") comes to mind. It's a futuristic world, but has a heavy colonial and piratic feel.
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I quickly read through these answers, and I think there is a trait that has not been covered.
Stone buildings are *durable*. Modern constructions are simply not made to last and require a substantial amount of effort and money to maintain them.
A change in building philosophy from "Bigger!, Faster!, Cheaper!" to "Build it to last forever" would heavily encourage stone construction.
Stone ruins in the Andes, Central America, Egypt, India, and other locations have lasted for centuries and even millennia. Without upkeep, our current buildings will be destroyed by the elements in a remarkably short period of time.
Similarly, properly built stone constructions are heavily resistant to being damaged by earthquakes.
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There are two factors here. As already mentioned, fashion, but the other is cost. The former is easily resolved, the latter not so much, but this being the future it's all in your hands to make it add up.
Mediaeval architecture is both high cost in materials and labour. If you're talking about fortifications, you'll see that every stone is irregular and selected and laid to fit in with the stones around it. The only time this doesn't apply are lintels and stairs which are much more carefully cut.
An automated construction system which allowed you to generate pseudo-random stone patterns in the walls, regular patterns around doors and spiral staircases, plus cheap materials and you're good to go.
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The reason could only be aesthetic. The reason mediaeval architecture was that way was because stone and wood was cheapest and best and to a lesser extent, made good castles. Once bricks and concrete were available, they were better and cheaper. Now we also use metal and glass, etc.
If advanced weapons are available then a mediaeval castle is useless, except for aesthetics.
Maybe think about ruins!
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Of course. Take a look at Washington D.C., all the buildings have an ancient Greek/Roman feel. London is another city that comes to mind that has a lot of "old timey" buildings. If this is happening today, I see no reason why it couldn't happen in the future.
I think where you see this the most is in cities that have been around for a long time. They have structures from long ago. To preserve the historic feel of these places new structures are sometimes even mandated to conform to the style. When something gets really old instead of tearing it down and rebuilding something they often will restore it. Combine all of these factors and place them in a city that has been around for a very long time (as in it has managed to avoid wars, natural disasters, or other catastrophic events) and it's absolutely feasible to have some city with a medieval style long into the future.
It wouldn't be 100% medieval I don't think. I'm sure experts can explain why Washington D.C. isn't as Greek/Roman as it appears, and even London has that giant ferris wheel in its skyline now. You could see a lot of similarities though.
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Architecture is basically just functional art. If the buildings perform their functions (whether they be homes or offices or military bases), then it doesn't really matter what they look like, they'll just end up being similar to the buildings that surround them, or they'll be of whatever style is culturally appropriate/fashionable.
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If technology is as all encompassing as mentioned in the back story, then rather than making faux medieval buildings, the structural forms of the buildings is covered in a holographic/VR simulacrum which can be changed and adapted as the social fashions change in society.
This will actually be both easier that making actual buildings, and also allow you to incorporate more "fantasy" and magical elements in the story (think of Clarke's Third Law: A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic). The owner can make changes to the building and the interior/exterior can morph according to whatever the new needs or desires of the owner are. If the social trend changes then owners can change the VR/Holographic overlays to match the new trends.
Underneath it all, the buildings might actually be simple cubes with the ability to expand and contract in certain ways depending on the owner's needs (maybe walls and utilities can shift so you can get a larger space for a dinner party). This could actually be quite dynamic with advanced AI "running" the building and subtly adjusting rooms and hallways as you walk from place to place, expanding and morphing rooms in front of you while quietly collapsing the spaces behind you.
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This question is pretty straightforward. I would like to build an earth-like world in which humans don't have access to iron, or at least can't mine any prior to full scale industrialization. They can scavenge very small quantities from meteor impacts to make "magic" steel weapons, but I want to force them to rely on bronze and other materials for all daily use. I'd like to do this with a minimum of other changes to the geology and biology of the world.
My problem is that I don't know any way to prevent humans from mining iron other than making it extraordinarily scarce, and I don't know if this will have spiraling natural consequences.
First, would a planet with so little iron that it couldn't be mined develop differently, geologically speaking? (No nickel of course, for a start. But I'm fine with that.) Second, could I make iron that scarce without radically changing the terrestrial biology, for example by forcing my creatures to use a different less efficient mineral as an oxygenator?
**Can you have an earth-like world with humans that don't have access to iron as a material?**
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You can still have similar iron content to Earth, without forming any useful deposits. We think that most of the iron deposits we're mining today come from a period with relatively low oxygen followed by a major release of free oxygen. The two main events on Earth correspond to the Oxygen catastrophe (when photosynthesizing organisms first appeared on a major scale) and the Snowball (when almost all photosynthesis stopped for a while, progressively deoxygenating the oceans).
The shorter the period of low-oxygen, the fewer large deposits of iron you'll have. So if photosynthesis developed earlier (plausible) and there was no snowball (plausible), you wouldn't get the massive banded iron formations, but there'd still be roughly the same amount of iron dispersed throughout the crust. This would make it very impractical for mining until you can process large amounts of earth efficiently. (Alternatively, you could have periods with very large weathering activity that would disperse the already formed deposits. This might be interesting if you want to explore the world with later technology - there would still be large deposits of iron, but the only ones surviving would be very hard to get to; under water, deep within mountains etc.)
It wouldn't prevent the formation of *all* kinds of deposits - only the gigantic banded iron formations, which we rely on heavily nowadays. But in earlier times, humans used iron from all sorts of places - volcanos, bacterial "lumps" etc. These are much trickier to handle, though (volcanos usually produce a lot of magnetite which is much harder to refine, the bacterial stuff is extremely low yield), which might be just enough to push the humans away from working with iron - it's hard enough with good ores. Deposits with lots of impurities like sulfur (including pyrite) are also very hard to process, since early human tech didn't have a good way of getting rid of the extra sulfur (which makes iron brittle and almost useless).
Another approach might be making "bronze deposits" more plentiful. The problem with bronze wasn't that it was a worse material compared to early iron/steel - it was quite a bit better in many ways. The problem was that you needed to get copper from one region, and tin from another - their geological formation tends to keep the deposits far apart. So bronze was associated with long-range trade, and when trade networks failed, so did bronze production - and people were forced to rely on iron, which was plentiful pretty much everywhere. But even on Earth, there are (and used to be more) deposits that *are* basically "bronze ore" (it might be how humans first developed bronze) - a mix of copper ore and arsenic in the right ratio that pretty much gives you bronze by accident. Make those plentiful on your world, and humans might never go for iron on a large scale. Meteoric iron would still be useful (it makes for great steel), but wouldn't lead humans to general iron processing anymore.
The tricky bit might be getting from this "stasis", though. One of the many things that got industrial revolution started was cheap iron and steel. If your civilizations never got through the early iron age, they might not get to the technology needed for large scale iron mining and processing. This is especially true if you go with the "good iron deposits are scarce and hard to access" route. But if you want to keep your story within the "stasis", you can ignore that.
A sideways approach might be making wood scarce. Before you know how to make coke (an industrial-age tech on Earth), coal is worthless for iron production - see "sulfur + iron = oops" above. As an extra bonus, mining large amounts of coal is tricky, since you need deep mines that are flooded easily. So if there's very little wood for charcoal production, iron would get even more expensive than it was on Earth. This might be the perfect solution for you - it keeps iron ores basically the same as on Earth, without having them reasonably usable. It makes meteoric iron pretty awesome, without having it lead to large-scale iron processing. It keeps all the resources there, ready to be used by a more advanced civilization, without making them useful to the "low-tech" (just like aluminum is extremely plentiful in the crust, but painful to refine). Another bonus is that this wood deficiency can be just a tiny time period on geological scales (so no major effects on life and geology outside of the forests), but cover the whole of your society's existence. It might be the result of a climate change, or some major parasite the woodlands didn't adapt to yet, or even an older civilization that destroyed the resources and itself :P
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> My problem is that I don't know any way to prevent humans from mining iron other than making it extraordinarily scarce, and I don't know if this will have spiraling natural consequences.
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Humans require iron in their bodies - think blood. We don't function without it and inadequate supplies are [medically dangerous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_deficiency), so in practical terms *humans* could not live on such a world. A species with some different biochemistry might.
Without iron being relatively common in surface layers humans can't function here and to have it reasonably common in the ground requires that it will appear in large-scale deposits at some point that are at least possible to mine.
So off the bat, no iron or exceptionally rare iron and humans is a non-starter.
You'll need to move to humanoids with a different biochemistry.
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Short answer yes, long answer, probably unlikely.
Yes, most things are possible if they're exceptional cases on the edge of the bell curve.
Unlikely because planets like Earth are made of material from nebular clouds (we think) which cannot avoid being Iron-rich (or more precisely, cannot avoid having [expected relative abundances of elements due to the way they would be created](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements)). Once iron is in there (and nickel is also going to be), you will get planets with Iron and it's likely to form in the surface as a result of geological activity.
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Not in my view.
But as I'm also suggesting you can't avoid Iron anyway, there's really no need.
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> I would like to build an Earth-like world in which humans don't have access to iron, except for what can be scavenged from meteor impacts, or at least not before industrialization. This would make steel a sacred, "magic" metal taken from the sky, and force them to rely on bronze for daily use.
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Although Iron, Copper, and Steel have been known for thousands of years, copper and iron alloys were the primary metals in normal use for most of that time.
Steel, although known of, was something like a rare and very expensive metal reserved for only the most important things: military weapons, vital tools. It would be like perhaps Titanium is today.
The problem you have is that humans are curious. If they find any substance they will immediately start trying to break it apart, mix it with other stuff and who knows what. They'll find Steel by accident or design and after that, because they are not great at keeping secrets, this will spread. Steel is going to appear.
In pre-industrial times to make steel (specifically) such a special thing for people you simply need to make it hard to get good iron easily. That could easily mean that the easiest deposits of quality iron were e.g. from a meteor and simply not easily mined.
Or you could simply have the natives incorrectly associate the iron deposit they work with a chance meteor or comet that "led them to it". Nothing like a good random astronomical event to play with the human mind's tendency to find connections when there really are not any.
You could make the discovery of the *process* of making steel an *inspiration from the Gods*. Perhaps the process itself was discovered by or controlled by a powerful religious organization - that would allow them to control it, limit it, and of course to label it "sacred". Maybe the dominant religion bans it and it becomes a cult secret. There are many ways to work this.
Even greed: I discover how to make steel. Do I (a) rush out and tell everyone or (b) keep it a family/clan/religious secret and try and make a lot of money and power from this knowledge? And if history tells us anything it's that (b) is the chosen option for humans faced with this "dilemma".
So I would suggest looking at social engineering and psychology to make steel this big deal in your world, rather than making a lot of implausible changes to force Iron to be so rare. Politics, religion, greed - these are much more powerful ways to alter the world than trying to rewrite physics and biology.
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You could make Iron difficult to mine if humans were not the the first intelligent life on the planet if most of the easily accessible ore was mined out (and perhaps transported to space). Large or easily mined iron will not exist, this will require a very advanced precursor race. However this will make other materials scarce as well. You will not find many fossil fuels or any other metals on such a planet either, so this will probably not work. However...
**There was a period in history where steel/iron tools mostly came from meteorites**. Making steel is tricky,especially the first step, smelting, but many iron meteorites don't need to be smelted, since they are already low in impurities. They do not need to be smelted first and smelting is the hard part, most of the rest of making iron tools is fairly easy and already understood. Of course this is only a temporary condition and will not last long, technology matches ahead and people will keep trying once they know how useful it is.
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> or at least can't mine any prior to full scale industrialization. They can scavenge very small quantities from meteor impacts to make "magic" steel weapons
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Sure. The easily minable ore just needs to be:
1. too deep underground for current mining technology to reach, or
2. bound in minerals with high "thermodynamic barriers", or
3. in high-quality ores that are in places where people don't live.
Sure, animals need iron for hemoglobin, but **not that much**. It can be in soils but not in mineable quantities.
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That's perfectly reasonable. Apparently you edited your Q, since whereas "no iron" is infeasible... "hard to get to in usable quantities" is perfectly reasonable.
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**Once again, economics saves the day.**
You can have a planet with plenty of iron, but the iron is in dirt instead of in ore. What's the difference between dirt and ore? Ore has enough iron in, and is accessible enough, that you can mine it at a profit. Dirt doesn't.
(This carries the amusing consequence that ore can turn into dirt, and dirt into ore just by the value of the commodity, or the technology used to get it, changing or improving.)
In short, you only mine any mineral if it's worth it. So if your iron was distributed evenly throughout the bedrock then insane amounts of expensive effort would need to be made to process enough rock to get any iron - ie: you have dirt, not ore.
Your iron could be found in high concentrations, but only in incredibly inhospitable environments.
All you need to do is find any way to make the cost required to extract it greater than the value of having it.
You might argue that your people don't use money, don't have an economy - that doesn't matter at all. The time (and resources, and risk) that someone spends trying to process dirt as if it was ore could be spent doing something else. If spending that time doing something else provides more value to the individual (or tribe) than spending time extracting iron from topsoil - they will stop bothering to extract iron from topsoil.
You made one iron sword twice as good as a bronze one? And it took you fifty times as long and 5 guys died achieving it? We'll stick with bronze! (And you're fired.)
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I don't think you can even get to be an Earthlike planet without producing mineable iron ore deposits. Most of the iron ore we mine comes from banded iron formations <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banded_iron_formation> which were mostly created as part of the Great Oxygenation Event. Without a GOE, there's no oxygen in the atmosphere, and hence the planet isn't Earthlike.
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Consider planetary formation. Countless asteroids smash into each other and form a big super-heated molten rock. Naturally the heavier elements (metals) sink towards the core over time, which is why Earth has a (mostly) iron core. As the impact frequency slows and the planet eventually cools and starts to solidify, later impacts will tend to deposit their minerals close to the surface, resulting in a fairly abundant supply of minerals in the upper planetary layers.
If you want fewer surface metals, make it so that fewer asteroid collisions occurred on this planet after it cooled. Perhaps it was formed relatively late by two or more large planetoids colliding into one super-heated mass, so that by the time the surface cooled, relatively few asteroids remained. I imagine this would also similarly reduce the abundance of other metals, but that may be something you can work with.
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A combination of poor ores like taconite and lack of fuel to process it will do. It could be that most banded iron formations in your world are flooded by very shallow seas due to glacial melting long ago. An advanced society could dig the tunnels on the coast to mine the iron but they would need iron to build the tools to mine more iron.
Also, don't forget that without iron it will be more difficult to build ships like galleons due to the difficulties of woodworking and many parts of the ship being made of iron and that your agriculture will suffer without iron tools like plowshares using iron on critical parts.
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A Recently terraformed generic world, minus the iron bacteria.
The modern concentrated forms of iron comes from biological activities: banded iron formations comes from the great oxygenation event from an acidic starting ocean PH, so iron could precipitate into banded iron formations; bog iron comes from autotrophic iron bacteria which oxidizes ferrous ions in bog water.
If the plants were strong enough in capturing/holding iron, or if the bacteria did not develop matallorespiration (the process that reduces ferric ions to ferrous ions) ,(the plants would acquire iron with an acid, from rocks.), then there would be ether a lack of soluble iron in the water, or the lack of ability to highly concentrate the dissolved iron in freshwater, eluding it to the seas. Also, if the grains of sand is too fine/containing excess chromium/titanium/aluminum, any bog iron will be unusable for bloomeries (because it won’t Melt)
For any planet that have been lifeless/waterless, only recently terraformed, through either cometary water(which is unusually oxidative because of UV radiation and cosmic rays, therefore lacking soluble iron) or through seeding with life, there would be no great oxygenation event coupled with dissolved iron, too little time to form a deposit/the terraformed forgot to introduce iron bacteria/introducing plants that locks up iron from the bogs/no bogs could form at all from the planetary terrain, there will be no concentrated iron ores over 3%, but would not be deficit in iron or other metals.
As for the culture, it can be from a failed colonization effort, or the world might be abandoned by some other civilizations, or the world is populated through interplanetary panspermia of some kind; while some evolutionary accident prevented the development of metallorespiration in bacteria. Or the colonists were not volunteered, and the world is to be designated as an (later abandoned) agricultural world; hence the intentional deprivation of any workable iron/metal deposits other than ones that could be accessed via space age technology, for the imperial empire that sent the culture there.
Metals for biochemistry or planetary magnetic field? Yes.
Metals that becomes accessible after major industrialization? Yes.
Metals that can be smelted with primitive technology, therefore producing an Iron Age culture? No.
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Is it possible for a country to be economic & technological super power but to have relatively little political clout?
If its possible under what circumstances it could happen?
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While there are already some good answers, it should be noted that for exampled Germany, South Korea and Japan are not economic superpowers, but mere *great* powers. (Germany and Japan lost political power for historical reasons and held back)
I think a better example could be the **European Union**.
* definitely a large economic power
* politically weak due to internal squabbles among its member states
**Imperial China** was similar, the political weakness here stemmed from its isolationism. Also, the **pre-WWI United States**.
An ineffective/non-existent central government and/or a policy of isolationism will severely limit political power while not impeding economic power too much.
It should be noted that the situation is unstable. At some point the political power will be there because isolationism ends or the state centralizes. Or the economic power goes away / the power breaks up into constituents.
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# China
Napoleon Bonaparte is supposed to have said “Let China sleep, for when she wakes she will shake the world.”
Known for years as the sleeping tiger, we've recently seen China take a more active role on the world political stage. The words of Bonaparte show that China has had the potential to exert its power on the world for some considerable time, however they have only now chosen to do so.
The key is that, given the economic power of the country, they have to choose to use (or not) the political power available to them. It's innately there as the definition of economic super power means the economies of other nations are dependent on theirs.
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* The economic superpower deliberately refrains from exercising political power in the "traditional" power politics pattern. They probably can't stay out of trade talks, G7/G8/G20, and so on.
* The economic superpower is not quite big enough to dominate the global political scene on her own, and for historical reasons there are few allies.
The example for the first bullet point is Germany, until very recently. The example for the second bullet point is China, again until very recently. So one might argue that the examples are not stable situations, merely a transition period until the superpower got used to being a superpower.
It depends on how you define *superpower*, too. During the Cold War there were two, the USA and the USSR. Something that large simply can't refrain from entering power politics. Anything they do or fail to do matters. Compare Japan or Germany in the 80s, or China or India in the 00s. Not *quite* on the level of the United States, and lacking global power projection, but certainly a major economic power.
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In my mind's eye, I could imagine a country which built itself up to be a great economic and political superpower, and then had a leadership change, and due to either isolationism, buffoonery or inexperience (say: inexperience in an at-will market economy), squandered the political power they carried in the world. All the other nations still bought their stuff, it's pretty good stuff, but when they were the one country to back out of a treaty all the rest signed, the rest of the world just soldiered on without them.
You see things like this even in our time. Look at Russia after the Soviet Union fell apart. Still the go-to country if you want to put a man in space, or want decent military hardware a child could maintain.
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What makes a superpower "super" is the unchallenged ability to project all forms of power, be able to push past almost all forms of opposition by individual states or even coalitions and enforce their will.
So you can be an economic and technological power, but without the ability to project your power ("Hard Power"), then most of your power is potential rather than actual. The vast majority of examples (pre WWI United States, China up until @ 2000, post war Germany and Japan) lacked the ability to project their power, so even a relative pipsqueak power could simply impose trade restrictions and other means to thwart the will of these relative giants. On the other hand, even super powers know how to leverage their assets. The British, since the time of Queen Elizabeth 1 have preferred to leverage their hard sea power and economic power by providing money and diplomatic influence to counterbalance would be hegemons in Europe. The United States "pays" for a globe spanning navy by using it to enforce free passage across oceans, immensely benefiting trading nations around the world and (through trade) immensely benefitting America herself.
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While it's generally true that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, it's not like guns grow out of thin air either. In an industrial world
it is usually it is the more economically potent that can amass the resources to build the military infrastructure and political network to further their influence in the world.
There are however several exceptions to this rule, as in our modern world there are countries that have had their military ambitions crushed in world wars and have for a long time been effectively protectorates (in all but name) of one superpower or another. Germany and Japan have long been quiescent on the world stage, generally preferring to stay in the shadow of the superpower.
Such a situation is however unlikely to persist for long, and indeed we see that in recent decades, both powers have shifted towards a more self-assertive military and political stature.
So to answer the question: yes, but such a situation is generally unlikely to persist, especially outside of a exteremely polarized 2 superpower world context.
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# Yes, If there are other limitations
Look at ancient Greece and Rome. Before they were conquered, Greece was more economically and technologically advanced, but probably because of their city-state structure and everything that derived from it they weren't really in a great position to push anything politically compared to Rome, Egypt, Carthage, or the Eastern Empires.
Japan and Germany both were limited by culture and treaties after WWII that prevented a military build up(different from political power, but related).
Switzerland has a habit of being politically neutral to the point of it almost becoming an idiom. There are a lot of reasons for this, and certainly you could argue that Switzerland still has a lot of political clout despite this, but they do have to walk a very careful line to not anger or antagonize more militaristic countries around them. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_country>
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I would say Pre-WWII United States. Its foreign policy was largely neutral with regards to European powers, with its only aggressive stance was against those that tried to meddle in in the Continental Americas and was content to be a more regional power. I would say that the two things America has in common with Switzerland is that it has terrain features that make foreign invasion near impossible (trans oceanic invasions are still quite difficult without a land based foothold) and the fact that it has an armed civilian population that can be quickly mustered (one male in every household in Switzerland is required to own a gun where as US law will vary from state to state, but no part of the U.S. can out and out ban gun ownership). This makes both countries notoriously difficult to invade and be bullied by people who might have a military advantage. In addition, America loves asymmetrical warfare, which is basically, never engage the enemy in a fair fight. Going to the invasion strategy, the colonies mostly engaged the superior British Empire in guerilla tactics, rather than head on confrontations. As Admiral Yamamoto is reported to have said "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."
Industrially and technologically, America was quite ahead of its time during this period and a major economic player. In both World Wars and the Civil War, failure to claim victory before the United States shifted to a war time economy was a decisive factor in the war's outcome (in the case of WWII, the shift was faster than anyone anticipated. Again, Yamamoto believed Pearl Harbor would buy him Six Months of Unchallenged Navel Power before the United States could muster some defense... and in six months, it had all but neutralized the bulk of the Imperial Navy's threat. In the case of the Civil War, the Confederate States were beaten before the United States is believed to have truly mobilized).
Obviously today the United States has considerable political clout, but it's necessary how one could achieve that. First, the United States sells a lot of weapons to other countries. This has several benefits... first, it's easy intelligence. You don't need to go and figure out a nations military capability when you have the order form for their guns. Second, it's going to have some compliance from most purchasers (you never hear of the gun store getting robbed for good reason). Finally, it removes resources from that country cause fighter jets are not cheap.
Now, that's more economic power than political, but it allows political power to be wielded. Switzerland on the other hand, has put its neutrality to political power by being the country that is neutral. Whatever international organization needs a meeting place will go to Switzerland. Switzerland also will negotiate as the middle man (Any time a US citizen gets arrested in North Korea or Iran, it's the Swiss who do the negotiations, since the US has no diplomatic channels to push its own interests in those countries). It's also very well known for its banking laws and thus, a perfect place to keep the rest of the worlds money safe. Just as nobody robs a gun store, nobody robs their own bank.
So... TR;DR some things to consider:
* The country should have natural defenses making invasion difficult.
* The country in question should have the ability to quickly raise defense. \* This could be by private militia (either state mandated or personal liberty) or quick shifts to war time economy (ideally, your economy produces peaceful items that can be re-purposed for war quite handily).
* Carve out a niche market in the world economy. If the business you do is vital to an enemy force, they won't be an enemy force for long.
* Maintain some semblance of hands off diplomacy. Basically, both example countries are largely going to wash their hands of the conflict unless provoked. While it's very obvious with Switzerland's neutrality (we're not supporting one side over the other, period), the United States tends to have its closest friends physically close as well. Of their two land borders, neither is particularly hostile towards the United States and are by and large friendly. It's also close friends with near neighbors in across the oceans, such as Britain, Japan, and Australia, Western Europe as a whole.
The two areas where this isn't true are Cuba and Russia. The latter's borders only exist in a part of the world that is not worth an invasion force (Eastern Russian and Alaska aren't extremely populous places nor are particularly hospitable... both sides of that conflict are better allowing the invasion to stretch its supply lines thin and countering when they're too far interior to get great support.) and Cuba (which the United States basically cut off all ties to and maintains poorer relationships with the countries that did not cut off Cuba ties). Beyond that, the countries physically closest to the United States (by the Crow Flies) are either friendly or neutral (very rarely are they hostile and those that are don't have the capability of supporting that hostility).
These two schools essentially work on some level of another layer of defense. Switzerland, by not taking sides in any international issues means that while they have few strong friends, they have even fewer enemies. The Swiss have made clear that if they are at war, they will not be the aggressor country. They have military strength for sure, they will use it, but their most powerful defense is that anyone who goes to war with them is clearly the bully. It's not so much as spin as it is obvious.
Contrast with the United States. Like Switzerland, their overall goal is to be left alone. Unlike Switzerland, they will have stronger friendships with other countries, but they have to gain something out of it. Most of America's closest allies physically closer to the United States than the threats... consider the cold war... had it gone hot, Russia's avenues of attack are Alaska/Canada or Europe. There are quite a few European countries that would have to fall before they could get enough invasion forces into boats and cross the Atlantic. The United States has always had an underlying desire to keep the problems of the world out of their hemispheres and will be aggressive in doing such. They will be more than willing to help a foreign power, but that help is largely to keep the problem "over there" Solve it, pause it, or redirect it, whatever... just keep it on your side of the ocean. And while the leadership has become more involved, the populous still has a strong opinion of "Not Our Monkeys, Not our Circus" (fun fact, the United States was content to only fight Japan following Pearl Harbor).
In essence, this country of yours would want to hold to the Teddy Roosevelt quote "Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick." It will have diplomatic power, but not in the sense of an aggressively diplomatic nation. Rather, it will have a booming economy that can allow its citizens to live in comfort, and who it chooses to do business with or not do business with is its lone diplomatic voice. His leader should speak in innuendo that is never threatening. He will always do business in direct line of sight of some cool and flashy piece of military hardware. Should the guy he's dealing with not want to deal, they can at least have a conversation about said hardware piece, which will either prompt the guest to ask where they could get something like that (which should be met with, "I know a guy who can get you one in any color you want... so long as it's black") or make the guy think twice about the benefit of being friendly with someone with that cool toy. And of course the realization that you don't by a thing like that unless you intend to play with it.
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There have been examples for a super power been too much internally fragmented to exert its power external. The Holy Roman Empire comes into mind. If the political elites are consumed fighting each other, they will develop hardly ambition to shape the geopolitical landscape. This behaviour will be reinforced, if they perceive the source of wealth and power of their own country to be more valuable than what the world can offer.
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For a pen-and-paper RPG scenario, I want the player characters to find and salvage undeveloped film from a crashed early-cold-war or late-WWII photo recon aircraft. Where in the world is it most plausible that the film would survive until the present day?
* As per this [news story](https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-54175441) from the BBC, undeveloped film can survive 70 years under good storage conditions. Here I'm assuming 60 to 80 years in the wreckage of an aircraft. It is not necessary that all photos on the film survive.
* Assume that the crash landing was close to a best case scenario from a film survival viewpoint, almost a belly landing, if that helps.
* It would be good if the crash site was "adventure friendly" terrain. With that I mean desert, jungle, arctic, high mountains, or the like. Of course a salvage operation on a golf course with lots of muggles oblivious bystanders has adventure potential, too, so that is not a hard restriction on the answers.
* I'm not aware if there were any fundamental technical developments in the timeframe that would alter the film survival. Wet film photo recon was in use until fairly recently and the timeframe might be adjusted if that is necessary to provide a positive answer.
* The story has science-fictional elements, but they don't affect the loss and subsequent recovery of the film. I tagged my question [reality-check](/questions/tagged/reality-check "show questions tagged 'reality-check'") and would not be unhappy if answers meet the [hard-science](/questions/tagged/hard-science "show questions tagged 'hard-science'") standard, e.g. by giving documented real-world examples.
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Just to clarify: I would prefer a wilderness expedition, not one into dusty, not-yet-declassified archives protected by guards and red tape. That would *also* be an adventure, but a completely different one. So the film would be undeveloped unless it was developed in flight (some big recon aircraft could do that).
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Next clarification: I would like the characters to be the first "discoverers" of the wreck, following a mix of old flight plans and modern satellite imagery. Say it had a *long* preplanned course, which it left *somewhere*, and then navigated by dead reckoning to find a friendly airfield *somewhere else*, all long before GPS and inertial navigation. So it was lost until someone took hyperspectral satellite pictures and started to hunt for the outline of the plane. That's not really part of the question because the different theories and search area reasoning for MH370 are still living memory.
I have a plan what's on the film, somewhat to the side of the historical mission objective. But that isn't relevant for the question.
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Let's give the word to the [experts](https://thedarkroom.com/tips-for-storing-photography-film/):
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> Film manufacturers print the expiration date on the roll, and when stored correctly, you can get great photos years or even decades beyond their printed expiration date.
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> * Low temperatures slow down film degradation.
> * High temperatures speed up film degradation.
> * Freezing stops the film degradation.
> * Humidity speed up film degradation.
> * Dry storage minimizes film degradation
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> Excerpt from Kodak’s website about Storage and Handling of Unprocessed Film:
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> Refrigerating camera films reduces the photographic effects of long-term storage, but refrigeration cannot reduce the effects of ambient gamma radiation. Naturally occurring gamma radiation increases the D-min and toe densities and also increases grain. Higher speed films are affected more by gamma radiation than lower speed films. A camera film with an EI (Exposure Index) of 800 has a much greater change than an EI 200 film. Exposed and unprocessed film that has been properly refrigerated retains the speed and contrast of the exposure conditions, but the overall D-min, toe and grain will continue to increase.
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It seems that the best place would be a freezing cold and dry place, away from gamma radiation.
I guess Antarctica fits the bill pretty nicely: it's a dry desert, and the large amount of ice surrounding anything left there would act as a natural barrier against gamma radiation.
And I guess it's also an adventurous place, ask [Scott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_Expedition) for references.
By the way, I think [I have read](https://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/28/world/antarctic-historic-photos/index.html) that some photos of polar expedition were found and developed a century after the expedition. (thanks to Henk Groot for referencing the right source)
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## Greenland:
I was thinking Greenland, due to the WW2/Cold war angle, and there were whole military bases that were built there and crushed by moving ice. A recon plane could have flown to an abandoned base in order to ditch on a runway, but crashed (and no one was there anymore to save them). Or your team could explore the ruins of an abandoned military base where the film got developed and/or stored in a sealed vault, then abandoned/forgotten as a combo of L.Dutch - Reinstate Monica♦ and this and Willk's answer (I upvoted both). There were abandoned bases from both [WW2](https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-ghost-air-force-bases-of-greenland) and the [cold war](https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-49209510) left here, but ultimately the climate was too harsh for permanent bases. They are being crushed by ice and snow, but the ruins are still there and make a great place to explore.
Need scifi elements? Folks like MUFON and other fringe groups report [alien spacecraft](https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1335261/ufo-discovery-aliens-google-earth-greenland-alien-spaceship-elon-musk) frozen in the [Greenland ice](https://www.ibtimes.co.in/researcher-claims-have-discovered-tr-3b-ufo-greenland-urges-elon-musk-take-look-828058), too. The [Vikings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland#Norse_settlement) built and abandoned villages in Greenland in case you need fantasy elements as well. So have fun exploring the lands and seas of Greenland.
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# High Mountaintop.
Your photo reconnaissance plane intended to fly 100ft over the mountaintop, instead if flew 100ft under the mountaintop. Typical clouds-stuffed-with-rocks scenario.
The plane impacted into deep snow, making the impact "gentle" enough for the camera's film package to survive intact and sealed.
The location is *well* above the snowline, the wreckage will be exposed to winds and ice and snow but *never* to temperatures above freezing, thus preventing repeated frost/thaw cycles.
You may need to provide a fortuitous avalanche to uncover the snow/ice covering the wreckage, just before discovery.
With sustained almost zero humidity, and sustained freeze, and intact in packaging from the first impact, your film should be quite recoverable. It may help that 99% of the time it was covered by a deep snow&ice layer, preventing light and greatly reducing cosmic ray impact from fading the film. (high altitude radiation would otherwise have been a problem)
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**Someone was there first**
Thinking thru the role playing aspect: your players find undeveloped film in the plane. Then they have to find someplace to develop it and then look at the images to figure out what is next.
Finding a place to develop old film in some remote area is not that fun. Also, I somehow know one of your players will be that guy who will argue that the film cannot possibly still be good, and might have a little knowledge on that front that he is eager to share and your game play gets sidetracked.
Your players find the plane. The interior is empty, the materials salvaged. Back in town they ask and are pointed to a bar where many of the seats are seats from the plane, seat belts still attached. The bartender assures the players that the crew of the plane were buried respectfully and can show them the graves if things go that way. As regards any photos or other items the proprietor refers the players to his uncle who is a weird little dude who lives in a loft over a bordello. He developed the photos and has them in an album. He has a lot of other photos too, and maybe other hobbies.
Visiting third world bars and strange old uncles seems like better role playing to me.
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### The Gobi Desert
The [Gobi Desert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobi_Desert) is very dry, being in the rain shadow of Tibet. It is also very cold for much of the year (below -20°C in winter), although it can become comfortably warm during summer. As L.Dutch says, the low humidity and temperature give fairly good conditions for film to survive.
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> It would be good if the crash site was "adventure friendly" terrain.
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Much of the Gobi Desert is mountainous bare rock, with some sandy areas and sparse vegetation. Very adventurous! Unlike most other deserts though, the environment is not so harsh that it's hard for people to survive there, given proper supplies. The problem simply is a lack of available water. So unlike Antarctica or the Sahara, it's perfectly possible for your adventurers to rock up with regular cold-weather gear and without needing super-specialised skills to survive there.
You don't explicitly say this in your question, but you do have a clear requirement that no-one has discovered the crashed plane before. (Or at least that it hasn't been reported to anyone.) A major problem with Antarctica as proposed by L.Dutch is that it's fairly actively surveyed by research groups. It also isn't particularly on the way from somewhere to somewhere else, and there have been few enough planes lost for it to be fairly unlikely that there's anything new to discover.
The Gobi Desert on the other hand has not had many people interested in it before, apart from nomadic animal herders and fossil hunters. Mineral extraction has now become more of a focus recently though, giving a viable reason for the area to have been surveyed for the first time and something new to be found. Some herders still live relatively traditional lifestyles in the desert, giving local colour and perhaps a source of oral history about the crash. Given its size and location, planes naturally have to cross it for some routes, making it entirely possible that a plane could have come down there.
To add to the chances of this having gone unreported, this would most likely have been a Chinese or Russian aircraft. During WWII the Chinese were fighting for survival against the Japanese, and one lost aircraft may well not have been particularly remarked upon. The Russians similarly had other priorities: China was not a threat; and the [Kuril Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands) were not as important as Leningrad and Moscow (and besides, the Americans were already dealing with the Japanese in the Pacific). With the Cold War immediately after WWII, Western governments would not have had any knowledge of lost Chinese or Russian aircraft. With the civil war, the Chinese themselves may even have lost those records, or other reasons (the families of the crew, perhaps) may have made it unacceptable for the records to be kept, and Stalin had similar tendencies to erase "unpopular" people from the records.
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I know this is not quite wilderness discovered by hyperspectral satellite, but I had an idea after reading "Of course a salvage operation on a golf course with lots of muggles oblivious bystanders has adventure potential, too, so that is not a hard restriction on the answers." and wanted to see where it would go.
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"Who do I think I am?" All you need to know is that we are a legitimate government organization tasked by the crown/congress/president/ministry of magic with protecting the realm against [outside context problems](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OutsideContextProblem). Here I have an ID glimmering with holographic print to prove it. Now, please hold further questions until after the briefing. The issue at hand is highly complicated but we're not paying you for intelligence so I will be brief.
In 1950 an asset was dispatched to Brazil to investigate an anomaly. The asset was damaged during recon and barely limped within our borders. We've tracked the asset to a crashsite in Frozen Utopia park, yes the largest artificial habitat replicating Antarctica in the world. As I already mentioned please hold your questions until I finish briefing. Fortunately at the time of crash the park was still under construction and the crew managed keep most of the plane intact. Unfortunately our retrieval team arrived to find site cordoned by a three letter agency in charge of the inside context problems. We're supposed to be on the same side, but bastards wouldn't let us access the crash site and they even detained the surviving crew. Enough with the questions and no you don't need to know the name of that blasted agency.
That should never had been a problem, but for security reasons the plane was unregistered, so they technically had jurisdiction and prevented us from investigating the asset. Thankfully the evidence collected is solely in our jurisdiction, so we've managed to block them from messing with the crash site. Bastards were not satisfied with interrogating the crew and inserted agents to Frozen Utopia staff to keep 24/7 watch over the crash site cordon. Thankfully we were quick enough to do the same thing to keep their grubby paws from retrieving the evidence.
We've been in jurisdiction limbo ever since. Fortunately both of our agencies produced a gag order for the park's leadership to stay quite and treat the crash site as an exhibit. My science staff tells me the conditions of the pavilion are near ideal for preserving the film canisters, so I am sure the evidence is still good.
What does that have to do with you? First of all, I asked you to stop asking questions. And second of all to claim jurisdiction the bastards must have an active case open. In 2 hours the case will be closed due to inactivity. They will re-open it of course, the bastards always do, however due to a holiday that won't happen for 14 hours. This gives us 12 hours to set things right. Crafty bastards have anticipated this and got a temporary injunction preventing citizens employed by us from interfering with the asset. However, you my friends are not citizens and you will be exorbitantly compensated for a trivial retrieval mission.
Now, operational logistics is trivial. When I walk out of the room the door to the wardrobe room will open. What did I say about questions, and yes it is the room that says wardrobe on it. That is the room our watchers stationed in the pavilion use. Inside you will find anything you might possibly want to conduct a retrieval mission in a hostile territory. Pardon me for the slip of the tongue, I meant hospitable, my speech coach is always on my case about confusing the two. Now, after you get the film canisters return to the wardrobe room and deposit them into the designated briefcases. We've had those ready since the beginning of the incident and it'll be great to finally close that loop.
There should be absolutely no problems, but we can't rule out the bastard agency from trying something underhanded. Oh, there are also some rumors that Russia, China, Israel, India, and Canada also expressed interest in the asset due to a similar event captured by satellites last week, but I am sure those are false. Heck, can you believe intelligence is reporting Canada stirring trouble? Honestly, SIGINT is a giant pile of rubbish.
The payment has already been deposited into your accounts. I am sure that won't be an issue, but there are two final legalities. First is the important one - we've obviously never met. And for the second one if you attempt to leave the area before completing the mission standby sniper teams have been authorized to maintain operational security.
Best of luck, phoenix out. You can barely make out agent muttering "god dammit, I said my code name again..." as he walks out of an unmarked door.
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In addition to the other answers, parts of the [Himalayas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayas) and [Svalbard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard) could also fit into this type of scenario. With the Himalayas, China, India and Britain could be included in the story and despite being Norwegian territory, Svalbard has a former Soviet Union, now Russian presence in [Barentsburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barentsburg) ([Pyramiden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramiden) and [Grumant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumant)).
For other places of interest areas check for locations above the permanent [snow line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_line).
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If it were me I'd be less concerned about where the plane was found but how much care was put into preserving the film in the crashed plane.
Was the film used of high quality? There's a lot of old film that has disintegrated because it was made of unstable chemicals, and they turned to goo or spontaneously combusted even when under the best care.
What kind of plane was it? A an airplane made of wood and steel components that crashes will rot and rust away, leaving anything inside exposed to the elements. An airplane made of aluminum and titanium will survive far longer, and take less damage in a crash, therefore protecting the film inside better.
Heat, cold, dryness, and humidity can all degrade materials. What degrades materials faster is the shifting between extremes. Look at the wooden posts at a pier. The most wear is the place where rising and lowering of the tide gets the wood wet and exposes it to the air. What stays (mostly) dry above the water, and what stays wet under the water, is not worn as near as quickly as what is in the middle.
The film most likely to be preserved will be the film that is kept from temperature and humidity variation. Think of film that would have been exposed, removed from the camera, then placed in storage canisters. A simple galvanized steel can or black plastic bottle (whichever is appropriate for the time period) will keep out wind, water, bugs, and even quite a bit of radiation from the sun, cosmic sources, and nuclear weapons testing.
Did anyone survive the crash to take actions, intentionally or not, that would preserve the film longer? Think of how crew of a crashed recon plane might act after a crash. They will want to tend to the wounded. They will seek out a means for rescue. While waiting rescue they will want to pack up the sensitive information that they can carry, such as the film, and destroy anything that they cannot, which will be the communication codes in their radios and maybe the camera. The capability of the camera could be a state secret and might be intentionally destroyed. The crew will be faced with a dilemma, they want to preserve the film for their superiors but also don't want it to fall into enemy hands.
What they could do is collect the film canisters and put them in a toolbox or something. They can tape it up tight with duck tape to keep out water and bugs. Maybe they even rig up a means to weld it shut before taping it up just for good measure. Then they bury it where they can retrieve it later if found by allies. If discovered by opposition forces then they can claim the film was burned. How the film stays buried can vary. They are discovered alive but no body cares about the film. They perish from being lost for so long. They are discovered by the enemy and lots of different paths can follow from there.
I'll review my two scenarios...
First, assume a sturdy plane that crashes with the crew killed instantly, or at least before they can be bothered to do anything about the film. The plane is intact enough to keep out the elements enough to minimize decay of what is inside, the film is quality stuff and the automated photographic equipment puts the film in relatively sturdy film canisters and due to being undisturbed remains preserved until our heroes pick it up. Second, assume at least some of the crew survives, they have sufficient time, skill, and resources on hand to take measures to preserve the film and prevent capture or destruction by opposing forces. For any of a dozen possible reasons the film remains undisturbed until our heroes arrive.
In either scenario the probability of film surviving most any place on Earth for decades is quite high. Especially in the second scenario.
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[Question]
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Imagine a scenario where a country around the size of New Zealand (in GDP, population, military strength and other areas) decides that it wants to take control of or at least destroy a much larger country (think Russia, USA or China).
The following rules apply:
* Neither country can call on other countries for help
* Either country can take over and hold parts of their opponent (similar to how ISIS has taken over parts of the middle east)
* The small country is run a lot like North Korea, with little to no regard for its citizens. They can devote almost all of its resources to the war and citizens (for the most part) actually approve of the war
* The small country has even less regard for rules of war than it does for its own citizens. For arguments sake, the large country still has to maintain appearances and not anger the UN
* The large country must at least try to keep its citizens happy because they are much more likely to revolt or disapprove of a long war
* Both countries are at a similar, modern or near modern technology level
* The countries are on the same planet, but can be situated however you like
[Answer]
The subtlest way to do this would be through infiltration, but this could take several years to accomplish. Continually send citizens from the smaller country into the larger country, get them into key positions within the government and society, and when the saturation of citizens from the smaller country exceeds 50% of the total population of the larger country, launch a coordinated interior/exterior offensive.
[Answer]
I think the answer to this is introducing some reason why people in the larger country would be willing to collaborate with the occupying forces of the smaller country. Perhaps the smaller country is considered the centre of a certain religion/ideology/ethnicity that a significant number of adherents/etc. in the larger country.
So imagine the large country is ethnically diverse. A third are Blonkians, another third are Donkians, and the remaining third are Jonkians. The Blonkians are the dominant minority. Their ancestors originally settled the fertile coastal regions centuries ago and they have long dominated the country's economy and politics. The Donkians and Jonkians hate the Blonkians, but also hate each other. The Blonkians are terrified that the Donkians and Jonkians will one day join forces and overthrow them, so they use their power to stoke tensions between the two communities as far as possible. The Blonkians say that without their firm leadership, their country will undoubtedly descend into generations of Donkian-v-Jonkian civil war.
Blonkia, where the Blonkians ancestors hailed from, is a small country, but is generally ethnically and ideologically homogeneous, with a government that touts a philosophy of Blonkian supremacy. The Blonkians in Blonkia and the ethnic Blonkians in the larger country would make very obvious bedfellows.
So say there is a situation where unrest is building in the larger country, the Blonkians there want to impose martial law and send the army in to maintain their control, but the army is mostly made up of Donkian and Jonkian conscripts, as more often than not, the wealthy and well-connected Blonkians are able to dodge military service. The obvious solution is to invite the Blonkians back in the motherland to send their soldiers over and help with the suppression of descent in the country.
This starts off as a reciprocal arrangement, but the Blonkians in the larger country are eventually going to be squeezed into doing anything the Blonkian Blonkians want as the Blonkian Blonkians can simply threaten to withdraw from the country and leave the native Blonkians to the mercy of the Donkians and Jonkians. Before you know it, you have a situation where the larger country is under the colonial control of Blonkia.
[Answer]
see literally all of europe's colonial period. Just have it be a left over from one of these periods, like Canada before 1982. becasue a smaller country really can't take over a much larger country unless there is a significant technology or infrastructure gap.
Or as a different option you could have another third party country do the bulk of the damage but lose and then have the smaller country sweep in afterwards taking advantage of the infrastructure gap in the damaged larger country. You need a pretty significant war though. Basically create an infrastructure gap with a third party.
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How about trickery and guile? A clever, ruthless, well-resourced small country might pull this off by tricking the larger country into welcoming (even begging) the smaller country to come in and help them survive the horrible plague-X, when no other country can/will.
Plague-X was, of course, artificially created/weaponized in the smaller/attacker for just this purpose. They created an incident on their own soil, as a basis for researching this disease and developing a cure. A cure they have stockpiled and willing to provide (to a fellow nation in need), but insist on administering themselves, to deal with known side effects. The cure does something nasty, like makes the populace (who's already scared and disoriented) highly suggestive and amenable to propaganda. The plague-curers are welcomed as heroes -- and never leave....
[Answer]
Maybe it might be possible if the larger country was throw into a state of disorder. You wrote that the people of the lager country may revolt. Perhaps there is infighting with in the larger country. If the infighting were to become violet then perhaps the small country could step in to "restore peace and order." If they are able to convince a large enough group of natives that they are there to liberate them (To add them there army and make things more equal), and if the larger country continues to fight among them selves instead of fight the invader (perhaps they don't see the army as threat because of it small size) then the smaller country has a good chance of gaining full control over the larger one.
additional thoughts: It possible that the smaller country might even be secretly be responsible for creating the strife in the lager one so that they could then step in. It also might help if many in the lager country have strong cultural ties to the smaller one. This would encourage them to see the invading force as liberators.
[Answer]
Strong similarities could be drawn with how Gengis Khan built the Mongol empire:
* superior tactics and strategy
* absolute terror against defeated an rebellious populations
* relative independence of conquered populations provided subservience (sending troops and taxes)
Another item could be derived from the US [offset strategy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offset_strategy) which aims at identifying technologies which give and edge against bigger and more populous countries.
It could be said that Gengis Khan's *offset* was his cavalry.
[Answer]
Yay, an opportunity to drop one of my favorite historical quotes!
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> Whatever happens, we have got
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> The Maxim gun, and they have not.
> --*Hilaire Belloc*
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The [Maxim gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_gun) was an early machine gun, and one of the primary reasons that Britain was able to do exactly what you state on the scales that it did. Though the psychological effects of the weapon are often credited equally or moreso than the weapon's actual lethal power, it makes no difference in the end.
We live in a different world today than we did in the age of Imperialism, but in some ways the groundwork that was laid and the ideas and goals are still in place. We ship capital and labor overseas rather than challenging a nation's political soverignty, but in effect we still extend our own power and gather resources. We've just gotten more diplomatic about our imperial ambitions.
Likewise, we live in a world where running in with a machine gun is just going to result in answering to the opponent's machine guns. The Maxim gun strategy is dependent on two conditions: that *we* have the Maxim gun, and that *they* do not. The strategy breaks down when both sides have a Maxim gun as badly as when neither side does. In fact, we've so thoroughly advanced the art of physical destruction that we can completely destroy any nation on Earth that we want to--or all of them, if we desired--with a sufficient number of missiles that can be launched and make contact in minutes. And the most compelling reason *not* to is that they can do the same to us (at least, if the two countries happen to be the US and Russia, who own the vast majority of known nuclear weapons).
What we require, then, is to find a method of conquest that our small nation has but the large nation can't match. Which would mean that the small nation needs to be a **highly tech-savvy nation.** [Zero day attacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-day_(computing)) against the larger nation's infrastructure may be effective, especially with careful planning. Playing your cards just right, a cyberattack can allow a nation with high technological prowess to attack another nation's systems in such a way that their involvement can not be proven and thus retaliation is unsuitable. In fact, [this has been done before](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet). Choosing the target systems carefully can allow the attacker to do anything from destroying powerful weapons to disrupting logistics, leaving them wide open to invasion.
[Answer]
**Military operation**
The strike must be fast, hard and focused. New government must be set and new laws enforced prior the "resistance" can be organised. New rules must improve the life quality significantly and in short term. With full stomach, there wouldn't be force to revolt back.
**Blitzkrieg**
Your military operation must be well organized, focused and it must eliminate military bases faster than they can regroup. Even if they outpower you in total numbers, the key to success is that you can overpower them locally. Citizens in conquered areas shall be turned into your allies - improve their life quality ASAP and spread this information to the unconquered areas.
**Infiltration**
Small country's TLA (Three-letter-agency) infiltrate the large country's government and army headquarters with sleeping agents. Compromise any candidate, that is not member of TLA or TLA-loyal. When you reach 2:1 Loyal-to-independent ratio in both government and army, run the revolution. Improve the life quality significantly.
The fewer changes for the citizens the better.
[Answer]
War is probably the most obvious and crudest of methods, and will only work if the smaller country has SIGNIFICANT technological advantage over the larger one. If the larger country is having trouble like civil unrest, that would make the conquest even easier.
However, IMHO, the best way to take over any country is **Ideological Subversion**, which doesn't require any bloodshed at all, just time enough to brainwash an entire generation.
I would ask you to watch this entire video of a USSR defector:
[Yuri Bezmenov explains ideological subversion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qkf3bajd4)
Through Ideological subversion, the size of countries doesn't matter at all, since the citizens of the target country will happily let the invader country take over theirs.
Strip them of their national identity, any respect of standards and differences between individuals, cultures, countries, races etc. and make them believe everyone and every ideology is each other's equal, and people lose ability to see danger even when its staring them right in their face.
[Answer]
All of these other answers are looking at military, or sneak invasion and infiltration via immigration.
How about economically? If a country is able to obtain massive gold reserves and is prepared to loan the opposition government money, what would happen when the big country owes trillions?
What if instead of government loans, they were loans to massive businesses, with enough interest transferred that the small government could control massive corporations. Then the blackmail starts. "Ah, yes, senator... we'd like this bill passed. Or we close/move our $somecorp headquarters and fire all of the current employees, who are your voter base. Have a nice day. We'll be in touch."
[Answer]
What is the nationality of the people in the big country? If there is a huge population from that small country it could be that the big country fails to mobilize because it needs to be paranoid about its own citizens and the guerrilla warfare has already begun.
The small country can have naval or aerial overpower. If the big country is not self sufficient the time they can fight before they have to surrender could be fairly short. This would require the small country to be in a strategically vital position for the big country.
These two could also explain why the small country gets its way to be a North-Korea without intervention.
[Answer]
Overwhelming Technological advantage
Historically, each time a tiny country took over a bigger one it was only because of technological advantage.
The entire colonization Era of Europe (Spain/Portugal/Englan/France/Netherlands/Belgium) was based on the fact that natives were technologically retarded compared to Europeans (not politically correct to say but that s the truth). It s easy to kill an army of bowmen if you have gunpowder.
In our current world, a tiny country like New Zealand could conquer the US if it had developped futuristic technology like fusion power, nano robots, space battleships, cyborgs etc...
[Answer]
Your "countries are on the same planet" part opens this up to something I did in a SciFi setting. The answer is that they are populated by two different species, though you could adapt it to two very different cultures.
My one species was large, had a war-like culture and high levels of aggression. The other species was small, caution and even cowardice were valued highly, and they would rather run and hide than fight.
When species one invaded, there wasn't even a war. They just surrendered immediately because by their nature that was the right response.
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[Question]
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So Mars has been colonised and is mostly self-sufficient (food,water, construction etc).
(We finally managed to create a back up humanity! Whew!)
Ok now Mars is looking to create an export economy with earth so they can afford luxuries and high-tech equipment etc.
However it turns out it is rather expensive to 'ship' things to Earth (because ~~space is big. You just won't believe how vastly...~~ gravity is a **<redacted>**)
The United Colonies of Mars (UCM!UCM!UCM) unanimously vote to cash in what is left of the *BesoMuskSwift* trust fund to bootstrap the Mars export economy.
The only question is:
**How do they do that!?!** & **What do they Export?!?**
[Answer]
Robert Zubrin answers this in his non-fiction book ["The Case for Mars"](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56713.The_Case_for_Mars), in the chapter the "Interplanetary Commerce":
1. Precious metals.
This has already been written in another answer. Zubrin states however that it is not yet clear how abundant these are.
2. Deuterium
Deuterium is important for Fusion reactors and according to the book Martian water is richer in deuterium. The price of $10,000 a kilo would make it worth shipping it back to earth. As pointed out in the comments, the price tag probably has changed since the book was published.
3. Low tech products for the asteroid belt
The most interesting answer however isn't a good that is directly exported to Earth, which can produce everything but raw materials.
Zubrin suggests a trade triangle Earth -> Mars -> Asteroid belt, which works something like that:
- Earth ships high tech products that cannot be produced locally to Mars
- Mars ships low tech products like food to the belt
- From the belt mined products like platinum are sent back to earth.
Sending products needed for asteroid mining from Mars to the asteroid belt is more economic than sending them directly from Earth directly, because "the launch burden for sending the cargo to Ceres is about 50 times less for missions starting from Mars than those departing from Earth
4. Fuel
Also mentioned before, fuel produced on Mars would be very useful for goods transported from Earth to the belt or back.
If you are interested in hard facts about how Mars could be colonized, I really recommend the book.
[Answer]
**"All Empires of the Future will be Empires of the Mind"**
The economy of the future will not be in parts or in minerals - these would be obtainable anywhere and with new means of manufacture would be quite ubiquitous.
Instead real value would be in tertiary items. Things like:
* Inventions, IP related items
* Art, culture, entertainment
* Research, scientific data, results and education
* Finance, funding, trade powerhouse
* Online communities, social media and privacy data
These are the new commodities, easily tradable from Mars. There would be immense interest in what is happening on Mars, what they are doing, what people could learn, the data they could be entrusted with. This is tradable.
Look historically at seemingly disadvantaged countries in the past, ones with not that much resources. As an example Japan was devastated after WWII, with a military disbanded, and as a small island had very little in natural resources. It transformed itself into a financial powerhouse, using the ability of its most important asset: strong reputable reliable Japanese culture. It could be trusted with funds, and was the doorway (if not physically, psychologically) to the Asian world, and now is a major economy.
Mars has an opportunity to enter the interplanetary economy with new and varied virtual products and services that are built on strong cultural and reputational foundations.
[Answer]
Rocket Fuel.
@aadv's answer mentions the key component. Mars' gravity is 1/3 that of Earth's. This means getting anything off Mars is significantly cheaper than it is to launch it from Earth, potentially exponentially so if the lower engineering requirements lead to a Martian space elevator being possible while an Earth one wasn't.
So you want an export commodity that everyone tripping around the solar system needs, Rocket Fuel is your answer and NASA are already working on production methods.
[In Situ Propellant Manufacture](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/279947-nasa-wants-to-make-rocket-fuel-from-martian-soil)
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> NASA calls the process of making fuel from Martian regolith “dust-to-thrust,” and it’s working on robots that can potentially do all the heavy lifting before humans even land on Mars.
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[Answer]
Services. Not the regular ones, but the kind that is more aligned with sustained Bitcoin when it was released, or services to governments who want their dirty stuff done away from prying eyes.
There isn't any commodity on Mars that is not easy to obtain on Earth already. Earth and Mars were made of the same raw materials, but Earth:
* Is about 10x more massive, so she has 10 times more of the same raw planetary materials;
* Does not require expensive life support:
* Is closer to itself than Mars. Like zero shipping time and costs, in comparison.
Even for regular services you have problems, due to taxations and the communication latency of a few minutes at best.
You can't even sell martian sand to people into esoteric stuff because if they are gullible enough to think the energy of Mars will do something for them, they are gullible enough to buy dyed regular Earth sand.
So you are left with:
* Tax havens;
* Prostitution;
* Prison camps for the unwanted (think Guantanamo).
[Answer]
Mars has a lower escape velocity compared to Earth. It also has a less dense atmosphere so there is less air drag keeping you from hitting higher speeds. Lower gravity might also make some aspects of heavy industry easier - ships and trucks being able to handle more tonnage, comes to mind.
There probably aren't as many environmental issues with strip mining asteroids and the moons of gas giants, because there are no humans or pandas there (yet). You might also want isotopoes of hydrogen and helium that are rare on Earth from those gas giants for nuclear fusion.
So if you are mining asteroids, the gas giants or their moons, and you want to get those raw materials to Earth's markets, it *might* be cheaper to take those raw materials to Martian factories for processing and maybe even assembly of heavy finished goods, before launching those goods to their destinations.
As to why you might prefer to have your factories in rocky planets closer to Earth over spacestations near the Asteroid Belt, I can think of two reasons relating to operational costs: you don't need to generate as much heat for your humans and you don't need to generate great centrifigual forces to simulate gravity - though I'm not sure how much gravity you would need just to keep feet on the ground and wheels on the road. One additional capital cost that a space station would have would be having to assemble the ground itself.
Mars might still have to compete with other bases like the Moon (closer to Earth) and Ceres (inside the Belt). One interesting advantage Mars might have is it's orbital eccentricity: the planet's distance from both Earth and the Belt changes quite a bit, so you might hitchike with Mars, within the confort of a Martian hotel room, and save yourself just a bit of the hassle of spaceship travel.
[Answer]
[`from __future__ import`](https://python-future.org/imports.html#future-imports) . . .
## List of exports of Mars
Acyclic hydrocarbons. Air pumps. Beauty products. Broadcasting accessories. Broadcasting equipment. Brochures. Centrifuges. Cheese. Chemical analysis instruments. Cleaning products. Computer programming services. Cyclic hydrocarbons. Data entry services. Diamonds. Design services. Documentaries. Electric generating sets. Electric heaters. Frozen beef. Gold. Hard liquor. House linens. Jewellery. Knit sweaters. Laboratory reagents. Leather footwear. Low-voltage protection equipment. Machinery having individual functions. Medical instruments. Microphones and headphones. Models and stuffed animals. Motion pictures. Musical records. Nitrogen heterocyclic compounds. Non-knit men's suits. Non-knit women's suits. Non-retail pure cotton yarn. Nucleic acids. Organic corn. Organic rice. Other furniture. Other plastic products. Packaged pharmaceuticals. Paintings. Perfume. Pesticides. Pharmaceuticals. Platinum. Precious metal scraps. Precision ball bearings. Radioactive chemicals. Raw sugar. Refined copper. Rolled tobacco. Rubber footwear. Sawn wood. Seats. Television shows. Thermostats. Translation services. Trunks and cases. Valves. Vegetable saps. Video games and card games. Wine.
[Answer]
Energy. Let's assume in your scenario Mars is populated way less densely than Earth. The would easily be able to harvest more energy than they need and share it with the earthlings. Ways of harvesting could be:
1. Solar. While the distance between the sun and Mars is about 1.5 the distance between sun and Earth (meaning that the raw amount of sunlight hitting mars is about at least 2.25 times less), Mars has a really thin and non-dense atmosphere (less adsorption of light before it hits the ground) and no seas to speak of (lots of usable surface).
2. Wind. Mars has an incredibly strong and consistent airflow across it's surface making huge parks filled with wind turbines a viable option.
3. Nuclear. Nuclear power-plants might be dangerous but unlike Earth on Mars there is not much to destroy in the first place.
Seeing how earths energy-consumption and population are exponentially growing and fossil fuels being limited, energy trade might be the real deal. Plus the entire idea of "shipping" stuff from Mars to Earth might not even be an issue. In your fictional universe inhabitants of Mars could have found a way to relay power across space by means of EM-fields or light emission.
[Answer]
**Gold** and other precious metals/commodities.
Imagine Earth, but never mined. In the past it was possible to find surface deposits of ores made of more than 15% grade precious metals. All known of those have already been extracted. Finding a deposit that is 1% copper is usually very profitable with current technology.
I did the math once (I'm willing to put it here, I just can't right now; I hope I will be able in a few days). It is very profitable. It could disrupt earthly commodities market and still be profitable. That's one of the reasons behind private space entrepreneurship.
Mars main competitor would be asteroid mining, though. OR, Mars could have the gravity-based refining plants needed for asteroid commodities to be exported to Earth as manufactured goods.
[Answer]
**Wood.**
On the future earth, forests are gone. Wood is difficult to grow because suitable land is dedicated to edible and fiber crops, and locking up land to grow desirable hardwoods is no longer feasible. But people still treasure things made of wood.
Mars has thick forests. Absent insects and diseases, trees grow fast in the terraformed Martian soil. It is no problem to sustainably harvest trees from Mars. Trunks are wrapped in mylar and launched to travel unaccompanied through space, where they are collected when they intercept Earth orbit.
[Answer]
## Psychoactive compounds
Pot and other psychoatives are legal across most of the earth now and most people have a small back yard pot patch, but something about the low gravity and different atmospheric composition - even in the bubbles - on Mars mean the stuff they grow there is **ah may ZING!**
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[Question]
[
In the show *Game of Thrones* there is this thing called The Wall. It is a monstrous, 300 mile (≈ 483 km) long bulwark consisting of a fortified ice wall that is 700 feet (≈ 213 meters) high (check [the wiki](https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/The_Wall) for more details). There are also castles/forts along the foot of this wall, as garrisons for the soldiers manning it.
Now, quite conveniently, at some of the castles there exists a sort of **elevator** built to reach the battlements from the castle 700 feet below the top of the wall. We can see the elevator is [built from wood and metal](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/clayseason/game%20of%20thrones/locations/the%20north%20and%20the%20wall/castle%20black/joninmovingelevator.jpg) and seems to be a fairly simple construction. No actual mechanism is shown. At the bottom is a lever, that when turned either sends the elevator cabin up or down respectively.
Given world like the one presented in Game of Thrones—**What could be used to power the elevator?**
Assumption:
* No magic
* The tech level is that of an (at most) late-medieval'ish civilisation
* Should work in the cold weather required to preserve an ice wall
Requirements:
* Works with as little work from people and or animals as needed.
* Can be operated by some sort of lever or switch (either at the top or bottom)
* Maintenance needs should be as low as feasible
*Note: I'm aware there might be a canon answer in the books (though I don't remember anything too specific). That is not what I'm asking for, and this would be the wrong Stackexchange to do so anyway. I'm wondering for general reality-based solutions for this problem outside of the actual Game of Thrones context.*
[Answer]
With counterweights it could be possible to have a "self-powered" elevator in these conditions.
The elevator must be counter-weighted by default with a mass that will make it slowly go down if activated (to activate it, it should be sufficient to manually remove some lock).
This will allow the elevator to go down empty.
if we instead want it to go up empty, we should attach a small additional counterweight, to reach a mass higher than the one of the cabin.
if we want to go down, with people or materials, we still need to attach more counterweight, to reach a balance and avoid a too fast descent.
If we want to go up, with people or materials, we need to attach a heavier counterweight, to surpass the cabin (and content) weight.
The problem is. these counterweights (except for the default one, which is always attached) will remain on the ground level once used and we should return them up to use them. Which will require human or animal work and defeats the purpose.
To solve this issue we could simply use blocks of ice/snow, that presumably self-generate at the top of the wall. In fact, imagine that the pathways on the top must be kept clean, and some excess of snow will be found every day.
So, let's say that there is a set amount of mass that can be lifted each day (varying day by day based on weather conditions?), but this could be an efficient solution.
Edit:
The lever could actionate a mechanism that attach the cabin to a heavy or light counterweight, inverting the direction of the elevator. However, manual work will still be needed after the travel to tare and reapply the weights
[Answer]
Good old [pulleys](https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/03/history-of-human-powered-cranes.html)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/phi2R.jpg)
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> A major improvement from the 4th century BC and still in use today, is the compound pulley: a combination of single pulleys in a block. The mechanical advantage equals the amount of pulleys used.
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> A crane with a triple pulley (a "Trispastos") has two pulleys attached to the crane and a free pulley suspended from them. It offers a mechanical advantage of 3 to 1. A crane with five pulleys in a similar arrangement (dubbed a "Pentaspostos") offers a mechanical advantage of 5 to 1.
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> Using a compound pulley a man can lift more than he is otherwise able to. If a single man pulling a rope can exert a force of 50 kg, he can raise (or lower) 150 kg using a Trispastos and 250 kg using a Pentaspostos. The same goes for the rope. A rope with a tensile strength of 50 kilograms can be used to lift (or lower) 150 kilograms if 3 pulleys are used, and 250 kilograms if 5 pulleys are used.
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And you can pull the rope using winches and capstans
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fRM2Q.gif)
[Answer]
Coming down is easy, you just need a braking system, so I won't worry too much about that. Going up is the hard bit.
**1. Donkey power**
Nice and simple, the horse powered pump or winch is a bit of technology as old as time. In this case you're going to use your donkey/ass/mule/horse to winch a weight up to the top of the wall. When you want to ascend the pulley with the weight is linked to the pulley with the lift. Weight comes down, lift goes up. The equine is then returned to duty winching the weight back up.
**2. Water power**
A similar system to the horse winch but this time the counter weight is a water tank refilled at the top and emptied when at the bottom. You pour enough water into the tank that the lift starts to rise, you can also use this as part of your braking system by removing only just enough water that the lift starts to fall. Appropriate speed controllers should remain in place.
**3. Men in a hamster wheel**
This is a very old system for controlling such systems, used in the appropriate period for cranes when building castles. This could also be the equines from method 1 controlling the winch directly.
**The lever**
Rings a bell to tell whoever is in control to do their job. Control systems aren't worth the hassle in the age of manual labour.
[Answer]
Treadwheel crane
The goto device for heavy lifting in the medieval era is the treadwheel crane. Larger ones can lift some extremely heavy loads even with only one or two operators. If the elevator has an alternating counter weight a single person or animal could move an elevator easily. The largest cranes could lift multiple tons with ease.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SdzkJ.jpg)
[Answer]
Wind power. The ice wall is going to guarantee fairly steady winds, so a windmill or mills at the top will provide plenty of power. For low wind periods, the windmill lifts rocks during windy times. If the wind isn't blowing, a sufficient number of rocks are placed in the "down" cage to act as a counterweight.
[Answer]
It's not going to be a complete answer (at least not yet), but I'll try to explain the idea. I still have to work more strictly on details.
First let me be very specific about one thing. I'm handwaving here the difficulty of building so tall mechanism and probably few other things. This is just an idea how things could be organised.
First of all, as others already mentioned, we need a setup with a counterweight and to make the trip possible the counterweight needs to actually adapt it's weight to the weight of a cargo (be it human, weapons, building materials - doesn't really matter).
As I imagine it, counterweight is liquid. Since the temperature is below water freezing point, the liquid used has to be either some kind of solution or other liquid (e.g. alcohol) in order not to freeze.
At both top and bottom station there would be a mechanism that enables balancing the counterweight. As soon as the counterweight sets itself in the correct position (close to the stop), the fluid starts to flow in/out until it gets exactly even with the weight of the cargo, making the elevator stop. Once stopped the platform and counterweight are locked in their positions (i.e. can move slightly but only within specific very limited range). Whenever the weight of the two becomes unbalanced the shifted position of counterweight causes the flow of liquid in the right direction causing it to automatically balance the counterweight against the platform with cargo. When a lever is activated, it unlocks the movement of elevator and at the same time closes the counterweight liquid tank. Due to a small difference in mass (potentially with some speed limiter) the elevator starts to move in the right direction.
Depending on the design there are two options:
1. The lever activation adds or removes a bit of liquid to the counterweight making the movement possible, or
2. The counterweight filling systems are scaled so that it becomes slightly heavier at the top and slightly lighter at the bottom.
And that's pretty much it.
The system might require from time to time balancing the amount of liquid in top and bottom tanks but it might be scaled so that this maintenance isn't needed too often.
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[Question]
[
This planet's atmosphere has oxygen at a partial pressure that is breathable to humans, and the rest of the atmosphere is, at least, not made up primarily of Nitrogen (that is, it's not just Earth's atmosphere with marginally different partial pressures). The atmosphere must be breathable for at least long enough to mount a rescue mission (say a few days without any ill effects, and a few months before death), although I'm also happy for it to be breathable indefinitely.
The atmosphere must be made of gases that are reasonable to exist in the quantities required. For example, it's unlikely to be made of Xenon gas, since that's fairly rare (as far as I know), even though Xenon is *probably* breathable.
I am aware that, at high enough pressures and low enough partial pressures of oxygen, some really exotic gases are breathable. I'm good with that, although one final stipulation is that the atmosphere cannot be so dense that gas narcosis sets in (I just really don't want to deal with that in my story is all).
So, what's my atmosphere made of?
[Answer]
**[Argon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon)** might be a good replacement for Nitrogen.
It's the 3rd most common element in [Earth's atmosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Composition), although only at a 1 % ratio. Argon is also heavy enough to sidestep the issue of losing most of it to space like some of the other noble gasses. It is however a little heavier than oxygen, which could pose the danger of it settling in lowlands. Argon is breathable and [as far](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10448/if-we-put-humans-on-planets-with-atmospheres-different-from-earths-atmosphere) as [I can tell](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/70gicp/would_an_argonoxygen_atmosphere_be_breathable/) shouldn't have any significant adverse effects at the quantities described, so long as the planet/area is windy enough to prevent the argon from accumulating too much.
Argon-40 seems to make up the vast majority of the element on Earth, produced primarily due to [potassium-40 decay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon#Isotopes) at a roughly 11 % ratio (the rest turns into calcium-40). Even though potassium itself is a fairly common element (it's the 8th most common element on Earth at 0.2 %), [potassium-40](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium-40) only makes up 0.012 % of the element's isotopes, so far too uncommon (at least on Earth) to produce the amounts of argon you would need.
For the planet you describe, a significant amount of potassium-40 in its crust could explain a high enough percentage of argon in the atmosphere. Since it's produced by decay, some math would be needed to calculate the amount of potassium-40 needed, taking into account the age of the planet itself and the potassium-40 half life (1.251×109 years). There's also an [interesting question on Astronomy StackExchanged](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/13498/why-argon-instead-of-another-noble-gas) which has some further details on these calculations.
[Answer]
Helium.
It is so safe to us, it is used in an array of different kinds of surgery to inflate your abdomen so it is easier for doctors to get to hard-to-reach organs. [This article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8846034) is from 1995 - a lot has changed since then, helium is much more commonly used today because of its non-toxicity.
Helium may be rare on Earth, but scientists think [it may make up for up to 23% of the mass of the known universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Natural_abundance). Most of the helium here is a product of radioactive decay, but is lost to space through various processes. I think it wouldn't be a stretch for a planet with a gravity higher than Earth's to have much more helium in its atmosphere, though.
[Answer]
>
> what's my atmosphere made of?
>
>
>
Nothing else in significant amounts.
As you state, oxygen has the same partial pressure of Earth. Thus around 0.2 bar.
Let it be that, plus traces of other oxides, like water and carbon dioxide.
In this way you don't have to worry about adverse effects, and you just need to take care of higher pressures because of oxygen poisoning.
[Answer]
**Methane.**
<http://aetinc.biz/newsletters/2010-insights/october-2010>
>
> Methane gas is relatively non-toxic; it does not have an OSHA PEL
> Standard. Its health affects are associated with being a simple
> asphyxiant displacing oxygen in the lungs. Miners previously placed
> canaries in deep mines to check methane gas levels. Reportedly,
> canaries keeled over at about 16% oxygen indicating it was time to
> leave.
>
>
> Methane is extremely flammable and can explode at concentrations between 5% (lower explosive limit) and 15% (upper explosive limit).
> These concentrations are much lower than the concentrations at which
> asphyxiant risk is significant.
>
>
>
Your world has an unstable atmosphere of 15% oxygen, 84% methane, and 1% (and rising) CO2. Oxygen is 10% so at the very low end of what humans need. Unstable because the methane does consume the oxygen and vice versa. The world is in flux - a methane world which terraformers seeded with photosynthetic algae in the recent past. Oxygen is being rapidly produced by the greening oceans of this world. Explosions happen but are rare - there is too much methane to easily explode.
[Answer]
## [Sulfur hexafluoride](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_hexafluoride)
This is a real oddball and probably a sign that the planet is a terraformed low gravity planet, because this is when sulfur hexaflourite is actually useful. No natural planet would have this in its atmosphere. However looking at its description from Wikipedia:
>
> Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is an inorganic, colorless, odorless, non-flammable, non-toxic extremely potent greenhouse gas, and an excellent electrical insulator. SF6 has an octahedral geometry, consisting of six fluorine atoms attached to a central sulfur atom. It is a hypervalent molecule. Typical for a nonpolar gas, it is poorly soluble in water but quite soluble in nonpolar organic solvents. It is generally transported as a liquefied compressed gas. It has a density of 6.12 g/L at sea level conditions, considerably higher than the density of air (1.225 g/L).
>
>
>
It would work quite nicely and gives you an interesting plot hook namely that the world the crew has stranded on has been terraformed.
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There are other inert gasses with reasonable cosmic abundance... neon and argon spring to mind. Neither are particularly common on earth (argon makes up 1% of the atmosphere, and neon is much rarer than that) but given that you're handwaving away the nitrogen in the air then handwaving in noble gas replacements isn't entirely farfetched. Both are safely breathable at STP (unlike xenon, which is used as an anaesthetic), and neon is slightly more common than nitrogen in space and indeed the solar system so there's lots of it about. You can also manage at least 4% water vapour (that's what you'll get in a steamy jungle on earth, for example, and I'll bet steam baths get higher than that).
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[Question]
[
Alright, so take your basic (not DnD or any other universe specific) mimic: an unassuming treasure chest that turns out to secretly be a monster as soon as you open it. This particular creature is one that happens (for whatever reason) to look and feel nearly-identical to a chest, rather than being some sort of slime-thing that's using a chest as a shell.
How does such a creature move around, assuming it can't just use the easy method of shapeshifting itself some legs when needed? My current ideas involve it having some sort of (likely insectoid) legs it can fold up under itself while at rest (in a slight indention underneath to accommodate them), or that it has a softer, muscular foot on the bottom like a snail, only lacking the mucus. (Or it has less mucus, at least. Snails don't seem to NEED it to travel, though it helps with climbing.)
I'm assuming with the snail-like configuration it would be very slow, though that wouldn't really be a huge issue for an ambush predator. The legs would be faster, I think, but harder to hide.
[Answer]
Let's have fun with this....
* It's a plant. It doesn't move, but like a [Venus Flytrap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_flytrap) it gets a portion of its nutrients by sucking the life out of people. Roots are for basic nutrients and water, and evolution played a nasty trick on Humanity by encouraging the plant to look just like a treasure chest with gold in it. Think [Audrey II from *Little Shop of Horrors*](http://littleshop.wikia.com/wiki/Audrey_II).
* It's actually a slug. Yeah, it looks like a treasure chest, but you can see the trail of slime it leaves as it moves around. What you think is a handle on the side is actually its nose evolved to help protect its eyes, which are just below the "handle." It's not actually after your blood, it wants your calcium.
* It's not a treasure chest, it's *luggage.* Courtesy discworldemporium.com, we have a chest with teeth and a LOT of feet:
When it wants to lurk, it simply sits down. The feet are hidden inside the "chest."
* Finally, for your consideration, my invention of "McHardy's Jumping Mimic," discovered by Francois McHardy (born to a French mother and Scottish father), this wonderful creature has a central protrusion beneath it that, when excited or really, really determined, allows it to spring from one place to another. Like cats landing on their feet and toast always landing butter-side down, their academians really don't know why1 it always lands correct-side-up, but with the exception of the case when prey is nearby, it always seems to.
---
1 *We, of course, are much more enlightened, having postulated the [Felix-Bouturon Infinite Energy Generator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8yW5cyXXRc) and proven to ourselves the true reason why cats land on their feet and buttered bread lands butter-side down. It's a religious thing. Praise [Glarnak](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2188/the-many-memes-of-worldbuilding/3789#3789)!*
[Answer]
**It has a heavy mass inside of its body which it can twitch/move vigorously.**
It would be somewhat analogous to a mexican jumping bean:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_jumping_bean>
>
> These are seed pods that have been inhabited by the larva of a small
> moth (Cydia deshaisiana) and are native to Mexico. The "bean" is
> usually tan to brown in color. It "jumps" when heated because the
> larva spasms in an attempt to roll the seed to a cooler environment to
> avoid dehydration and consequent death.
>
>
>
The mimic could contain a mass which it could similarly "spasm", thus throwing itself around with its own inertia. (It would move in any direction in a series of hops, provided it has traction on the floor. By twisting the mass concurrently with a hop, it would be able to adjust the direction it is facing. On the other hand, I doubt it would have much luck with stairs.)
*Edit / final note:* Based on the depictions of mimics I've commonly seen, perhaps its tongue could perform this function?
[Answer]
The D&D version is described in great detail in Ed Greenwood's classic *Dragon* article "The Ecology of the Mimic", and, as with the article as a whole, the mimic's locomotion is a brilliant balance of ridiculously silly and seriously plausible.
I don't have access to the magazine,1 but from memory:
Mimics are amorphous beings. They don't spend all day looking like a chest; they see or hear adventurers coming, and mimic a chest because they're smart enough to know that's how you catch adventurers.2 But they're not "some sort of slime-thing that's using a chest as a shell", they actually form their hides into rectangular shapes that look and feel as tough as wood, metal, or stone.3
They can rapidly form and extend pseudopods. Hence the famous Monster Manual drawing:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zKOxg.jpg)
They can also secrete and dissolve a strong adhesive at will.
The way they move is by throwing out a pseudopod, covering it with glue, dragging their body over, and dissolving the glue as they toss out another pseudopod for the next "step". They can move about as fast as humans this way. This also means they can travel on walls and ceilings as easily as on floors.3
---
Also, most people forget that D&D mimics are intelligent, and will usually try to con the players through fast-talking instead of attacking them. And, while this is probably even less relevant here, they're immune to alcohol but have been known to feign drunkenness to trick adventurers.
So, how's that for an image: a mimic drunkenly dragging itself around the floor and the walls pseudo-fist by pseudo-fist, trying to make a deal with the PCs.
---
1. It really is worth reading, but I don't know where to find it. I mean, I'm sure you can find a pirated copy somewhere online pretty easily, but I don't want to encourage that. Go to the library, maybe?
2. They mimic other things in other environments. A statue in a city so they can eat people tossing coins in the wishing well, a bundle of war pennants in an orc camp, etc.
3. And how do they decorate themselves to have the right color and texture? I don't remember the details, but there were details. Something to do with pigment sacs and a special circulatory system, and also multiple rapidly growing layers of skin.
4. Yeah, that last part doesn't make sense—it should be harder to pull yourself up than sideways—but then AD&D never really got gravity.
[Answer]
How about it's a hermit crab-type deal? Crabs legs and mouth pieces are pretty uncomfortable to look at, probably because there are so many bits moving around. If it's ambushing people who try to open it up then it makes sense for it to have a good reach and fast hands, like a boxer crab. I really don't like crabs.
If it has big claws that reach out to grab whoever opens it up, it would have to fling the lid of the chest back really fast to counteract the momentum of it reaching forward, right?
To move itself around its legs would have to be close to the opening on the chest too and this thing would tip the chest on its longest axis to scuttle from side to side. Tipping would be difficult if it has stumpy limbs, so these appendages would have to be long and/or chunky.
Being geared up to scuttling side to side is practical if you're a chest because that'd be pushed up against a wall unless it's a feature chest or the interior designers don't use the space in the room efficiently.
That wouldn't make this thing great at chasing but it's an ambush predator anyway. Unless you're in a dead end of a corridor.
As far as the chest goes, that'd just be whatever's around, evolving a shell that looks exactly like a chest is a long shot, especially if chest-fashion in this world shifts regularly like it does in this one. It'd take a lot of very specific genetic changes to form a shell that looks just like a chest and there would be a lot of really messed up looking chests that weren't 100% right if this were how the chests are being formed.
These things might be laying a whole bunch of eggs so the smaller ones might be catching small animals from like empty cans or cat flaps or whatever. Any hole they can get into I suppose. You seen the movie teeth? All viable options.
I guess these things would have to lie in wait for really long periods in the abandoned buildings to avoid being fumigated or something. They'd have to be really energy efficient to survive, or fed by whoever's using these things as a security measure.
Maybe to stay tight in their chest, vase or whatever they're wearing, this things should be secreting an adhesive from its abdomen/tail. It's probably worth noting that out of a shell, hermit crabs look a bit like a creepy hand.
What's the story about?
[Answer]
**The mimic can transform itself into something that someone else will move to the desired location**
A crate mimic might always be stuck as some variety of crate, but it can still switch up its label. Mimic wants to go to the big city? Add a mailing address. Mimic wants to lay low for awhile? "Industrial Waste - Do NOT Open" and boom, you're in the local swamp.
[Answer]
It has legs, but not connected to any externally visible hips.
It can fold its legs beneath itself, so that in a sitting position the legs are completely hidden by its four sides. Just like a sitting chicken.
It also had many, many legs that move in a centipede-like motion. Meaning it can run surprisingly fast for its shape and size.
It will also follow its master wherever they go, even in time and into the outer dimensions. And you absolutely don't want to see these things mating.
[Answer]
My suggestion is similar to abarnert's, and I suspect it might be influenced by having read Ed Greenwood's article at some point in the past. But it's got it's own little twist to it: instead of using a sticky pseudopod to move around, what if the sticky part was its tongue? So when closed, looks like a normal treasure chest. When it wants to move, it opens the lid, and the hidden, sticky tongue pops out. Like a frog or reptile, the tongue is very stretchy, and the inner mimic is mostly just tongue. It would shoot its tongue at a location a few feet away, anchor itself with, perhaps, special barbs designed for this purpose, and then drag itself forward. Detach tongue, repeat. The other use for this stretchy, sticky, barbed tongue would, of course, be ensnaring prey that wandered too close.
Ooh, or instead of pulling with the tongue, it could push! Then it would [look rather like a clam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBx0IKBn9vc) "walking" around.
[Answer]
I like the idea of a chest-like monster which hides its arms/legs inside itself.
When he feels like moving, he just needs to put them outside its "mouth"; the idea would be for it to look and move like a spider in this "walk/run instance".
This also gives it the ability to actually grab its preys once they are close enough.
[Answer]
I know you've accepted an answer, but I might as well give some of my thoughts too.
---
**It's sessile:** be it an animal or a plant, it needn't move at all. It could root itself to the ground and simply wait for a passer-by. When the human - or some other curious animal - touched its exterior (Which could be covered in mechanosensory trigger-hairs), its jaws would open and snap shut, severing the person's arm and digesting his or her hand.
**It's a gastropod:** or, at least, it moves like a gastropod. On its underside, there is a muscular ventral foot - not like ours, but like a slug or snail's. The foot would be lubricated with mucus and covered in cilia (tiny hair-like organs), and the Mimic would move by way of waves of muscular contractions of the foot.
**It's a slime mould:** again, I'm not suggesting that you place Mimics taxonomically as pseudo-multicellular microbes, but at least that they move like a colony of one. Basically, slime moulds move by swinging their gelatinous mass back and forth slightly, and then extending tendrils, pulling them across the ground. This movement would be very slow and hard to observe.
**It's an echinoderm:** Echinoderms, such as starfish and urchins, have ventra which are covered in tiny, hydraulic tendrils called "tube feet". They are, essentially, used like we would use our feet, except that they are so small that they can barely be seen without looking closely.
**It's a ricochetal saltatore:** well that's a mouthful. Basically, it would have a single leg (Stored inside the "chest" when not necessary), and hop like an Eponan [Springcroc](http://planetfuraha.blogspot.com/2009/12/springcroc-in-springtime-epona-iv.html). Kangaroos released stored energy with each jump, which helps them jump further.
[Answer]
Mimics could be large fossorial creatures, such as giant earthworms, that dig burrows underneath chests, so that when someone comes near the chest, they can extend out and attack.
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[Question]
[
In a world that i am building, there is an advanced civilization that is somewhat close to 21st century humans. Two of the differences are: they have discovered electricity much earlier than we did and they have never had the idea that explosives can be used as a propellant for projectiles. That's why most of land based combat revolves around infantry running around the battlefield with swords with enormous railgun artillery providing support.
My two questions are:
1. How realistic is this scenario?
2. How realistic is the strategy i presented? Is there something that makes it really stupid, or will it work fine?
EDIT: The problem with railguns is that they require a LOT of power. So you can have stationary artillery, but planes and cars cant pack a powerful enough power generators. So planes are capable of dropping bombs, fighter planes are not really a thing. And in case of car, infantry would need to exit the car in order to swing their swords around.
EDIT2: So, yeah "running around with swords" is totally not the best idea when you have vehicles and can use them.
EDIT3: Due to a lot of answers/comments touching this topic: Yes the kind of combustion engine you see in your car is not really a thing in this world. (Not because it is explody, but rather because they have way less liquid dinosaurs than we do.) However having similar engines is not a requirement for having electricity, because it is done by steam turbines (They were *very* lucky with geothermal energy). Also the battery tech is much better than we have, it is just the capacitors (things that can charge/discarge *really* fast) are lacking.
[Answer]
## Railgun Technology
There are a number of problems to overcome in order to have effective railguns. Most obviously, is the enormousness power requirement along with a large direct current. In order to be anything other than a static defence for fixed fortifications and large warships, the powers source for these would also have to be portable.
Second, every firing of a railgun will cause wear and tear on the rails. The huge amount of current passing through the rails will cause them to heat up and eventually warp. So, unless your world has a way to resist this heat effect the rails will need regular replacement.
Now that you have an idea of what sort of prerequisite technology your world has in order to maintain railguns, think what other things they would be able to achieve with that level of knowledge. If your world never thought of using explosives as a propellant, would they have thought of it for use in a combustion engine? If not, how are they carting these railguns and their power sources around?
High-tech electrical knowledge may mean that all vehicles are electrical rather than fossil fuel based. Electricity is likely to be a key part of everyone's lifestyle, possibly more so than it is to us on Earth. But where does this power come from? Do they have immense fossil fuel power stations, fields of solar panels or numerous nuclear power stations?
## Strategy
Now that you know what other technologies would arise, how does this affect strategy? If your railguns are very fixed, requiring a long time to set up, it is feasible for combat to be reminiscent of 13th Century European warfare, where cannon were just starting to be fielded.
If your railguns are more portable, towed around by trucks and ready to fire as soon as the hand-brake is applied then no-one would field large formations of infantry, when the artillery can out pace them and bombard them to smithereens from long range. Instead warfare may turn to small companies of cavalry units or infantry in all-terrain cars, who engage in small skirmishes and use movement to avoid artillery fire and catch the railguns.
Of course, there are a number of things I haven't covered here, but I hope this has given you enough different things to think about.
The majority of my railgun knowledge comes from [Orbital Vector](http://www.orbitalvector.com/ "Orbital Vector"), a site which covers a number of different technologies and attempts to band them into tiers of similar difficulty.
[Answer]
What bothers me is that your civilization uses working railguns but still relies on swords. It seems odd that they didn't yet came up with a better, eventually ranged, alternative. Indeed, there are various non-explosive possibilities - while it seems dubious to me that they achieved electricity tech sooner than humans without discovering the explosive powder :
* Portable railguns. They have more advance than us after all. Maybe not a an individual rifle-like weapon, but something a specialized soldier in a given unit could handle.
* Microwaves. Maybe far-fetched, but hey! If I know advanced electric techs and a bunch of guys are running at me with swords, I bet I give it a try!
* Tasers. Yes, that's how useful swords are currently. Shooting projectiles bound to your weapon by a conductive cable is more effective than a sword in modern warfare.
* Lasers. We already can more or less craft handheld laser pistols, but that tech is pretty young and besides it has some weaknesses: it's reflected by mirrors, diffracted by fog/rain/humidity, barred by dust, it turns flesh into plasma which protects the underlying flesh from the laser and the optic lenses are very brittle: handling the pistol without enough care or even using it can crack it or make it less optically pure. That makes it less useful on the field than rifles even though the ammunition is quite cheap and as an exceptional range if the weather is good. Anyway, it would be totally worth the shot against swords. Bonus fun points: parrying the beam with a sword mind melt it over the hands and body of its wielder. Combo bonus if the enemies are wearing metal armor: either it's polished plate that reflect the beams (still, not enough) and they are spotted from far away from the light's reflect or it's not and a laser beam would cut through it like a magnifying glass over an anthill.
* Pressure gun. Using rifles powered by pressurized gas can look primitive, but again it would do wonders against swords. I don't know if it counts as explosive weapons, but using flammable gases works too.
In the end, the sword can't be suited for your setting. It's a medieval weapon in the electric times, even without explosion powered weapons, they are doomed to fail.
Whether you use laser pistols or electric crossbows, swords will lose. They have no range at all. We haven't used melee weapons as main weapons since the 18th century, even though we didn't have electricity. Since your people focused on electricity sooner since they didn't have the powder, I assume that they achieved our current level at least a century or two sooner than us. That leaves a lot of room for improvement, so I assume that their 21st century looks insanely different from ours.
For as far as I know, we might not even use explosion based weapons as main weapons in half a century ourselves. I'm pretty sure that the weapons used by your people would outcompete ours, so swords are outmatched by a landslide.
[Answer]
A sword. On a stick. next to another stick. With a string on it. Let's call it a BOW.
People have this idea that the further you are from somebody you want to kill and the sooner you can inflict dead on them the more people you can kill before they get to you.
So without explosion they can use electromagnetic pulse rifles, coil gun, gauss rifle. Maybe not machine gun but still beat running toward other people trying to cut them to death.
Also, Tesla soldiers.
[Answer]
**It's plausible**
*First, I am assuming that the railguns would **not** be used as handheld weapons, because this would **completely defeat the purpose** of having swords in the first place.*
With no explosives, the only way to take out large groups of soldiers would be with melee combat. The railguns would be great for piercing vehicle armour and the likes, but wouldn't do any damage to infantry. (A single shot could kill a single soldier if you're lucky, and two if you're *very* lucky.)
Let's go through some scenarios:
**Open field combat**
In real life, they would quickly demolish each other with rifles before contact.
In your world, they would be able to move freely about without worry of attack. Standing still for too long could perhaps encourage a calculated railgun shot, but that's the only threat. You can choose to run off, or to engage your opponent in hand to hand combat.
**Ambush**
In real life: bombs and missiles. A couple mines, and people on standby to finish them off with rifles.
In your world, a barrage of railgun shots to disable any vehicles, and then a swarm of sword-wielding idiots soldiers riding in on vehicles to attack their opponents.
**General war**
In real life: Air forces, infantry, and missiles.
In your world: Careful management of troops along a front line, ready to attack any invaders or to attack a point and move the line forwards.
[Answer]
World feasibility.
You would need a world that after initially discovering electricity (lemon batteries of Mesopotamia) quickly transitioned to generating electricity through a non-explosive method.
This might have initially been slaves or cattle’s turning a generator. Then perhaps a windmill or watermill. As long as they were always able to generate surplus energy cheaply and efficiently there would be no drive to find other means.
Once demand outstrips supply people will start looking for other sources. Steam engines, or fossil fuel engines. As soon as a culture begins powering something through combustion it is not much of a leap to transition to using combustion for other purposes.
Your climate is probably quite warm. If they burn wood for heat they are likely to think of burning wood and other items for other purposes.
Scarcity: There may need to be a reduction/elimination of petroleum, and wood and other things that burn easily. Other chemicals as well. This reduction will reduce the chances of developing combustion mechanics. (Desert climate?)
In the end, maybe someone did develop explosive propellant. However something caused it to not be adopted widely. Cultural disdain. Or there where many accidents with the first designs, killing too many. The early adopters of gunpowder lost their wars and their reliance on gunpowder was blamed, or upon their nations fall the technique to build them was lost.
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I like the concept but since you are asking us to challenge it, here is my take: it sounds like people in your world use a lot of steel, right? Steel is made with coking coal and iron ore, both of which require blasting to be mined economically in large quantities: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drilling_and_blasting>
Now, you did specify that explosives are known in your world, and simply nobody had the idea to use them as propellant. But I wonder how long would it take to anyone who has witnessed a controlled blast at a mine to figure out that you can at least throw explosives at your enemies on the battlefield or from a plane.
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I think there could be some feasibility in how you structure your worlds history. However if your world does have rail cannon artillery then they certainly understand that the magnetic energy can launch projectiles.
You do touch on the idea that this requires immense energy, however the military machine will always try to adapt weapons and systems for other uses. As such if you want swords to be a common feature on your battle fields I do have a suggestion:
**"Rail Flintlocks"**
A better understanding of electricity should lead to improvements in things like circuits and capacitors. While you can't carry the equipment to generate the electricity a dense capacitor hooked up to a small handheld gun is sufficient to fire a single rail.
Once fired the pistol can be reloaded (arduously of course) by swapping out the capacitor breaching the barrel and reloading a large iron spike. So military charges can have a volley of fire and then resort to sword play.
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I'm surprised nobody mentioned Dune.
In that story, personal shield generators made firearms useless, which meant combat was often hand-to-hand or with swords.
Perhaps you could craft a handwavium solution in this story:
*Excellent electrical mastery resulted in the development of personal shields, rendering the recently discovered explosive-projectile firearms (if ever discovered) obsolete just as they appeared on the battlefield. As a result, swords were still widely used in combat, although large-scale, long-range railguns and/or explosives were utilized for long-distance attacks.*
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If they discovered Electricity before us maybe they have the necessary science to store more power in little containers, it could open some possibilities.
For example in modern technology, we use capacitors that can release a big tension at once and can kill humans if it is badly manipulated. If they find the mean to overpower it with some strong current, you could easily make it affordable and handy.
In terms of strategy I came with an idea : railguns shoting chained ammo like chained-cannonballs used by pirats and marines soldiers in order to break the main mast of ships. It could clear a battlefield of swordsman.
Even if it is slow and big, railgun is really overkill against group of soldiers.
Electrified nets, Tesla shotguns/Spear, tazer Bow/crossbow, portative chainsaw, sawdisc launchers, and if you adopt the idea of little source of power, you can have tesla grenade, electrified arrow as it was said before.
problem with grenade, if they touch the ground the electric load will go in the ground i think. Because air is really difficult for the electricity to get through.
I hope I helped, don't forget your insulating armor on the battlefield, weather lady has foreseen stormy weather and railgun-fired bullets.
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To be honest, you've created what I call a "technology dichotomoy." Your civilization has the ability to build a rail gun that projects a projectile using magnetism, but they never thought about using explosives? Not even with all the hints laying around? Like slingshots? Or pneumatic BB guns (or just air hoses with a tube and a wad of paper...)? Or arrows? Or golf balls? Or the first time some highschool student mixed nitrogen triiodide as a contact explosive for his (it's almost always a "his") amusement? Not to mention *spit wads.* The idea that they created rail guns without the technology necessary to build dynamite (or anything else that goes "boom!" like natural gas, propane, nitrous oxide, gasoline, etc., etc. etc.) is simply unbelievable. It's like asking me to believe in a society that can move things using a maglev train but they never invented the wheel.
To make matters worse, rail guns exist as an artillery piece, but there are no hand-held weapons of significant range (I'm going to assume arrows and spears exist, but compared to rail gun artillery, they might as well be bayonets). So, basically just swords. ***No one in their right mind would fight this kind of battle.*** The artillery wouldn't just decimate whole armies, it would completely dismantle whole armies, because to use a sword everybody needs to be bunched together... perfect fodder for artillery of any kind. After the very first battle the war would become one of artillery only. (Remember, there are mothers and wives back home screaming at the government over the sensless slaughter.) It wouldn't be disimilar to the trench warfare of WWI where neither side had an efficient way to overcome the wide-area attacks of gas and machine guns. (How'd they do it? With planes and tanks. Not infantry, regardless their weapons. Heavy-duty armor with medium-ranged weapons and light-armor with a boatload of speed and altitude.)
I can't even think of anything that would justify, "we have more advanced weapons, but because of technology X, we can't use them in-close." You still have the artillery beating the snot out of any group dumb enough to come into close combat with swords.
Regrettably, this is why the once very popular RPG *[Traveller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_(role-playing_game))* took so much heat for actually wasting character-building space on the Cutlass (and other hand-to-hand bladed weapons not a knife) skill. In an age when advanced ranged weapons can be brought to bear, there is no useful reason to train in swordmanship (other than weddings. They're cool at weddings). It's the ultimate problem of bringing a [knife to a gunfight](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bring_a_knife_to_a_gunfight).
Conclusion: the only way you can make this combination work is to make the railguns so... *something...* so expensive, so difficult, so rare, so... *something...* that they are actually brought to bear quite rarely. They're devestating when they enter the fray. It might even be utterly surprising when they do. ("They WHAT? How did they find the [unobtainium](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unobtanium#English) to even charge the darn thing?") Suddenly, your sword fights are over the resources needed to build/operate the railguns, or over the emplacements, or over the technicians who know how to use them, or over whatever it is that makes them special and rare.
...and heaven help the idiot who doesn't take control first.
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Here are some ways your scenario might work.
If these guys never developed gunpowder then it may be they only recently developed any ranged weapon more powerful than a catapult. Maybe they invented radio-controlled "missiles" (kinetic weapons, since they don't blow up) and railgun "cannons," but those are both bulky, expensive weapons that you can't just hand out to everyone.
So infantry might be the same as it was in the 11th century, although with much better armor. "Cavalry" might be people driving electric motorcycles and armed with sabres. Or are railguns light enough to mount on tanks?
Air fighting without gunpowder would be strange and interesting. Planes might be able to drop rocks or grenades on soldiers below, but I can't see how they'd shoot each other. Ground-based railguns might, or raido-controlled missiles could be flown into planes. Which would mean that planes need their own cadre of counter-missiles, controlled either from the ground or by a passenger on the plane.
For heavily-armored-but-lightly-armed infantry, my first thought is that tactics would focus on a balance between swarming enemies and ripping them apart (con: making a cluster of people that might be targeted by a railgun or missile) and sneaking up on enemies and sticking a dagger into a weak point in their armor (con: assassins are expensive to train and work slowly).
In terms of damage done, railguns would blast down buildings and infrastructure, but without hand-held guns, individual soldiers would have a harder time killing civilians than in real life.
I wonder how the economics and politics of this world would work...
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If they have engines, they also have tanks with railguns.
Which means that most combat would revolve around tanks with railguns, with infantry soldiers acting as spotters. Not terribly different from modern mobile warfare. Instead of pointing a rifle at the enemy you point a rangefinder, and then your iphone sends instant instructions to the railgun waiting half a mile behind or so.
Which suddenly makes electronic warfare extremely interesting.
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I'm not entirely sure I got your question right, but:
* If they are XXI century-like they would have *a lot* of things that would make "infantry running around the battlefield with swords" be very out of place, regardless of presence of firearms or not.
* they would have communications
* they would have transportation
* they would have air-support
* etc.
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There are many explosive reactions in chemistry, you can even create explosions by distributing harmless substances like flour in the air. Other explosions are so easy to produce like Oxyhydrogen (water + oxygen), that it is unlikely that no one discovered them by accident. There are many historical records of unexpected and unwanted explosions before gunpowder was discovered, and many alchemists have tried to utilize those explosions. Gunpowder was simply more easy to control, so it could be distributed easily and used by the common soldier.
It is highly unlikely that no one ever encountered explosive reactions or what could be done with them, it is however possible that none of them was controllable enough so they couldn't be utilized in smaller firearms. So if in your world gunpowder has simply not yet been discovered, that wouldn't keep an army from using other kinds of explosives, if there is a safe method of distribution. If you have a plane, then you can still drop a tank with an explosive substance over the battlefield, with the risk that getting hit might rip the plane apart prematurely.
Railguns require an intense amount of energy to be fired. There is a good reason why only now they are starting to use them as weapons, because only modern abilities to store and discharge electricity is sufficient to create guns that can fire more than one (really devastating) shot.
Additionally, even if you ignore all those issues above, any army would include at least traditional fighting strategies, which are cavalry, foot soldier and crossbowmen, so they can hit fast, steadily and at range. On top of that more sinister leaders might use gas or bio-weapon attacks.
Your scenario is not at all realistic.
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If explosions as a means of propelling something is out of the question, then combustion engines are out of the question, since explosions are needed to propel the pistons' movement.
Without combustion engines, you're going to have a hard time getting enough power for a large rail gun through batteries alone. The large battery store would have to be transported in electric motor vehicles, and are one time use unless you also have a portable power generator that doesn't rely on a combustion engine. Ex) Solar panels. Shots may require days to recharge.
Also, as @TwoThe points out in his answer, it would be pretty hard to have a modern type society that hasn't encountered or thought of this behavior. This may necessitate your society to be more in the Knight's age, with accidental discovery of electricity that wasn't seen as voodoo magic.
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I have a scenario in which the Kingdom of Aderia has King X of House Harranshield. A civil war to push the claim bannerman Y (of House Bloodshield) has on the throne (because his mother was the daughter of the former king) has been declared and a decade of bloodshed ensues. This decade of bloodshed ends when peace is signed and King X agrees to share the kingship with Y jointly and equally, and the two spend the rest of their reign consolidating the realm and repairing the damage the war caused.
Both X and Y's eldest son, still of different houses, now have an equally valid claim to the throne. When their father's died, rather than risk another civil war, they continued to share the Kingship. A law was put forward for royal approval by the small council advisors of both kings that required two kings in power at all times.
How might Aderia survive? It needs effective leadership to survive, but at the same time, I see issues rising;
# Conflicts of Interest
Okay, so King X wants to do something with law W because it would benefit him. King Y says no. Who gets his way?
## Politics
King X makes an alliance with neighboring Meralia and seals it by wedding his daughter to the heir of that country. However, King Y refuses to acknowledge that alliance because it puts King X's grandkids on the throne of Meralia in a couple generations.
### Trade?
King Y makes a trade deal with that neighboring merchant republic Aestoso. This deal harms King X's interests, however, and he refuses to abide by the conditions.
These are merely just some of the many possible problems that could arise. Now, I know you would say something like; "make a parliament". All this works fine in a country with relatively low crown authority, but I need Aderia to have unusually high crown authority.
So, keeping in mind political problems, can Aderia function with two equally-powerful kings?
**Inheritance**
The throne only passes on when both of the joint kings have died.
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Wikipedia calls such an arrangement a [**Diarchy**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diarchy), and gives several examples, both historical and modern, of such arrangements, including the ancient Greek nation-state of Sparta for over 700 years, the Roman Republic, a few minor periods in England's history, as well as the modern Principality of Andorra. There's little detail on how these arrangements work in practice, but, at least in the cases of Sparta and Rome, it mentions that each has veto power over the other.
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**Princes are responsible for finding a partner to rule with.**
Inheriting the right to rule is not a simple process in Adeira. Because each king needs to be able to cooperate with the other king, and must reach what amounts to consensus agreements with the other king, simply choosing the first heir from both ruling families could easily result in ruler disputes that could tear the kingdom apart.
Instead, the princes, princesses, and other eligible potential rulers must find a partner to rule with if they want to take the joint throne. A partnership must have one individual from each ruling family to be considered. The partnership, together, will then present to the ruling kings their case as to why they should be considered to take the throne, after which the ruling kings must come to an agreement as to which partnerships they think would make good rulers. Only if both kings agree to a partnership can that partnership be considered a successor to the throne.
Successors are then granted a duchy to jointly rule, which they must do effectively to remain a potential heir. All potential heirs must be sorted by the sitting kings, although the kings can choose the manner in which such sorting is conducted. First among these is the crown partnership, which serve as dukes of the capitol until such a time as the ruling kings leave the throne, at which point they will appoint a new crown partnership and take the throne.
**A partnership is only allowed to rule so long as both partners agree to it.**
Naturally, a partnership which cannot abide itself cannot effectively rule. A partnership is dissolved should *either* partner become disillusioned with the quality of their running mate or die. Partners cannot be swapped out in a partnership, so if one (or both) of the partners wish to remain a potential candidate, they must find a new partner and go through the vetting process again.
This is true even for kings. The quality of one king is no indicator of his skill at navigating any potential future partnership, so if a king dies or otherwise decides to abdicate the throne, his partner also loses their place and the partnership is replaced by the crown partnership. A former king can, of course, find a new partner and be vetted for a dukedom. A former king can even potentially becoming part of a new ruling partnership in the future, and in the case of a king who was formerly a beloved ruler, there may be considerable pressure on the new monarchs to step down and allow the new partnership to rule, but this is by no means required. The new partnership has ever right under law to remain in control of Adeira until such a time as their partnership comes to an end.
**The kings rule by consensus only.**
The kings wield absolute power over the land, but only if they both agree to it. This belief has been enshrined in both the political sphere as well as in the spiritual one. Humans are seen as quarrelsome by nature, so if two kings can agree on a policy, this is seen as a clear sign that the policy is not an act of man bu an inspiration from above.
While the kings may, among themselves, decide to delegate responsibility to one another, perhaps with one king handling domestic affairs and one foreign, all of their decrees are theoretically made by consensus. Should either king oppose a decision, that decision is not made. Throne room argument and bargaining are common, with both kings often seeking favor for their house and relatives, but this requirement for consensus means that the kings will always present a common front on any decision they choose to turn into policy.
The only exception to this, of course, is in abdication. Any king can choose to remove himself from the throne at any time, dissolving his partnership and removing his former partner from the throne, as well. Of course, this means a considerable loss of personal power, so kings rarely choose to abdicate, sometimes going for years without speaking to one another due to bitterness from internal conflict, while still technically ruling as a member of a joint partnership.
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## Domains of Power
It's fairly common for two leaders to share power; historical conflicts between leaders are what led to the popular arrangements of executives/ministers/legislators/judges that we have today. You could allow each co-king to have their own domain: perhaps one governs internal affairs, the other external. Or one deals exclusively with learned trades (medicine, law, diplomacy, religion) while the other deals with common affairs (agriculture, tradesmen, military).
## You Don't Need Absolutism
I'd also like to point out that medieval kingdoms had extensive power sharing relationships.
In the political sphere, a single powerful rules wasn't a common ideal until the *end* of the medieval period. A more typical medieval system involved several local and regional leaders sharing a piece of territory. This was the essence of feudalism: lower lords offer their support to regional leaders, who in turn pledge their own support\*.
Power was also shared with other groups - trade guilds, the Church, aristocracy, and other groups were less "ruled" by the King, and more uneasy allies required to get work done. Your two kings could easily come from different factions who require each other to get work done.
One historic example that you could adapt: In the early medieval period in England, kings were selected by a council (not born into the position), and enforced their legitimacy with religion. Maybe one of your "kings" is the elected king, and the other is a religious leader. They each use their power to help the other out, but at times come into conflict.
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Could it work? Sure. All the issues you bring up come down to, What happens when the two kings disagree? So yeah, there'd have to be some procedures in place to resolve that.
The Roman Republic was led by two consuls who shared power. Basically, the government could not act unless they both agreed. In extreme cases, the Senate would vote.
Saying they both have to agree, period, is probably impractical. At some point there will be an issue where you have to go one way or another. "Neither" may not be logically possible, or it may be a distinct third option, or it may be theoretically possible but not practical. Like, a neighboring kingdom has proposed an alliance. Should we accept their offer or not? We can't say that we'll neither accept nor reject. We have to do one or the other.
Of course "two" is an awkward number because any disagreement is a tie vote. If there were three kings, you could say that they take a vote and majority rules.
So you have to have a way to break ties. The most obvious possibility is to have some third party who is called in to decide in such cases. Perhaps some sort of senate or parliament, or the most senior member of the nobility, or whatever.
Perhaps you could say that king X has the final word in some areas and king Y in others. Like X gets to decide in foreign affairs and military matters, while Y decides in economic and domestic law questions. Or whatever division. That would have the catch that they might argue about which category a question falls in, and then you have the meta question of who has the final say on what category something is.
If the kings basically get along they might be able to resolve disagreements amicably. If one is more forceful and dominating they might end up in practice as being senior king and assistant king. Or they might constantly be at odds and there's an endless power struggle and they spend more time fighting each other than solving the country's problems.
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# Assassination
This hasn't really been covered by the other answers, but it seems self evident to me. If one king's son cannot take the throne until they both die, then have one King kill the other. Then the living King always gets his way.
## Issues
The main issue would be the one house accusing the other house of murder.
This could potentially cause another civil war. And we don't want that.
So you have to use positions or somethi, and make it look like natural causes or a freak accident. That way, the one King is not held accountable for the other's death.
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I recognize this is kind of cheating, but a King is used to getting what he wants.
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# Take Turns
One king's eldest son is the ruler, and the other king's son is his closest advisor. When the King dies, the eldest son of the advisor becomes the new King, while the eldest son of the dead King becomes his advisor. That way, it is always clear which King holds more clout in decisions.
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Since the real problem is getting the two kings to agree "jointly and severally" on issues, you have essentially set up conditions for paralysis of the kingdom, or civil war.
To avoid this, the co kings could try several different setups:
1. A King for domestic affairs and a King for foreign affairs. This might work if the two kings have different interests. The domestic King ensures domestic harmony, sets the laws of the kingdom and is the patron of arts and science (such as they are). The foreign affairs King is a diplomat, adventurer and, if necessary, the warlord of the kingdom. He is the one who visits other potentates, sponsors expeditions to other lands (think of Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal) and leads the armies of the kingdom against foreign enemies. While there is some overlap (the domestic king raises taxes to pay for the overseas adventures and the army, and will have some say in foreign policy insofar as it affects domestic policy), the separation of the two domains with two specialist Kings means the ruler isn't overwhelmed by events at home and abroad. As well, there could be an age based succession, the new, younger King is the foreign affairs King, who movies to the domestic throne when the elder King dies, while recruiting a new foreign affairs King to replace him.
2. The Nobility take over. Two Kings at loggerheads or with mutual veto powers is a recipe for disaster. Rather than allow the kingdom to descend into anarchy, the Nobility create a body which advises the Kings and has the right to "direct" them. The Noble houses have the high cards here, since they collectively have more wealth and manpower than the Kings either individually or collectively, so can impose their will on the Kings if needed. The Noble houses also enforce their will by vetting the selection of new Kings to replace the old, either those who die or those forced to abdicate. This is not ideal either, as clever Kings and ambitious nobles could conspire to empower one faction over the other. As well, the most likely outcome is a replacement of Kings with puppet Kings who are figureheads for the nobility, somewhat like feudal Japan's Emperor was a figurehead for the Shogunate.
3. Reversion to the lower energy state. Having two "co Kings" is expensive in terms of time and resources, so there will be a great deal of pressure to eliminate this system at some point. Either this gets sorted violently (assassination, civil war), by inertia (one royal house has no suitable heir, so no one bothers to find a replacement), or agreement (the one royal house has a princess rather than a prince, so the houses are joined in marriage), but in the end, there is only one King left on the throne.
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As AndreiROM pointed out, you can't split Absolute Power. Either you have it or you don't.
However, making a truce between the two kings is a first step. They would each have their own kingdom. By making themselves close allies it would start merging the two countries together. Especially if they come to each others aid.
Now for the future, each one can provide a child for a union to unite both houses, this was a common practice to cement alliances and make allies. Eventually the union would produce an heir who would be of both houses and be able to rule both countries as one individual.
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I think the situation in Aderia would go to hell in a hand-basket sooner rather than later.
A **King** is by definition a ruler - typically by the grace of God, etc. What kings throughout history have in common is that they hold absolute power, and don't like being told ***"No"***. They are not democratically elected leaders with a finite term. They are not council members. In fact, the whole idea of democracy would sound ludicrous to them.
Two people cannot jointly wield ***absolute power***. Look at how well it works out for UN to have Russia and the US both wield veto power.
Big decisions such as raising an army, military decisions, taxation, sentencing people to death, legislating religious rights, etc. have to be made firmly and decisively.
Having one ruler declare himself as the backer of military strategy X, and the other back military strategy Y would leave everyone in limbo - and have them sending assassins after one another in the middle of the night.
The role of the King in medieval society was to have someone who is ultimately responsible when things go to hell. When the nation is threatened, that person makes a decision. When the barbarians are a the gates that person leads the charge against them.
Having two former - bitter - enemies try and cooperate on such a scale is ridiculous. Just look at politics.
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As others have suggested, sharing power could lead to an even worse feud or to nothing at all being accomplished as each king vetoes the other.
Perhaps King X remains king in name while Y is named Supreme Consul/Head Priest/Knight Commander. Y exercises considerable political and military power but still ultimately owes loyalty to King X. If Y oversteps his bounds, then X issues some imperial mandate condemning the actions of Y. The lesser lords and ultimately the people are bound by faith and loyalty to obey King X. Though the kingship is largely reduced to a ceremonial position, X still has the ultimate authority and legitimizes Y's leadership. This would serve to pacify the loyalists who want the king to remain, while still allowing Y to wield power.
Another issue this solves is [divine right](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings). The King was often regarded as a mythic figure in medieval society, often acting as the agent of God. To defy the king would be to defy God. If a common man, even a member of a house of lords, were to unnaturally ascend to be king, it may weaken the kingship's hold of power over the people.
For historical examples, I am thinking something along the lines of the Emperor - Shogun of feudal Japan, or the Pope - Holy Roman Emperor.
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I see a few scenarios where this might work out.
**Alliances**
The two kings would likely forge a real alliance with each other, through marriage. This way only one, effective, family would be on the throne. Any pretender could have their claim stripped, legally, reducing the threat they would pose to the current throne. This won't eliminate such a threat, but it would make it harder for any would-be usurper to gain support.
**Rule by Council**
Rather than having the kings do the ruling, the effective rule is delegated to a council of some sort. This council could work much like a European monarchy, where the royal families are little more than (very privileged) centerpieces in society.
**United we stand**
Ruling a country is *hard work* and takes a lot of skill. By having someone else, who has exactly the same interests as you (ruling the country, keeping the vassals at bay, getting rich) you're pretty sure you also have someone you can trust. If you're alone, you could easily end up in a situation where you (think you) have nobody to trust.
**Internal division**
The realm could have an *internal* division, where the realm, externally, is still one realm. The different vassals within the realm, would only own fealty to one of the kings. This is what happened to Francia after Peppin died and Charles the Great and Carloman inherited Francia (it did not end well for Carloman). How the realm is governed internally could be in any fashion imaginable -- a formal alliance may be in effect, there may be a council where the kings have major influence or some other instrument.
The key point would be how laws are made and where they are in effect. In medieval Europe, it was far from uncommon to have different laws in the same country. As an example, Denmark once had Jyskelov, effective only in Jutland, while Skånske lov, was in effect in Scania (and perhaps Zealand). Given this, there may not even have to be consensus on how laws are made or which are in effect where, as long as it's clear who make the relevant decisions.
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**Can people learn precise hand-eye coordination for prosthetic or external mechanical limbs that don't have normal proportions?**
For example, someone is controlling a small mech via a suit or exoskeleton that takes in their real body movements (like pacific rim but one person and smaller). But that mech has very long hefty arms compared to its legs, like a gorilla. The controls would still work intuitively so long as it had the same joints as a human, but would the pilot be able to learn proficient robohand-to-eye coordination in a reasonable time frame (at *most* a few years of deliberate training)?
Or say a prosthetic controlled neurally with the same situation, a very large/long arm (given the rest of the body could support it). Could they become as proficient with it as their lost real arm, despite its proportion and size difference?
If so, how long would it realistically take? Would any special training methods work faster? Would it be practical?
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**A month to a year**
The human mind is incredibly flexible. Via association we can learn a great deal. When you start riding a bike or car you can see this very well. Moving your arms and legs in certain ways creates desired movement. We haven't evolved with these movements, yet we can learn them. Even better is controlling a computer for example. Moving your fingers on a keyboard or a mouse makes the computer do stuff. You can look around in a computer game, or type and select whatever you want in a word document. Finally, you can learn to fly an FPV drone. You put glasses on and get feedback of the camera. Moving your hands you can fly any direction you want. At the start it might be difficult, but with extensive training you'll be able to control it very well in a month, or for slow learners about six. These show that you can learn new abilities and movement by moving your body in a certain way in specific situations.
Even more impressive is doing something that flips it all upside down and left side right, going against what you've learned. A man made special glasses that flip and mirror the light coming in. After three months he was able to drive a car without problems. Interestingly he had trouble adjusting when he removed the glasses. The more he started switching, the easier it got.
For your questions Starfish Prime already has a great example. These monkeys receive a neural implant, either EEG or some evil spiked things into the brain. These can measure the electrical impulses of multiple neuron. They first try to match some signals in the brain, like moving up with your arm should move the arm up. Then the rest is just the monkey learning. A problem is noise of the signals, but we're getting better at it. But this noise is visible in the gif of the monkey moving the arm. It isn't fast and controlled yet. We're getting better at it though.
Interestingly EEG headsets exist that give you control over a mouse on your computer. Again, the movement of the mouse is mapped to a certain function of your cortex, like moving your arm. At the start people often need to move the arm in conjunction with the mouse. Interestingly at a certain moment these people start to think differently, and are able to move the mouse without moving the arm. That despite it being the same brain patterns on the cortical level. This shows that we're able to learn that some brain signals for an arm can be used for something completely different than moving an arm.
The conclusion is simple. Via association it will be relatively easy to learn a new body plan, like longer arms. That is very simple compared to flipping your world upside down and mirroring it, or moving a mouse along a screen. Even better. Most people already experienced getting longer arms during puberty! Although it might be a temporary and gradual thing, it does happen and is learned.
Now the kicker. EEG and many of the current brain pattern recognition is still in the starting phases of development. They are crude, relatively inaccurate and prone to noise. A suit is more like a keyboard and mouse, so you're able to control it without noise. If you then see through the eyes of the mech, you'll certainly be able to learn this new body plan quite quickly. Especially if there's bio feedback (you feel what the controlled item is feeling). With the mech and an intensive week you can probably get ok in controlling it. In an intensive month quite proficient and in two you'll think of it as a second skin.
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Humans routinely learn and master how to control an excavator: a very long arm with the body moving on way more compact base, which is the same situation you are describing.
It doesn't take that long to achieve a good coordination with moving the excavator and operating its arm: I would say that a few months of routine usage are enough to become proficient. (But I am not an expert, if anybody can provide better figures out of first hand knowledge, it's better).
I have received training on how to use a crane with a remote controller: already after a shift of work my coordination was dramatically better than it was at the beginning of the day.
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Here's a clip of a monkey feeding itself with a simple robotic arm controlled via a direct brain interface, taken in the implausible scifi future of 2008:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9h5GY.gif)
([Nature article on the subject](https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080528/full/news.2008.861.html))
This work was done by [these folks](https://schwartzlab.neurobio.pitt.edu/) who have since done some work on humans ([PDF article](https://schwartzlab.neurobio.pitt.edu/press/a_whole_life.pdf)). They aren't saying how long it took to train her (or the earlier monkeys), at least not anywhere that I spotted, though maybe you'll have more luck.
The issue here does not seem to be the learning, but more the implantation and maintenance of the neural interfaces which is still very much cutting edge stuff... the issue is making a safe, reliable, commercialisable neural interface, not training people to use it.
What I can infer from what I've read is that it a) apparently takes less than a year, b) doesn't require functioning limbs but c) does require suitable bits of motor cortex to hook up to and d) works even for arms that aren't necessarily the same size or geometry or speed as the operator's usual limbs, even in the absense of proprioceptive feedback.
] |
[Question]
[
A small perfect sphere is suddenly *gone*. Everything inside is teleported somewhere -- through space or even maybe through time, we're not sure. It's a small sphere, just enough to fit a human sitting on a chair. The perfect vaporization affects everything -- most of the chair, large part of the desk, air. What's left behind is just vacuum. No flash, no explosion, no sound. (The fact that this can happen is the only part I can/want to handwave, but bonus points for a reality check here.)
But what happens to this space moments after it happens? **What would a blob of empty space do when placed in the atmosphere** -- precisely, in an office full of tech equipment. Would there *be* an explosion after all? Would it create an energy blast? Would it feel like a wind coming from it or going towards it? Could it do something to the laptops and phones nearby?
[Answer]
A very similar question was covered in [What if](https://what-if.xkcd.com/6/) series, applied to a glass.
Quoting from there:
>
> We’ll imagine the vacuums appear at time $t=0$.
>
>
> For the first handful of microseconds, nothing happens. On this timescale, even the air molecules are nearly stationary. For the most part, air molecules jiggle around at speeds of a few hundred meters per second. But at any given time, some happen to be moving faster than others. The fastest few are moving at over 1000 meters per second. These are the first to drift into the vacuum.
>
>
> After a few hundred microseconds, the air rushing into the glass on the right fills the vacuum completely and rams into the surface of the water, sending a pressure wave through the liquid. The sides of the glass bulge slightly, but they contain the pressure and do not break. A shockwave reverberates through the water and back into the air, joining the turbulence already there.
>
>
> In a few more milliseconds, it reaches the humans’ ears as a loud bang.
>
>
>
The bang will be pretty loud. I happened once to force open a vacuum chamber not yet fully vented, and though it was not in deep vacuum (just few millibar) it sounded like somebody had given a strong hit with a hammer.
Maybe the shockwave would be strong enough to shatter some fragile glass and damage some MEMS (like the microphones in the telephones).
[Answer]
>
> What would a blob of empty space do when placed in the atmosphere -- precisely, in an office full of tech equipment. Would there be an explosion after all? Would it create an energy blast? Would it feel like a wind coming from it or going towards it? Could it do something to the laptops and phones nearby?
>
>
>
The same thing that happens *after* a lightning strike heats up the air so much that the hot gasses expand, causing a partial vacuum where the lightning was: air rushes back in **really fast** because *nature abhors a vacuum*.
And we all know what goes with lightning: a really loud **thunder clap** that -- if close enough -- breaks glass and sets off car alarms when the rapidly in-rushing air bounces against other bits of in-rushing air and bounces back.
[Answer]
This is somewhat similar to the situation in a "vacuum cannon" - one of those research/demonstration devices where they accelerate light objects like ping pong balls or meteorite models to very high speeds, way past mach 1, by
The problem is, there's always extra noise involved with those, like breaking the diaphragms and the thing they're firing hitting stuff.
My guess here is that it would be very noticeable but not very damaging=there would be a sudden wind towards the hole and a drop in pressure that would really thump your eardrums, but any kind of sonic wave from the air colliding in the middle of the hole would be almost nothing because its surrounded by a much bigger shell of rarified air, blowing directly towards it. Even if you were right at the boundary when it disappeared, I can't see it would be any different than a very very hard gust of wind.
I can't see how there could be any supersonic effects or any overpressures over 1 bar, outside a spherical void, because all the energy and air involved in the middle would have to reduce the pressure and total energy outside the void... which geometrically is going to be bigger (although that effect obviously goes away the bigger the void is, until at some huge size you could pretend the boundry was a flat plane i guess)
Now if the area that suddeny becomes vacuum had some interesting shapes, I think you could produce weird jet effects by changing the shape, but i still dont see how you can transfer much energy outside the area if the entire area disappears at one time. Those vacuum cannons work by breaking the membranes at different times.
TLDR: i think people right at the boundary would get blasted off their feet by wind or smashed by cars or buildings blowing onto them. They wouldn't have permanent hearing damage or even burst eardrums, but they'd all go OW what was that whomp noise. They would all get really cold really fast but very briefly, and there might be a wave of sudden white mist that went away in seconds.
people standing around 2 radiuses or more from the center of the void would probably just feel a strong gust of wind and hear a huge WHOMP noise, and 3 or 4 radiuses people would just hear a weird echoey whomp.
super short still TL still DR: I think it would be pretty underwhelming, there's a lot less kinetic energy involved than a small bomb or something, and less transmission of it.
[Answer]
Mini sonic boom as the air rushes in to fill in the empty space. It's not really a huge volume of air but people within a meter (yard) would certainly feel both the suction as well as feel the concussion of the rebound, papers would be tossed around the room, books/binders may be pulled off of shelves. People within several meters would certainly feel the momentary pressure differential, calenders would wave as the air rushed past to fill in the space. People further away wouldn't feel much, if anything at all, but would certainly hear the bang which would sound like something like a large firecracker (but probably not as big as an M80).
A more interesting question would be: If this is the way your teleporter works, what happens at the place where the matter re-materializes?
**Edit:** Coincidentally I was just watching *Predestination*, which is a time travel movie, and I think they depict this very well. When the time traveler leaves one place everything in the room is sucked in the direction of where he was. At the place where he materializes everything is pushed back out of the way as if momentarily blown by a strong wind.
Just an added perspective.
[Answer]
It's not directly answer to your question but it's based on one of comments:
>
> the idea is that a sphere slips through time while duplicating itself -- like cell division, but through time (not space). This leads to whatever taking its place from another time plane (chances are that it's a chunk of outer space). One duplicate goes to whatever, while the other duplicate creates a new time-plane. I guess that I'll need to anchor the spheres from time-planes into same or similar Earth coordinates (something with gravity?) to **avoid the sound and wind. It has to be mostly unnoticeable.**
>
>
>
Make the sphere 4D with time as fourth dimension. This way the empty space won't be an immediate one but gradual which means the pressure just drops slightly and gradually while the 4D sphere moves out of the current time plane. You can set the timing as you please to avoid sudden rush of air and limit any other unsuitable effects.
Let's assume we have a standard open-space. In the building I currently work a single floor area is around $2100 m^2$. The height of a floor is aroung $3 m$ giving a volume of $6300 m^3$. A sitting person has height of roughly $1.4 m$ so a 3D sphere that is the intersection of 4D sphere and the current time plane has a volume of
$$
V\_S = \frac{4}{3} \pi r^3 = \pi \cdot \frac{4}{3} \cdot (\frac{7}{10})^3 \approx 1.5 \space (m^3)
$$
So it occupies as little as 0.24% of total space. If the original pressure was 1013 hPa (an average atmospheric pressure), with a gradual change after it completes the pressure will drop to 1012.76 hPa
For comparison, when flying on a typical airliner, the pressure drops in about 20 minutes (the ascending time) from the ground pressure (1013 hPa on average) to the pressure that exists on 7000 ft, which is approximately 782 hPa. It means the pressure drops 11.55 hPa per minute. If you've ever flown a plane you know there are no visible signs, however your body does react to some level - yet this is mainly due to *significant* overall change in pressure. If your process of bubble split is gradual as I suggest and takes about 1.5 second the pressure drop rate will be comparable to that in a plane but due to the extremely small pressure difference and time of it, it will go totally unnoticeable to anyone. It is also not going to affect any equipment.
The interesting side effect is that the phenomenon will cause some kind of time turbulence while moving bubble to a different time plane but there is your hand-wave area as this is something due to the mechanics of your process and you can decide on the impact of it yourself (e.g. the time might fluctuate for a moment near the bubble so you can notice a clock seconds hand stops for 2 seconds rather than 1 only to jump twice in the next second.
---
Some links to back this up
* [Sitting human height](http://donsnotes.com/reference/size-humans.html)
* [Plane cabin pressurization explained](https://aerosavvy.com/aircraft-pressurization/)
* [Air pressure calculator](https://www.mide.com/pages/air-pressure-at-altitude-calculator) (use the second one!)
* Sorry, I couldn't find anything about time turbulence caused by the 4D sphere moving through time planes, but someone might get more lucky with better Google query ;-)
] |
[Question]
[
This is the third in a series of 5 (at this point) questions. It's not relevant to this question, but for anyone who's curious this was the [first](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137897/at-great-altitude-what-conditions-are-needed-to-support-a-human-community), this the [second](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/139029/reducing-atmospheric-pressure-on-snowball-earth).
Conditions for this question are:
* Earth-normal atmospheric pressure/content. (Or close)
* I'm aware that over [38,000 feet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hang_gliding#Records) has been achieved by exploiting [thermals](https://www.aviationweather.ws/095_Thermal_Soaring.php). This slow and steady way is not what I need.
* I need the ascent to be sudden and unexpected (for an arguably inexperienced pilot), be it; meteorological, geothermal or by some other (not fantasy) means.
* It should not kill the pilot - if you can plausably argue a volcanic erruption - then fine but the pilot must survive (unconsciousness is just fine though).
Any landscape type can be specified in supporting arguments within the answer, sea nearby, desert, mountains, geisers, volcanoes, icefields - anything that could feasably contribute to the desired sudden lift.
**A hang glider, the pilot taken by surprise, there is a sudden unexpected lift to 25,000 feet altitude, what could do this?**
[Answer]
Getting caught in a thunderstorm is the most likely cause. This can happen even to experts if they are incautious enough to take risks with the weather.
Here's an example with a paraglider. (I'll see what I can find for a hang-glider)
>
> Ewa Wisnierska was sucked into a powerful thunderstorm while training
> for the world paragliding championships in Australia. She was carried,
> unconscious and wearing a layer of ice, to an altitude of more than
> 32,000 feet into the eye of the storm. <https://youtu.be/IXLdsnB5VBw>
>
>
>
---
Here's another - this is a good one because it is videoed with a live commentary from the pilot who escaped the updraft before it was too late.
>
> Caught in Cloud Suck! - Life lesson from 3Km above sea level
> <https://youtu.be/FdoGtqCQ2ZY>
>
>
>
---
**Some science**
Hang-gliders are likely to find it easier to escape a storm because their forward speed can be much greater that that of a paraglider. They should be able fly out of it provided they can keep a sense of direction.
**Hang-glider** Beginner wing 14 mph to 45 mph. Advanced wing - 16 mph, to over 100 mph which has been clocked in speed gliding competitions
<http://www.hanggliding.org/wiki/A_Comparison_of_Hang_Gliding_to_Paragliding>
**Paraglider** Beginner wing 13mph to 22mph. Advanced wing - 14 mph to 35mph
<http://www.hanggliding.org/wiki/A_Comparison_of_Hang_Gliding_to_Paragliding>
---
**EDIT** (from the same source)
See under **Wind penetration** where my above suggestion is supported.
<http://www.hanggliding.org/wiki/A_Comparison_of_Hang_Gliding_to_Paragliding>
Here is a claim that it can happen to hang-gliders as well but there is no reference to back it up.
>
> In one reported incident, two hang gliders were caught in cloud suck
> by the same storm clouds. Both gliders lost consciousness above 30,000
> feet, one, happily, was released by the storm, and regained lucidity
> before crashing into the ground. The other glider was not so
> fortunate. His frozen body was discovered later and returned to his
> family.
> <https://www.toysperiod.com/blog/extreme-sports/hang-gliders-in-the-sky/>
>
>
>
---
**Cloud suck**
If you want to know how people get trapped and about emergency procedures for escape, then I suggest you Google "cloud suck".
>
> Cloud suck is a phenomenon commonly known in paragliding, hang
> gliding, and sailplane flying where pilots experience significant lift
> due to a thermal under the base of cumulus clouds, especially towering
> cumulus and cumulonimbus. The vertical extent of a cumulus cloud is a
> good indicator of the strength of lift beneath it, and the potential
> for cloud suck. Cloud suck most commonly occurs in low pressure
> weather and in humid conditions.
>
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_suck>
>
>
>
---
**Hypoxia due to Altitude**
>
> Helios Airways Flight 522 was a scheduled passenger flight from
> Larnaca, Cyprus, to Athens, Greece, that crashed on 14 August 2005,
> killing all 121 passengers and crew on board. A loss of cabin
> pressurization incapacitated the crew ...
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522>
>
>
>
>
> ---
>
>
> The Time of Useful Consciousness will vary depending on personal
> physiological factors (e.g. if you're a smoker your blood doesn't
> oxygenate as well - you will probably have less time. If you're a
> mountain climber in excellent shape and used to breathing rarified air
> on your climbs you'll probably have a little more time).
> <https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/2766/how-long-will-one-remain-conscious-in-the-event-of-a-sudden-cabin-depressurizati>
>
>
>
[Answer]
A hang glider caught under a powerful cumulo-nimbus is unlikely to be able to 'outfly' the updraft without breaking the airframe.
I have flown a high performance sailplane capable of around 180 knots, flying fast with the airbrakes out, wheel down and with crossed controls and STILL showing a healthy 5 metres per second climb. With all that one would expect to be sinking at probably 15 m/s. or more. 'Assuming the glide angle of a brick' as we say. A hang glider would simply be sucked in to the cloud and spat out at random. I flew ( sailplanes ) with a chap who, in the early days of gliding got inadvertently sucked in to a South African CuNim and emerged from the anvil at well over 30 000' ( the instruments all froze well below that ) the airframe was caked in ice and he had no supplemental oxygen. Very fortunate to survive. I have seen rates of over 20 m/s in a sailplane under big CuNims ( that's around 80 kilometers per hour straight UP! ) and rates WELL in excess of that have been recorded inside big developed storms. A H/G would go from entry at say 5000' to exit at 25000' in around 5 ( very terrifying ) minutes. The pilot would be lashed with hail, probably suffering from the cold and damp and possibly annoxia.
I very much doubt that a H/G could enter wave without being able to avoid it. In conditions where they were lifted to 25 000' in a very short space of time no one in their right mind would be out with a hang glider at all. ( I have piloted a sailplane to over 32000 in wave ) The windspeeds required would be well beyond the capabilities of the H/G to get airborne, penetrate any turbulence or penetrate enough to stay in the lift. Its implausible.
Inadvertent entry into cloud is the most likely scenario. ( although a lot of people who do this are no longer here to tell the tale as without instrumentation and experience, it is highly likely that the airframe breaks )
This was on a forecast relatively benign thermal day. [cloud entry](http://forum.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=22979)
] |
[Question]
[
This is unabashedly stolen from this recent question:
[What would be the structural impact of an oscillating orbit on a planet?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/205068/what-would-be-the-structural-impact-of-an-oscillating-orbit-on-a-planet#comment635043_205068)
with its sweet sweet gif
from that question
>
> Around this white-hole stands a telluric planet, quite similar to Mars
> in terms of composition and orbital characteristics, excepted for one
> thing. Due to some yet-to-understand space history, its orbit is
> crossing 8 times the neutral-line, as it is oscillating from and to
> the pull-zone with contrary forces. It forms a pretty star-like shape,
> as you can see in the toy model I made1 below
>
>
>
:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ITVJX.gif)
*The red planet's orbit forming a star-like shape around the white star-like body.*
My question: **what force could produce an oscillating orbit like the one shown?**
The references question wants to know effects on the planet. The force causing the oscillation is handwaving force. But I want to know if such a orbit is possible. I was thinking about both bodies being charged and an induced magnetic force. I was thinking about diamagnetism.
I am not committed to this being a planet and a sun. Any sinewave orbit is ok but the answer has to explain why.
[Answer]
The simplest solution would be to have a twin body orbiting. The terrestrial planet has a companion - it could be a micro black hole. The common center of gravity follows an ellipse, but the two bodies follow two epicycloidals.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wzP9W.png)
[Answer]
Any force that is attractive at some distances and repulsive at other closer distances would be able to produce such orbits. As for how to get such a force on Greg Egan's webpage on Orthogonal
<https://www.gregegan.net/ORTHOGONAL/ORTHOGONAL.html>
He discusses how in a universe with 4 fundamentally similar dimensions and with massive photons the electric force would be attractive at some distances and repulsive at others. So if there was a universe where planets are held in orbit by a force similar to the electric force with massive force carriers and with 4 fundamentally similar dimensions you might be able to get such orbits assuming that the force really is attractive at some distances and repulsive at others.
[Answer]
1. Gravity. If there is a third body forming a binary system with the planet, the combined orbital motions can produce such a shape with appropriate ratios of orbital radii and periods.
2. Fictional physics. Any force that has a natural trough in its radial potential will produce these kinds of orbits. Getting something like that to operate on a solar-system sized scale would be pretty contrived, though.
[Answer]
The planet is orbiting another massive object, which is itself orbiting the central mass. The two periods are in resonance, which gives you the shape shown.
The terrestrial planet could be orbiting a hypermassive remnant of some kind, so it's actually much larger than the gravitational primary and the inhabitants won't see a huge globe in the sky; might not even know it's there until they develop technology.
[Answer]
This is a special case of a [Rosetta orbit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_orbit). In general relativity, Newton's inverse square law gravity is only an approximation, and in very strong gravitational fields, such as the region just outside the event horizon of a black hole, the orbits are no longer closed ellipses. They instead form a curve called a [hypotrochoid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotrochoid) in which the orbit "oscillates" radially in a similar way to how you describe. The wiki page on hypotrochoids shows an example that forms a closed five-pointed star.
I'm not totally sure whether a hypotrochoid like this could actually arise as a black hole orbit; it may be there are limits on the parameters allowed that exclude it, or render it unsuitable for life. For a distortion this large, you'd have to be close, and the tidal forces would be fierce. I suspect any reasonable real planet would be torn apart without copious supplies of handwavium. (On the other hand, milder tidal forces would provide a handy source of heat to stop your dark planet turning into a frozen ball of ice without a sun.) And it would in any case require some extreme fine-tuning to get that closed orbit that speaks of a deliberately engineered planetary system, rather than a natural occurence.
Explaining *why* it has this form would require general relativity, but you can probably see that something like it is intuitively reasonable if you start with an elliptical orbit, and then think about how the black hole's gravity distorts times and distances more strongly when it is close in than when it is far away, giving it a boost of speed at one end of the ellipse and slowing it at the other. That causes the ellipse to [steadily rotate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsidal_precession).
Your quote mentions white holes. A white hole is a time-reversed black hole, and so the orbits for white holes and black holes are the same. (Strictly, the orbits are time-reversed equivalents, but for the hypotrochoids being discussed, the time-reversal of the orbit looks exactly the same.) Or in the case of an eternal black hole, the white hole and black hole are the past and future of the same structure. So this would seem to apply.
[Answer]
Actually, it's assumed that most planets already do this. It's called an epicyclic orbit, and comes about when either the planet is radially displaced in some way or the mass of the central object changes.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mWXjC.jpg) Granted, the effect is much smaller for most planets than in this diagram, but there's no reason that you can't hand-wave your planet having a much larger epicycle. I'm much more familiar with it in my field of Galactic astronomy than in solar systems, but I can't think of a physical reason why it's forbidden, just unlikely.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/H94re.jpg) This motion causes the planet to oscillate on a small ellipse on top of its orbit, which causes those star-like orbital patterns that you show in your example.
As for what could generate this orbit, I would suggest a large asteroid striking the planet head-on at early times, causing this perturbation on its orbit. Once the orbit is perturbed, it will stay perturbed for very long periods of time, since it's difficult to shed energy/angular momentum in star/planet systems. If you want the orbit to be even more stable, make this planet the only one in the solar system, since that's the main thing that will "even out" your orbit over time as far as I know.
Another possibility is that the star that the planet is orbiting gained or lost mass very rapidly in some way. This would cause the planet to be moving too fast or too slow for its orbit, and would cause an epicycle to occur. This is the process that is thought to actually generate epicycles in the orbits of disk stars, like the Sun.
EDIT: The processes I suggest would result in an elliptical orbit (which is technically a circular orbit with an epicyclic period half it's orbital period), but wouldn't generate the desired orbit above. For that I believe you will need extra bodies or diffuse mass distributions.
[Answer]
This star is a hydrogen fusion star only in its outer shell. Its core is composed of an exotic form of matter which rotates through a higher dimension, such that periodically (some of) its mass gravitationally disappears from our universe, allowing the orbit to expand. Soon afterward and before the planet can settle into its new orbit, the mass returns.
There would be side effects. The diameter of the star fluctuates with the same period as the orbit of the planet and thus so does its brightness/temperature. Unfortunately, the star gets hotter as the planet gets closer, so rather than balancing out any climate concerns this exacerbates them.
This is fictional physics, and there's no evidence that this is possible in the real universe.
[Answer]
If the planet has no atmosphere, periodic strong volcanism can act as a booster, increasing or reducing momentum and producing the oscillating orbit depending on where it happens with respect to the direction of motion.
On a small scale this happens with comets, where the effect of differential gas emission due to exposure to sun light slightly alter their orbit.
[Answer]
Two of Saturn's moons are particularly strange. [Janus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus_(moon)) and [Epimetheus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimetheus_(moon)) have the unique (in our solar system, at least) distinction of having nearly the same orbit as each other, interacting with each other in a [complex dance](https://www.planetary.org/articles/janus-epimetheus-swap) but never colliding. One orbits *slightly* closer to Saturn than the other. A closer orbit is slightly shorter, so the inner moon eventually catches up with the outer moon. Once they get close enough to gravitationally interact, their mutual pull on each other will accelerate the inner moon and slow down the outer moon, causing them to essentially swap orbits.
The mathematics behind Janus and Epimetheus result in an orbit swap every four Earth years. If you can play with the numbers (relative masses, distances, orbital periods, etc) such that you get four orbit swaps per local year, you'd have a star-shaped orbit resembling the image in your question.
This mechanic requires the two object's orbits to be *very* close to each other during both swaps. That means the overall amplitude of the "wave" in your orbit will be a very small percentage of the mean orbital distance (otherwise they'd drift too far away from each other to interact). That's probably good if this is an inhabited planet, since large swings in orbital radius can create hyper-extreme seasonal changes or move the planet out of the habitable zone entirely.
] |
[Question]
[
I'd like to explore the development of a country that has a political system where people vote for their favourite candidate and against their least favourite. The *against* votes are subtracted from the *for* votes. This could mean that some people would get negative votes - the least negative would win.
My instinct tells me that this measure would make for fairer voting. Am I blind to the disadvantages? Are there any drawbacks that I'm missing?
---
**Assumption**
This takes place in a Western democracy (such as the UK), the only difference being the voting system.
Please ask if anything is not clear
[Answer]
We already have something very similar to that which has been proven to work: Ranked Choice Voting. Everyone chooses their candidates in order from most preferred to least preferred. In this system, the number of offices to be voted divided by the number of voters sets a threshold minimum. All rank 1 votes are tallied, if all top candidates meet the threshold, they win. If not, the lowest candidate is eliminated and the rank 2 votes from those voters are added to the remaining candidates. This repeats until all top candidates meet the threshold.
The problem with the simple choose one to +1, and one to -1, is that it's likely that a minority winner will be selected, so the fewest number of people are likely to be represented. This would likely happen because the "least hated" person would win, rather than the "generally most liked" person winning.
Consider a thousand votes:
| Candidate | Votes For | Votes Against | Result |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Alice | 501 | 499 | 2 |
| Bob | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Charlie | 496 | 501 | -5 |
Nobody particularly *wanted* Bob, but nobody *didn't* want Bob, so he wins even though only 0.3% of the population voted for him. Maybe he didn't campaign at all, and the only three people who voted for him were his parents and a close friend. He'd actually end up winning from a lack of information about his policies, character, etc. Or maybe he didn't actually put any policies out, only negative campaigns against his opponents. It's likely that the "negative ads" that we see in the real world would be even more pronounced; they'd want to end up being the least hated person for the best chance of winning.
This could be an interesting plot device where nothing ever seems to get done because the only people who end up getting voted in are those that have never held office and remained relatively unknown, perhaps even cycles of greater and greater political disasters because the unknowns keep winning; the last person in office did a terrible job, becoming the most hated, allowing the newest least hated person to win.
[Answer]
### This is how Australian voting effectively works in practice.
Australia is officially "Ranked choice voting" - You order N candidates from 1 to N, however I can tell you from experience and anecdotally that Australians typically vote "for" and "against" first, and then fill in the blanks between.
So for example, my recent voting slip looked something like this:
* \_ \_ \_ Centre left party | Mr Cleft
* \_ \_ \_ Centre right party | Mr Cright
* \_ \_ \_ Environment / mid left party | Mrs Green
* \_ \_ \_ Christian right party | Fr Right
* \_ \_ \_ Super right xenophobic party | Mr Hitler
I approached this ballot paper, immediately decided that I was voting "For" Mrs Green, and "Against" Mr Hitler. So my ballot paper looked like:
* \_ \_ \_ Centre left party | Mr Cleft
* \_ \_ \_ Centre right party | Mr Cright
* \_ 1 \_ Environment / mid left party | Mrs Green
* \_ \_ \_ Christian right party | Fr Right
* \_ 5 \_ Super right xenophobic party | Mr Hitler
I then filled in the blanks - in rough political spectrum order:
* \_ 2 \_ Centre left party | Mr Cleft
* \_ 3 \_ Centre right party | Mr Cright
* \_ 1 \_ Environment / mid left party | Mrs Green
* \_ 4 \_ Christian right party | Fr Right
* \_ 5 \_ Super right xenophobic party | Mr Hitler
I voted "for" and "against" two separate parties. I could also vote entirely "for" a party (put a 1 there and then copy in their "how to vote card" which their party volunteers are usually holding by the entrance gate) or entirely "against" a party (put them last and then fill every other box with random noise - or copy in their how to vote card with the numbers reversed)
The end result implements the behaviour you want: A vote "against" a party will flow through all their opponents in the system in priority order - it will always stay against my 5th preference for the entire vote tally (moving through 4 candidates in order) thus increasing the vote count required by Mr Hitler in order to win by 1. The same effect as voting "-1" to him.
And this example only had 5 so was kind of trivial (we'd get this for our lower house elections). Our upper house you're looking at numbering typically 60. Many just put in the 1 and call it done (trusting their #1 party to direct their preferences), but I want to explicitly put the crazy parties last, so I put a 1 for my favourite party, and I put a 60 for the craziest, fill up the 50s with the hard NOs, and then I work towards the middle.
### This fixes the issue Phyrfox identified and ensure the plurality gets their way:
*(Democracy isn't typically majority rule - it's often plurality rule. Eg USA. 40% can be the winner if 2nd and 3rd place only have 30%).*
Taking their table of vote totals:
| Candidate | Votes For | Votes Against |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Alice | 501 | 499 |
| Bob | 3 | 0 |
| Charlie | 496 | 501 |
An arrangement of ballots that produce that in preferential voting would be:
* 501 x ABC (501 for Alice, 501 against Charlie).
* 496 x CBA (496 for Charlie, 496 against Charlie).
* 3 x BCA (3 for Bob, another 3 against Alice).
Following the rules of preferential voting, A wins immediately (more than 50% of the 1st preference vote), but were we to distribute preferences anyway; B is removed, all first preference B (only 3 x BCA) votes are removed, and 3 2nd preferences flow to C. Alice wins by 2 votes.
For a democratic voting system the plurality must win, and that applies to all 3:
* The plurality (50.1%) voted against Charlie, so he shouldn't win.
* The plurality (50.1%) voted for Alice, so she should win.
* The plurality (99.9%) didn't vote for bob, so he shouldn't win.
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There are so many different and well studied voting systems, each one with its particularities. For instance, [this site](https://rangevoting.org/CompChart.html) presents a single election evaluated with 4 different methods which gives 4 different results.
Many of the existing methods allows for voting against a candidate, either explicitly or by placing one candidate in disfavor in relation to the others. Other answers already explained how it is done in a Condorset method: you rank the candidate you disfavor lower than the other candidates. But let me talk about one of my favorites voting methods: approval voting.
A voter must choose either üëç or üëé for every candidate in the ballot, representing if that choice is acceptable or not. In the end, wins the candidate with the average closer to üëç.
This is a very good system that combats polarization and have many good mathematical properties, like being resistant to [tactical voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_voting) and not being possible to hurt your candidates by going to vote instead of not going.
Save for psychological factors and abstentions, this method is equivalent of allowing for voting to many candidates at once. In such scheme, voting against someone would mean voting for everybody else.
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Your election system is affine, which means adding 1000 to every candidates vote total doesn't change the result. The highest value wins.
We can translate your vote from -1/0,0,0,0/+1 to 0/1,1,1,1,1/2 and get the exact same result. Except now we can see why it results in strange results when there are many candidates.
If you like party A and think you have a good chance of helping them win, you'll give them a 2.
You now give 1 vote to everyone else. Finally, you pick a party you think could beat party A and you don't want to. They get a 0.
Now, suppose you have two wings of politics -- Up and Down. The Up wing has its power concentrated in one party -- the Top party.
The Down wing of politics has 5 different parties who all mostly agree that the Up/Top sucks, but disagree on details.
When someone wants to support Up, they give it 2 votes, and then ... they give each of the Down 1 vote, except whomever they think is most dangerous to Up.
When someone wants to support Down, they give one of the Down parties 2 votes, and give the Top party 0 votes. And they give every other Down party 1 vote.
The Down parties in a sense "get votes" by being split up.
Suppose we have 100 Up supporters and 100 Down supporters. The Down supporters vote semi-randomly -- between 10 and 30 vote for each of the 5 parties.
The Up supporters don't know exactly how the Down supporters vote. So they end up spreading their "anti vote" over each of the down evenly.
At the end of the cycle we have:
```
Top: 100 yes votes, 100 no votes. Total: 200 (or 0).
Down1: 10-30 yes votes, 140 to 160 neutral votes, 20 no votes, total: 190-210 (or -10 to 10).
Down2: the same
```
The result will be one of the Down parties winning just due to variance.
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In a two-party system you would see even dirtier election campaigning than you see in the United States. Candidates would not just want people to vote for them as the lesser evil, they also want them to vote against their biggest rival as the greater evil. That would make attack ads even more important for winning elections than they already are.
However, in a multi-party system, it might be a good idea for the two strongest candidates to form a pact to not run any attack ads against each other and instead attack the candidates of the minor parties. Otherwise you risk that each of them receives as many positive as negative votes and a minor party candidate wins.
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Of all the [electoral systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_system) that have been in wide use and documented, none are exactly like what you proposed. By the way, according to that Wikipedia page, "the study of formally defined electoral methods is called [social choice theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_choice_theory) or voting theory, and this study can take place within the field of political science, economics, or mathematics, and specifically within the subfields of game theory and mechanism design."
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First of all, "least favourite" does not explicitly mean "against."
If that's all there is to your proposed electoral system, then, to clarify, you're saying voters are required to make two, and only two, marks or voice-votes for a race: one mark denoting their favorite and one mark denoting their least favorite. It means either the amount of candidates has been restricted to two or that the voter is not allowed to vote for their "middle-weight" candidates about whom they feel more ambivalent. It's different from all presently notable voting systems.
[Instant-runoff voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting), known in the United States as ranked-choice voting and asserted by two of the answers previously offered to you that have at present the two highest numbers of approval votes from registrants to this website, is ***not*** what you proposed. In that system, the amount of marks may be optional, full (every candidate requires a mark), or partial (N marks, where N is less than the amount of candidates on the ballot for that race). Voters mark numbers denoting their rank of preference for the candidates. For all amounts of marks except full preferential, marks represent only approval. Marks never explicitly represent opposition or disapproval of candidates that the voter ranks lower. Further, its counting method is entirely different.
In [approval voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting), described by the previously offered answer that has at present the third-highest number of approval votes from registrants, marks represent approval and are decided for each candidate individually, not in ranking or comparison to other candidates. Some ballots for this system may ask voters to mark "No," which represents, "I do not explicitly approve." A blank or "No" does not explicitly represent opposition or disapproval because the counting and calculation method used by this system recognizes only marks of approval.
So beyond variables that precede these such as who is allowed to vote and how difficult it is to be allowed, there are variables in the format and layout of the ballot; variables in the amount, representation, and meaning of marks or blanks; and variables in the method and verifiability of... recognition, counting, and calculation.
As far as mathematical criteria, you can find most of them on Wikipedia's [comparison of electoral systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_electoral_systems). tl;dr: Jump down to the first table, or click the "Comparisons" heading. **In my opinion, this is the best place to start of all the information I've read.**
Two of the criteria for electoral systems that are often overlooked but I think are very important with the rise of voting *machines* are [polynomial time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_complexity#Polynomial_time) and summability. In the context of electoral systems, polynomial time and summability basically tell you whether counting and verification by recounting can be done through a distributed method ($O(n)$) by each tier of polling districts verifying their district... or that counting and verification can be done only at one top-most central location ($O(n^m)$) to which is shipped every marked ballot or a copy of data from every ballot cast in the election. The location could be a warehouse filled with the marked ballots or a mainframe computer storing a database file.
Instant-runoff (ranked-choice) can be counted only at one top-most central location. If IRV was counted by hand and not by machines, a central location could allow better oversight than a distributed count, but ballots are not usually counted by hand anymore. They're counted by profit-influenced, proprietary, closed-source software on black-box hardware. Campaign officials, scrutineers, polling place volunteers, and most election officials are not known for being skilled in information security, cryptography, computer engineering, or software engineering. There are a few skilled ones who regularly consult to a national government, the United States, at the Brennan Center for Justice.
Another system similar to your proposal is [score voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Score_voting). Score voting that's been reduced to a three-point scale (approve, neutral, oppose) is used by Wikimedia's Board of Trustees and by the United Nations to select the UN Secretary-General. However, its marks are decided for each individual candidate, not explicitly in comparison to other candidates as your proposal is.
One more notable system, [Schulze method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method), is used by ICANN, many free and open-source software projects, the Pirate Party in many countries, and the self-governing bodies of several languages of Wikipedia. It's one of the few systems that satisfies most criteria, but it's one of the most complex in polynomial time.
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I'm writing a novel which takes place in a Middle-ages-type world with magic. The heroes come across an abandoned city in the middle of a deciduous forest. The climate is temperate with rare snowfall and high humidity but not tropical.
The city was built of quarried stone, probably something like granite. Buildings are 1 to 3 stories high. The windows are without glass. The city size was about 5 to 10 thousand people. 1500 years ago, demons attacked the city, killing everyone and had the earth suck up the entire city. The buildings were damaged in this cataclysmic event but some of them are still intact a the semi-damaged buildings shored up certain areas resulting in pockets of underground city. There are some outlets to the forest above but not many.
Assuming there is no flooding, the city is protected from light, there is limited freezing/thawing and plant growth is restricted to fungus and other underground plants. What would the state of decay be inside buildings? Would bed frames, desks, chairs, swords, be gone? weakened? recognizable? Would everything just be a mold and fungus?
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If you're looking for longevity the arctic or a desert are obviously the way to go.
That said there are many old buildings that still exist in **temperate and tropical climates**. Here is [a list of really old buildings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_buildings_in_the_world).
As you can see, the majority show up in the desert, moisture and temperature change are bad for preservation.
There are examples from the rest of the world as well though.
If you are looking to have a relatively intact series of ruins that is perfectly plausible even in your forest.
**As an example I would point to the [Chichen Itza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichen_Itza).** The complex/city has existed for about the amount of time you are looking at and is in perhaps the only environment worse for preservation than a deciduous forest...that being a tropical rain forest.
When it was found there were trees literally growing out of the tops of some of the stone structures.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eq6Ye.jpg)
That being said many stone buildings were still intact, and archeologists found **[Textiles, Basketry, Stone, Bone, Shell, Ceramics, Wood, Copal, Rubber, other Organic Materials, and Mammalian Remains](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780873656948).**
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What you are likely going to end up with depends on what you start with. In the case of a fairly advanced society you likely end up with.
* A few major stone structures that are still standing, though it may just be walls or parts of walls
* All wooden buildings and wooden parts of buildings (unless rapidly buried for some reason) will be gone.
* Underground rooms/tombs/cellars etc could well be in decent shape
* Buried items may survive but it is partly luck, where it specifically falls and what the exact environment is like will dictate what remains after 1500 years.
So you have a few stone buildings, mostly ruins, some underground rooms in decent shape and the chance for certain artifacts to survive.
And welcome to the site.
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This depends on the city, but absolutely nothing visible would be a reasonable option.
In the case of a major city, scattered blocks of dressed stone. Not a lot else.
Pretty much everything in that time period was made of natural materials, after 1500 years it would be gone. Some larger metal objects might leave traces, say an anvil might appear as a rusted lump of metal. Dressed stone would be weathered but might be recognisable as having once been part of a building but there's a high chance that it would all be buried under a couple of feet at least of soil. Deciduous forest is probably the worst place for this as it lays down new soil fairly quickly. 1500 years is also enough generations of trees to have demolished the buildings.
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**Stone structures will remain, especially big ones.**
Even in the middle of jungles, stone structures can easily survive 1500 years of decay. For reference, the Mayan classical period was around 1500 years ago. In the present day, a Mayan temple looks something like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/my3u8.jpg)
That's the ruins of a temple in the Mayan city of Tikal, which has been abandoned for over a thousand years.
Of course, Mayan ruins have seen some cleaning and restoration in recent years. In an abandoned city, there's likely to be significantly more dirt and vegetation covering old buildings. Smaller buildings are likely to be completely buried and overgrown with trees and plants, while for larger structures, only the top will protrude from a mount of accumulated earth. Basements and lower floors, if open to the environment, will be filled with dirt. Plants and trees will grow on *everything*, though the degree to which they do so will depend on the sort of environment that the city is in. High rainfall deciduous forests will grow much faster and more aggressively than those in drier climates.
**Most other artifacts will break down if exposed to the environment.**
Wood and other organic materials will rot and break down first, followed by almost anything metal. Even large metal structures, if exposed to moisture, will rust and break apart well before 1500 years pass.
Of course, that's only true for metals that will rust. Gold artifacts, for example, do not rust quickly, nor do those made of any other noble metals, like silver or platinum. Stone artifacts and statues, if made of sufficiently hard stone and protected from the weather to some degree, are also likely to survive.
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nq8GQ.png "because radiation is bad")
(source: [mentalfloss.com](https://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/insert_main_wide_image/public/2-prypiat-view.png))
The former is Chernobyl. In 1986, the city was the centre of the worst civil nuclear disaster in human history. Today, it lies abandoned, the stronghold of cockroaches.
The latter is Chichen Itza, Mexico. It was built between 750 and 900 AD by the Itza people, and lay abandoned for a millenium before it was designated a World Heritage site in 1988. It's had minimal restorative work done to it - the major work done there is clearance of the surrounding site, rather than restoration of the pyramid itself.
Which of those two sites has held up better? I'd say it's the latter. Conveniently, that's also the closest parallel to your medieval city. It's also in a tropical climate (hotter and worse for preservation of buildings than you specified). If it can hold out a millenium, that gives you a fair idea of how a medieval city could last, if it was built well.
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So, basically everything goes into two categories, organic and inorganic materials.
Everything organic will be gone. No wood, wool, cotton, hemp, silk or anything like that. Major wood items might leave a mound of dirt or similar, but essentially if it's organic something would eat it. Cloth items by bugs and wood by bugs and plants.
Inorganic items are trickier. Stone would likely be diminished, but not gone. General shapes of big things, and totally missing small things. For example, an old stone inn might become a large pile of stones that just happen to have a "wrong" feeling because there is too much pattern to them. Stone fences and smaller stone works would likely be a "lump" in the ground or totally missing (berried under plants etc.) So parts may still be around creating, again a "pattern" like a row of bushes or trees that appear un-naturally straight. Metal materials, would still be around in many place, but would look more like stones then anything else. For example a metal sword wouldn't have it's hilt, or any of it's embellishments, you would instead find just the blade looking all pock marked and raw.
The last effect would be an uncanny structure to things. trees that are too lined up (cause they were planted that way), or a seeming odd, straight path (where a stone road prevented any deep roots.
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There are several factors you must consider.
1. Construction style: Most of the temples shown here are predominately stone with small internal chambers, and their shapes are very resistant to tectonic activity. But a more "modern" type of stone building with larger internal spaces and vertical exterior walls is much more susceptible to earthquakes, leading to collapsed structures that are little more than piles of rubble.
2. Scavenger activity: Many ancient sites exist UNDER newer cities (as their geographic location is still favorable for habitation), or the materials were taken for building elsewhere (since it is often easier to scavenge quarried stone than to quarry it anew).
3. Climate change: Were there major floods or glacial activity in 1500 years? Very few places were static over 1.5 millennia (although this is a common assumption in fantasy worlds). A flood can bury a city under mud, wash it away, or leave it underwater as a river now flows through it. An ice age with glacial activity just grinds stone to dust or redeposits them far away. Even dry periods can cause sand storms that can bury cities.
4. Volcanic activity: A lava flow or ash deposit can easily bury a city (i.e. Pompeii). An earthquake can level it, bury it under mud, or redirect a river/lake to cover it in water.
5. Anything organic will degrade unless it is sealed or buried. This is why archeologists usually are excavating refuse pits and graves at sites, those are the places where organic and ferrous stuff (cloth, weapons, seeds, food, etc) might be preserved, or at least leave degraded remains that can be analysed. Things left out in the open have long since been taken or rotted away.
6. Even the type of stone is critical. More porous stone can be easily eroded by rain fall or freezing/thaw cycles as small amounts of water get into cracks, then freeze and expand, enlarging the cracks. So abandoned stone that isn't covered with something (many stone structures used to be coated in plaster or whitewashed, for example) can erode in a wet environment.
There are, in general, very few preserved towns/cities from 1500 years ago that were not either continuously occupied/maintained (and even then, perhaps only a few major structures would have endured like in Rome) or are in any condition to be "explored" outside of excavation. But large stone temple-like structures are probably the best bet (i.e. the central city temple can be explored, while the smaller buildings around it are just foundations covered in vegetation at best) as they were large, probably had the best foundations to resist collapse, and wouldn't be easy to disassemble. In a low humidity environment with minimal vegetation and rain activity, barring sandstorms, earthquakes, floods or volcanic activity, and a remote site that wasn't rebuild or scavenged, it wouldn't be unreasonable to have a large stone pyramid type structure remain in decent condition with explorable interior spaces over that time period.
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Seems the climate is similiar to what climate exists in modern countries like italy, there are ruins dated 2 thousand years in italy:
(All images are from Wikipedia)
Pompei Amphitheatre (dated up to 80 BC, so 2000 years):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PMXFw.jpg)
After 2000 years only most massive buildings are still alive, roofs, high walls are all gone and almost everything is covered by moss.
Monte Consolino ( 1000 years)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9xNxG.jpg)
While after 1000 years roofs and towers are all gone, you can still see high walls, there are already trees growing inside buildings.
while it is likely most items will be just raided by criminals, it is likely after 1000 years you will still find:
* Pottery (no more paint visibile, unless buried under earth)
* big metal objects will still have their shape (but just appear as a block of rust)
* ropes, tissues, colors all will be gone
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Another notable site is Angkor, Cambodia. Many of the structures here, albeit only ~800-900 years old, have been largely abandoned for centuries and unmaintained until only very recently. Another three-quarters of a millenium would probably see them in much worse shape.
As alluded to above, the climate plays a considerable role - freezing climates will see much more severe degradation due to ice damage of stone structures. Dry climates and deserts by far play home to some of the oldest structures on Earth. Wet and jungle climates like Angkor degrade very rapidly with ingress of vegetation and mosses that quickly consume man-made structures.
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[Ta Som, Angkor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta_Som)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VxrqM.jpg)
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> image credit : *By Henry Flower at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, <https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8628828>*
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[Preah Khan, Angkor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preah_Khan)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wnwzL.jpg)
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Your biggest problem is whether any of it is above ground. After 1500 years of fallen leaves, I'd confidently predict that all single-storey buildings and most two-storey buildings will be below ground. For your explorers, the city will just look like a lumpy hill. You might get the tops of the 3-storey buildings if the vegetation is kind, but typically a 3-storey building of that kind of age would have a wooden upper storey, and wooden structures clearly won't survive.
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Would *artificially* created robots that can reproduce and heal themselves be able to evolve?
I imagine a planet where an advanced civilization made robot "creatures" and then died out, so would they be able to evolve?
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**Locked**. Comments on this answer have been disabled, but it is still accepting other interactions. [Learn more](/help/locked-posts).
## Yes, in fact you can't stop it from evolving given they can reproduce.
If something can reproduce and pass on the instructions to reproduce ,evolution will occur, literally all that is needed is for evolution is reproduction and heredity of the instructions for reproduction. All you can change is how fast it happens and what form it takes. The less the robots programming can change the slower it will evolve. If it has to wait for errors to occur it will change slowly, if it can change its programing on the fly it will evolve quickly although in the latter case the evolution will be different than normal natural selection. So if you want slow evolution give them high fidelity copying of instruction.
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### Depends.
In terms of hardware there are features when making copies that better allow for evolution then others:
* Absolute perfectly similar copies will suppress evolution.(AKA no mutation)
* High error copies are unlikely to successfully create next generation.(AKA high mutation)
* Next generation with having a few errors randomly distributed biased away from critical sections are most likely to evolve.( AKA low partial controlled mutation)
I am skipping mental evolution here. Mental evolution is much more complicated. It depends heavily on what definitions are used and there are many more options of what definitions to use. Mental evolution depends on at least: hardware, environment, and the transmit received from the society.
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# Yes, and quite fast actually
In the field of AI there is a set of algorithms called [genetic algorithms](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm):
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> In computer science and operations research, a genetic algorithm (GA) is a metaheuristic inspired by the process of natural selection that belongs to the larger class of evolutionary algorithms (EA). Genetic algorithms are commonly used to generate high-quality solutions to optimization and search problems by relying on biologically inspired operators such as mutation, crossover and selection. (...)
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(Emphasis mine)
These algorithms can find solutions for a lot of problems in ways that amaze us humans. They can also ensure continuous adaptation to a dynamic environment.
If the problem the robots are trying to sove is survival, they will be constantly checking what it is in them that helps them thrive - each trait gets treated as a gene in the blueprints for the next batch of robots. I.e.: they find out statistically that tall robots thrive better in environment A, but worse in environment B. Environment A gets taller robots sent there, whereas environment B gets shorter ones.
They can fine tune their own ratio of mutation and recombination to achieve ever greater success in whatever enviroment they happen to conquer. Since robots are built rather than born, this is like industrial eugenics for them.
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They could evolve, but it would be artificial.
Evolution happens because you only have a single copy of each DNA molecule in the sperm and the egg. Faults can creep in, and there's no simple way of error checking.
Computers have [RAID arrays.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID) where they store key information in redundant drives. As such, they don't change over future generations. They could store the personality modules and plans for each robot in an extremely low error arrangement.
They could artificially make themselves evolve. Perhaps they've found that the original designs for their bodies are extremely restrictive outside the intended environment, and so they've done evolutionary changes to their design to try to adapt to new environments and niches.
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## Yes, with qualifications.
In order to evolve, your robots must exhibit the following characteristics:
1. Intelligence. They don't have to be brilliant, mind you; they just need to be capable of adapting to changing situations. As such, dumb assembly-line robots will not evolve.
2. The ability to modify themselves. Being able to think of useful adaptations is useless if they can't affect changes upon themselves.
3. A reason to evolve. Evolution doesn't happen for literally no reason, after all. This will present a bit a problem; the robots can repair themselves, so the only reason for them to change would be a catastrophe which irretrievably breaks them out of their routine.
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# yes.
*This answer assumes the robots are capable of modifying their bodies in a way or another, even if it takes several generations.*
Basically, to achieve something close to "evolution" at least in a natural sense, your robot needs to be in many ways like a very instinct-based animal (aka it can basically survive on its own from birth, relying very little on actual learning and much more on basic instincts or "programming") in several ways at first:
Essentially, programming is to your robot what DNA is to the animal I've described: it dictates everything from how it repairs damage it sustains to how it behaves to how it fabricates the next generations.
If your robots' programming is fail-proof and never changes *(which apparently, as some seem to think, is necessarily impossible and a thing that should never be Done in *any* setting under *any* circumstances)*, there can be no evolution, every new robot will be exactly like the older ones and every robot will do the same thing in the same way under the same circumstances.
*However*, if there can be bugs in the coding, particularly when writing the coding on the newer generations, we start to have a glimpse at a potential "natural selection". Maybe the error does nothing, maybe it makes them better at not sustaining critical damage and thus being unable to create more copies, maybe it only makes it a bit jittery in certain circumstances, changing nothing otherwise (this is natural evolution, where changes undergone by a generation aren't necessarily good or bad, but they stack into changes that helps the thing perform better, be it by being better at surviving or at finding a mate,although in your case sexual selection doesn't seem to be at play).
If however your robots can willingly change their own coding to adapt to a certain problem, then machine-like evolution (as in newer generations are by default better than the older ones) can certainly be achieved, because they're constantly attempting to improve themselves (this is fairly similar to the RNA editing we see in cephalopods, except that, depending on Howe exactly this code rewriting works, the changes might be more long lasting).
So summing up, if your robot can have its programming changed, be it willingly or through bugs, without needing someone to actively tampering with them, evolution to some degree (be it in the natural or in the mechanical sense) is possible.
The final outcome most certainly will change drastically depending on how this evolution occurs though. Mechanically evolved robots probably will be better in every way compared to older generations within the natural constraints of their technology. You can and should expect them to be improved versions of their predecessors, since that's the goal of mechanical evolution.
However, if the evolution happens through bugs and errors in programming piling up, you should expect them to be simply more adapted to the environment they find themselves in than previous generations. Natural evolution doesn't work in the sense of improvement, but simply on the concept of what changes make the creature better at making more copies of itself and surviving long enough to achieve that goal (evolution doesn't necessarily make a moth capable of karate chopping its predators to survive, but it might simply result in it looking like a piece of bird poop to deceive said predators, because that's what allowed it to survive better).
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## What does "reproduce" even mean?
### Robots constructing robots (internally or externally)
**External construction** basically means the robots are made in a factory.
Of course you can also build parts to upgrade the factory, or to make another factory, from within a factory. The factory itself may or may not be intelligent.
In this case they'd be able to make as many or as few improvements from one "generation" to the next as you wish. Any new discoveries could be incorporated into any new robots built, but you could also limit their ability to come up with new discoveries/improvements based on their programming. Such a limit would suggest that they're not truly *intelligent*; although, on the other hand, even humans can be very much stuck in their ways across many generations, and they have the benefit of actual evolution, whereas robots may just be stuck making exact copies of the same robot indefinitely.
This would follow the colloquial definition of "evolve", rather than the biological one.
**Internal construction** means one robot making a copy of themselves (or something similar) from within their own body.
How would a robot actually "grow" to reach the size of their "parent" (since the "child" would necessarily have to be smaller to fit within the "parent")? Perhaps they could gather the resources required and have the mechanisms to build any missing parts after birth. Or perhaps they're simply physically compressed from their natural state or the "parent" significantly expands during pregnancy (much like humans).
Although, overall, this seems quite inefficient. It would generally be much better to just have a factory somewhere rather than having a whole lot of robots carry around the parts to construct a copy of themselves at all times. On the other hand, you could have these parts be removable (in which case it probably needn't be part of them at all, and we're largely back to a factory), or you could have only a small subset of "female" robots capable of giving birth, who will then essentially serve as the factories mentioned above (although having an actual factory is probably still much more efficient).
For internal construction "evolution" may be slightly slower than for external construction (you probably wouldn't be able to double the size of a robot within 1 generation, nor create a part or structure that your mechanisms can't physically build). But they'd still be able to change almost everything about themselves within 1 or 2 generations, as long as their parts allows for some programming in terms of how to construct their "offspring" (otherwise you could, again, be left with them making exact copies of themselves indefinitely).
### Biological reproduction, i.e. cyborgs
If the "robots" are actually cyborgs, i.e. they have some robotic parts and some biological parts, they may be able to biologically reproduce.
Their biological parts would probably roughly evolve like any animal, i.e. fairly slowly due to mutations. Their robotic parts would need to be constructed at some point during the pregnancy, and this can be improved as much or as little as you want (following from the above). I expect the most reasonable option would be to probably have this mostly take place in a lab or factory (much like external construction, except that it would use the actual DNA and whatnot).
Of course with [gene editing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome_editing), you could make a whole lot of changes to their biological parts from one generation to the next.
### Why reproduce? Just upgrade!
While there are some common themes in fiction of robots becoming outdated and being replaced by better robots, this isn't the only way to end up with better robots.
You could also have robots with removable parts, who simply construct some new part (in a factory, probably) and replace whichever of their existing parts they want to replace.
You could go one step further and create an entirely new body and just move the "brain" onto the new body.
As for upgrading the "brain": they may have memory or processing power modules, and it can be realistic to have them be able to increase, upgrade or replace these without affecting their personality (as long as you don't *remove* any memories, that is). They may also have some sort of personality module, which may be more limited in terms of what you can actually improve there, while maintaining their personality. You could also back up the whole thing to mitigate any potential damage, so they can simply restore themselves. Depending on how all of this works, e.g. if it's a [neural network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network), these parts may all be one and the same, or they may be entirely distinct (like a conventional computer with RAM, a CPU, etc.), which could make it easier or more difficult to make adjustments within the same robot.
If you want to go this route, you can also, if you want, have robots refrain from making improvements in new robots built that they can't apply to themselves. They may realise doing so could eventually lead to their own downfall, as there would be less and less of a need to cater to their old parts, and they would be less and less capable of keeping up with the new robots.
If they can upgrade themselves, this would likely mean that they would largely stop reproducing at some point (as long as they aren't expanding across their planet or the universe).
[Answer]
**It's Life Jim But Not As You Know It.**
Forget robots. Robots are just machines. They can be pulled apart and put back together. It's the programming that evolves.
The whole point of AI is that it can learn and adapt. It can then apply changes that work to every robot. Need to run faster? Every bot gets faster legs.
Look at Skynet in the Terminator movies. One learning AI building better and better terminators. In the books Skynet starts with running people over with self drive cars. It then builds the early terminators and then infiltrators with rubber skin then ones with real skin and finally shape shifting ones made of liquid metal.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g5z1j.jpg)
It's evolving but not as you know it.
[Answer]
**Adaptive Repair/Construction behaviour**
If your robots are capable of adapting the design of new robots to make use of local materials (this spark plug will do the same job as this other component with minor modifications) then they will tend to become quite diverse as they repair themselves or find themselves lacking raw materials when reproducing themselves.
This is a natural extension of a Field-Repair ability that would be highly useful for robots intended to operate away from ideal repair-facilities for extended periods.
Some of these ad-hoc modifications to the design may actually be more efficient than the base design, or be more robust in the given scenarios the robots find themselves in, and if the robots are capable of recognising this, they may formally adopt the change and accept whatever trade-off that brings them.
After all, if having half a microwave oven hanging out of your power core is more power-efficient than using your base-design, then you'll probably benefit more from having the oven on day one than clunking along for a few hundred days before maintenance requirements cause you to implement the change anyway.
[Answer]
Short answer yes, and very, very quickly, depending on how advanced they are.
If you have an artificial creature that can reproduce itself, especially if it has human level intelligence, it can create new selves to whatever liking it desires.
The concept of self reproducing machines is known as Von Neumann machines, and such machines could easily "evolve" - yet it would bear little resemblance to natural selection. It would not be a random process at all, unless the intelligence of such creatures was very unadvanced.
If you desire something resembling more traditional ideas of evolution, the machines could be extremely advanced to the point that modifying themselves is difficult, or they are lower intelligence - or lacking in the specific knowledge needed to intervene in how new selves are made.
[Answer]
**Your question is only about whether it is possible or not, but it will not make sense without planning out how.**
Can they evolve or not, would have an easy answer. Yes they can and will evolve.
But what you might find harder to explain would be, how exactly would they do it?
And for that, all you have to assume is that their whole genetic "code" is stored inside some drives. Which you can describe as however you want to as it would make sense to show them as some advanced technology.
Next, you would need to dive deeper into how they reproduce. Maybe in order to reproduce, they take a new drive and then they both connect their own drives together and the third drive in order to copy the data from those two drives to the third. But in doing so they have to expose off the drives to the outside.
And then again *maybe*, their planet has a lot of radiations on it and also cosmic rays. To induce random error all around the code. This does not affect the adult robots that much, because they have protection on themselves. But the adult robots don't have to be perfect against the radiation. They can still be somewhat affected by it, Just like mutations in adult humans. Radiations would also explain how the species that made them died off.
And for the hardware, it would make sense if the instructions to construct their hardware were present inside their drives.
Then, all you would need in order to complete the process of evolution would be some local *reproduction factories?* That would make the new offspring using the instructions from the drive.
This brings the robot evolution as close to human evolution as possible. Easier to implement and easier to digest.
[Answer]
# Yes, absolutely.
## But the timescale depends on the robot architecture.
It doesn't matter how error-checking & redundant your programming & hardware is, there's always (some ridiculously implausible) simultaneous set of random errors (quantum tunneling/cosmic rays/etc) that can bypass all the error checking & redundancy & automatic shutdowns & manage to create a viable mutant.
So yes, *anything* (and I mean anything) that reproduces can evolve, but I wouldn't be surprised if even with today's technology it wouldn't be possible to make such a digital architecture that it'd take longer than the lifetime of the universe before you could expect such a "miracle fault" to occur & produce a viable mutated offspring.
However, this is disadvantageous in a competitive environment. Excessive error checking is time- & energy-demanding & does not lend itself to an efficient organism, artificial or otherwise. Of course, the benefits of being able to evolve on relatively fast timescales are apparent; otherwise you will not be able to adapt as a population to a changing environment. In organic organisms, the amount of error checking it itself an evolved trait--too little, and the organism cannot compete as efficiently; too much, and deleterious mutations wrack the organism.
So again, yes, but the timescale is up to the designer (until enough mutating generations pass & the evolution rate itself becomes an evolved trait).
[Answer]
Sure. Especially if they're self-replicating. Others have covered macroscopic versions, so I'll cover the microscopic.
If you have self-replicating nanobots, then so long as they don't have an existing biosphere to compete with, they'll happily spread over the entire planet providing a starting point for a whole new biosphere to evolve from.
They'll make errors when replicating, and while the designers will have included error-correction codes, you can only design in so much error correction into your microscopic robot. Eventually you'll get a few where the software gets garbled enough that something gets past the code (or disables it), and if those have differences in how likely they are to replicate, then you've got evolution in action.
Now, note I said before "so long as they don't have an existing biosphere to compete with". If your nanobots get out on a planet that already has a biosphere, they're unlikely to go very far. They're basically artificial microorganisms and the biosphere consists in large part of microorganisms that have been competing with each other for billions of years. The nanobots won't have any optimisations for that, and even if they did have some designed in, the existing biosphere will have far more variety in its own methods of competition. The nanobots will either get eaten, get out-competed for resources, or at best become just another species in the ecosystem.
If you want a nanobot-descended ecosystem, it has to get its start on a lifeless planet. Even then, the old grey-goo trope of turning the whole planet into nanobots won't happen, and definitely not quickly. Thermodynamics limits how fast they can operate. They can only withstand so much heat and still work, and that'll limit how far down they can go, assuming they can even find what materials they need.
So, overall, self-replicating nanobots undergoing subsequent evolution could be how life on a given planet got started. Could leave explorers from a more Earth-like origin scratching their heads after putting some samples under a microscope.
] |
[Question]
[
In the summer of 1957 Soviet leadership was shown a model of the soon-to-be first man-made object in outer space. It was a shiny sphere with thin antennae. The energized chief designer didn't mince his words describing the propaganda value of the launch. Then premier Malenkov interrupted him and spoke calmly: "Comrade, the Party has decided to keep the first satellite launch a secret, we want the capitalists to continue wallowing in complacency. Paint your sphere in black and make it silent".
Let's say we need a radio transmitter on the satellite that occasionally beeps while flying over Russia and can be delivered by R-7 rocket.
Is it possible to make it undetectable for contemporary US telescopes and radars?
[Answer]
Beyond all certainty, the answer is '**yes**'.
Sputnik 1 was specifically designed as a propaganda ploy, the singular intention of which was to broadcast a radio 'beep' that could be picked up on regular AM radios. There was no other practical purpose of the ball. That's how we (by 'we', I mean my family and I, personally) detected it as it flew overhead. Of course, we were able to see it as well, given the time of night and the position of the sun reflecting from it.
Sputnik 1 was less than 23 inches (58 cm) in diameter in an orbit between 215 km. and 939 km. With the state of radar at the time, it would be undetectable by any Earth-based system unless they were specifically looking for it.
It wasn't until 1960 that America had a [radar system sensitive enough](https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,894745-1,00.html) to pick up satellites that did not emit radio signals.
>
> Three weeks ago, headlines announced that the U.S. had detected a mysterious "dark" satellite wheeling overhead on a regular orbit. There was nervous speculation that it might be a surveillance satellite launched by the Russians, and it brought the uneasy sensation that the U.S. did not know what was going on over its own head. But last week the Department of Defense proudly announced that the satellite had been identified. It was a space derelict, the remains of an Air Force Discoverer satellite that had gone astray. The dark satellite was the first object to demonstrate the effectiveness of the U.S.'s new watch on space. And the three-week time lag in identification was proof that the system still lacks full coordination and that some bugs still have to be ironed out.
>
>
> First Sighting. The most important component of the space watch went
> into operation about six months ago with the construction of "Dark
> Fence," a kind of radar trip wire stretching across the width of the
> U.S. Designed by the Naval Research Laboratory to keep track of
> satellites whose radios are silent, it is a notable improvement on
> other radars, which have difficulty finding a small satellite unless
> they know where to look. Big, 50-kw. transmitters were established at
> Gila River, near Phoenix, Ariz, and Jordan Lake, Ala., spraying radio
> waves upward in the shape of open fans. Some 250 miles on either side,
> receiving stations pick up signals that bounce off any object passing
> through the fans. By a kind of triangulation, the operators can make
> rough estimates of the object's speed, distance and course.
>
>
> On Jan. 31 Dark Fence detected two passes of what seemed to be an
> unknown space object. After detecting several passes during the
> following days, Captain W. E. Berg, commanding officer of Dark Fence,
> decided that something was circling overhead on a roughly polar orbit.
> He raced to the Pentagon and in person reported the menacing stranger
> to Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke. Within minutes the news
> was communicated to President Eisenhower and marked top secret.
>
>
>
But it begs the question be asked, 'Why would the Russians send up a satellite no one could detect, if the entire purpose of the launch was to prove to the Americans that Russia could do it?' It was only after this, that they sent up silent [spy satellites](https://petapixel.com/2014/08/31/us-spy-satellites-used-drop-photos-film-buckets-space-airplanes-catch-mid-air/) that took high-res photographs, and then were retrieved to get the film.
>
> So, you think taking your film to the local shop to get developed is a
> pain? Try being an American spy satellite in the 1960s. Getting your
> film developed then meant dropping it in a special ‘film bucket’
> capsule from space, which the US Air Force then had to catch in
> mid-air.
>
>
> Strange as this seems, this is in fact how it worked, as you can see
> in the video above. Photographs captured by these so-called “Corona”
> satellites were shot on special 70 millimeter Kodak film using two
> panoramic cameras that evolved over the course of the program.
>
>
>
From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1) Note this refers to the booster, not Sputnik itself.
>
> The booster rocket was located and tracked by the British using the
> Lovell Telescope at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, the only telescope
> in the world able to do so by radar.[48] Canada's Newbrook Observatory
> was the first facility in North America to photograph Sputnik 1.[49]
>
>
>
**Edit Addendum**
Sputnik 1 was the first, period.
There were no satellites before Sputnik.
There were no ICBMs before Sputnik.
There were no rockets capable of delivering a payload into orbit before Sputnik.
There was nothing, period, made by humans circling the Earth before Sputnik. There was zero capacity for any country to put anything into Earth orbit.
There was certainly absolutely no need for anyone to have any radar that was looking for anything orbiting the Earth. It just wasn't possible for anything to be there.
For anyone under the age of 70, it is very difficult to imagine a world when there was absolutely nothing made by humans orbiting or even capable of orbiting the Earth. But some of us are old enough to remember. We were alive when the only thing in space before Sputnik was in sci-fi novels and comic books.
And there was zero telemetry from Sputnik 1. All it did was beep. The only telemetry was a change in the frequency of the beep, depending on temperature and pressure - catastrophic failure of the vehicle. No other data was transmitted. The only purpose of the beep was to demonstrate it was in orbit. When they heard the beep 90 minutes later, over Russia, they new it was a success. End of story, end of data, end of reason for the beep except propaganda.
**EDIT Addendum 2**
America did not even have radar installations that would reach near-Earth orbits, nor that even covered their own air space, [until after 1957](http://www.rfcafe.com/references/radio-news/radar-network-air-traffic-control-february-1957-radio-television-news.htm).
>
> The new radars will help CAA controllers accomplish this by scanning
> the skies for all aircraft up to 200 miles away, depending on size and
> altitude.
>
>
> The 23 radars will be part of an expanding coast-to-coast traffic
> control network of more than 70 civil and military radar
> installations. The network will give controllers a picture of aircraft
> from 15,000 to 70,000 feet in virtually all the U. S. airspace, and of
> aircraft at lower altitudes on densely traveled routes. Thus, radar
> will serve to track the civil and military jets which move at 600
> miles an hour or more in the higher altitudes, and the conventional
> aircraft traffic using the lower altitudes.
>
>
>
**EDIT Addendum 3**
The irony is, it was the Russian push for a propaganda victory that led to the Americans winning the race. Had the Soviets kept it a secret, world history would have been very different. America would not have changed their educational system towards the '60's version of STEM, physics would not have gotten the boost it did ([PSSC Physics textbooks](https://www.csun.edu/science/ref/curriculum/reforms/pssc.html) re-wrote the entire physics curriculum), America would probably not have put huge resources into space radar, and Kennedy would never have pushed for 'the Moon within a decade'. There would have been no Apollo program, no moon landing.
As for the timing deice, it was well within electronics/electricity to make a very simple capacitive timing device using diodes and resistors, to cause a capacitive discharge into a coil to produce a spark discharge every 90 minutes (the length of time it took for one orbit). The spark would have been so broad-band, it would have been picked up by receivers around the world, but would have been impossible to completely localize geographically, let alone be localized to space. The West would know something somewhere in Russia caused a spark, but they would have no idea what, and would probably not be able to differentiate it from say lightning. The Russians would know Sputnik completed an orbit, but no one else would have a clue. Recall that the Russians had absolutely no way to track it by radar either. They too needed it to send a signal.
The Russians could have developed their ICBM project in secrecy. They should just have kept their mouths shut, instead of going for publicity.
[Answer]
At the time of the launch of the Sputnik, there was no system to detect rocket launch, but it was developed [soon after](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Defense_Alarm_System)
>
> On October 4, 1957, from the Tyuratam range in the Kazakh SSR, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite. The event, while a scientific triumph, also signified that the Soviet Union now had the capability to attack the United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The R-7, the booster rocket that launched Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2, could be loaded instead with a hydrogen bomb, bringing the threat of a surprise nuclear Pearl Harbor-style attack on the United States and Canada. To give an early warning of any Soviet sneak ICBM attack, the governments of the United States, Canada, and Denmark (with the authority over Greenland, where the main radar station was built at Thule Air Base) agreed to build the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS). This system would use radar to detect incoming ICBM warheads and give about 20 minutes of warning of an ICBM attack.
>
>
>
Spotting a small sphere of metal moving at few km/s around Earth is not easy, in particular with no clue where to look for. Maybe only around the terminator it could be spotted as a very fast moving light point. But that would be a negligible risk, considering its limited dimensions.
Probably the radio signal would have been the giveaway: with no technologies to detect position, you can't really instruct the satellite to beep only when above friendly territory. You can however create a circuit which answers back when it is called, and you make the call sign obviously only from friendly territory. However I am not sure a receiving antenna and the related circuitry would have fit into the balance of the Sputnik, plus the unknown of having such a system operate in space for the first time.
[Answer]
I think the answers so far are kind-of-right, but not exactly right.
* The West certainly could have detected Sputnik, even painted black and without radio, if they had known where to look.
* Without the radio, and without the press release, they would not have known where to look.
Any visual observer without instruments would have interpreted any one sighting as a meteorite or the like, and failed to recognize that it was an artificial satellite. A sufficient number of visual observations might have allowed the calculation of the orbit, but how would the various observers coordinate their data?
Things would look completely different if the was tipped off by agents to mount a systematic search.
[Answer]
# Not if you want to communicate with it
Undetectability is impossible if it needs to send you something. In fact, the moment it needs to send a *single* beep from orbit with non directed antennae, that beep can be picked up by at least one NATO country, because radio waves go out in a sphere and it is flying so high, that every point over the Soviet Union is at least observable by some NATO or commonwealth country in the first or second reflection.
If the satellite flies the Sputnik 1 orbit, then it will be at its closest about 215 kilometers over earth. The ping will be listenable for 1670 kilometers - or when it does it in the center of Russia, it'd be listenable to most of Kazachstan and some areas of Mongolia and China. The first and second reflections carry the signal to India and Turkey. At its furthest, 939 kilometers over the earth, the ping reaches 3586.1 kilometers in the first instance and that means at the same point the unreflected signal can (almost/barely) be picked up in Deli, Oslo, and Ankara, and its first reflection will reach Tokyo and Berlin.
In fact, just about 230 kilometers more west and it can be heard in Berlin and only 1200 kilometers to the east to reach Tokyo instead of Ankara. And in any case, Spitzbergen is a very good listening post, allowing to hear the signal when it has about 3000 kilometers ping radius - which is at a height of 670.3 kilometers over the marked spot.
To visualize: these are the minimum and maximum circles of the direct signal, and that is without taking into account the effects the upper atmosphere has on signals - which usually make it carry much further.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QCjFv.jpg)
[Answer]
Well before 1957, it was possible to build a (vacuum tube) radio circuit that would respond to a pretty specific interrogating signal. Instead of a timer, that might cause your Sputnik to announce itself when the wrong nation is below, you send this circuit up.
Soviet ground station sends interrogation at the calculated time, and if the satellite is in the expected orbit and operating, hears the response. If the orbit is wrong or the satellite's battery or radio are dead, no one hears anything.
With appropriate tuning of the response signal strength (a few milliwatts might be sufficient, if the ground station has a directional, steerable antenna -- 1940s tech) the response from the satellite would only be audible to stations with large enough, high enough gain antennas, listening at the right time on the right frequency and in the right direction.
A much larger issue would be hiding the launch. R-7 used kerosene/oxygen engines, and the bright exhaust flame would be visible for thousands of miles from locations near the ground path (as happens now with Falcon 9 launches, though the flame would be smaller with the R-7). Any spy (especially with a mission to monitor missile activity) might see the launch, recognize it for what it is, and make a report. Combine this with other information from potential spies within the Soviet missile command, and it's possible American or British intelligence networks might learn of the launch in time to interrogate the satellite before its battery fails...
[Answer]
# Malicious compliance
This might seem like a joke, but it isn't. The URSS was a strange place to live, getting stranger by the moment. There were many rules to follow, sometimes contradictory, and therefore many comrades had to resort to malicious compliance if they wanted to survive.
The most popular example is Eduard Anatolyevich Khil, who was ordered to sing on national TV. But the song he had to sing spoke of a cowboy that was glad to return to his farm, which was a private property - and it was forbidden to mention private property in a positive light. The whole setup meant he would probably be taken straight from the studio to a gulag, but Eduard was a smartass. He went on stage and sang, but he replaced all the lyrics with "La lalaya lalaya la lala" and "Trololololo, lololo, lolo LOL". He went back home that night and managed to survive long enough to eventually become an internet meme.
Back to your guy, he can do both things. The chief designer can **make Sputnik "silent" by making sure that the signal is so faint that not even the most sensitive receivers can pick it up**. That makes it compliant with both requirements - it will beep and it will be invisible. As for beeping over Russia, put a timer on it. I would like to say that this is not rocket science, but calculating orbital periods and therefore when it beeps actually is rocket science. But still, nerding it out is in the comrade's job description.
[Answer]
The thing about Sputnik I is that it was a quickly conceived Plan B.
Plan A was to launch [Object D](https://www.russianspaceweb.com/sputnik3.html) in 1957, which was supposed to undertake a series of scientific measurements during a brief 3 or so week period, while in orbit.
There were problems however, Object D was too heavy and initially there was a [problem with the R7 rocket in being able to provide enough specific impulse](https://www.russianspaceweb.com/sputnik_design.html). There was also going to be a delay in the delivery of Object D, from 1957 to April 1958.
Plan B was to send the simplest satellite, and also a much lighter satellite, into orbit to claim the title of first orbital satellite launch.
Given the history of the launch of Sputnik I, it would be pointless trying to hide it, once it's launch was a success. Getting the Kudos for the first successful orbital satellite was something that appealed to [Khrushchev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita_Khrushchev), to "prove" the Soviet System was better than the American System, even if the first satellite was nothing more than just a radio beacon. Hence why he was eager to get the first animals, man and woman into space; amongst the other Space firsts the Soviet Union achieved.
If however, you want to develop an alternate story hiding Sputnik I, it's plausible, but the Soviet Union didn't hold on to the advantage it initially had, the Americans quickly overtook many of the Soviet achievements.
] |
[Question]
[
I am reading *We are Legion*, by Dennis E. Taylor, in which humanity has developed the so-called 3D atom printer, briefly described as:
>
> 3D printers delivered individual atoms using a number of tuned carbon nanotubes, each sized for specific elements. (...) as you had to place individual carbon atoms, one after another, with zero defect.
>
>
>
They are able to *print* any material by placing individual atoms, and thus their only concern is obtaining raw *matter*. In the book series the main characters resort to mining asteroids and planets to obtain the raw material needed to 3D print things.
I wonder what alternative methods (if any) science fiction has given to sufficiently advanced civilizations for collecting massive quantities of raw matter. Something like mining dark matter, for example. Soft(er) science fictions are welcomed, too.
[Answer]
# There's starlifting.
*[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting)*, *[YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzuHxL5FD5U)*.
Basically, the idea is that you get a large (humongous) magnet orbiting the star (or hovering over it artificially via solar wind sailing), with which you attract magnetically charged plasma of the star's surface (but a couple of other means are described at the respective links).
You then collect the uplifted matter and can convert it to the materials you need by nuclear fusion and fission. Stars are easily the most prominent source of matter for a reasonably advanced civilization since even our own relatively small sun contains ***99.8%*** of the mass of our *entire* solar system.
The best part is that you can power your starlifting operation directly from the star itself, achieving basically cost-free production. And of course, it's very industrially scalable.
[Answer]
Atomic transmutation (a.k.a. alchemy) is a gestalt technology. It changes everything.
Mining is the process of digging through masses of undesirable material to find the comparatively rare desirable materials.
When any material can be transformed into any other material at an atomic level, the whole idea of mining flies out the window.
*Dr. Emmett Brown needs some energy for his time machine so he grabs a few random items from Marty's trash can. After pouring some leftover soda into the Mr. Fusion's input hopper, he drops in the empty can. After all, matter is matter. It's current specific form is unimportant.*
So given that we have 5.972 x 10^24 kilograms of raw material right under our feet and given that [every day, Earth is bombarded with more than 100 tons of dust and sand size asteroid particles](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/overview/fastfacts.html), it is very unlikely that we will need to mine the asteroids any time soon.
If your device was created tomorrow, and if laws were passed that limited its use to existing garbage accumulated from just the last decade, the United States alone could provide more than [2 billion tons of raw material](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/zero-waste-families-plastic-culture#:%7E:text=The%20world%20generates%20at%20least,trash%20per%20person%20per%20day.) for transformation. Given this technology would allow us to go directly to the desired end product without all of the current byproducts and production waste, that decades worth of American trash would probably be enough to create a century of historically unprecedented wealth for the entire planet.
[Answer]
If there is a powerful and abundant enough energy source, there is always the option of converting energy into matter, remembering that $E=mc^2$.
That would allow for creating directly any nucleon and from them any atom.
However mind that only to create 1 gram of matter one would need $10^{15}$ J. That's why I started with "If there is a powerful and abundant enough energy source".
[Answer]
## Make it using lasers
Just a couple of years ago, scientists discovered that an adequately powerful [laser can be used to create matter out of a vacuum](https://www.newsweek.com/particle-physics-laser-space-vacuum-nuclear-weapons-793621). If your advanced civilization has discovered some infinite or virtually infinite source of power, they may decide to simply fabricate new matter out of nothing.
Although this technology technically exists today, making it practical would require an extraordinarily advanced race due to the following complications.
1. Lasers need to be in the petawatt range just to be able to get the smallest of subatomic particles to form; so, when I say you would need a virtually infinite source of power, I am talking about a level of power generation that makes a nuclear power plant look like a potato.
2. You would probably also need to handwave in some kind of super material to make the lasers out of since anything we have today will probably degrade faster than you could use it to generate replacement parts.
3. Another problem with this is that for every particle of matter that you make, you are also creating an equal mass of anti-matter which will of course need to be seperated, contained, and properly disposed of. Containing and disposing of anti-matter is no simple task, for this I would recommend dumping into the nearest black hole just to make good and sure it does not accidentally drift into any normal matter that you might care about.
4. Lastly, every proven source of power that we know of requires at a very minimum, the same amount of mass going into your reactor as you have energy coming out. So, for your civilization to "make matter out of nothing", it means that they need to first "make energy out of nothing". Both of these ideas are more or less impossible under our current understanding of physics, but the later at least has some theoretical possibilities.
## How an advanced civilization might do it
It is very difficult to generate energy from nothing, but there are a few devices believed by some to be able to exploit the permanent binding energy of nature's fundamental forces like [gravity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_tyMXRjOE4) or [magnetism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwTPwIcSDpg&t=209s) to produce net gain energy outputs from a system. While these devices are a bit controversial, and not super efficient, a future tech civilization might be able to grow these technologies into effective sources of energy.
For example, a gravity pinwheel engine placed close enough to a black hole might produce extraordinary amounts of power compared to our weak 1G powered variety. As a bonus, you could dump your unneeded antimatter safely into the black hole which you are already exploiting.
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# Recycle
For a growing civilization, you'll still need a net increase in total mass to keep things going, so this won't eliminate the need for mining. However, I'm sure there will be plenty of trash and other unused matter that can get thrown back into the machine.
This answer is inspired by the 2-part "Year of Hell" episode from Star Trek Voyager, where Janeway throws her watch into the replicator for a few more days of food.
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Create a pocket universe. (or just find one)
Keep it contained yet accessible.
Trigger a big bang and expend it enough to cool. Once cool enough matter will form. Extract the matter from that universe to the one you are in.
Or,
Mine the Past. (with a nod to the Strugatsky brothers) send pipelines and other implements into the past and get the goods before they were mined. You already know where they are and how good the quality is.
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I've also seen fiction that 'mines' the dark-energy field, basically slowing down the universal expansion by an immeasurable amount. But at that point you might as well just say 'magic'.
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[Nebulae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula) contain incredible amounts of resources (they are, after all, the remnants of supernovae) although said resources are generally incredibly diffuse, e.g. a nebular cloud the size of the Earth would have a total mass of only a few kilograms. So they're probably not an *efficient* option, unless you're able to find the denser areas.
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Well - if you really 'just' wanted matter, there's apparently hydrogen out in interstellar spaces. While its meant for reaction mass for a rocket, you could essentially use something like a [bussard ramjet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet) as a way to harvest it, and fusion to produce helium.
I'll leave it to the reader to work out how to turn a healthy breakfast of the neutrons, electrons and protons of helium, and the electrons and protons of hydrogen into other elements, and how the energy requirements make sense.
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Attach propulsion systems to asteroids and crash them on a planet or airless moon where traditional mining techniques can be used.
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Is there any generally useful magic that can be done if all it could do was violate the [Third Law of Thermodynamics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_law_of_thermodynamics)?
The Third Law of Thermodynamics just seems to relate to [absolute zero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_zero)? And it says that:
>
> It is impossible for any process, no matter how idealized, to reduce the entropy of a system to its absolute-zero value in a finite number of operations.
>
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> Physically, the Nernst–Simon statement implies that it is impossible for any procedure to bring a system to the absolute zero of temperature in a finite number of steps.[3]
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**Violating any of the laws of thermodynamics would be very useful.**
If you can violate the third law then you can get a substance to reach (or since it's magic, go below) absolute zero.
The laws are occasionally humorously defined like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zduCa.gif)
[The efficiency of a heat engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_Engine#Efficiency) follows this formula from Carnot:
$$\eta = 1 - {{T\_C}\over{T\_H}} $$
If you can get $T\_C$ to zero, the efficiency is unity. If you can get it lower than zero, efficiency is greater than unity. That means if you can actually reach zero, you can get 100% efficiency. If you can magic something to be below absolute zero, you can get more than 100% efficiency. This is known as free energy.
In general, free energy is considered useful.
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As far as I understand, you'll also get rid of the quantum [uncertainty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle): since a particles do not move, you can know both their momentum (zero) and their position. There already are some [workarounds](http://www.zmescience.com/science/physics/particle-momentum-position-measurement-54354/) that reduce the uncertainty, and they are linked to the possibility of the quantum computing - so, I guess your magic could be used in quantum computer.
By the way, getting the system lower than zero does not require magic:
<http://www.quantum-munich.de/research/negative-absolute-temperature/>
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We are pretty used to read private letters of important and less important people who lived in a distant past: for example we can read the quite explicit letters that Mozart wrote to his wife and love letters [written on birch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript) by somebody in Novgorod.
Given that those who wrote these letters are long gone, their privacy is not really a concern. Their writings, where applicable, can be considered public domain.
Now, coming to my problem: in a world where some individuals are immortal and disguise it by periodically changing name and place where they live, how can they ensure that their writings and drawings, be them public or private, do not end up exposed in some museums or library for the general public to read them?
For one they don't like being exposed to the public eye in that way, and it can also happen that some inquisitive mind notices the remarkable stylistic proximity of several letters written in the span of various centuries.
* Technology-wise these immortals operate in a world which has reached at most the equivalent of our 1940, so no no digital or electronic mass storage of data.
* While they live in a certain place as Mr/Ms X, they cannot totally avoid interaction with mortals, including romantic affairs. They can sporadically live in total isolation, but not for more than a couple decades per century (eternity is very boring to spend alone)
* The less other people are involved in supporting their "leave no traces behind", the better.
* preferably no magic involved
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# They testament it to themselves
*Heirlooms* are not subject to copyright. As physical objects, they will remain with the [estate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_(law)).
An immortal will simply set themselves up as the trustee of the estate, or [testament](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_and_testament) the estate in its entirety to their new identity, and — as such — make sure that the heirlooms remain within the estate. Their new identity will then be the "new" owner of their property, and as such it cannot be appropriated by anyone else against their will.
As for creations that are not physical — and where copyright *might* apply, such as works of music — well, that depends entirely on how copyright actually works in this fictional world of yours. In this present world that we live in, copyright expires on — or some time after — the death of the original copyright holder, and that would be a problem for your Immortals.
However, there is an easy way around it: you can simply define copyright law in your fictional world differently, such as — to alleviate the problem of important works being lost due to copyright never expiring — forcing estates that owns a copyright to *license* such works periodically to retain the copyright, or else it expires.
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# Obfuscate, Annihilate, Imitate:
It will take great deliberateness to eliminate any evidence of an immortal. They will need to take a variety of steps to erase any evidence of their presence.
* **Get a secretary**: If the works and letters themselves are written by another hand, the handwriting cannot match. Have your immortal hire a personal secretary to write their works. You can't match handwriting if you don't handwrite.
* **Destroy the evidence**: If you burn all copies of anything you write, then there is no evidence of your presence. Destroy entire libraries if needed - history shows they are easy enough to destroy. It does mean it is very difficult to leave a record, but your goal here is NOT to leave a record.
* **Work by proxy**: Maybe Galileo was an ordinary idiot, and didn't know one end of a telescope from another. But if an immortal wants to leave no record of themselves yet still leave a legacy, then a proxy given credit would keep attention off the immortal while leaving their works intact.
* **Be artificial**: In the renaissance, calling someone artificial was a compliment. It meant you controlled yourself well and presented only that part of yourself you wanted people to see. If each incarnation affects a deliberate and conscious style different from the true self, the record of the person won't reflect themselves, but the person they portray (like an actor).
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As noted in the comments, copyright and privacy (secrecy) are two different things.
[**Copyright**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright) is a legal concept and a relatively new one (the first laws appeared only in the mid-17th century). Copyright establishes legal ownership of intellectual property and exclusive copying rights. However, *copyright does not guarantee that one's works will not be copied and distributed illegally*.
It might be dangerous for immortals to lobby for laws that grant intellectual property rights with no expiration date. This could attract unwanted attention and expose immortals to the general public. It might be better to keep a low profile and treat intellectual property as something that has limited earning potential. Immortals, especially those born a long time ago, should understand the fleeting nature of the world and prioritise non-exposure over profits.
As many other answers state **privacy/secrecy** can be achieved by either producing no works, or their destruction, or the use of perishables in their creation. This should work for many immortals. However, **if an immortal desires to leave their legacy, *one of the possible solutions is establishing a school, i.e. gathering a group of people that use the same style and share the same philosophy.***
Historically, many workshops followed the same style and trained apprentices in it. Even contemporary art historians with their advanced techniques and equipment have a hard time distinguishing between works of individuals belonging to the same workshop or style school. Individuality tends to appear only when very talented apprentices mature and develop their own interpretation of the style. However, if works are finished collectively this individual style can be barely noticeable or even disappear completely.
It is expected for apprentices of a school to imitate works of their predecessors and have the same style. So, it will not raise any flags if an immortal keeps producing works over a long time using the same style if they pose as a member of the school.
It is also worth mentioning that artistic styles are not static. They evolve and change over time. Some artists have well-defined periods in their artistic careers, where they use rather distinct styles and approaches. It is hard to imagine that immortals will be different in this regard. As time changes, as they accumulate more experience, as new technologies develop, immortal artists will change as well. Their styles will undergo transformations. If the changes are significant enough it would not be possible to establish that all works belong to the same person based on the works alone.
Today we establish authorship of as many works as possible, determine elements common to all of them, and only then attempt to attribute authorship to works of unknown or disputed origin. Working backwards from works to the immortal author, especially when the existence of immortals is unknown and style school is known, is almost impossible. The most likely conclusion will be that later generations produced apprentices highly skilled at imitating the original style.
Writing may pose a slight problem, though. Penmanship is affected to at least some degree by our genetics and is very habitual, so a paranoid immortal would need to make a conscious effort to change their handwriting style and habits every time they change their identity. It should be noted that different writing systems develop different handwriting habits. So, it is also likely that an immortal's penmanship will change naturally as they learn new languages and new writing systems. The effect will be significantly reduced as they grow older, though.
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# The same way mortals do it
>
> Eliza Hamilton was a modest, self-effacing woman who apparently
> destroyed her own letters and tried to expunge her presence from the
> history books (*Alexander Hamilton* by Ron Chernow)
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>
>
Mortals have the very real problem of maintaining privacy. Immortals would have the same issues and would use the same approaches. You can use protected communications channels ([Hillary Clinton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy), [Ivanka Trump](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ivanka-trump-used-a-personal-email-account-to-send-hundreds-of-emails-about-government-business-last-year/2018/11/19/6515d1e0-e7a1-11e8-a939-9469f1166f9d_story.html)), rely on trusted recipients who won't share your communications ([Mark Twain](http://www.twainquotes.com/19351215.html)), expose the most embarrassing things you've done before other people can do it ([Jeff Bezos](https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146e3922310f)), never write anything down ([Donald Trump](https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2021/8/5/22611154/donald-trump-fraud-crooked-mob-boss-gene-lyons)), etc.
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# Ephemeral art
Use materials that won't last. Some buddhist monks will make very elaborate mandalas with colored sand, just to blow the sand away when those are done. In Tibet they even make butter sculptures which melt a few hours later.
Your artists could use very fragile paper that crumbles to dust in short time and ink that fades fast. Once you receive a letter, you've got a few days to read it and then it's gone.
Or use a pencil. In this case the text might last a few years. In any case use light strokes so the text cannot be inferred by the marks on the paper.
Drawings can be made with food material (milk, ketchup, soy sauce) that will spoil within days. It will be beautiful when finished, but insects and rats will overtake it after a few days. Even if someone wishes to preserve it behind glass it may be difficult.
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## Corporations Are People My Friend
Just set up a corp that owns the copyright. They can fund it with their immortal wealth and control how it works and lobby politicians to extend their copyrights, without being directly exposed.
If they want to hide a document, they can just have the corporation hide anything they make. So long as they hire trustworthy people this should work fine.
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**Private Works are Easy**
You draw a distinction between writings and drawings that are "public" and others that are "private". Keeping private documents private is simple. Your immortal will in some way own or control a piece of property upon which is constructed a secure building with a hefty vault. Perhaps in the crypt of a church or even a monument in a park or cemetery. Immortal stashes private papers in the vault. Without access, no one else can get at them to publish them. Papers she wants access to she will keep in her home.
Keeping her private life private and low key will be the way to go. The obvious downside would be robbery of the vault's contents or loss of access to said contents. If she doesn't have the key anymore, she can't get in!
**Public Works are Not too Difficult**
In a sense, this one is even easier. Your immortal will simply write nothing and draw nothing -- *of any consequence* -- for public consumption. Your immortal will simply have to be very careful about what she doodles on napkins in restaurants (doodles and notes can indeed become very famous and valuable); and she will have to ensure that nothing of consequence ever gets written or drawn that is traceable to her. The difficulties lie in her own ability to keep her valuable works private.
Public documents like credit card slips, receipts, business documents and various ephemera of that sort can be prevented by contracting all transactions through her corporation.
**No Works is Optimal**
Less is best. The best option for an immortal to keep writings and drawings away from public scrutiny is to simply keep nothing for the public to scrute. If she's old enough, she probably didn't know how to write for the first thousands of years of her life, so the issue would be moot. She would have to develop a good memory and keep her stories and her secret vice to herself.
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you are worried about nothing.
Just don't give your works away, historic material does not magically teleport to museums. People who own them give them to museums, usually descendants of the author. Unless your immortals make it a habit of donating their work to museums or selling works of art, there really is no issue. even if a few letters make it to museums it will mean nothing, writing styles are not something at can be compared with individual levels of accuracy, nor would they remain static they change over a persons life. People can't even agree on what Shakespeare wrote despite having ample examples of his writing.
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I assume, that you are regularry changing identity (like each 20-50 years - you have to age at the same pace as people around you and if you cannot magically modify yourself, this is how far you can safely go by mundane means), ideally let the old you "die" in an accindent or so to be surely dead, not just missing (still some beleive that Elvis Pressley is alive somewhere else, so he cannot safely re-use his older look and style). That is like 3 identities per century.
Your biggest enemy are ofcource you, as you want to keep some your writings (or writings from your love, or picture or so) and so you came your own bigger museum and you must keep that hidden for all cost. (And you cannot just burn it all, as you need at least something like diary, to remember, who were your enemies, where are dangerous informations about you, where you was too notorius etc. etc.).
Next one are your letters to personal friends/loves, which you gave away - would be wise time to time show your love, that you still keep ALL her letters in one box (and draw her/him to do similar) so you can later easy collect the letters back be it by yourself or by hired burglar, burning donw the whole building or any other means.
The same problem goes for records about you - your friends may draw your pictures, write letters about you to other people, write diaries, all that describing you, sometimes in good details.
Then there are already public materials, like street photo/picture, where you are included, press writing about you, official records (but those are more about your money, houses, nationales etc, so less directly incriminating).
And being immortal, you became too good in some areas, as you have experiences from many lifes. If you would do the same (not recomended), you are too proficient in it ater few centuries of practising it. Doing different things you are skilled in too much areas, which is also hard to hide consistently. So prepare to be little outstanding in each new incarnation - and so more probably noted more than average person - this include more journalist/historican/influent people coverage.
So best you can do is make your personal museum minimalistic and good guarded, burning everything you do not necessery need.
Also the clothes and style changes relatively fast (historicians can from picture/description tell time of origin to like +/- 20 years correct) and there are few different ways at each time, so you will use very distinctive style for one incarnation and totally different for the next one - if you will be portrayed anyway (in pictures or in writings), let it be more about your clothes and extravagacies, then from you are under it. Clothes make a person and it is possible to make so specific impression, that changes to other style nobody would recognise you. (lol, I made it to my wife, I changed and came at her workplace just to be send away by her, cause "there is already after closing time". We where face to face at that moment :) )
What also helps is to make sometimes pause between incarnations (take few years time away), while let other two incarnations overlap - live somewhere as aging and slowing person, many times too lazy/tired to leave house for days, while you make appereance at other place as very active young person - your next incarnation - it would mix your trace.
There will sadly anyway would be some your personal records, but it would be extremely hard to connect them to the same person. So even when there may be here and there some your intimate letter at some museum for everyone to read, nobody would connect it to your other incarnations, mainly the current one.
And you can arrange "dissappearing" of many such letters over years in unrelated cases - like robbing the museum of some special exponates, while making mess all around and let few letters and other small items to be lost too - you do not want to make impression, that only one letter (colection of letters) was stolen - this would make many questions and maybe copies would be studied. But robing it for some historical armor and weapons, or kings crown, or famous jewelry and leave big collateral would give press item to talk about (the main target like jewelry) and ommit all the small collaterals as "and many more priceless items was lost or destroyed" and even if somebody would try make connection, then it would be hard to say, what was really important for you.
Also you need to decide, what is really bothering you (to be deaply personal or too much revealing) and what is better to just leave as not so important (as you do not want to do too many risky moves and leave too many indicies, to someone realize, that ALL letters from THIS and THET person was stolen nearly simulately and start to ask about THOSE personas)
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[Question]
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I am trying to make a language for a fictional world and I am wondering how a species without vocal chords could communicate via written language
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## It may be 2-dimensional as well as 1-dimensional
Speech, sign languages and such transmit a single sign at a time, thus forcing the writing, which is secondary, to also form a sequence of signs that can be read one at a time.
A language made by different species that originates in a written form directly doesn't have to follow this restriction. It's likely to develop from the sights of the body language, and there several signs can be formed simultaneously by different body parts, each being as complex as human facial expressions.
If your species have brains adapted to read such complex poses, their writings will first capture the poses in something like [parietal art](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parietal_art). And it will get more abstract from that, to the level of modern ideographs or more. But no need may ever arise to linearize it.
So the words or sentences in the language may be based on a [graph grammar](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Graph_grammar) instead of our conventional string grammars. Graph grammars are usually more powerful at the same level of rule types, a [context-free](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-free_grammar) one able to form sentences that only a context-dependent can make in pure one-dimensional text. So a writing that has never passed through speech form has a potential to be something drastically different from human speech and lead to a *completely alien* way of thinking.
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Purely written languages have already been created! The most famous is probably [Unker Non-Linear Writing System](https://s.ai/nlws/) (UNLWS), but you can also find others - see [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/2dimz9/what_are_some_writtenonly_conlangs/) for a collection of links. Here's a sample of UNLWS, to show you what it's like:
>
> 
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>
> *"I understood from my parents, as they did from their parents, etc., that they became happier as they more fully grokked and were grokked by their cat."*
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As you can see, this is non-linear; that is, concepts do not always follow each other in a straight line. This is probably the most innovative concept which purely-written languages offer over spoken ones: while sound waves are 1D, a page is 2D, and a written language may be able to exploit this extra dimension, as UNLWS does.
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Chalk and slate, charcoal and wood, or clay or wax tablets. (At least to start.) They would have started by scratching characters into the dirt and painting on cave walls, but technological necessity would develop portable tools.
That said, there's a more portable mechanism yet that would likely evolve in parallel - sign language. If the creatures are unable to make any sounds, that doesn't necessitate a written language.
(It goes without saying that advances in writing technology would be adopted as it was developed.)
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A language could be developed in any manner that conveys information. Sound can be carried in other ways than using vocal cords. Clapping, snapping fingers, clicking claws, sign language. It might even develop from facial expressions.
A written language might be assumed to start from pictures such as hieroglyphics, but it could also be symbol based. For instance, if the language started from sign language, the written language may mimic the shapes of the sign language. If the language were based on the tapping of sticks together, the written language may somehow show the beat (like music for drums).
How the language is conveyed may bias the society toward being more mathematical (from rhythms) or being emotional tuned to each other if based on facial expressions.
While it doesn't have to, I see no reason to think that the technology couldn't follow the same path as our technology, assuming they have hands or something similar once a language is invented to manipulate tools the same way.
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Writing developed from pictures to pictograms to ideograms. In a species with spoken language it can then move to phonetic scripts such as syllabaries and alphabets. But in a species that does not speak the next step would reasonably a featural script describing whatever method they used to communicate without writing.
What form that takes is really up to you. For sign language it would be stylized representations of the gestures. For color based communication, it would be just the colors. Or bunch of lines of different lengths corresponding to different possible colors. Which would also work for scent or radio based communication.
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Actually when it reach the aplabet stage, than leters may be anything "random but distinct" - alphabet also have no relation to how it is spoken (other than wague custom - the same alphabet is spelled differently in different countries and the words are read really different (if read by native, not as try to spoke in other known language)).
So maybe ***A*** would be "spelled" as jaws cliks, while ***B*** would be spelled as rotation around vertical axes clockwice, ***C*** would be spelled as particular pheromone and ***D*** would be just decent fluorescence. (And their written form may be the same as in aplhabet, or totally different, it does not matter too, just there should be a way to recognize those "characters" with sences avaiable to the alien race.)
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You’re conflating two very different questions here: “How would a written-only language work?”, or “How would language work for a species without vocal chords (or, presumably, any alternative capability for complex sounds)?” Which of those constraints do you really want to explore?
If “no vocal language” is what you want to explore, then, “sign language” is a much more natural answer than “written language”. It’s well-documented that human communities can [spontaneously invent fully-featured sign languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language) quite quickly when other language is off the table (e.g. due to deafness), or for other reasons (e.g. as a lingua franca between different spoken languages), whereas the invention of writing is historically extremely rare, and has (as far as we know) always grown gradually out of a pre-existing spoken language.
A written-only language, or more generally a language whose primary form is closer to what we know as “writing” than what we know as “speaking” or “signing” — that’s a more far-fetched constraint, but at the same time probably a more interesting one to explore, as it’s much further from anything we know of in human linguistic history. The other answers give various suggestions for how that might work.
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One main issue here, that human written language represents sounds (most languages). However, what you need here is words representing meaning. (Think of Chinese script as an example).
As per the example of [Koko, the Gorilla which communicates via sign language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koko_(gorilla)), she was smart enough to use "words" signs in their proper context. If a sentient yet "mute" species evolves written language, most likely it would be an abstract representation of its sign gestures.
For that to happen, you must assume the species does not use complex sounds in any form to communicate. (It does not matter whether the sounds come from vocal cords or *other* organs).
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Human language began as vocalizations coalescing into concepts to facilitate communication. If you take vocalization out of the equation, the precursor to written language would likely be visual like sign language, dance (think worker bees), or changing color patterns like an octopus warning predators to stay away.
Whichever root you choose to pursue, the language should reflect that origin. To compare, the English language represents the sounds words make. Potato is written that way because it's letters represent a pronunciation of "Po tay toe", a spoken word you associate with a starchy tuber. So for sign language you'd want to have symbols that evoke the positions and motions this alien would perform to convey their ideas in their natural sign language. For dance, something that evokes the flow of their natural dance. For color shifting, you could argue that naturally they would have began making pictures and patterns on their bodies, growing in detail and nuance as communication became more developed until they arrived at a semi-pictorial written language similar to Chinese characters that represents their natural body coloring language.
Though that said you could likely develop this into any origin; communication based on touch, on scent, on Morse code-like tapping, on electric impulses, on telepathy, on writing messages into genetics, or anything your wild imagination can conceive. You'll simply want to make the written language evoke elements of that communication technique.
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My understanding is that [pictographs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictogram) like [hieroglyphics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieroglyph) are developed before an alphabet takes form. Once the alphabet forms, your fictional species could use [bioluminescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence) to communicate in a style similar to [morse code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code). A certain sequence of blinks would represent a written letter. Certain colors could also express different emotions.
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Chinese people sometimes draw out characters on their palms with their finger. The written language is such that it's not too difficult to visualize the result of their invisible finger writing.
Chinese characters are ideographs, as in each one represents an idea. Most are combinations of simpler ones. For example there is a simple character representing a tree, and a forest is simply three of them packed into the space of one character (all characters are the same size). There is also a fixed stroke order, i.e. the order in which the lines that make up the character are to be drawn in is prescribed. These factors make it easier to visualize characters from finger movements on the palm. Phones support it as an input method and people can so do without looking at the screen.
Another hand based solution would be something like a chording keyboard on the fingers. Chording keyboards have a small number of keys, say 4 or 5 to match the number of fingers available, and characters are selected by the combinations of keys pressed simultaneously. It's kinda like playing a chord on a piano.
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One more extra example - there are written laguages, which are used to transmit elaborate ideas, constructions and commands for readers, who does not have vocal chords. And those languages are not ment to be directly spoken (usually are even mechanically obsure so cannot be directly spoken), just written and read.
The recipients are typically able to sense tactile informations, light even outside human visible spectre, sometimes also preasure, moisture, also magnetic and gravity directions and force and usually express itself in movements, emiting lights, sometimes sounds or music, but usually does not spoke, but many times they express themself by elaborate series of electric pulses.
Yes, I am talking about programming languages for Arduino, or CNC, or any other manufacturing robots, maybe even for "typical" computers :)
[Answer]
Many human beings already work extensively with a language which is purely written: computer code. Almost all of all the programming languages in existence are basically impossible to express vocally, turning into a mindless stew of vocalised punctuation marks or explicitly expressed whitespace. You could argue that this is because the 'entity' we're 'communicating' with doesn't natively have ears or vocal cords. Yes, that's because we built them that way, but it still reflects the reality.
As a consequence, trying to express complex concepts in this purely-written language has resulted in some of the features that other posts have described: non-linear 'flow' is a good example. Another notable feature is recursion and abstraction: the ability to describe a complex meaning and 'assign' it to a compact representation, and particularly to incorporate recursion into that meaning.
When thinking about the evolution and development of such a language system, you could explore the history of programming languages, which began as an extremely literal translation of the physical 'movement' of the hardware, and developed much more meaning and abstraction over time, eventually shifting to some of the not-text-based programming 'interfaces' we see today. Certainly while your alien race's language might develop *from* anatomical roots (sign language or a limited palette of sounds), it won't remain so simplistic, it will develop according to the intelligence of the creatures.
[Answer]
It's very likely that they would not develop written language first. The most likely cases are either:
* They develop a pure sign language. I know of no known cases of this happening in real life.
* They develop a mixed sign language utilizing a combination of visual signals and whatever vocalizations they are already capable of making. Most primates and cetaceans have some level of language like this, and arguably most other vertebrates do to varying degrees too.
* They develop a phonetic language like most Earth languages, but with a different set of phonemes. There's nothing that says a language can only use sounds a human can make, or that it has to have some minimal number of sounds (and there's huge variety in real life, English has up to 28 vowel sounds depending on dialect, while Spanish has only 5).
From there, they may eventually develop a written language, though if humanity is any indication, it will probably take a very long time, and possibly an agrarian lifestyle.
As far as the written form of such a language, it's hard to say. It really depends both on which of the the type of language they develop, as well as further details of the language itself:
* If it's a pure sign language that only uses a 1:1 mapping between ideas and signs, you'll probably end up with a logographic writing system similar to Hanji or the classical Mayan writing system, most likely originating as stylized depictions of the signs themselves.
* If it's a pure sign language that utilizes something like an infix system (that is, each root 'word' has a sign, then other signs are used to signify derivations, similar to how Esperanto works), you will probably end up with a compositional writing system still similar to traditional logographies. In essence, something where you have a glyph that indicates the root, and then modifiers that indicate part of speech, 'inflection', tense, mood, and other things.
* If it's a context-based pure sign language (that is, the same sign can mean different things in different cases), you will probably still end up with either of the two previous cases.
* If, however, it's a mixed sign language, things get really complicated. A logographic writing system is of course still a possibility here, because it's always a possibility, but you may end up with something that looks more akin to Pinyin, Hepbun, or other alphabetic representations of otherwise non-alphabetic scripts. Essentially, you get a base writing system (probably logographic) mapping the signs to glyphs, and then have extra modifiers that indicate the associated sounds that go with it.
* Where it gets really interesting though is if you go with the (rather unlikely) possibility of a sign language where sequences of signs map to ideas. In essence, this type of language would be like our own natural languages, just using movements instead of sounds. In this case, they may develop a writing system that wouldn't be too drastically different from ours, except it would almost certainly be purely phonetic in nature initially (unlike most real world languages which typically have a 1:N mapping of symbols to sounds).
* In the event that they just have a regular phonetic language, there's no reason to suspect they would develop a written language not unlike our own.
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[Question]
[
You may have heard of this common fantasy trope, an archer firing multiple (usually 3) arrows in a single pull of the bow.
Now, I am not an expert at bows or tactics, but it seems to me that the loss of accuracy is not worth even attempting this and that's assuming it could work!
What problems appear with this 'Multi-arrow' bow and how can I overcome these? What are the actual realistic advantages and disadvantages of a multi-arrow bow if it could work?
[Answer]
Your main problem is that you're trying to fling **multiple projectiles with a single bowstring**. I'm no physics guru, but it seems that you're going to be dividing the pounds of pull across the total number of projectiles -- so you'll get correspondingly **less range & target penetration** than if you stuck with a single arrow *(ignoring more obvious issues like aiming)*. [Someone actually ran the numbers on how much kinetic energy from the bowstring is transferred to the arrow](http://www.wired.com/2014/12/much-energy-bow-goes-kinetic-energy-arrow/), if you're interested.
A crossbow is a much more workable solution, as the strings can be drawn in advance, and held in place. That leads to the possibility of firing more than one projectile, in quick succession. [Such weapons are indeed a trope](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AutomaticCrossbows), usually because the increased firepower is desirable from an action standpoint, but the limitations of the time period will not allow firearms.
One solution to firing multiple arrows is a special crossbow, featured in [a battle scene in the 2000 film *The Gladiator*](https://youtu.be/AIZIImigbjI?t=20s). On first glance, it looks rather ridiculous, but I actually feel it is a workable design *(albeit perhaps not terribly practical for anything other than a showy arena skirmish)* for the simple reason that ***each crossbow bolt has its own string***, rather than some sort of imaginary bolt "magazine" that ignores the necessity of re-cocking the string after each firing. Additionally, it dispenses with any sort of fanciful common trigger system, and appears to have the wielder just rotate the entire weapon on its axis.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/S8iEk.jpg)
A simpler version would be the double-sided crossbow, from the 2000 film *Dracula*:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/agUqm.jpg)
[Answer]
## Accuracy
Let me expand on "reduced accuracy". I base this on my own experience shooting target-weight bows and observing others.
Accuracy at any decent range depends on some fairly fine-grained factors. Aim a fraction of an inch high or low, or draw the string back *not quite as far as usual* (or *just a bit farther*), and you're probably going to miss your mark. You might still hit a large target *somewhere*, but it won't be what you were aiming for. It is not uncommon to mark the center-point of the string for this reason, so that you're nocking the arrow at the same position (and thus drawing at the same angle with respect to the bow) each time. **The key to good aim is consistency.**
If you add arrows to the string in a single draw, then *by definition* those arrows are not positioned to hit your target. Movies usually depict multiple arrows being spaced an inch or so apart on the string, maybe more. And if those arrows have fletching (feathers), you probably can't get them much closer than half a inch on the string. (For any decently-heavy bow, the arrow itself is about a quarter-inch in diameter.) *That's a huge difference* when shooting at even 30 yards, to say nothing of 50 or 100 yards. Those extra arrows may look pretty, but they aren't hitting your target. I suppose if you're shooting at a large charging army they might hit somebody else, if you're very lucky, but probably not (see "power").
## Power
Other answers have already addressed the reduced power so I won't repeat them. Your arrows aren't going to pack the punch you need to do damage. They're also not all going to get the *same* amount of power; the one in the middle will have more force than the others, which will likely fall short. (Thanks to XandarTheZenon for pointing this out in a comment.)
## Practicality
A competent archer can fire an aimed shot about once every five seconds; good ones are even faster. A lot of this speed comes from the ease of the load-draw-release cycle. It's a very smooth motion; you draw an arrow from the quiver by its nock and place it on the string. You don't even need to be looking at it; this is done by feel. (Instead you're looking at your target.)
Now, how long is it going to take you to load *three* arrows onto the bowstring? I don't think you can do them all at once, and if you do them one at a time then the ones already on the string are going to slow you down. I haven't tried the experiment, but I'm going to be bold and say that it will take you longer to load and fire your trio of arrows than it would take to fire them individually.
So you can shoot less-accurate under-powered arrows more slowly, or you can shoot them one at a time instead. I know which I'd choose.
[Answer]
I use a recurve and longbow. Getting good at this took practice, like a lot of practice.
First. There are some very expert opinions out there on why this is fake and or a bad idea but there are some problems with that. Most people aren't thinking of the bow as a weapon of war. They are thinking of it as a hunting/sport weapon. They are thinking of compound and recurve bows where it is pretty much a given that you are going to be using bow hand draw and not arrow hand draw.
Second, the physics around arrow flight are really REALLY complicated. So complicated that for a long time people thought bows were an impossible mechanism leading to the coining of the "archers paradox" now I'm not going to get into the specifics but suffice it to say that the loss of acceleration is correct but not as dramatic nor as important as you'd think in the context of a battle.
third thing is, Arrow hand draw is important which means owning a bow that allows you to do this is important, you can get a longbow, and if you are interested in them I highly reccommend it, or you can just get a recurve for the opposite of your dominant hand and sand the grip to shape it a bit. Professional olympic archers can fire an arrow maybe every once every 3-5 seconds an ancient archer could fire an arrow about once every second. The reason is arrow hand draw lets you rest, nock, and draw the arrow as a single motion rather than maneuvering the clumsy bow hand draw. This is going to help you keep the top arrow from going off course or worse, interfering with the flight of your other arrow.
fourth thing, in sports and hunting accuracy is important, in battle they are important but the MOST important thing is how many arrows you can put down range within a specific amount of time. It may not surprise you to learn that people really don't like getting shot with an arrow, so the less of a break in the screaming bodkin-pointed death missiles there was, the less of an opening you presented. Also the average range for an archer to be shooting at individual targets in battle is 170-200 feet at most otherwise they would just be firing into the mass of people hoping to hit. So you don't actually have to get it that far.
So to pull off the famed "multishot" you need to knock two arrows, I know theres a lot of ways to do that and some people use a mechanism to aid them in having a clean release. I've personally found this is the worst way to do this trick so I would avoid it. The method I've always used is one finger above the nock and two below but for this you are going to make an "arrow sandwich" with one below the first arrow one in the middle and one on top of the second. and you need to grip the bow so that your index (pointer) finger can extend and the tip can rest between the two.
If you did it right both the arrows should be perfectly straight.
Now here's the part that's going to take practice. There are two things i've found that generally make this trick work reliably. First, and most important, once you release the string your index finger needs to slide out from between the arrows, otherwise the hens (the two matching coloured flights) are going to sting it on the way past, your instinct is going to be to curl it back in but what usually happpens when you do that is it deflects the bottom arrow down. The best thing to do is to flick it straight out so it's out of the way, this may deflect the top arrow up a bit but over a longer distance it will drop back down and you should still get a pretty accurate shot. Second, draw the bow with only your middle finger, keep rour ring and index finger extended to stabilize the arrows but you should be pulling from the middle, the reason for this is, while the bow will deliver all of its force across the entire string it delivers the greatest acceleration from the point you drew it back, for maximum accuracy this should be directly between the two arrows.
[Answer]
## Reduced Accuracy
As you mentioned, the accuracy of all of the arrows would be significantly degraded.
## Reduced Power
A bow transfers energy from the bent wood/materials of the bow into an arrow through its bowstring. The amount of momentum imparted depends upon a number of factors but by adding multiple arrows to the bow string, you are *at the least* dividing the momentum by the number of arrows added.
Decreased momentum means:
1. Lower range
2. Less penetrating power
## Historically Speaking
I suppose the best argument about whether you gain or lose more by adding arrows to the bow string is by looking through history. The trick is an obvious one so if the people who did it greatly benefited from it, you'd expect everyone to be doing it.
## Limiting Factors
The limiting factors of arrow acceleration are:
* The mass to be propelled, for example the arrow(s) - $m\_{arrows}$
* The mass of the limbs of the bow - $m\_{limbs}$
Also there's a scaling factor, in that the firing of the bow causes the bowstring (and arrows) to pass through the entire draw length (perhaps 24-30 inches). Meanwhile the limbs of the bow (which are forcing the arrow through that distance) may only pass through a few inches. This distance might be 8-10 inches or so (see image below).
Bow drawn and at rest:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jcpr1.png)
Because the ratio of motion between the arrow and bow limbs are not constant you actually get a relatively complex interaction between the two. Initially the force propelling arrow and limbs are high. As the string returns to rest, the amount for force decreases while the amount of motion increases.
Even if you set the arrow mass at zero (no arrow notched), the bow will take time to return to rest state (FYI, never draw and release a bow with no arrow notched, this can break your bow) because the bow limbs have finite mass.
[Answer]
Actually, it is quite possible to fire THREE arrows with a single draw. I first saw this technique in the Hindi movie, **Bahubali (2), The Conclusion**. Google for images and relevant yt clips.
Now, while I'm sure there was liberal application of Movie Magic, especially when the hero shot past the gal's head—two past her ears, one above her crown…I've not been able to figure out how to bump one of the arrows into a higher/wider flight—I've nonetheless been able to duplicate the *draw* if not the loading speed and fluency.
Note the draw hand's inverted grip with thumb-down, palm-away. Inverting is not necessary, but is definitely a conversation starter on ranges. When the arrows are parallel, their grouping is quite tight. I've yet to get a spread triple hit by putting angles between the shafts.
But instead of me telling y'all about it, I recently found this: <https://youtu.be/l6HdEqOpgzE>
[Answer]
Shooting multiple arrows is somewhat similar to throwing knives.
Certainly, it is possible and it isn't completely useless, but it's not something commonly done in a combat situation. Its unreliable and requires many hours of practice to perform with any modicum of skill.
With Knife Throwing, there are many other weapons that are far more effective at range. Instead of wasting your time trying to throw a knife, just pick up a bow or throw a javelin. The knife is just a backup weapon at close range and a tool.
Firing a second arrow will reduce the power of the bow, but if its being done at close range you can afford to sacrifice power against lightly armored targets. The real issue here is that you don't gain much. Let's say you fire two arrows at a single target. If one of them misses, the second one likely will as well. You've handicapped yourself for no benefit. One arrow in the chest is enough to fell most targets, so adding a second one isn't going to gain you much.
You'll be better served to simply draw and fire one arrow using the same technique you've trained and practiced hundreds or thousands of times rather than train a whole new one.
Now, just like with Throwing Knives, if a person was an expert that spent all of their time honing their skill then they would be quite fearsome. A normal person throwing their knife is just a somewhat sharp rock that needs to be dodged, while an expert can clip the wings off a fly at twenty yards. The same could be said of firing multiple arrows. Its certainly possible for a person to train so long and hard they could fire two arrows and strike two different targets(with reduced power), but who has that kind of time to devote ten or so years to constant training?
Just look at Lars Andersen. He's firing arrows faster than anyone thought was possible and can even fire them around obstacles. Of course, this is done with special arrow nocks and a weak bow, but he is a 50 year old man reinventing this stuff. Imagine young and extremely strong men with skills being passed down over many generations.
It's mainly an argument over the way that an army or large force would do things and the things that isolated experts can do. In your question you ask specifically about a multi-arrow bow. That would likely be the only way this sort of thing would work, creating special bows/equipment to help reduce the amount of training needed by the rank and file.
The bow might have large V-channels on it for the arrows to fall into. Quivers could have grids in them so the arrows are easy to grab in groups. They might even have special drawing devices that not only grip the string but keep the arrows spaced properly.
Of course, you'd want there to be a valid reason to do this. Why would you want to fire three weaker arrows rather than a single more accurate and powerful one? Is there some fantasy beast with three equally spaced eyes that are its only weakpoint? Do they have a special tri-part magic technique that needs three arrows flying in parallel to activate?
If there is a reason to do something, then people will go above and beyond to figure out a way to make it work.
[Answer]
This is a very interesting idea and one that I would like to look into. One factor that I would like to point out, is that all of the bows made today are for firing one arrow. so trying to fire multiple arrows will not work. If someone were to make a bow that was specifically designed for multiple arrows, the Idea might actually work. You could also work out a way for the arrows to shoot in such a way that they would fire at a wider angle and thus prove an actually useful point.
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[Question]
[
The world is similar to that in Prince of Thorns: namely, so far in the future that civilization has essentially reset, and is back to a medieval level of technology and culture. However, there are still rare pieces of modern civilization scattered around. A type of trade has emerged where Artifact Hunters travel the world, finding leftover artifacts and selling them. What I want to know is, **What characteristics will define items as valuable, useful or desirable?**
### Constraints
1. **No electricity or technology works**: Anything electrical is too delicate to still be in working order, and any powers sources have long since vanished/stopped working.
2. **Use should be different than modern usage**: Anything that works the exact same today as it would in a medeival setting would already be available, created etc. A modern knife might be sharper, but it's still just a knife.
3. **Doesn't have to be practical**: While use is a key part, the ultimate criteria is if something is sell-able, and at a high price.
4. **Society has forgotten modern times**: People know of the artifacts lying around, but any memory of modern/post-modern times is basically myth, and no scientific or cultural knowledge has been passed down.
### More Details
Humanity reached a peak of technology at a few hundred years from our current time. Not far enough that there was anything super revolutionary, but more people, bigger bombs, better weapons etc. Some cataclismic event, human triggered, happened. Involved widespread destruction, think nuclear war but not necessarily radiation poisoning. The few, <.01% survivors were people already somewhat isolated from society. Cities and towns are gone, blown up, but anything more than 100 miles from nearest town survived. Fast-forward a few thousand years
[Answer]
The characteristics should be that:
* they can't be created without modern machines or processes
* AND/OR they're made with materials that aren't available in the
middle ages
* AND/OR they're based on principles that require knowledge
of physics.
So my proposals are
* left-over rolls of new velcro straps
* very thin filaments made of very resistant synthetic polymers or metals
* cloth made by synthetic fiber (especially thermal padding)
* tires and wheels (like the ones in modern animal-powered carts still used in some poor countries, or from motorbikes), other mechanical steel or aluminimum vehicles parts, these greatly help transportation, wooden carts being slow and breaking down was a big issue back then, so these would give a big advantage
* steel beams, good for defensive construction
* binoculars and other optical mechanical devices, these weren't available until 1600 or so in our world which is 100 years after the official end of the middle ages, yet are extremely useful for navigation and warfare (both observation and aiming) and geographic mapping
* ship hulls made of durable materials (I don't know about their longevity)
* any remain of modern cannons or steel tubes, in the last 2 centuries of the middle ages cannon and handcannons were already on battlefields, given the difficulty in manufacturing these by hand and making them safe, finding easy-to-adapt tubes would be a big help.
* any post-middle ages antique weapon out of a museum that doesn't need anything more than black powder and small rocks to shoot, these could be operated.
* portable mechanical watches, no words needed
[Answer]
[**Aluminium**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium)
It may be just a metal, but its production depends mostly on the availability of electricity. Even back in the 1880's it was for a time [more valueable than gold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#History). Since it is light and does not rust like iron, there could be any number of uses for it - even some rather spectacular ones like [thermite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite).
[Answer]
**Plastics and Glass**
With the primary characteristic being **time** - that they'll still be around. [Most modern products](http://des.nh.gov/organization/divisions/water/wmb/coastal/trash/documents/marine_debris.pdf) aren't designed to last, and will decompose/rust away relatively rapidly, certainly within a couple of hundred years.
On the other hand, glass basically doesn't decompose at all. Even broken glass will generally hang around, and could be used in the future as a tool or weapon because of how sharp it is.
Plastics do decompose, but they last a lot longer than most other products. A plastic bottle can be a re-usable canteen, a laundry basket can be used to haul supplies around, etc.
Two other outliers on that list of interest:
1. Monofilament Fishing Line - can be used as a strong and versatile rope.
2. Diapers - archaeological value, or as curiosities for the rich.
[Answer]
Two main themes come to mind, the first is probably the sort of thing you're looking for and the second one is in my mind far more realistically important.
**Caches of Antibiotics and Multi-Vitamins.**
Sure, lots of it could be expired and no longer useful, but I'd imagine that these two categories could hold out for a fair bit, some of it maybe even a few thousand years suggested in your comment. More specific medicines would be less useful presumably because expert knowledge would be required on when and how to use them (and may degrade more rapidly). But these two could just be used indiscriminately when people get sick and many times you'd see miraculous restoration. They would likely build a strong enough reputation that the placebo effect could go a long way on its own. [One problem would be how they would distinguish these categories from the other inert or possibly deadly pills. Or work out dosages.]
**A Large Cache of Books (possibly a library)**
I'm assuming that the language has been heavily modified beyond comprehension of basic writing (though I doubt this premise is realistic). A library or even certain household's caches of books, (and I doubt they'd **all** be blown up) if well preserved, would give access to children's books where the scribes could scaffold introductory knowledge of the language, from there dictionaries could open up the rest of the books in the language. Then, the real important books would be science textbooks. These could allow the training of a class of reverse engineers who could then unlock all those old useless things you can't plug in any more. And even likely the construction of a power source.
In a few years they could be taking apart those useless electronics to see how they tick, within a decade fixing them, within a century making them. It might be a subject you want to avoid for your plot. But it might be interesting to explore as well.
[Answer]
There should be a roaring trade in mining for old laptops, PC, tablets, cellphones etc.
The devices themselves are useless, since there is no electricity for them to work and their hard drives would have been demagnetized ages ago (flash memories *might* still work, bit without electricity they are just interesting pieces of jewelry).
The main reason to look for them is they have something like 300X the amount of gold in them as any similarly sized piece of ore, and are therefor the most valuable ancient artifacts by weight. The circuit boards and chips that are not melted down also make interesting decorations and jewelry for very high classed aristocrats, and having a set of Intel earrings or an AMD pendant would be the mark of distinction for a Baroness or Queen.
[Answer]
**Contents of a post-apocolyptic gypsy merchant cart...**
Knowledge, in the form of hand written transcriptions
of books for blacksmiths, fletchers, midwives, etc.
Maps, again hand-transcribed.
Pencils and pencil-sharpeners
Blank Paper
Toilet Paper
Fishing Hooks
Sharpening Stones
Craftsman hand tools (since they're still under warranty)
Nails and Screws
Copper tubing
nylon rope
Sewing needles and thread
costume jewelry
belt-buckles, clasps and buttons
[Answer]
* **Vinyl kitchen tile**s, for lightweight vests, tough to cut through
* **Fiberglass sheets**, to build canoes and shelters.
* **Rubber tires**, to carry liquids, for milling, and even for weapon
delivery using timers and downhill targets.
* **Refrigerator magnet strips**, for binding cloth on royalty/priests.
[Answer]
**Wires**
I read somewhere that there are about 1.5 billion miles of telephone line strung across the United States. That's just telephone wire! And just the United States! Think of how many millions of miles of power lines, fiber optic cables, coaxial cables, ethernet cables, etc, there must be in the world. I'm sure there's a hard number, but unfortunately, I don't have the time to research.
The obvious use is rope. Braid some wire together, and you have pretty strong rope. Also as metal working increases, the copper can be melted down and reused...though admittedly there will probably be better sources for metal by that time. Data centers would be of particular archeological interest.
[Answer]
In medieval times, simple luxuries that we take for granted now were either rare or non-existent. The items below are extremely common in our time. Almost every family today would be able to afford them, yet they would be exceedingly rare and valuable in the middle ages.
## Modern Cutlery
Most people in medieval times did not own eating utensils such as forks, knives, and spoons. Even if you were fortunate enough to own a set of flatware, it would not be very good quality. The utensils would be heavy, crude, and prone to rusting. Knives were extremely valuable. Very often the same knives used to whittle wood, skin and gut game, etc. and would also be used as an eating utensil. Obviously, most people would never do that today. Only the noble classes were able to afford anything close to what we have today because the utensils had to be made out of metals which did not corrode such as silver and gold.
Modern stainless steel utensils are ubiquitous with any household. There is a good chance that they would be able to survive to this time.
## Pots and pans
Again, here is another luxury we have which most people in medieval times did not have. Any surviving examples would be sought after.
## Fine china and crockery
Unless these items get broken, they can last nearly unchanged for thousands of years. Plates and dishes at that time were very crude. A set of porcelain dishes would probably worth more than their weight in gold.
## Glassware
Here is another category of items which would be very valuable. A common person would be very lucky to own **a single glass**, let alone a whole set of them.
## Footware
Most people today own several pairs of shoes for different occasions. The majority of people of that time went barefoot.
## Firearms
Any type of gun would give a person a very big advantage. It might be possible that functioning guns and ammo would survive if they were stored underground in bunkers.
## Wash basins and tubs
The majority of the people in medieval times did not bathe more than once or twice a year.
## Toothbrushes
Most people did not brush their teeth at all, and often suffered abscesses which could prove fatal.
## Toiletries
Most people of that time didn't smell very fresh. Colognes, perfumes, soaps, etc. would have been a luxury. The soaps that existed in that time were very harsh on the skin and would give people severe chemical burns. Modern soaps would be worth quite a bit.
## Hand tools
Tools such as modern hammers, saws, measuring tapes, levels, etc. would definitely be items people would want. Before standard units of measure were created, it was very difficult to have more than one person work on the same project at the same time. There are stories about people that tried to build bridges starting on both sides and meeting in the middle. Once they got close to the middle, they realized that the bridge wouldn't line up because each carpenter used a different sized length for a foot. A tape measure, or any standard measuring device would definitely help out.
[Answer]
The set of desirable characteristics is straightforward. Said artifacts:
* can last several thousand years (that narrows it down a bit)
* must be significantly better than future-medieval era closest-equivalents in whatever purpose they would be used for by the future near-barbarians.
That makes for a rather narrow field, since virtually nothing of modern tech is built to last in any meaningful way for decades, never mind millennia. Moreover, the set of available useful non-food, non-shelter objects in a medieval society was much narrower than today, essentially breaking down into things you wear for protection or to indicate status (clothes, armor, jewelry), things you use to cut or smash other things such as nuts, fields, or people (mostly tools and weapons), things with symbolic information content (maps, books, signposts) and tokens of value (precious stones and metals).
Kevlar breaks down, most metals oxidize and rust, paper would decay, wood would rot or turn to dust, most anything organic would decompose, rubber would become brittle and decay, medievals can easily mine for gold and basic metals, leaving only a handful of materials like Plastic, Aluminium, Titanium, Wolfram and a few other ultra-high-melting point and low oxidation metals as wondrous relics from the past. Titanium and Aluminium would be valued for their lightness compared to Iron, but of limited use, since the technology would not exist to recast them, and any edged weapon or shield would have become blunt and pitted with age. A plastic bead necklace would probably be rarer than a golden one, and a collection of **plastic toy Indians & Cowboys** on horses (currently $17.50 for a set of 130 on Amazon) would be beyond priceless. Those plastic **sealed keychains with some image in them** that you can buy in any tourist trap: more precious than diamonds.
After thousands of years of climate change, maps would be outdated because of changing river-beds and coastlines and general difficulty of travel, time-proofed books would be incomprehesible due to language shifts, signposts would point to long-gone cities.
Future technology might be future-proofed, such as durable crystals that trigger holodisplays under the moonlight, or similarly sealed devices that can charge simply from being moved in Earth's magnetic field to display some shiny incomprehensible stuff (perhaps a minecraft video, a tweet, or perhaps something more easily understood such as pornography).
[Answer]
Ball-point pens:
If still functional they allow a steady flow of ink for written manuscripts and were revolutionary when they were invented.
Hypodermic needles:
Their utility goes beyond just medical applications but they are impossible to make without precision engineering.
Nuclear devices:
Whether bombs, medical devices, sources for industrial testing, or just smoke detectors, anything that would have a metal that actually gave off endless heat energy would be extremely valuable and seem almost magical (even if they knew of the inherent danger). Radioactivity would have been valued in actual medieval times except it wasn't until modern times that we were able to refine and concentrate these substances.
Batteries:
Even if you can't make use of their charge, all will be dead by that point anyways, batteries are little capsules filled with sometimes rare and heavy metals, acids, and other chemicals that would have been like a treasure trove to medieval apothecaries and alchemists. And I would imagine a complete lack of understanding at how they worked or why they were created would be great for driving a story.
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This is very similar to the situation Wall.e faces in the 2008 Pixar movie, Wall.e. Of course, in the movie there is a 700 year gap, not millenia.
However, we can still learn a few things.
* The best place to find artifacts is in the middle of rubbish tips and dumps, where buried by other rubbish, they will survive for longer.
* Most jewelry will survive intact - an obvious example is a gold ring with diamond on it.
* Some electronics will be intact, such as disaster-proofed data centres and anything in time capsules. If it is possible to extract the gold from the circuits, these will be one of the most valuable trading items.
+ Nuclear bunkers will almost certainly survive - particularly military ones. Anything inside, such as weapons, books, first-aid kits and perhaps even medicine could be usable. Finding a nuclear bunker would be the equivalent of us finding a pyramid.
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Old mobile phones
You may think I'm joking, owing to how brittle mobile phones nowadays are and the fact that they usually have round corners, but we have tons of it, and I mean it literally. Each year as Apple and Samsung release the next best thing since sliced bread and the last phone, countless obsolete phones are thrown to garbage heaps, we have so much of it. They don't degrade and even a broken phone will still maintain its general mass and shape.
Back when NOKIA was the king, phones were made even larger and larger before they shrink, those phones are thick and can withstand a lot of abuse, they can be laid down as roads and do a good job as one.
For more modern ones, which are pretty thin, they can be used as personal self-defense projectile, it doesn't hurt like an arrow, but can disorient the occasional wild dogs, and is a better choice than throwing kitchenware at thieves
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Bulletproof vests. The ones made of kevlar or similar, used by police.
Fireproof equipment. Such as used by firefighters, or by professions dealing with heat (e.g foundry).
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Assuming:
* there was no power, so there was no web/internet
* you had a mobile phone (one of the smart ones, not a basic one) powered by solar
* the phone had maps downloaded on to its memory card (so you were not reliant on the internet for map access),
Could you still use satnav (satellite navigation)?
My rudimentary understanding is that satnav works through orbiting satellites constantly pinging down their location enabling you to exactly pinpoint where you are on the earth's surface. Without the internet, could your phone still access this, or is the internet still needed?
EDIT; I just want to say a big thank you to you all. I can't get over how helpful the replies have been. What a great resource Worldbuilding is!
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**No, the internet is not needed** for a GPS-based device to calculate location.
A standalone device learns about updates to the GPS constellation (broadcast by GPS) as part of it's startup. That's why the take a minute or two to startup - they are listening for updates. Phones often receive these updates via internet, which is why they start working faster than standalone devices.
The orbital data requires regular maintenance and the constellation of satellites requires regular replacement. Since nobody will be doing such work after an apocalypse, location fixes will be come increasingly unreliable after a few weeks. After a few months, GPS coverage will become increasingly spotty. The satellites will begin to fail within a couple years.
There are multiple SATNAV systems in orbit - GPS was the first in common use and is still the most popular. The others have the same requirement for regular maintenance and replacement.
Location means just that - a unique latitude/longitude spot on the Earth. Without a database of paths and other locations, that is of limited use to folks. Standalone GPS devices have the database pre-programmed. Phones download databases of varying sizes and uses from the internet.
There are easy alternatives: You can just follow the highway signs and use paper maps, the way everybody successfully navigated before 2000-or-so.
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It depends on how soon after the apocalypse you're trying to use it.
The GPS system is conceptually divided into [three segments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Structure): the "space segment", the "control segment", and the "user segment". Other satnav systems function similarly.
The "space segment" is the satellites. You need four satellites to be visible to figure out your location; right now, you can typically see nine of them at any given time. In a post-apocalyptic scenario, nobody's replacing these satellites when they fail, but assuming they all survived whatever happened, it'll be a decade or two before you can no longer count on seeing four at any given time.
The "user segment" is your GPS receiver. You've stated that your character has one that works, so that won't be a problem.
The "control segment" is where the problem lies. The GPS system relies on knowing where the GPS satellites are to extreme precision. To do this, the satellites are tracked by the US military and updated orbits are calculated and transmitted to the satellites, which in turn transmit it to your receiver (this transmission is why a non-internet-connected GPS may take a few minutes to get an initial fix -- they're waiting for the orbit data).
This data is updated [every two to six hours](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Message_format), and is only good for a few weeks. After that time, the accuracy of the GPS system will degrade rapidly. If it's been more than a month or two since the last update, your GPS probably can't even tell you what city you're in (or near).
Even if you're in the timeframe where the GPS orbit data is still good, you won't have [WAAS data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Augmentation_System). This is data on ionospheric effects and other unpredictable accuracy reductions. It's updated every five minutes, and without it, your GPS fix will only be good to within 20 meters or so, rather than the 3-meter accuracy you're used to.
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In addition to the maintenance of the satellite constellation there's another problem that's going to degrade your fixes unless you have a military device--the weather. Lightspeed is only constant in a vacuum and the upper fringes of Earth's atmosphere aren't quite a vacuum--enough to matter at the precision that GPS needs.
Normally, part of the information your receiver gets from the satellite is an update on this weather--but nobody's going to be making the weather reports anymore.
There is a second broadcast on another frequency that can be used to calculate and correct for the weather (the effects vary with the frequency, by seeing the difference between the two signals you can figure out how much atmosphere got in the way) but it is encrypted, if you don't have a military device you can't read it. Note that this is also why military devices are a bit more accurate than civilian ones--they get realtime calculations across the actual path the signal took, civilians get the periodically-updated weather reports that are an average over a large area.
Overall, the effect will be the fix degrades in a somewhat random/somewhat predictable way (a satellite that has drifted away from where it should be will make the same error every time it comes around--I think this will cause an error that repeats on a 12 day cycle but I'm not sure) and eventually starts getting periodic holes in the coverage as satellites die and sometimes you don't have 4 satellites above the horizon. Note that there are receivers that are built to look at all the satellites up there, not just the US ones. These will degrade the same but go a bit longer before getting no solution at all. (These units are commonly sold for polar use as the Russian system is optimized for high latitudes.)
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First, we must assume that the GPS (or Galileo) satellite constellation is intact, and the satellites have not been shot down as part of the apocalyptic events in your world, and have not been subjected to EMP from nuclear blasts. If all is working up there, then they can continue to transmit their signals, which are nothing more than very accurate clocks (plus an almanac of where every satellite in the constellation is supposed to be).
Down on the ground, you have a device (smart-phone or standalone GPS) that is battery-powered, and a means of charging it. The complicated maths that allows GPS to work operates entirely on board this device. Comparing the time signals from multiple satellites and using the minute (ie pico-seconds) differences (which exist due to the speed of light) to derive a geolocation co-ordinate, is all done on-board your device.
Once the co-ordinate has been calculated, it can be compared against the index of a map stored on your device and voila, you know where you are. You can then use your choice of algorithm to calculate the best route to another location in that index, also done entirely on-board the device.
In summary, **Yes, SatNav would still work**. However, as has been said in comments and other answers, without replacement satellites, and continual updates to both the satellite orbits (and/or the almanacs they transmit) and to the maps on your device, the accuracy and usefulness of the navigation will degrade rather quickly, within a matter of years *at best*.
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On my quest to make pretty much every single fantasy creature biologically feasible I have come across a hiccup. It wasn't angels, no you people helped me with that. Demons are easy, we have plenty of ways to fireproof a human. No it was something much less common, something people may know, of but don't know the name of. The Dullahan, also known as, The Headless Horseman.
Originating in Irish mythology, which is a field day on its own I'll tell you that, most of his supernatural features are pretty simple to explain. for example:
Quotes Cited from: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dullahan>
However this does not lend itself heavily to the fantasy depictions seen today.
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> uses a human spine as a whip
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Now that is the easiest part to explain, human spines are not that hard to come across if you look hard enough.
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> Drags a wagon adorned with funeral objects
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There are plenty of funeral care stores around the country, so this is easy enough.
All of these features are cosmetic however. It is all "things made of dead people" that is simple. But if we get down to the meat and potatoes of a Dullahan. If we look deeply there are only two to three elements that bare any weight. The head, the body and the horse. And we can do without the horse.
Say there was a race of these Dullahans. Say they are no longer grosser Grim Reapers, but instead just a person or other biological sentient being that could live with a head that at least seemed to be able to detach. A Dullahan could be seen and reported to have their head detach and be held in their bodies hands.
Now some mythology has the Dullahan have no head at all. That is simple: move the brain and sensory organs to the body and Bob's your uncle. But I am looking for something challenging here. there are two depictions of the Dulahan, one where they have control of both the head and body and the second is a depiction in which the head has control of the body while attached but once removed the body has a mind of its own. Most commonly seen as less intelligent than the head, these bodies are always seen responding to orders yelled at the body to put the head back on top, with the success of these orders being dubious at best.
My question is, how would this be possible? How could a creature be capable of living and at least having basic problem solving and motor skills without a head. The furthest I could get harkens back to the masterpiece of a film, *Pacific Rim*, in which the theory is proposed that large creatures such as Dinosaurs and the Kaiju required a second brain to handle motor control in such an unwieldy body. This is as far as I have gotten so maybe the smart people over at Stack Exchange can give us a little help.
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That's actually easy.
You see, there is not one race of Dullahan. There are two. They are symbiotes.
One species is nearly humanoid, minus the head. The other species looks like a humanoid head.
Now for the details. The head controls the body in two ways: hormones and neural signals, just like our brains communicate with our bodies. The interface is the kind that you saw in James Cameron's Avatar:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wlAy3.jpg)
The head has a hole in its lower portion which is actually its cloaca. A sac close to the ends of the gonads and bowels contains a modified umbilical cord which is able to connect to an interface in the body.
Similarly, the body has a special kind of tissue at the beggining of the esophagus: it contains exposed nervous tissue and is highly vascularized, so as to connect to the neural tentacle of the head, and also to send and receive hormones.
As to how they coevolved: the head's ancestor species was a parasitical quadruped with a shape close to that of a rather large frog. It would attach to hosts just like a male frog attaches to a female frog, and then its anal proboscis would penetrate the host and suck up nutrients.
The body's ancerstor species was a hominid that happened to have a perfect spot for the proboscis to connect in the nape. The parasite was better at spotting feeding grounds and detecting predators, though, so the relationship evolved from parasitism to mutualism.
Without the need for sharp senses nor advanced processing, the body species's head shrunk over generations. Currently the bulk of the brain is between the throat and the chest. As for the head species - without the need for limbs, and getting processed nutrients from the body, it took a more head-like shape. Most non-sensorial organs became vestigial. It still has lungs and a heart, though. In time the head started moving to the position where the original head of the body would be, to facilitate its symbiont's gait.
When heads mate, they lay eggs inside a body's stomach. The larvae attach to the bowels, where they get nutrition from. After larval stage, heads go into an infant stage in which they have limbs that allow them to move towards and climb to a body to which they will associate. They exit the body through its rear end (yes, just like you imagined).
As for feeding: the head does the chewing, and then... well... excretes the chewed food into the body's esophagus. The body processesses it, and the head gets some nutrients through the proboscis.
This arrangement allows both species to be separated for a while, but they still need to be together and connected in order to properly eat and move around.
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How about that it just very much looks like the head is removable?
The species used to have a large predator, something like a Rok, that always went for the head. Over time they evolved a behaviour to always hold a hand above their head to ward off this predator. It just turned out that being able to distract the Rok was the most viable survival strategy, coupled with a head that is sinking into the chest with every generation. So now you have a race with a very large right hand (think fiddler crab). Said hand just happens to look like the head of their ancestors (think Hawk Moth caterpillar) and with their brain and eyes safely hidden in the chest cavity.
[I've illustrated my idea](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nEcdr.jpg)
If you came across one of these, especially one on a horse, you wouldn't notice how his head doesn't look right until you met him in the bar and he pours a beer into his chesthair.
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The Dullahan is just a variation on the super-slug trope...
* In super-slug apocalypse stories, an alien organism (or escaped bio-weapon) with a body like a large slug, lives on or inside a human body with tendrils linking its brain to the nervous system and muscles of its host. The slug enslaves the body while multiplying inside, then spawns its children to infest other humans. Some variations on the super-slug trope leave the host indistinguishable from their previous uninfested selves (The Puppet Masters) while most reduce the host to a zombie like creature (Night of the Creeps & Slither).
The Dullahan is simply a single host containing a mated pair of slugs. The female lives in the head and makes all decisions when attached. The male lives in the body and is in-charge when the head is detached. Some female slugs possess such a strong psychic link with their mates that they remain in-charge of the body even when the head is detached.
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As the dullahan is derived from Irish mythology, I like the idea of representing biological feasibility through something like plants, or other flora, because when I think of some of the other mythologies from that region, it seems steeped in the wetlands.
Something like this comes to mind:
<http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden-internet>
Perhaps a dullahan would be a corpse controlled by a more sentient flora that have taken the corpse up as a host. The parasitic organism could establish a network through the corpse, and have the capacity to operate independently when severed, and additionally have the capacity to re-graft itself to the core of its network (the body). This would enable the Dullahan to optionally use the host's head to access its memories, its ability to speak, and see.
In this fashion (going off of the Wikipedia description at this point), the Dullahan's "hideous grin" and "moldy cheese" flesh consistency could be decomposition by the parasitic flora, along with muscular contractions as a byproduct of the parasite's adaptation to the host's nerve structure. It's sentience of death could be based off of the parasite's capacity to breach other existing plant networks (fungal mycelium networks spread through the countryside, grass, trees, etc.) and learn of its surroundings. This would allow the Dullahan to operate without sight, enabling it to stalk during the night, and its awareness of movement in its surroundings would make it easy to stay hidden.
The Dullahan's purpose for seeking out death could be based on its need to feed after having devoured nutrients from its host. The accoutrements could be made from the remnants of it's food, and the wagon could serve as a means of storing and carting around more food. The wagon's creation could be an anomaly based on the memories of the host. The horse could also be an ancillary host.
As for getting through locks and gates, perhaps the parasitic flora has the capacity to operate at a hive-like capacity, similar to ants. It could conceivably send out worker spores in advance to enter keyholes and open doors.
If the parasitic organism was fungal, it would make sense that they would shy away from metals. Copper (toxic to fungus) and its close-ish resemblance to gold could explain how even a single gold pin could drive a Dullahan away.
And all it would take to create a new Dullahan would be for a suitable host to die in a forest or bog, and become infected with a queen spore. Perhaps those queen spores are a rare and fragile thing, perhaps for the best.
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What about making them 4D beings? Their body and head are attached, but it doesn't always seem that way from our 3D perspective. You could have some fun with the whole 'outside of time' and linking that to the funeral/death aspect of the Dullahan.
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A dullahan could be something similar to a humanoid [Disturbance](https://www.deviantart.com/sciocont/art/Disturbance-315314219)
but with the sensory organs being inside the prosoma, with the detachable head being just a regular human head
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When building a city, one must consider *why* one is building a city. It's all very well imagining a city perched on top of an inaccessible mountain peak, but a believable world requires that we consider why on earth anyone would ever live in such a place.
With that in mind, imagine a city. This late Bronze/early Iron Age city is located in an inhospitable antarctic desert region, in an area otherwise uninhabited because, well, it's a freaking antarctic desert. We have an excellent design for this city, but we need a reason for it to be there.
In the middle of the city is a butte of igneous rock, rather like the famous [Devil's Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devils_Tower). Around the city, geothermal activity heats subterranean water and forces it to the surface, providing a fresh water supply and nutrients to the population (think Yellowstone, rather than Hawaii). So, in search of a reason to build a city here, I have to wonder:
**What valuable geological deposits are likely to be found in a geologically active zone?** Can the extraction of precious ores justify a city built in this harsh, forbidding place?
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# Cities are often built near resources
The key mining/mountains example would be [Potosi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potos%C3%AD), a city of 100,000+ that grew up around the famed silver deposits of Cerro Rico in Bolivia, despite being in a desert at over 4000m elevation. It was by far the largest city in the Americas in the late 1500s and early 1600s.
[San Francisco](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#History), in turn, saw a massive influx of people as the chief port of the gold chasing 49ers. In 1848, it had a population of under 1,000; in 1849 25,000; and in the 1850 census (conducted in 1852, for complex reasons) 34,776.
So there are ample historical precedents for such a city to spring up, literally overnight.
# Volcanic minerals
There are plenty of examples of minerals being mined from currently active volcanoes or recently extinct volcanoes. Some of the other answers mention diamonds. While diamonds are moved to the surface by volcanoes, they were moved millions to billions of years ago. Most of the big diamond regions of the world (Angola, CAR, South Africa, Russia) haven't seen volcanic activity in a long time. I don't think diamonds fit the bill for what you are looking for.
Lets restrict our search to things that are mined from currently active volcanoes, or at least extinct volcanoes close to currently active ones.
* Sulfur is mined at the active [Kawah Ijen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijen#Sulfur_mining_at_Ijen) complex in Indonesia on the island of Java.
* Gold is [mined](http://www.newcrest.com.au/our-business/operations/lihir/) at the extinct Luise caldera on the Papua New Guinean island of Lihir. This operation is somewhat complex, as geothermal vents have been cut to lower temperatures around the gold deposit so it can be mined. It is one of the largest gold deposits in the world. While the caldera itself is extinct, the region is still part of the Ring of Fire, with many active volcanoes nearby on [New Britain and New Ireland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volcanoes_in_Papua_New_Guinea#New_Britain).
* Pure [Rhenium](https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v369/n6475/abs/369051a0.html) was discovered in the active Kudriavy volcano in the Russian Kuril Islands. Rhenium isn't used in a lot of things so it isn't [super expensive](https://apps.catalysts.basf.com/apps/eibprices/mp/)(thought at $85 dollars per ounce it is still 5 times more expensive than silver), but it is rarer in the [Earth's crust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust) then gold or platinum. So if it were in demand for some high tech (or magical?) application, it would be very expensive indeed.
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**Sure**
Starting from geothermal water sources, they may be [rich](https://pubs.usgs.gov/ha/ha730/ch_i/I-text3.html) in minerals similar to what you find near [deep sea vents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent). Sulpher and Iron compounds are very common and useful. Additionally, the action of the hot water over time creates [veins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vein_(geology)) of economic minerals, like gold and silver, that could be exploited for profit. Depending on the type of volcanic activity in the area, if there was a [Diatreme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatreme) eruption there at some point in the past, then diamonds could easily be found. Again, depending on the volcanology there may be a [Volcanic Pipe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_pipe) which are also rich in precious gemstones.
Depending on tech level, the geothermal sources could also be used a source of energy.
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I know you (the OP) have settled on commercial reasons; but in reading the setup I imagine privacy and/or military advantage could be at stake. The inhospitable environment make for a natural "moat" around the city; difficult to attack by surprise and defensible. The nature of the city makes it an oasis in this inhospitable environment: If there is any military advantage in dominating this area, then this is the place to build. For secret research or other operations (like keeping prisoners), this city is difficult to observe secretly, and any escapees probably cannot leave the city without dying.
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## My Goodness, Yes!
Many of the most valuable mineral deposits in the world are found in similar spots - including the famous silver mines of Potosi. There are two primary mechanisms that concentrate ores in such locations. First, magma is a liquid in which many chemicals are dissolved. As magma cools, different chemicals fall out of solution at different temperatures. If you had a ball of magma, after it cooled it would be something like an onion, with each layer having concentrations of specific minerals. Of course, in real life you don't get such a neat arrangement.
The second mechanism serves to further concentrate the ores. As superheated water travels through the ground it dissolves minerals. As it cools, it deposits them again. Most mineral "veins" are the result of this action, and the results are often near the ground (as hot water bubbles up from below and cools as it nears the surface).
Certain ores lend themselves to either type of ore formation, depending on their solubility in water and magma. You can study a good geology textbook, or you can just look at a map of mines in places such as Nevada and Peru and steal their examples.
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If it's a dormant volcano, then the ash and lava fields left behind from previous eruptions could potentially create a layer of fertile soil within proximity to it. As long as you could keep the ice from the surrounding Antarctic desert from covering it over (geothermal heating or ice walls for example) you could potentially grow food to sustain a city there.
If you combine that with the rich mineral deposits and the defensive advantage of it's location (as the other answers state), then you could potentially have a reason to build a city there.
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**How about diamonds? I posit that your 'devil's tower' is actually a Kimberlite pipe, chock full of diamonds.**
See: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_pipe#Kimberlite_pipes>
And in addition to diamonds, Kimberlite may also contain garnets, spinels, and peridot.
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Political reasons.
Greenland is claimed by the kingdom of Denmark, but some parts are completely inhabitated. To maintain their claim, they must keep continued presence there. They have a special patrol whose only purpose is wandering around the huge unhabitated parts of Iceland. (Sirius Dog Sled Patrol). This is cheaper than permanent stations.
In this case, let's pretend that a permanent base is better than a continued patrol. Or maybe the city is a base for the patrol.
In this case, a king maight want ownership of the volcan. Many possible reasons:
* to prevent others from placing military bases on it,
* for personal pride (only kingdom with city in antartica),
* to prevent rivals from claiming it (petty personal disputes between 2 kings),
* national pride (it's claimed by a long-time rival),
* to put a prison,
* to put a concentration camp,
* to torture prisoners far from prying eyes (think Guantanamo)
* to place a secret military base.
The king could hide his true reason with plausible excuses:
\* order his bishops to create a religious order that worships the volcano.
\* order an existing religious order to create a monastery for meditation/penitence/etc.
\* order his science minister to put a permanent base to study the volcano.
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Historic reasons:
Long ago the climate here was different, it was a lush paradise. No one knows why it changed (continental drift, volcanic eruptions). It was so long ago few even remember that it changed. Slowly the population dwindled as the land could not support them. Until only a remnant of a remnant survive. Eking out a living on what sustenance can be provided from this small heat source. That, and from what the penguin hunters bring in.
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In short, yes, availability of some kind of valuable mineral resource is enough to build city in inhospitable remote place. The resource does not have to be particularly precious : if its extraction generates profit even after extra cost imposed by geography, it is enough. As an example, please consider Russian city of Norilsk: it is located in place that is probably closest thing to Antarctic desert and without the bonus of geothermal heat! Primarily they extract nickel or, but also some precious satellite metals as well.
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norilsk>
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"What valuable geological deposits are likely to be found in a geologically active zone?" You name it. The ones we exploit, directly or indirectly (as in [placer deposits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placer_deposit)), most often are, in no particular order: gem seams in the form of Diamonds in [Kimberlite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberlite), and Corundum and Beryl AKA Sapphires and Rubies and Emeralds respectively in both [intrusive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusive_rock) and [extrusive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrusive_rock) [igneous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igneous_rock) deposits, Gold left over from intrusive melts and geothermally enriched Copper bearing [ophiolites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiolite). Also of importance to human habitation in many active volcanic areas is the relative abundance of trace nutrients brought to the surface by eruptions which enrich farming soils in many parts of the world.
Two notes, one, cities often come to be because of forces that are purely social rather than physical, geographic or economic although the original settlement may have formed for one or more of those reasons. Two you do not, I repeat *not*, want to use geothermal fluids as drinking water, not with human kidneys you don't the high levels of dissolved minerals will kill you. Additionally that water could carry Gold and Silver in solution until it cools and most of it's minerals precipitate, the Arsenic is pretty much the last to go.
So in summary sure there could be definite incentives to build in such a place but not necessarily the ones you'd think and possibly you don't need *that much* by way of an incentive to have a city anyway.
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The reason for the city being located there? Because the tower is sacred to the people. The gods of Sky, Fire, and Earth all live there. The city is to support the priests who live on the top tower to observe the stars and planets for augury.
Fortunately the water allows for crops to be grown and livestock to be kept, so a city can be supported.
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Honestly, a source of fresh water and heat is enough to have built a city in an otherwise inhospitable climate. Humans flourish anywhere there is a reason to survive.
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Sabotaging the electric network is kind of a well established scheme: find a node of the network, put some explosive on the pole and take it down (or the like). The network is gone for a while.
Now imagine that this organization wants to avoid using explosives and plans to do the following: a large set of conjureds agrees on switching on a high power electric device in their houses (let's say an electric oven or a water boiler, drawing at least 3 kW) at the very same time, to the split second.
Is this a realistic plan to take down the network on (at least) an urbanized area of about 500 square km?
(background info: when I was at the University during a lecture on electricity generation the professor told us that in the '80es a comedian, during a TV show, proposed to complain against the government by switching off the TV when he said to do so. The professor claimed that if he had done it, it would have caused a nationwide blackout.)
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# Yes and No
Would you believe this occurs at a predictable time every day in the UK?
During the break at the end of popular soap operas a significant percentage of the population of the UK puts the kettle on. Total load spike on the system can reach 3GW, equivalent to approximately 1.8kW load per household for around [1.75 million kettles at almost exactly the same moment](http://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/tea-time-in-britain-causes-predictable-massive-surge-in-electricity-demand-1535023/)1.
This is a known factor and you can set your watch by the power surges relating to it. Power stations are on standby, more power is made available in France to cover the spike.
However this is a known effect at a known time and the system is geared up to cope with it. Dropping a 3GW load onto the national grid without preparation would likely knock large sections out.
*1[BBC video source](http://www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/stories/people/teatimebritain.shtml) probably not available outside the UK*
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It shouldn't work.
* First, there are circuit breakers in flats and houses. These, they could disable, but
* then, you have breakers outside flats, usually one per building section, like staircase. If you try to draw more than you are allowed, it'll break your circuit. But what if it isn't fast enough?
* You will have a breakers and monitoring tools at the transformer station, on the stage that transform medium voltage to low one you use in your flat. Often this is the first step where you can encounter active protection and management devices.
And so on. Power grid further away from end user is actively managed and monitored. If these countermeasures fail, you will have a
# [Cascading power failure](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_failure)
Looking at the examples, for problems like this you need a lightning storm, human error in setting up the protection system, software bug etc.
On the other hand, in [India this happened in 2012](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_India_blackouts), just the way you want it. What was the exact conditions no one knows, but it appears as unusually large power consumption in unusually short time. Of course, power grid there was not a state of the art, so you would need to go faster, stronger and overall larger scale to get this done in more modern system. Can't tell you exactly, because simulations say it shouldn't be possible, and we don't have many real life examples to extrapolate from.
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Cascade failures are no joke: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003>
So how could we engineer one? How big is a [500 sq km area](http://www.bluebulbprojects.com/MeasureOfThings/results.php?comp=area&unit=km2&amt=500&sort=pr&p=1)? How many people are involved in this? That's about a third of London or two Birminghams. Let's say you have 2m people. UK *peak* consumption is very roughly 1kW per person, so your city uses 2GW or half of Drax.
You want to disrupt this.
How much power-delta is required? Let's say 10%. That would require 67,000 people switching on 3kW devices. That seems like quite a lot of people to me, easily enough to engage in more direct action.
Edit: note that you don't necessarily have to switch all of them *on*. If you can switch off enough load simultaneously enough ("load shedding"), this will cause the local voltage to exceed limits for a short time and trip out the substations - causing more load shedding.
If you've got really good control over the on/off timing, you could try oscillating. Exploit the LC resonance in the largest power line leading to the city?
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500 square km is a small city... or at least, my city is smaller than that. So, I searched news archives for instances of blackout because of overload of the local power station...
I found one such incident: it happened during a test because of which the power plant was running at a fourth of its capacity. While the test was running, a connection to another power station failed, leaving the local power station with all the demand. The system did shut down automatically. Power was restored 20 minutes afterwards.
So, the normal demand was too much for a fourth of the capacity of this single power station when there was no connection to other power stations for backup.
The conditions for this failure are very unlikely... it is expected that the power plant will have enough capacity to supply any foreseeable peak of demand, and second even if it can't handle the capacity it should be able to pull power from the rest of the national network.
So, even if you manage to multiply the demand of the houses and buildings on the city (which would then make the local circuit breakers fail instead of the whole urban area), so that you can cause a peak power demand beyond its capacity... the power plant should be able to rely on the rest of the national network (which you didn't sabotage).
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# Maybe, but there would be easier ways on such small scale
As Mołot mentions, cascading power failures are a real threat. However those usually concern much larger areas. Here is an example from Europe, November 4, 2006.
[The Day Wind Power Nearly Blew Out Europe](http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/blog/2008/12/13/the-day-wind-power-nearly-blew-out-europe/).
So if your saboteur times things right, preferably when conditions are at their extremes in terms of load and when a big change is not expected, then yes... if they have hacked every "smart" home and for instance suddenly turn off the main power switch in the houses, then flick them on again, then they can perhaps instigate a failure.
But 500 square kilometers is a square about 22 km on the side, or a circle 25 km across. That is not a very large area. And it would probably be quite easy to just shed the troublesome grid sections restore power to others fairly quickly, no more than 15 minutes or so.
However...
Since the area is quite small, it would be easy for the saboteurs to just map the incoming power lines. Unless the area in question has local power production, attacking the power lines will flick the switch on the entire area. This can be done by bringing down the towers — even though you said "no explosives" there are other ways — or by propelling a chain or similar over them to cause a massive short-circuit.
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[Not only is this possible](https://www.wired.com/2016/02/how-to-hack-the-power-grid-through-home-air-conditioners/), [it already happens](http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/08/09/smart.grid/). (two different links there). I am going to take it that you don't live on the US eastern grid where rolling brownouts/blackouts happen during the summer.
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# It is a real danger, especially where I live.
And Why? Because [the government has installed these, in almost all households, as part of their "Residential Load Management Campaign"](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiHoLXsgIrwAhVSoVwKHXLWDN4QFjABegQICBAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eskom.co.za%2Fsites%2Fidm%2FDocuments%2FRLMFAQ.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3ysrXkPXxlIvl4_M1I9UsF)
Basically, it is a remote-controlled switch for the electrical water heaters "Geysers" that every single household relies upon for their hot water. If allows the power company to remotely switch on or off the water heaters, via signals propagated along the electric lines that power these devices.
So, you have about 17 million households, all on the same (state-owned) power grid. Every household with a 3600w (some 6000w) electrical device that can be remotely triggered by one signal from the power company.
Switching all of them off for a couple hours (so they cool, and are below their thermostat temperature), then switching all of them on simultaneously, will impose a 61 Gigawatt power pull on the network in an instant.
On a grid that has a *total*, all-sources-summed, power generation capacity of 58Gw.
Normal operating load closer to 34-36Gw.
Imagine if some hacker triggers all these devices on at the same time!
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3kW per household is not much, I do not think it will cause a large area blackout. It might cause some on the edge transformators to stop functioning. For reference 3kW is a vacuum cleaner and a hair dryer running at the same time (maybe plus a couple of lights). Unless you are already running couple of other devices eating 3kW, you are out of luck. If you want to overload the system, you should care about turning all that the house breaker could handle, not necessarily at the same time. If the grid is well connected and the event is local, the system might stay up or you could take down quite large sections of it, not just the immediate area.
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A little context: According to the beliefs of that religion, a woman sent by God guided humanity from a distant place to the world in which they live today. This woman known as The Lady, taught them to use a resource present in the air that allows people to use magic.She told them it was a gift from God to humans. She established a philosophy of a responsible use of that gift to preserve the planet and give a prosperous future to humanity. That philosophy was later transformed into the religion called Ladyism. It became popular and a religious organization called The Order arose, with great influence in the governments of the whole world.
Ladyism is currently spread in all the societies of the world and in its popular culture. To speak ill of The Lady or make fun of her is considered blasphemy and is disapproved by most people and is even legally condemned. Therefore the figure of the Lady is in high esteem and respect.
My main doubt is that it would so much affect a female religious figure in the general treatment of ordinary human women. There are several factors to keep in mind:
• As in the real world, men are attracted to the female body in a sexual way.
• The difference in physical strength between both sexes is not determinant due to the use of magic. Women and men can use it in the same way, so in a combat they are equal.
• Culturally it is said that women should be strong and spiritual, worthy of The Lady.
• The leader of The Order is always a woman.
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In a word, **YES**. Because gender is complicated, and culture is like an onion -- just peel back the skin, and you'll find a series of smelly layers.
Let's start here: At least one study has indicated that men who display benevolent sexism, or well-intentioned attitudes that still promote inequality, are also more likely to be outright misogynistic in other contexts. It's a pretty simple mechanism once you think about it; the higher you elevate the feminine ideal, the more obviously all of the real women around you fall short. The more you think women need you to love and extoll them, the more you probably think they need you *period*.
The best historical example of this is the Victorians. They were ruled by a queen, idealized the mother as protector of the home, took every chance to praise woman as man's spiritual guide and superior, and were morbidly obsessed with the problem of rising prostitution. (The famous Liberal prime minister William Gladstone used to try to save prostitutes he met on the street. On the days he felt tempted by them he drew a little whip in his diary, and flagellated himself.)
The same social order was also deeply repressive. The law deprived women of inherited property, doctors opined quite seriously that education was dangerous to their health, and novelists like Dickens and Stoker punished and killed otherwise sympathetic female characters that strayed from the chaste ideal.
Women became, in effect, too good for the world. It was the duty of men to protect them, and that also meant controlling them. Significantly, this control was often enforced by women on women, through conservative and carefully limited education. It was also enabled by those women who did attain real power. Queen Victoria herself did not find it contradictory to mourn the loss of absolute monarchy in one letter, while raging against the suffrage movement in another.
There are many other historical examples to draw on. Consider the Spanish, who venerated the Virgin Mary even as they burned witches. Or the medieval knights who developed a whole culture of courtly love and poetry, but also assumed to a man that rapine, like plunder, was a right that could be won in battle.
So if you want to create a sexist culture, I suspect all of that is the key basic tension to play with: Woman as ideal vs. women as real. Woman as spiritually superior vs. woman as actually in charge of her own destiny.
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The female saviour figure won't make a difference.
Just think of the various examples in earth history:
* Guan-Yin is arguably the most popular figure in Chinese Buddhism, and is portrayed as a woman. Some female deities are also central to Daoism, and there are many "Mother Goddess" type cults in Chinese history, where total commitment to a female deity was central. Female human heroes were also commonly revered. And yet imperial Chinese society was sexist to the point that a honorable woman was expected to never leave the house.
* The Egypt-based cult of Isis was widespread in late antiquity throughout the Europe-Mediterranean region, including in the very patriarchal societies of Greece and Rome. Rome also held the virgins of Vesta (female devotees to a female deity) to be of central importance to their existence as a city, but that did not raise the position of women in general.
* The imperial house of Japan claims descent from the female deity Amaterasu, and yet the emperor must be male to this day and society as a whole is relatively sexist.
* Both Christianity and Islam have central, important female figures like the Virgin Mary and the prophet Muhammad's daughters. They're still patriarchal religions.
What will destroy the patriarchy in your story is magic as a game-changer between men and women. Historically, patriarchy exists because women are:
* Typically physically weaker than men
* Much more burdened by reproduction
* Less disposable, because you need them to bear and raise children
If the existence of magic removes the first two points from consideration, I don't see how a patriarchal society and sexism against women would arise in the first place.
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Well it's a fantasy world and it's yours. Other people have quite effectively identified the factors that have given men power in society. Here is what I see as making it not relevant to your story:
1. In a post-industrial space faring society brute strength and aggression have little value.
2. In this society's pre-history something happened to the earth to inspire humanity to leave. If men screwed it up, why would society at large take the rule of masculinity seriously?
3. You say that magic takes away a man's physical dominance. That's going to change a lot of psychological dynamics; you get to have fun playing with those dynamics see *The Left Hand of Darkness*.
4. The things that would change the life experience of normal women would be the roles of magic, and technocratic post-industrial society.
Historically religion has had little influence on most people's day to day lives, unless they lived in an extremist theocracy like Saudi Arabia or the Islamic State.
Best of luck, have fun world building!
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**Historical precedent says absolutely**
Jesus Christ was Jewish, and so were all of the Twelve Apostles. Yet the religion he founded spread anti-semitism far and wide.
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On the Merriam-Webster definition, sexism is *"prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex."*
In the daily practice it is interpreted or a more wide form, mainly for people rejecting this new aspect of the gender ideology that it tries to make the differences between the sexes blurry. In this sense, sexism often means *"that somebody thinks there is a difference between male and female."*
Actually, yes, there is a difference. So, most of us are sexist on this practice, while most of us aren't on the Merriam-Webster definition.
It doesn't depend on that there were a female messiah or not.
Note, in some Christian denominations, particularly in the Catholicism, there is no female messiah, but there are female saints. And there is also Jesus' Mother, Mary. Other Christians consider Mary not important, or even as a negative person in the New Testament.
It didn't have any effect of that we are all sexist, except the few people thinking that the also the males can bear children or the females can have a penis.
The situation is more complex if it is about sexism towards women. In this case, we can use a mirror trick: switch the sexes, we get our world (with a male messiah), and look, if it has any effect to the sexism against man.
The answer is that no, it hasn't any effect. The greater direct power of the men in the majority of the history of the christian world was the result of various practical, economical, social reasons and didn't have anything to do with the fact that also Jesus was a man.
In our world, the Messiah is a male, and yes, there is sexism against males, although it is more rare as sexism against females.
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I have received some feedback that I should supply evidence for claims I have made. Since I cannot tell which part of my answer might not be commonly known or understood by others, and this topic is already taboo enough (*I don't want to go linking to all sorts of hate terms that exist and hate groups or hate speeches, etc.*) I ask that you please let me know what sections might need additional explanation or evidences.
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This question seems to imply that sexism is something that humans that share a gender with their religious icon have toward the opposite gender, but that does not seem to be the case in reality.
The answer to your question is "yes," and it's pretty straightforward...
At least in the United States, and I'm guessing in many other areas, the generic phrase "Men are [insert negative adjective here]" is a very common phrase heard from women. In fact, sometimes it even takes the form "*All* men are..." One common situation where this recurs is when a woman breaks off of a romantic relationship with a man who has just offended her, and either that woman or some other woman consoling her uses that template line. I have heard it said by women even in the presence of myself and other men. It is common enough that it even appears in mainstream media.
Currently there is sexism toward men in a society where the main religion(s) are based on male messiah. Since you want to do a gender swap, just take my previous sentence and swap the genders around:
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> Currently there is sexism toward ~~men~~ women in a society where
> the main religion(s) are based on ~~male~~ female messiah.
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If there is sexism toward men currently (and *there is*), then why would there not be sexism toward women if the religious icon were switched?
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I will go one further...
There exists bias and bigotry against *everyone* for practically every aspect of their being and every type of decision they have made in their life.
Protected classes exist for a reason. The Wikipedia article on [Protected Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group) lists some as: race, religion, national origin, age, gender, pregnancy, citizenship, familial status, disability, veteran status, and genetic information. There are also other aspects which people have, but let's concentrate on these first.
I have heard racist remarks made about every race I know of. Caucasian, African, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese, etc.. They all have racist hate speech made against them. I used to know a small group of guys who would frequently make awful remarks about Polish people and suffered having to hear racist remarks about them when I was around that group, and I always wondered how you could come to dislike such a random group, but the real reason is probably because hate knows no bounds.
Religion is another obvious one; we all know there is plenty of hatred and bigotry based on religion. There is a ton of it toward Muslims. Jews are another obvious religious group that receives a lot of bigoted hatred from others. I have heard plenty of it toward Christians too.
National origin is closely related to race, and I could repeat that paragraph almost verbatim.
When I was young, I was often offended by the bigotry based on age: "butt out and let the grown ups talk" or "I won't have that conversation with you until you are an adult" (this often happens even to those in their mid teens), and obviously the elderly get a lot of it as well.
Gender goes without saying. Almost everyone acknowledges the sexism against women, and most people acknowledge the comparatively less but still very real sexism toward men. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "Men are [insert negative adjective here]" I could afford to put this answer on a billboard.
Wow, I'm not even halfway through that list of protected classes and this is getting long, even though that list is not even an exhaustive list of ways people can be bigoted.
The point is that for almost every distinguishing quality or aspect a person can have, for almost every different value that quality can be, there are groups of people who hate it.
I'll add some more things people often hate over: sexual orientation, abortion, gun rights, government taxation decisions, and the list goes on.
Personally, I am Caucasian, so there are millions of people who will hate me for that on first sight, ditto for being male. Millions more would hate me for being Christian, ditto for hating abortion (as I hold the right to be alive in very high regard), and again for supporting gun rights (again, for holding right to be alive in very high regard). If everyone in the world read this answer right now, I would have millions of people who hate me when they have not even met me and have no idea what kind of person I am. Unfortunately for me, I do not hide any of this from people and so I have a lot of people who have hated me without ever getting to know me.
If there is anything you can count on when it comes to people, it is that they are very good at hating. I challenge everyone who reads this answer to think about all the different values for each thing I have listed above and to see if you don't have hate toward a general class of people over some aspect or decision. Though we commonly think of race and gender, I think you will find even more haters, likely including yourself, if you think about different options (for or against) of sexual orientation, abortion, or gun control.
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The point is, yes, there will be sexism toward women in the setting you describe, because there is bigotry by almost everyone and against almost everything.
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In my world, interstellar vessels use a drive whose design mankind learned from an extinct elder civilization. While construction of the drives is possible, the physical principles making them work are beyond mankind understanding. The drives have a number of curious properties, which I need them to have in order to prevent too many secondary applications of the technology. Additionally, there are a number of properties I gave them because since handwavium based technology is essentially magic, I might as well apply [Brandon Sanderson´s Laws of Magic](https://coppermind.net/wiki/Sanderson%27s_Laws_of_Magic) to it in order to keep stuff interesting. These limitations are beginning with the first category:
* **no real exhaust plume** This does not mean there is no exhaust plume, but that it consists of particles that either decay quickly after leaving the engine or won´t normally interact with matter. (I´m still somewhat undecided here, so any particle fitting this description can be chosen to explain the drive.) This condition exists in order to avoid relativistic matter beams or death ray photon rockets capable of punching holes through gas giants.
* **the faster the vessel, the higher the power output** The drives need to be supplied with energy in order to work, but unless they move faster than $0.15 c$ relative to their point of production no thrust will be produced. The trust increases with the speed roughly following $F = 1\,000\,000\,000 \times (23.81 \times v - 3.571)$ with $F$ thrust in newton and $v$ being velocity given as a fraction of lightspeed, meaning the maximum thrust that can be gained is about $2\times10^{10}\ \mathrm N$. So an average interstellar vessel of $1\times10^6\ \mathrm t$ moving near the speed of light can achieve an acceleration of about $20\ \mathrm{m/s^2}$. Vessels get up to a speed where the drive works using laser pushed sails. This is meant to prevent the drives from making other types of energy production obsolete and to be used in systems for energy production.
* **the alignment of the drive to the vector of motion matters** If the drive structure is aligned to the vector the vessel moves along orthogonally the energy output is at its maximum if it is aligned parallel to the movement vector it reaches zero. This is meant to show that a specific volume of space is *harvested* for energy and to limit the maneuverability of interstellar vessels. The idea of harvesting a specific volume of space is also related to the point mentioned before, as the velocity the vessel moves at would increase the volume the machinery can cover per second. However, the *harvesting* aspect isn´t essential and can be swapped out for a more plausible explanation of these features.
These three are crucial and **must** be considered in the answer. The second category contains limitations based on
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> The limitations of a magic system are more interesting than its capabilities. What the magic can't do is more interesting than what it can.
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These limitations fix minor issues the technology could create and should create interesting plot points.
* **drives hate being active near (meaning ca. 100 AU) objects above Jovian mass or close to each other** Hate means that they tend to get unstable in these situations and can explode.
* **while drives are active movement near the drive should be avoided** There is no fixed distance, just the guideline of the further away the better. This is the second reason why interstellar vessels are very long and arrowlike and why crews tend to dwell as high up in the vessel as possible. Bonus points if there is a reason why gas and fluid movement in pipes are fine but a human or a machine moving through a corridor is not. Additionally, a very slow movement of about a millimeter per second is fine.
* **weird accidents and failure modes** The drive blowing up and vaporizing the vessel isn´t the worst thing that can happen. At least if one is willing to trust blurry telescope observations and spacers yarn. People merging with bulkheads, teleportation, visions, the works. I mostly will mostly explain this with the arcane nature of the technology, but if there is any physical explanation for these effects mentioning them would be appreciated.
**Assume you are a physicist who is tasked with explaining this alien piece of technology within the realms of known physics.** Known physics means you can use any theory currently proposed or accepted. The first three points must be explained and the last three would just be a bonus.
Any remarks about his being impossible to answer are not relevant since even within the setting the question has not been answered. I´m just interested in how one would **attempt** to explain the stardrive.
EDIT1: I created [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/147358/58321) to solve the rest frame issue.
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EDIT: In retrospect, I think it's possible there is some confusion about what you're asking for.
If you're asking us to help fit your story requirements to real science, that's what I've tried to do below. It's a loose fit, to be sure.
But, if you don't actually care what the purported mechanism is, and you're just asking us to help invent diegetic technobabble -- such as inventing names for the different parts of the engine -- then I don't know how much use you'll find my post. The same applies if you're asking us to help anticipate how a fictional physicist might speculate as to the workings of an engine given only the observations you've outlined.
As I re-read your post, I get the impression this is maybe what you're asking for.
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I think the easiest solution here would be to assert that the drive works by interacting with dark matter and/or energy.
For one thing, **no real exhaust plume** is readily handwaved: the exhaust consists entirely of dark matter, and thus doesn't interact with everyday objects or physical systems.
Second, **the faster the vessel, the higher the power output** seems to come naturally if we assume the drive has some kind of ramjet-like mechanic. Whatever the process is that the drive uses to generate thrust, it depends on an influx of dark matter or energy. In reality, there is some interesting speculation about the way dark matter is distributed in the real world, but for your purposes the advantage is that you can play as fast and loose as you want -- since it's not directly observable, you can make any assertions you want about whether there's currently too much or too little dark matter present to get the drive going. There will be precious few opportunities for other facts to constrain your choices.
I'm a little less clear on your third rule, but I think a vague ramjet gestalt sets you up to talk about "harvesting" volumes of space.
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Why do **drives hate being active near (meaning ca. 100 AU) objects above Jovian mass or close to each other**? Because dark matter responds to gravity, and is thus likely to pool in very large wells. And while this drive depends on the presence of dark matter, it can't tolerate being drowned in the stuff -- especially when not operating at speed. If you just turn the thing on and then submerge it in a well full of dark matter, it's gonna clog. How does a device behave that's built with exotic materials, when you literally submerge it in one of its key fuels? I certainly wouldn't want to find out. But I bet it's unpredictable and bad. Imagine starting a car engine -- which requires a constant influx of *vaporized* gasoline -- and then lowering it into a tank of liquid gas. I assume there will be a fire, and the engine will stop operating. I also assume some really weird stuff will happen internally before the fire occurs.
**While drives are active movement on the lower decks should be avoided** this is a little harder to explain. I think you're looking for a story where there are bad physical consequences for breaking this rule. Since the effect presumably permeates floors and walls, we can reach for some kind of radiation-like effect, or we can reach for localized disturbance of space-time. However, you might consider that the effects are not physical. Perhaps the drive has strange effects on the functioning of the human brain. If space-time is being rapidly perturbed, perhaps it has really strange effects on the human brain: imagine a neuron firing in response to the alternatives of the quantum wavefunction before it actually collapses. Perhaps it's actually pretty tolerable as long as you're basically stationary, but if you start moving around it's like "scrubbing" your mind against a neurochemical washboard, leading to temporary (or permanent) psychosis.
Another interesting possibility is that the "can't go near it" effect *is not* a necessary consequence of the drive's operation, but a kind of anti-tampering feature added by the designers. Perhaps the elder civilization wants to prevent the engine from being studied closely, to prevent lesser races from figuring out how to weaponize the technology. So they added a entirely separate system that generates this harmful effect. The lesser civilization lacks the scientific understanding to realize that this anti-tampering device is not a critical part of the engine -- so whether you've got us building from blueprints or maintaining a fixed inventory of engines gifted to us by the aliens, we are ignorant of the fact that this nasty effect is actually an add-on.
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So, it's kind of ramjet that facilitates ultra-high-speed collisions of dark matter to produce thrust. It accomplishes this by the controlled generation of microgravity waves. Its reactants and exhaust are both weakly-interacting, so it can theoretically be mounted anywhere within the ship. However, the effects of the microgravity on the human mind are extremely dangerous, so it's wise to keep this thing -- filled with dangerous, exotic materials -- at arm's length.
Oh, and it was designed to traverse the distances between stars, not for local travel, so it operates best out in the open at "highway speed." It's usually safe for planet-hopping, but it's literally unusable for station-keeping and *extremely dangerous* in close range to planets and other large bodies. To say nothing of space cancer.
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From a storytelling perspective, it's a decent shorthand to treat dark matter as a kind of physical manifestation of gravity: you are more likely to find dark matter in big gravity wells where it can be held "captive," and less likely to find it between planets and stars. My understanding is that this is not actually true, but it's consistent with some generally-believed and easily understood ideas about dark matter.
Taking your 100-AU no-fly-zone into account, we might want to posit that the drive leverages environmental dark energy -- vacuum energy that only exists in the vast spaces between stars -- to create the microgravity waves that are used to coerce particles of dark matter to collide inside the drive and produce thrust. While none of this is really hard science, if you make the drive dependent upon dark energy, you're effectively saying it can't operate within a planetary system. So, that's an option to consider.
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EDIT: if you want to prevent robots from approaching the drive while it operates, best go with an effect that interferes with electrical signals: that will keep away animals, and robots. It could also make it tricky to deactivate the drive: an electrical signal might have a really hard time penetrating the region of the disturbance. Maybe it's controlled entirely with a couple of giant pushbuttons, and we usually attach long metal rods with actuators on the end so we can push those buttons mechanically.
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As an engineer I’d explain it by showing you the schematics.
As a Priest of Our Elder Saviours I’d explain it as Divine Power.
As a physicist? I wouldn’t explain it. Until we’ve developed suitable theoretical frameworks to explain it’s operation any attempt at explanation is the creation of a hypothesis at best (which requires much more detailed knowledge of the construction of/measurements of the device, which obviously I can’t get right now) and wild conjecture at worst. Hypotheses can be tested and models updated until we *do* understand it, at which point the physics is no longer beyond us.
But you stated in the OP that the physics of it is beyond our understanding. Therefore any physicist claiming they can definitively explain the workings of the drive is either a liar or mistaken. I personally fail to see how the physics would be beyond us for long (We’re pretty good at making models to explain things, at the worst we’ll develop a new branch of science), but with the problem as stated no physicist can give you an honest answer.
Now, any engineer explaining the device will point at the schematics and say ‘Here’s what the instruction manual says it can do’, and so the drives will be usable.
And any Priest explaining the drives will be able to say ‘Divine will’ and so the arcane and terrifying side effects will be explained away in a haze of Faith.
But if the workings of the drive are truly inscrutable then no physicist worth the title will pretend to understand how the damn things work.
[Answer]
**The drives works in more dimensions then we are used to**
We use to think of the universe as a 4 dimension space, 3 axis (up\down, left\right, forward\backward) and 1 for time (which moves forward only), but just because that's all we can see doesn't mean that that's all there is, what if this engine works with the other dimensions?
Let's say that this engine works in 5D space just to keep things as simple as possible, the 5 dimension will help the engine get up to speed as maybe moving in is a shorter distance between the two points (so you get to the destination faster?)
Let's go over the checklist:
* **no real exhaust plume** - there is one, but it goes on the fifth dimension only so for "normal" space there isn't really any
* \*\* the faster the vessel, the higher the power output\*\* - the distance might be shorter in the fifth dimension but you still have to cover that shorter distance, and of course the faster you move in in it the more power you need
* **Hate being near other engines of this type or larger mass objects** - this is less to do with the engine and more with our limited understanding of the physics involved, as both the engine & large mass objects affect this 5D space which we don't really understand we run the risk of getting into their gravity affect so it's safer to not use them close to either of them.
* **movement should be kept as far away as possible while the drive is active** - rotational momentum is a bitch even in 3D, [gyroscopes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope) act very strangely on 3 axis only, can you imagine what will happen with 4 axis? and as already established humanity doesn't really know a lot about this extra dimension so once again we error to the side of safety and try to keep any movement in "normal" 3D space as far away as possible, a pipe of water has less mass then a grown man\woman so they tend to cause less angular velocity which is why they tend to have lower "safety distance limits" then the crewmembers.
* **The alignment of the drive to the vector of motion matters** - it needs to push the ship forward in the fifth dimension, this may create very weird facing in the "normal" space but for the fifth dimension it will point directly behind the ship and it's target.
* **Weird failures & accidents** - you might move in the 5D space in a way where your body ends up in two room at the same time in "normal" space... That counts as weird in my book.
**Also if 5D is not enough there is noting that stopping you from saying the engine works in 39D space... (but not 40D as that's where the Glorfth lives & nobody likes how they smell)**
[Answer]
This engine is a warp drive. It changes the shape of space in front of itself, and then gets pulled forward to try to catch up with the space distortion. It is "surfing a wave" in space-time of its own creation.
As [a4android](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/22159) points out, this warp-drive "isn't necessarily a FTL drive. It warps the shape of space and that moves the spacecraft.… There's no reason why warp-drives should always be FTL drives. A sublight warp-drive makes more conceptual sense than a FTL one. Gravitational waves aren't gravity. So it isn't generating gravity."
The wave has a wake. This wake is a gravity wave. Gravity waves are effectively sound waves. Ordinary sound waves are the propagation of a density difference in a fluid or a solid. Gravity waves are the propagation of a change in the shape of space-time through space-time. They can be "heard" by ultra-sensitive pairs of eardrums; confirmation by a second ultra-sensitive pair of eardrums is required to rule out false positives. So far, the only gravity waves we have been able to hear have been 1/3 second long chirps as 30-solar mass black holes spin into each other at high speed. So it is possible for the wake to carry away a huge amount of power in a way that is hard for ordinary technologies to detect.
The huge amount of power can be generated by a Bussard ramjet. These ramjets need large, intense electromagnetic fields to pull in interstellar gases; they get more fuel the faster the ship goes.
The engine needs to be regularly adjusted to accommodate the motions of stars that are within a few light-years. Unfortunately, the adjustments are not fine enough to handle the motions of Jupiter-sized planets in Jupiter-scale orbits that are within 100 AU. These motions create disturbances in the gravitational field, which interfere with the engine's internal workings. (It is possible that the problem is the planet's acceleration, not the planet's velocity.)
The wake caused by another such engine within 100 AU is just as bad as the effect of a Jupiter-sized planet in a Jupiter-like orbit.
By the R-squared law, a too-fast (or too-jerky) motion of a small, nearby mass also causes uncompensated disturbances in the gravitational field inside the engine. Fluids moving within the ship are okay as long as the movement is steady.
[Answer]
[Tom's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/147277/37815) is spot-on in the physical backgrounds, the answer just lacks a good name for the drive. I would simply call it either
* **Dark-matter Jet Engine** (for formal use)
* **Dark Jet** (for colloquial use)
* **DJE** (for engineering slang)
The first term really explains quite well what this thing does: It ingests some dark matter, does something with it, and then exhausts it in the form of a directed jet. Just like a normal jet engine does with air. The other terms are just abbreviations of the first.
For the details of how well this covers your different conditions, please refer to [Tom's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/147277/37815).
] |
[Question]
[
We're starting off with a Japanese mythical creature, the [Yuki-Onna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuki-onna). Now the specifics of this being vary quite a bit from one tale to another, so let me be specific what this being is about. Keep in mind that this is **my** version, and may therefore deviate from popularly held versions.
Yuki-onna are ghosts of women who died during snowstorms. They're beings that begin being corporeal but can learn to 'phase through' other things (temporarily becoming incorporeal). They are essentially frozen corpses, so their core temperatures are well below -50 degrees Centigrade. Their lungs are filled with air of that same temperature, so they don't have 'ice breath', they just cool the air as they breathe out. Their diets and circadian rhythm is unimportant for this question, so I'll skip that.
What I want to know is: how are they affected by a fireball type spell? Say they breathe in the flames, does the temperature of the fireball affect whether they 'melt'?
The problem I am having is [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILA1ic-Q8_E). Ice (frozen water particles) should melt in layers, which would then need even more energy (heat) to vaporize. So, in theory, Fire shouldn't be 'super effective' against ice. It would take too long to be effective.
So, if I hazard a guess, I would say that there would be a insulating layer of ice on the skin of the Yuki-Onna. The flames would first have to get through this layer (via the same ineffective methods of heat transference), before melting and burning through skin, then blood, internal organs, etc.
Would fire therefore be the most effective method to combat beings of this nature? Or would the airways allow for the heat to circulate into the core and heat up quicker?
[Answer]
>
> *The problem I am having is this. Ice (frozen water particles) should melt in layers, which would then need even more energy (heat) to vaporize. So, in theory, Fire shouldn't be 'super effective' against ice. It would take too long to be effective.*
>
>
>
What you're describing is [ablative armor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_armor) where the protection comes from the armor eroding away. This is used on [real spacecraft as a heat shield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_heat_shield) (just not made of water).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/W5R9z.jpg)
Ablative armor works by carrying away the energy of the attack in lots of tiny fragments. A microscopic outer layer heats up, vaporizes, and is blown way taking the energy along with it. Water works fairly well at this because it has a very high [specific heat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_heat_capacity), meaning the amount of energy needed to raise its temperature: 4.2 J to raise 1 gram of liquid water by 1 C. [Ice is about 1.9 J/g/C](http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/ice-thermal-properties-d_576.html).
Phase changes also take energy. Going from water ice to a liquid water takes 333 J/g. From liquid water to vapor is a whopping 2257 J/g. This is why we still use steam to turn generators, it contains a lot of energy. This is also why steam scalds are so bad.
So to take 1g of -50 C ice to 100 C water vapor takes...
```
-50 C -> 0 C | 50 C * 1.9 J | 95 J
Solid -> Liquid | 333 J | 333 J
0 C -> 100 C | 100 C * 4.2 J | 420 J
Liquid -> Gas | 2257 J | 2257 J
-------------------------------------------------
Total 3105 J
```
That is roughly 1 [Watt-hour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilowatt_hour) (ie. 1 Watt for 1 hour or 60 W for 1 minute) or [roughly the kinetic energy of an Olympic hammer throw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy))... for ablating a single gram of -50 C ice.
To put that in perspective another way, [a typical stovetop burner uses 1500 J/s](http://energyusecalculator.com/electricity_stovetop.htm) and so could ablate 1 gram of -50 C ice every 2 seconds. This is why boiling water on a stovetop takes so long.
---
The problem with ablative armor is its protection eventually wears out. The question then becomes how much energy does this fire attack have? Does it have enough to ablate all the ice? If so then their goose is cooked. If not, then they'll be -- mostly -- fine.
A quick puff of flame isn't going to do more than vaporize the outer layer of frost; and if their chill is magical it will rebuild that layer with water vapor from the surrounding air. While a sustained flame will wear away the layer of ice and start scorching flesh and presumably doing damage.
So really fire against a frost being would be very ineffective until all the ablative ice vaporizes, then it's just as effective as fire is on flesh. If you're playing an RPG this could be modeled as a pool of HP that absorbs fire attacks and slowly replenishes itself. When it's gone, fire does full damage.
[Answer]
# Ice has a large enthalpy of fusion
The specific heat of ice is 2.05 kJ/kg\*K. That means it takes so many kilo-joules to raise a kilogram of ice by one degree kelvin.
The enthalpy of fusion of ice is 333.5 kJ/ kg. Therefore it takes so many kilo-joules to melt a kilogram of ice.
For a mythical ice creature, losing and kilogram of ice might not be that important, assuming it has a way to make up the lose by freezing water out of the air or something. If this is the case, then the 333 kJ blast wouldn't really be life-threatening.
# Its hard to melt that much ice
Now 333 kJ of heat energy is not that much energy in the long run. But it still represents a lot of energy for one attack. That is roughly the complete discharge from a lead-acid battery. That means if you discharged a car battery through this creature, it would probably not be killed (can't say the same about you or me).
To put this in more fireball related terms, this is 10% of the blast of 1kg of TNT. If a block of explosives went of about a foot away from this creature, and blasted in all directions, the amount of heat energy that this creature absorbed would be around 333 kJ, and would not be deadly. If 1kg of TNT went off 1 foot from you....well....condolences to your family.
# Conclusion
Melting ice is hard. Better off doing what most people do to get rid of ice, hit it with a shovel. Let springtime and the sun take care of the melting.
[Answer]
You are describing that the air she inhales is magically cooled, and that the ice being is magically cooled against *normal* room temperatures.
So why can’t it combat oven temperatures as well? It’s a matter of capacity, not general ability.
Just as we heat our flesh and can tolerate *some* cold environment, yourcreature will have some active countereffects against *some* increased temperature. This can be tireing.
Just as we can reach into a hot oven and grab a foil tray but are burned instantly if touching a solid metal tray, and fireballs remove the hair from my arm but don’t otherwise injur in such a short exposure, your creature can be overwhelmee with heat if delivered fast enough.
Hot air might not do it. Use *hot water*, or hot metal objects.
I suggest that the best weapon is **steam**. Steam will scald you far worse than boiling water, because of the phase change heat. This nicely counterballances the huge amount of heat needed to melt the ice!
[Answer]
I'm not certain a fireball would do much more than surface damage to a creature like this in most instances. something like a fireball (in my mind) is pretty much just fire. To cause lasting damage, you need a reliable and steady means of thermal transfer. Boiling Water would do much more damage much more quickly because of the specific heat of water as opposed to the specific heat of air. This is to transfer heat damage through the skin and clothes.
There is one thing about a fireball that might work though. Lungs are pretty fragile. Time a fireball to go off during the Ice creatures "inhale". Cell layers in the lungs are maybe one or two layers thick, so the fire should be able to crisp a large quantity of lung tissue in a short period of time. The problem is: Is you mage skilled enough to launch and place the fireball well enough to catch the Yuki-Onna on the inhale. Not very likely. Go with Boiling Water, or even better, a Glob-O-Lava for max damage.
[Answer]
Well, if by *fireball* you actually mean a sphere of nothing but temperature gently surrounding your target, then yes, heat is going to take too much time to be an effective weapon. But if you are thinking in the more usual form of fireball, a blast of flames akin to a deflagration, then you surely can blow the Yuki-Onna out.
The key, as with any explosive, is not the heat nor the raw chemical energy of the explosive, but the sudden raising pressure blow when the thing goes off - gasoline is more energetic than TNT, and butter more than gasoline, but you have way more probabilities of surviving a pound of butter burning besides you than an pound of TNT :D.
Ice is hard, and so, very fragile. It should shatter in a thousand pieces when smashed by a 3 psi push or above.
[Answer]
In addition to already existing answers, please remember that the layer of ice being melted away is analogous to human skin and flesh. Thus this creature would effectively still sustain damage, though it would not instantly be killed.
Depending on your setting this creature would or would not feel pain from the damage caused - a corpse should *not* feel pain, though.
I would suggest using fire or any other source of heat will still be an effective method to combat this creature.
] |
[Question]
[
I didn't see this question pop up when I wrote the title, so I don't think this has been asked before (or, at least not the way I'm going to ask it).
Everyone knows and loves fictional languages: they can be really in-depth from Klingon and Eldarin to simple languages like Newspeak. These languages serve different purposes; in the former case they create the feeling of immersion for a fantasy world, and in the latter case they highlight the power a government has.
Creating new languages, however, is a difficult task: it requires a really deep knowledge of linguistics, and it's not sufficient to just take an English corpus and do a one-to-one translation without changing any grammatical structure.
Given how difficult it is, then, my question is: **why do storymakers and worldbuilders put this time and effort into making new languages?**
I was thinking of a few reasons, but I also felt like I found counters to them.
* It lets a species use words that don't exist in the written text's language (English, for example).
However, it's not uncommon to see words unrepresentable in English be written in some other language, or made-up compound words be created to push an idea across. This results in creating one or two *new words*, not an entire language.
* It doesn't require aliens or other species to know English, which may otherwise not be logically sound.
This is fair, but in a lot of stories where aliens or other species come to Earth, they are sufficiently technologically advanced - it doesn't sound inconceivable that they would have a device that takes in an English dictionary and translates whatever they speak to English (or whatever they hear to their native language$^1$).
I think I'm missing something here. What really are the *major* benefits of having a new language? What is the explanation for why it's worth the time to create?
## EDIT
Wow, I did not expect this question to get this much traffic. I appreciate all of the answers - they're all well-written and I don't have the time to comment on them all, but thanks! (:
I want to add a clarifying bit to this question: I know that worldbuilders might make a language for personal reasons, for example:
* To have fun/relax while working out an entirely new language
* To help with immersion in your new fantasy world
* To appeal to a fanbase and be able to sell unique merchandise
I agree that these are valid reasons, but they are all out-of-story reasons. My question really pertains to in-story reasons. I mentioned earlier in this post some arguments like, "some words don't exist in English," so I'm looking for reasons like *that*.
This isn't to say the answers here are wrong - to be fair, the three bullets I listed above make a good argument for why all the effort that goes into making a language is worth it!
$^1$[This already exists, by the way.](http://www.waverlylabs.com/)
[Answer]
# because
You answered it yourself: Everyone knows and loves fictional languages. Why write your story at all? Why put effort into making your city have consistent locations, distances, and routes across different scenes (by making a map before writing such lines)? Why make a backstory to drive your characters reactions in a deep and consistent realistic way, when the backstory itself is never given in the book?
It's part of the art of worldbuilding. Some people will find it fun in and of itself and be motivated to develop it beyond the degree of consistent background required for a good piece of writing, and tqke it up as an artwork of itself.
Beancounters may decide to *fund* this effort because it may lead to a better developed and persistent fanbase, as seen from the example of Tolkien. So maybe Okrind was *inspired* and the studio execs were convinced that it was worth the price.
# some reasons
* stimulate a fan base, in and of itself
* have more products to sell in the franchise
* serve as cultural development, enriching both setting and individual characters
* rather than avoiding language as a trope to get on with the story, make the language translation a part of the story.
# overkill
So you might *need* a general flavor: how names are made, what sounds are used so a poem or inscription can be "made up". But just as a map can be just a sketch showing different districts and distances and only the names of the streets actually used, the artist might simply want to go farther: another step might be to plan a naming convention for the streets in a part of town (say, named after flowers) but not name them all. Someone might go further and fill in the map, even though it's not needed. That might be handy for a series/franchise, later on.
Someone suffering from *writer's block* or not feeling like working on the plot elements or dialog or whatever needs to be done to finish the story might still "work" rather than just sit there or take off. A OCD-ish task of details can engage you for hours and seem productive, and not be *blocked* in the same way as the avoided task. Adding details to the city map or to the language dictionary are just the kind of thing that (I suppose) would work here.
So, there are any degrees of development you can work towards, not all-or-nothing. Going beyond is *a work of art*. Why do any of it? That's the only answer.
[Answer]
I have found that creating languages, or at least their basic components, actually saves me effort.
If I have a "language" to fall back on with a defined phonology, it becomes much easier to name things in a consistent manner. Instead of having to reinvent the wheel each time I want to give a character a name, I can often just go to my syllable/glyph chart and pick a few that sound good together. Of course this is unideal if you want broader meaning in names, but since the vast majority of human languages have little to no meaning conveyed in names, I don't consider that a major issue.
Further, using a fictional language could save actual time and money in in some contexts. In games, for example, using the native language of the developer in textures could mean substantially increased effort in localization. Using fictional languages can potentially allow you to include text in-game, but avoid having to remake large amounts of the visuals. I suspect this is the reason for the creation of the otherwise undeveloped Hylian language.
---
The main reason I create fictional languages is for the **visual style** it enables. If you want to depict anything "native" to a civilization that wouldn't use any human writing system, you have no other option that doesn't come across as cheap. I have a setting with a galactic empire in which humanity as we know it does not exist and never did exist. I couldn't have the ship names written on their hulls in Latin characters, if I want to be at all believable.
And it's not just about believably. A writing system is a very good way to create a clearly **recognizable style**, even if it is just code for Latin characters. That is valuable in marketing. For example, even people with no understanding of fantasy can tell you what setting this is associated with, and probably even which general group in that setting:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2BodE.png)
---
That said, there isn't one single act of "creating a language". There are degrees to it. Just to give some general clearly delimited lines:
* A visual code-only or meaningless language/script (Hylian, Romulan, Dinotopian)
* A functional but limited language (Dwarven, Na'vi)
* A full-fledged designed language with a dictionary, complete grammar, and a body of writing (Klingon, Quenya, Sindarin)
How far someone decides to go with the language development depends on their intended usage of it. If all you want is visual style, as I generally want, there is little reason to worry too much about grammar or to spend time filling up dictionary pages. For example, one of the most easily recognized fictional languages is merely a code for Japanese:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zw3hP.jpg)
As I suggest by listing Na'vi, you might even be missing major parts of a language depending on context. The Na'vi don't have written language. Many settings have unspoken ancient languages existing only as texts. Some have have incomprehensible scripts which supposedly lost their meaning.
---
To address the question more directly - people generally create languages for the same reason they create flags, maps, nations, and even character names: **to make the setting more believable and rich**.
But while that is typically the motivating factor, there are other reasons that can motivate people to do so beyond merely fleshing out their settings:
* Credibility
* Visual depth
* Aural depth
* Immersion in general
* Marketing / branding
* Localization
* To prove a point (/points) about language (sometimes suggested as why Tolkien, who mostly started the trend, was so obsessed)
[Answer]
Why do people create fictional world, stories, characters? Some will do it as a strong background to a book, a game or a movie. Others just like to wonder "what if?". Some are high on drugs and are certain a world where bees are in charge would be awesome (note that I don't talk from personal experience, a bee-premacy would be terrifying (also, don't do drugs)).
People do stuff for multiple reasons and creating stuff seems to be one of our favorite gig. Why would people *not* want to create a fictional language?
Of course, most people that invent a language are linguists, just like a lot of Sci-fi authors have a scientific background. My guess is, when you love your work, you want to also be creative about it. You want to explore unexplorable land. And language is in no way an exception to that.
I will now finish with a quote I don't fully understand taken from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secret_Vice) by J.R.R. Tolkien, on his passion of language crafting:
>
> The man next to me said suddenly in a dreamy voice: 'Yes, I think I shall express the accusative case by a prefix!' A memorable remark!
>
>
> ...Just consider the splendour of the words! 'I shall express the accusative case.' Magnificent! Not 'it is expressed', nor even the more shambling 'it is sometimes expressed', nor the grim 'you must learn how it is expressed'. What a pondering of alternatives within one's choice before the final decision in favour of the daring and unusual prefix, so personal, so attractive; the final solution of some element in a design that had hitherto proved refractory. Here were no base considerations of the 'practical', the easiest for the 'modern mind', or for the million - only a question of taste, a satisfaction of a personal pleasure, a private sense of fitness.
>
>
>
Now, I'm not sure of what an accusative case is, but obviously linguists see beauty in it. And if someone can see beauty in something, someone will create more of it.
But let's get out of my philosophical mumbling and get to the actual question: on the practical advantages of creating your language.
For some authors, this may be part of their creation process. Heck, for Tolkien, it was central to it. As language is central to society, creating the language for the world you're building may well be an ultimate commitment to it. If you want realism and immersion, language may well be a powerful tool to do it.
You don't need to do it totally though. Playing with language has been done in a lot of different ways in creations:
* Yoda is "alien", R2D2 is robotic, Chewbacca is untamed
* The use of Chinese in [Firefly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_%28TV_series%29) adds background to the story while passing censorship.
Also, some people just don't have enough realism.
[Answer]
One factor to consider is that it is not always necessary to create an entire language to include it in your world. Most of the time, simply stating the language that a character is speaking is enough, whether or not that language exists. Any major benefits as you have described them could be achieved through this method. Actually building the language would give insight into where translation issues and misunderstandings would arise and help you write characters speaking that language in a consistent dialect, but these are very minor benefits of a very large undertaking. The only real reason to create a fictional language is because you want to. It's as much a part of the finished product as the setting and the characters themselves.
[Answer]
# For Immersion and Fun!
Language is a huge part of a people/species' culture, and it's a delight to immerse yourself in an imaginary world.
Consider the following conversation between two orcs:
English:
>
> "Hello, old friend! I've just come back from hunting deer.
> We'll have lots of food tonight. Yay for food!"
>
>
>
Orc-english:
>
> "Lok'tar, brother! I have been hunting the gu'ul—the
> bouncing four-legs. Tonight we feast, we will have a great brog'nar.
> Brog'nar!"
>
>
>
Here enough language is given to grow a culture, a mindset, while still conveying enough English for the reader to understand what's happening.
[Answer]
It creates a communication barrier between different characters. Something that not only enriches the characters and their culture, but is also a challenge they must overcome.
[Answer]
I think the most basic answer, without delving into why, say, a publisher would support a conlanging endeavor (revenue, obviously), is that humans like to make art. Whether it's underwater basket-weaving, conlanging, or turquoise jewelry on Etsy, there is going to be some population of people who enjoy expressing themselves through a particular medium. Conlanging is often a more technically bent art form, but not necessarily either. You can find lots of conlangers on Tumblr, for example, who conlang not as an outlet for skill in the science but as a way to express their dreams for a more just, equitable, and gender-inclusive culture. I can't throw actual stats at you, but it's generally acknowledged among the community that a huge proportion of conlangers are LGBT+, and it's easy to imagine why.
As an aside, I feel that it's worth mentioning a deep knowledge of linguistics is far from necessary to try your hand at conlanging. I mean, I would certainly suggest knowing what you're technically doing, but one glance at the "Ancient Language" of Christopher Paolini's *Eragon* series should be enough to convince anyone that you can shoehorn your conlang into any cash cow even if it's just a relex--no one will know any better.
In any case, the overwhelming majority of fictional media doesn't contain conlangs at all, so it actually does take a special love or devotion to the craft or its worldbuilding value to commit to the effort.
[Answer]
If everyone in a story speaks and understands a common language, that can be represented as being the language the story itself is written in. If it's necessary to represent the characters as being sometimes unable to understand each others' languages, however, it's much more effective to say:
>
> The Quazark wandered in and shouted *Snaem gnihton!*--The village is under attack!--while tugging at people's sleeves, but nobody understood him or paid him any heed.
>
>
>
than it would be to say:
>
> The Quazark wandered in and shouted, in perfect Quazarkian, "The village is under attack!" while tugging at people's sleeves, but nobody understood him or paid him any heed.
>
>
>
If one knew an obscure language or dialect that nobody would recognize, one could use that rather than inventing a fictitious language, but doing so would likely cause those who did know the language to wonder why the characters would be speaking it.
[Answer]
Sometimes you really want to explore concepts which are difficult to capture in English. In such a situation, you can construct a fictional language to state such concepts. You then get to spend your effort helping the reader understand the language well enough to get your point across.
Sometimes you don't even need a full language. In Robert Heinlein's *Stranger in a Strange Land*, one of the focal points of the book is his invented verb "to grok." One might even say the book is a several hundred page attempt to teach us what grok means. If he had tried to describe the concept with just English words, it would have been very difficult to convey the idea.
[Answer]
I think it helps in creating culture and personality to characters or people and allows the author to ask himself more questions that can help flesh out the world.
What sounds does the language use? Is it loud and boisterous filled with gruff sounds or clicks or is it erotic and enticing with soft tones or a musical quality? What words are bad words? Why are they bad? Same for good words. Do they have words for things that English doesn't and what words do they not have that English does? What does the written form look like and what impression does it give to non speakers (compare Tolkiens elvish to elder scrolls Dragon language).
Overall the final question is what does this language have to say about the character, government, people, and their culture/ethics/values?
[Answer]
It might depend on how much the artificial language gets focus, and how interested the writer is in having the audience analyze it. Speaking only for myself: in my writing, artificial languages are only there as flavor. For the most complete example to date, I developed a fictional font for an alien culture, and wanted the writings featured in the story (as background decoration, console readouts, etc.; it's a webcomic) to have natural language patterns, without just being a real language in a different font. And generating realistic-looking gibberish would at once take more effort to keep consistent, and be less able to withstand an attempt to decode it, should any reader care enough to try.
So, drawing on my smattering of knowledge of various languages, I invented a few fictional sentences on the spot, derived general rules from them, and referred back to those rules to create new sentences. New words were generated at random from various known Earth languages (mostly Germanic, Romance, Semitic, and Indonesian).
None of it is necessary to understand the story (characters speak in the language of the story itself when necessary for reader comprehension), it's not a fully developed language, and it has little prominence, but I feel better knowing that the "foreign text" would stand up to some elementary level of scrutiny.
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I don't think anyone's mentioned **indentifying with the character**, which you (the writer) often want the reader to do. If the character enters a situation where there's some aliens, and they say a bunch of stuff she doesn't understand, and **you don't understand it either** then you identify with the character: you are both thinking *"Gah, what are they saying? Is it bad?"*. So it's a useful way of putting you in the character's shoes, so to speak.
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**TL;DR version of the answer:**
If you are capable of creating a full language and you need a new language as a part of other form of art / storytelling / fiction (not as an end in itself), it makes no sense to do a full language. It's wiser to use your time to fake it well, given that you know how a new language should be, and use the saved time to specifically focus on what would have been side benefits on a full fledged language. It only makes sense as a means of expression for its creator, valve of some sort, or if it's an end in itself.
**Rant version:**
I like the other answers, they enter the details of the 'why', analyzing the objectives, effects and results of such process, and the objective benefit it could bring into story-making. Many of them explain perfectly valid reasons.
It kind of depicts the writers as entrepreneurs, with plans for everything, win-loss balances for their actions and cost-estimations for their time, or caring about the cost of opportunity on investing time in give depth to one aspect of their work.
I think maybe a plausible answer is the other way around. It may be a symptom for a vocational writer, the opposite of money driven people who would create just nice sounding phrases, and strange looking symbols, (i.e. efficient investment of time) and be contempt with it (it has more or less the same effect on the general audience). So I'll try to address some of your questions from the creative standpoint:
Considering both type of writers with the same intelligence and knowledge level, both with the skill and understanding of linguistics deep enough to create such thing from the start, one kind vocational and the other 'entrepreneurial' (for my lacking for a better word):
**Why do storymakers and worldbuilders put this time and effort into making new languages?**
Surely not because someone with the skills to create a new language couldn't arrange some sounds and place some crafted symbols in consistent enough ways that in the end, the audience feels like there is a complete alien language behind. The entrepreneurial writer (or the vocational pressured by uncaring publishers, equal in this case) will patch up something smartly, and have a happy audience nevertheless. Not many will care what hardcore 'freaks' like to brag they can squabble in, or talk about in forums that 99% of their audience won't even know exists.
Why then put the effort into something that is wholly behind the scenes?
Other answers point out that it may help bring depth, or attract hardcore fans, or develop a better story altogether.
That makes sense, from the perspective of writers that pursue completeness or depth in itself, but from a (vocational) artists standpoint, not so much. Their point of view is from what they want to express, not what they want others to perceive. (Why would not make sense if what you care about is what others perceive is discussed more deeply in the answer to the next question).
Those storymakers and worldbuildes ALREADY have that language in mind, like working on it on their free time, and happen to feel the urge to either share it with the rest of their work or it inspires the rest of their world.
I'm basing this answer in the fact that I myself feel similar urges and like 'daydreaming' in similar ways. If I ever make a game, or write a novel, or make a film, it won't surely be because I want to do something people like and get recognition, or to attract hardcore fans, or to make money with merchandising in the long term. That may be a welcome side-effect, but it won't be the WHY. That's has nothing to do with what a (truly) creative person thinks about when making something. It's the other way around. They have inner worlds, and feel the urge to 'solidify' them into something. It's more of a mind relief, or and act of conservation of ideas. I myself, feel the urge to at least write down or sketch most of the creative ideas I come up with. It's hard to let them go knowing that doing so may incur in forgetting them completely, and so, maybe losing them. So it's either to create a tangible version of your inner world, or risking not thinking about it for enough time until it's forgotten. The decision may be based upon your perceived worth of the idea and your skills to create any form of representation of abstract thoughts.
Some will feel relieved and don't do anything else, others, completist enough, may refine such sketches into something more. After completion, some of the creative people is confident or bold enough to release such creations into the wild. Some get recognition, may even find out that their success was based on the sincerity of the representation of their inner worlds, breaking what's established without much shame. Some end up with things that are already common, but is possible that it feels new to some critics and audiences. It's even possible that it has nothing so original about it, we are mostly under the same conditions and sharing environment, after all, so it's perfectly natural that the same ideas evolve simultaneously and from distant origins, isolated or not.
**What really are the major benefits of having a new language?**
From the audience and money driven writer point of view:
Asides from less work creating social and cultural background for the species involved, not much. If the part of the time saved is put in designing better cultural backgrounds and social structures for your species involved, or more original sounds and alphabets; the positive side effects are greatly diminished by the cost of creating something complete rather than just a facade. In many aspects you could create far better results with superficial patches if you invest half the time it would take to build the real thing (almost a must in most aspects of the cinematographic industry, where the creation process involves too many paychecks to be done the way the director/writer wishes it'd be really done). I don't think it's hard to extrapolate this to many of the aspects of the creative process.
Then, once again, the major benefit might be that the creator does not have to be constantly thinking about some thing that he/she likes and will be lost if forgotten. And even more important, once 'solidified', you can free your mind and expand upon the idea, add detail, explore and tweak it to let it be more than it could possibly had been holding it all in your head at the same time. Musicians do it, writers do it, ... Is a must to succeed? Probably not. So the major benefit for having a new language might be, simply, that the creator is happier.
**What is the explanation for why it's worth the time to create?**
Generally, it is not economically worth the time to be any kind of artist or create any kind of thing. It's a ticket draw. It will be worth a lot it if it's what the audience fixates upon, and if they like it so much after they notice. Or it can be ignored. Or disliked. But as any ticket draw, for every successful artist there will be many more who have put exactly if not more effort and won't succeed. I don't have the numbers, but you can easily see that dividing the collective benefit any of this could bring (mostly will be from the successful artists) to the collective effort put in it (where non successful people outshine the others) won't add up to any economical worth.
On the other hand, other kinds of 'worths', like the ones mentioned before, less tangible but providing happiness to the one that invests the time and effort, may be unquantifiable. I'm quite sure they wouldn't be doing it if it was not for those other kinds of worth. They'd be earning a paycheck doing some other thing that makes them equally not happy but brings more money and is more reliable, or investing in other more noticeable aspects of their novels or whatever. People doesn't do theses kind of things for money. (Creating intangible depth, that is. People will surely write what is easy to sell without liking it!)
I tried to answer in the most general way, as I felt that the answer to the tangible benefits of an invented language were already pretty well exposed on other answers, but as your question incurred in the 'WHY', I felt like there was no good answer exploring the reasons behind all the dubiously economically worth forms of art or creation, which I think this is a case of.
**The answer in short terms:
Because whoever creates something does not want it to be just an idea in their head.**
Finally, I'd like to add a reason some people do things: They think it's *soo damn cool*. It could answer to 'why?' too, though it really is just a simplification of the above reasons.
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[Question]
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Imagine that one day in the not-too-distant future, our scientists discover that our world is dying. It doesn't matter how this is happening, maybe magic or unstable core or Gaia herself has finally had enough of our sh\*t, but the important thing is that it is happening, and *soon*.
Our only hope is to escape, and head out to space. One tiny solace is that the Earth isn't going to *explode*, just become uninhabitable, so we won't have to travel far.
With a time frame of around 50 years, assuming that everyone on the planet managed to pull their heads out of their asses and work together for a change, what would be the best method to save the most people, and how many people would we reasonably be able to save? What if we only had 30 years?
Harder science preferred. If your answer calls for needing more time, state how much extra time would be needed.
Edit: Tech level set 20 minutes in the future. I think I may not have been clear enough.
Edit: Thanks for all the great answers guys! Project ORION is clearly the way to go. I would accept more answers if I could, but Jimmy360 was the first to provide the answer. Thanks :D
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**[Nuclear Pulse Propulsion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion) Rockets**
NPP rockets were (still?) actually developed by the U.S. government. They called it Project Orion. Simply, the design is to detonate a nuclear bomb with a nuclear bomb underneath it. One would expect the shield underneath it to melt or be destroyed also with the rocket, but the rocket gets away so quickly that it is safe.
There are 7.13 billion people on Earth and the average human weighs 62 kg. The minimum amount of weight that we have to lift is 441440000000 kg. It takes about 350703 joules to lift a single kg to geosynchronous orbit. However, one of the problems with rockets is that they have to carry their own fuel making it exponentially harder to lift things with a rocket... but this one doesn't, meaning that we can avoid the tyranny of the rocket equation. 350703 x 441440000000 = 154814330000000000. We need at least 154814330000 MJ to lift everyone to space.
The Castle/Bravo, detonated by the U.S., released 63,000 TJ of energy. This is over 6x the amount of energy that we need. This is also enough energy to bring equipment (like terraforming equipment).
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> Edit (a counter to Jim2b's answer):
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In this situation, something I like to call emergency Communism would come into play. The unified Earth government would cut off all unnecessary business/production and force everything to work for the Orion goal. The world's steel production would be massively increased.
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If the Earth is dying, then a revived ORION is the way to go. Polluting the atmosphere with fallout is going to be the least of everyone's worries. Calculation made by the ORION team in the late 1950's suggested they could have gone to Mars in the late 1960's, and Saturn by 1975. Their spaceships would have resembled Winnebago's rather than the tin can's we remember from history; ORION is so efficient in terms of both ISP and deltaV that ORION team members jokingly suggested they could bring barber chairs on board if they wanted.
The NextBigFuture blog has also been rather enthusiastic about the so called "Jules Verne Cannon", which involves firing a nuclear "physics package" in an underground salt dome and channeling the blast through a large pipe to boost large and insensitive payloads into space. One suggested example is coal, so you have carbon to carry out various chemical reactions on the Moon, which suggests just how cheap this could potentially be. That idea was inspired by the real life "Plum Bob" series of tests, where one underground explosion popped the cap from the top of the shaft. Calculations suggest the huge steel cap exited the shaft at 6X Earth escape velocity, although no verified records (the cap only appears in 1 frame of a high speed movie recording the event) exist and the cap itself has never been found (it is most likely it disintegrated inside Earth's atmosphere due to aerodynamic stress and heating).
Obviously, payloads being launched by a Jules Verne Cannon need to be very rugged indeed.
So the basic escape route would be to use a Jules Verne Launcher to fling payloads of heavy, unbreakable "stuff" into orbit or even blast it into the Moon (future astronauts can "mine" the new craters for steel, other metals and minerals) while sending the actual astronauts into space in large Orion craft, which have enough deltaV to pick up payloads in orbit and carry on the far reaches of the Solar System. By lofting large amounts of basic materials via the Jules Vern launcher, even relatively inefficient recycling systems can be made to last for years while better life support loops are designed and built, and new sources of materials from the asteroids and moons of the Solar System are developed.
[Answer]
This is amplification on previous answers citing [Project Orion (aka Nuclear Pulse Propulsion)](http://jim2b.blogspot.com/2010/11/the-case-for-space-viii-nuclear-pulse.html). Read the provided reference for history and technical background.
**Background**
Research & testing performed from 1950s - 1970s indicated that **using that level of technology** we could built a **8,000,000 tonne** craft capable of achieving orbit and providing a bit of extra $ \Delta V$, perhaps enough for $V\_{esc}$. However, only about 1/3 of this mass is payload mass (2,700,000 tonne).
**The problem**
Let's assume we need to lift every human being off the Earth and there's **zero population growth**:
```
Current population ~ 7,000,000,000 each
Average mass ~ 100 kg / each
Total mass ~ 700,000,000,000 kg
Total tonnes ~ 700,000,000 tonnes
```
Assume that we need 20x this mass for equipment & consumables for keeping people alive in transit, colony construction equipment, plus sundry other items. Also assume that the ships are constructed in a modular prefab fashion that allows us to directly use them at the destination or dissemble them and use the parts in existing colonies:
```
Total lift requirement in tonnes ~ 14,000,000,000 tonnes
Per craft payload mass in tonnes ~ 2,700,000 tonnes / craft
Total required craft ~ 5200 craft
```
**Estimating timing**
[Wikipedia states that world production of container ships was ~11,000,000 tons in 2011](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship#Vessel_purchases) and our Super Orions would require similar (but more stringent) levels of construction difficulties (remember we can use normal construction materials like steel). So without straining we could build on average 1 of these Super Orions per year but each would require multi-year construction (say 5 years like US aircraft carriers or perhaps even 10-15 years). **We'd be done in 5,200 years.**
With straining, (I would guess) we could build 10x this number. **We'd be done in 520 years.**
With all out desperation, the upper bounds of what we could make would be determined by our critical resource production (such as steel). Assume our 8,000,000 tonne craft are composed entirely of steel and that this is our limiting resource. [This site](http://www.worldsteel.org/statistics/crude-steel-production.html) indicates world steel production is around:
```
World steel production ~ 150,000,000 tonnes / year
Max Super Orion production ~ 20 ships / year
```
We'd finish making our Super Orion fleet in **260 years.**
**Estimating cost**
Let's assume that the amount of labor and difficulty of constructing these Super Orions equates on a tonne per tonne basis with the expense of building nuclear aircraft carriers.
US nuclear powered aircraft carriers mass about 100,000 tonnes of displacement and cost 26 billion (USD).
**Each Super Orion will cost ~2.1 trillion (USD)** or about 2/3 of the 2014 US federal expenditures. The fleet will cost 11,000 trillion (USD).
**Destinations**
The Earth is the garden spot of our Solar System. Very few places have both the readily available volatiles, metals, and other materials (soil?) that we'll need to survive. IMO, Mars and perhaps a few of the main body asteroids (Ceres is looking really good right now) might fulfill this role.
But really only Mars has enough volatiles, metals, and *room* to host a significant portion of the human population. Where are we going to put everyone?
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If we had 50 years, we'd be boned. With the most optimistic estimates of fuels costs; [SpaceX can put things into Low-Earth Orbit for $1,600/kg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator_economics#Costs_of_current_systems_.28rockets.29).
The average person [weighs about 62kg](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mass%20of%20a%20human%20being).
This becomes an *enormous* problem when you try to ship all [7.13 **billion** people](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population%20of%20earth) into space.
That's going to cost 704 million *million* dollars ($704,320,000,000,000).
**Now you have to find the spare cash to build enough spaceships for seven billion souls.**
At the end of the day, with anything close-to today's technology - it's just not practical to save most people. A *lot* of people are going to be left behind. We can't even keep a few astronauts in space indefinitely. We manage [a few years at best](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeri_Polyakov).
But in general, how many people we could potentially save is dependent on how advanced our technology has progressed - the further along we are, the more we can do.
Exactly *how far*? That question is far too broad because every person can select their own subjective answer.
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There is a "documentary" called [Escaping Earth](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543838/) that explores this scenario. And while I disagree with some of the options presented (ORION is IMO impractical and the whole "artificial ecosystem in cylinder" is quite stupid), it does make few points:
* It is impossible to save every human, but it is possible to save human species and maybe some other species
* It would take combined effort of whole world to save few thousand chosen people
* There would be people against it
I believe all issues we have right now with space colonization and exploration are related to money. We already have technology to create a colony on Mars, but there is huge pressure to minimize expenses, so it is quite limiting on amount of stuff we can send along with colonizers. But what if we could send a 1000 ton spaceship to Mars every month? In a few years, there would be enough material there that self-sufficiency could be achieve. Yeah, it would be expensive, but not impossible. We just need to motivate our politician to invest into space colonization instead of military and big corporations to make rockets instead of consumer gadgets.
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If the Earth is going to be uninhabitable anyway, you can use ORION-type spaceships to get most valuable people (this is usually a great plot device) out. Maybe you can help some of the rest to get out if you use some of the 50 years to build a space elevator.
I think it would be impossible to get everybody out, even if you had more time.
I reckon the most likely scenario would be to take "valuable people" (define that as you will for your story), maybe useful animals and plants (or maybe just DNA samples) and after that, anyone/anything else that time andmoney allow for.
It won't be nice, it won't be pretty and more likely the people left behind will riot and try to stop you...
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Right now in order to keep astronauts in space they require a LOT of infrastructure on Earth, all the food and other supplies come from it. It is theoretically possible to grow plants in space, but the amount of land required even for a single family to subsist on is not trivial. Finally, technology breaks occasionally and requires repairs and spare parts, which also come from Earth.
In 50 years it should be possible to setup some long term spaceships with a lot of spare parts and space greenhouses, but they'll provide for a few hundred at best, not sure entire planet will work for the tiny few to survive instead of looting and other fun stuff like that. And even then it won't be sustainable indefinitely, they won't be able to acquire resources or develop or grow, and after a decade or two things on the ship will start to break, their bones will become brittle and so on.
Space presents enormous challenges and for every person staying up there requires thousands working down here to make it happen, creating even a tiny sustainable, self sufficient facility up there in just 50 years is pretty unlikely. Being able to put 7 billion in space and have life support for them would probably require a thousand years if it's even possible.
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The main limiting factor is time and to a lesser extent money. If the human race is at risk then a temporary solution could be made that meant money was irrelevant, or at least credit could be extended to defer the problem.
I would advocate using the Moon as a temporary base, to buy time for a longer solution to be found.
We already have the technology to get to the Moon and back and all we would need to do is build something similar but on a much bigger scale. Rockets could take off on a regular basis to make the trip and a Moon base could be built to house the ever increasing number of people arriving. The base would include facilities to turn around the rockets so they could be re-used many times to bring more and more people with more and more rockets being built on Earth so as time went by you would have thousands of rockets bringing in hundreds of people in each trip.
Heavy resources that would be required including water (ice) and metals etc could be sent using the Jules Verne Cannon.
Assuming each rocket could carry 1,000 people you would need 70,000,000 trips to evacuate everyone. Five thousand rockets, each taking a week for the round trip would therefore be able to evacuate 5,000,000 weekly, 250,000,000 annually. It would take 28 years to get everyone to the Moon.
The figures are arbitrary of course, building a rocket capable of carrying 1,000 people is not currently possible but equally the 7 day time scale for the round trip is probably too long.
Once established on the Moon a longer term solution could be found such as moving to Mars etc.
Conditions on the Moon would be very crowded so living quarters, factories etc would be constructed under the surface.
If the numbers didn't stack up then you could force a policy of not allowing people to have children, or 1 child per family as they do in China, this would reduce the figure from 7 billion somewhat over the time periods involved. You could also have something along the lines of Logan's Run where people over a certain age are left behind.
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To save the human race does not mean saving EVERY single human. Maybe high government officials and the rich people get to buy tickets to automatically be able to board the trip to the other planet, but the poor people which cannot afford a ticket will be either just not taken with or subjected to a lottery process. Or sort of a lottery where the more you pay, the bigger is your chance of winning a ticket. A person who wins the lottery is allowed to take his family with him if the family is not too big.
Also, I would recommend that you construct several giant ships in orbit so that no fuel would be wasted for the ascent into space. You will bring the people that are to be saved to the ship using spaceplanes; the same applies for landing them on Mars when you arrive there.
Also, you can send expeditions to Mars (this is the planet which I recommend) that do reconnaisance and find good sites for bases before setting up the modules (you can use robots too) and the agricultural domes. Before the main wave of people arrives, you will send crops and livestock to Mars.
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[Question]
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In Deep, deep space, there exists a star system with a single planet. This planet, named Dewel, is a large, green gas giant with a mass of about twice Jupiter's. What could this planet's atmosphere composition be to make it green?
[Answer]
## You need methane, ammonia and atmospheric temperatures of $∼$150 K.
The color of a giant planet depends on the type of clouds dominating its upper atmosphere. These in turn depend on the temperature of the planet, as different molecules reach their gaseous phases at different temperatures. There are [a few realistic potential cloud types](https://wfirst.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/preparatory/160303/Lewis.pdf) on gas giants:
* Methane, dominant at $∼$100 K and producing a cyan-aquamarine color
* Ammonia, peaking around $∼$150 K and giving teal hues
* Water, found in atmospheres of $∼$250-300 K and producing deep blues
* Alkali metals, gaseous from $∼$500 K on up and giving the planet a reddish color
Take Uranus as an example. Though most of its atmosphere is in fact hydrogen and helium, methane clouds at the topmost layers are responsible for its green-blue appearance. If you're looking for a greenish planet, the best you're going to get is a layer of ammonia-methane clouds at the top, like Uranus and Neptune.
The teal-ish colors of Uranus and Neptune, on the other hand, are found at lower temperatures. This is because volatiles like ammonia and methane are only found farther out from a star, beyond what we call the ice line. You'll need to place this planet fairly far away from its parent star, lest these compounds be unavailable.
### Chlorine won't work
Folks have mentioned chlorine; I agree with them that it won't work. Putting aside the issue of how you could get enough of it to occur naturally, chlorine's boiling point is about $∼$240 K, which is higher than the temperatures of giant planets where ammonia and methane dominate. An atmosphere with a substantial layer of chlorine-rich clouds would likely be hotter than that, in the realm where water-rich clouds could also form, making chlorine potentially not the dominant cloud constituent. Furthermore, an atmosphere rich in methane and ammonia could only exist at temperatures below chlorine's boiling point, making them incompatible.
[Answer]
Green atmospheres are weirdly challenging to construct. The closest in our Solar System seems to be Uranus, which is only slightly more green than Neptune's considerable blue. If you want a rich, lime or forest green, there might be problems, but perhaps taking Uranus's dose of green and pushing it as far as it can go before something breaks will be good enough?
Temperatures are somewhat relevant, since, no matter what, you're going to get majority Hydrogen / Helium atmospheres for the overwhelming majority of gas giants, and temperatures will affect what other trace elements can do. So I see four options, none of them seeming quite right:
# Super Uranus, Now with More Methane
How green this would be, rather than a bluish teal, I'm not so sure.
# 350–900 K, with a Sulphurous Haze
Sulphur hazes tend to tinge atmospheres orange, so getting this to help with the green would be somewhat troublesome. I'd mostly want to try and mix it with the methane to see if it helps at all, but it probably won't.
# Throw in a Green Gas, such as Chlorine
I have no idea how you could get enough chlorine in a gas giant atmosphere to make it look green, as chlorine is highly reactive, there's plenty of hydrogen, and if you have megatons of chlorine (all denser than the H/He atmosphere, remember), you also have the more abundant elements between helium and chlorine, which will inevitably get in the way and ruin your nice green ball of gaseous death.
# 1500 K:+ Make it Hot Enough for Metal Clouds
At these temperatures, sodium, silicon, and perhaps even iron compounds start forming clouds. This could give you a greenish-grey atmosphere, if everything is just right. It could also give the planet a blue halo or a comet-like tail, because at those temperatures, gases are being blasted into space at an alarming rate. I'm not sure if Mercury would have wound up like this under the "Was Mercury a gas-giant?" hypothesis, but I imagine that a gas-giant baked green would inevitably lose its atmosphere and leave a Mercury-like core behind after a few million years.
The trouble with green is that you need to both reflect green and absorb everything else, and while some substances do that at close range, scattering and black body radiation work against you in thick atmospheres. The most promising options will usually be in conflict with other necessary features of the planet. Methane is not *too* rare, and does greenen Uranus a little more than Neptune. Gases like chlorine are unlikely to find their way high enough to color an atmosphere, and if it does, there will be numerous more abundant elements interfering. Green particulates, or high-temperature metallic clouds can appear greenish, but those typically require the kinds of temperatures that can create metallic clouds, and that's a good way to lose an atmosphere over time.
My favored options are Super Uranus, or Metallic Clouds, as the others feel far more handwavy. And greenish-grey with a stormy aura/tail could be kinda neat, setting permitting. But I'm not sure that either is quite so green as you're looking for.
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While CAE Jones already got the inorganic chemistry settled, I'd like to propose an even more unlikely **biological explanation**. Let's use [Sudarsky's gas giant classification](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudarsky%27s_gas_giant_classification) and take a class two gas giant with water clouds.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/Celestia_exo-class2.png/150px-Celestia_exo-class2.png)
Now let's assume that life found it's way to this gas giant via panspermia and got stuck there. While cloud alge don't exist on Earth, it doesn't mean that they can't exist elsewhere. The fast winds which travel around the globe as uninterrupted bands and the possibly higher air pressure at the altitudes, where the clouds exist, create better connections for sky alge.
The planet probably wouldn't be entirely green. Some latitudes would offer better conditions for the sky alge than others. Expect a green equatorial region and white poles or vice versa.
As a side note, class five is a "metallic cloud" gas giant like CAE Jones suggested. Just in case your are interested in an illustration.
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If you can't change the color of the room, change the color of the bulb.
This may be a bit simplistic for what you are looking for, but if green clouds are impossible under the lighting conditions we are used to (good ol Sol), change the color of the star. That way you can still use plausible gaseous compositions, but they will be an entirely different color because of the light that is available to reflect. For example, Mars would be almost black if our star were green. So if the clouds in your planet were white, and the star were green...
[Answer]
Green stars don’t exist because our eyes don’t perceive light in that way. Perhaps if you had an alien race with different eyes they would see the planet as green. If you’re using humans, advanced cybernetic or bionic eyes able to see additional primary colors would also work to explain this.
Alternatively, from a language perspective, you could posit that the color is described in a language that categorizes colors differently so that the planet may be light blue or dark yellow but the rough translation is “green”
Both of these solutions would create some complications with other blue and yellow objects being considered green, but you can say that contrast and hue also determine what is green and what is not.
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[Question]
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The Orville has Mochlans, an (almost) all-male species. They reproduce in some unexplained method that produces a fertilized egg.
The issue here is that if one of the mates lays an egg and the other fertilizes it, they are functionally hermaphrodites and the male designation basically only implies a certain set of genitalia (and perhaps hormones) rather than reproductive function. For this to be a functionally male-only species, there would need to be some other mechanism that produces the egg.
For the purposes of this question, femaleness is defined as producing a small number of large cells to be fertilized by a mate (i.e. production of eggs), whereas maleness is defined as producing a large number of small cells (sperm) that compete to fertilize an egg. Other traits like lactation and physical appearance are irrelevant.
One mechanism I can think of involves ejaculating sperm into a common pool, but there are a few problems with this:
* What would prevent the creation of single-parent offspring? It needs to be sexual reproduction, not a sort of male parthenogenesis.
* What would prevent the conception of millions of offspring? Ideally, this should produce one offspring most of the time for a humanoid.
This mechanism should also be natural since it's conceivable that technology could be used to create artificial eggs from stem cells and an artificial incubator could be used to simulate pregnancy (this is less practical than an artificially all-female species, but should be possible as far as I know). This should be something that could occur naturally through evolution.
EDIT: as comments have pointed out, you can't exactly have "males" for a single-sex species because "male" implies the existence of "female" (The designation technically works for Mochlans since females are just incredibly rare), so I'll refine this down to a species that reproduces through some mechanism exchanging large quantities of motile gametes (in the millions, like sperm) to produce a small number of offspring (usually 1, sometimes more, like humans). Gametes are the same size from both mates, so it is a single-sex species that reproduces sexually. In addition, neither mate has organs for incubating offspring like you might expect from mammals. Although an egg might be produced through this process, "laying" them also isn't possible, so the egg must be grown externally. Essentially, neither mate can perform what might be understood as a "female" role, other than incubating eggs (whether this means sitting on them or keeping them in a pouch.) or lactation since those aren't, strictly speaking, female-exclusive. (Emperor Penguins and Seahorses are good examples for male egg-bearers and even human men have been known to lactate in some rare cases)
Basically the idea here is to make the method of reproduction look like something that we as humans would observe and decide is most simply explained as an "all male" species.
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Yes. And as you have supposed, simply ejecting "sperm" into a common pool (or more technically, [motile isogametes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isogamy)) is the most straightforward way to do it. How do you prevent single-parent offspring? The same way that many real-world isogamous species do: by instituting *mating types*. I.e., you may have 7, 11, 29, or even larger (not necessarily prime) numbers of distinct biological sexes distinguished by nothing more than the chemical markers on their gametes that prevent them from fertilizing themselves, and with no more sociological significance than blood types.
How do you prevent it from resulting in millions of offspring at a time? Well, that's easy--you just decide to be careful about what counts as "offspring". If you count individual embryos, that might be tough--but externally fertilized individual embryos don't have a fantastic survival rate if they aren't intentionally cared for, and that's hard to do when they're microscopic! So, just establish a convention that offspring don't count until they reach a certain minimum developmental stage--anything that dies earlier is just a "failed pregnancy". Then you just need to figure out how to kill off most of them--which, again, isn't hard. If you want to make sure that there is a natural tendency for any particular intentional procreative event to average one surviving offspring, just make the larva cannibalistic--only one or two will manage to make it past "fetus" stage after having eaten all of their brothers.
For a more complicated option, consider hybridization with sexual parasitism--in which case you really *can* have "males" of one species, as distinguished from the males *and females* of a different species. The simplest way to work this is to have the all-male species' sperm hijack the eggs of their host species' females, ejecting the host's DNA and resulting in the incubation and birth of a new male every time, with no (or at least minimal--perhaps they preserve the equivalent of mitochondrial DNA from the host mother) gene transfer between species. While mechanically that looks like sexual reproduction, however, genetically speaking it is effectively asexual, with all males being nuclear clones of each other. There are a couple of ways around this.
1. Maternal DNA is not discarded during fertilization, but during
meiosis. I.e., every male is actually a hybrid, carrying the unique
DNA of his own species from his father, and half of the DNA from his
extra-specific mother. When he manufactures sperm, however, the
maternal DNA is preferentially discarded, ensuring that the paternal
DNA is propagated unchanged between generations, and merely
re-hybridized with new host females each time. This ensure no
permanent gene flow between the populations of the all-male
parasites and their female-having host species, and limits evolution
of the parasite male chromosomes to spontaneous mutation like an
asexual species, but still allows the parasite male population to
effectively evolve alongside, and benefit from the evolution of,
their host population.
2. If we want gene transfer between males, you will need to
introduce an additional step--a host species which is internally
fertile with both males and females, a hybrid form which may or may
not be internally fertile, and the parasitic all-male species. This
can go a few different ways, depending on the fertility
characteristics of the hybrid form(s), but the next simplest option
in this case is to make male hybrids either completely sterile or
simply non-existent (i.e., any hybrid male embryos are simply
non-viable, like a human YY embryo would be), leaving only female
hybrids able to procreate with at least the all-male parasite species,
and optionally with the the host disexual species.
In either case, we assume that there
is some unique genetic material (i.e., mis-matched chromosomes) that
can be distinguished between species and does not transfer between
them, although there may be some mixing in other parts of the
genome--this shouldn't be too big of a deal, since the two species
involved would have to have started out pretty closely related
anyway in order for hybridization to be possible, so they'll only be
sharing genes that they already had in common anyway. Parasite
male-species reproduction then occurs in two steps:
a) a parasite male mates with a host female to produce a hybrid female
b) a parasite male mates with a hybrid female, resulting in a parasite male who is the nearly-pure genetic child of his father and maternal grandfather.
Of course, we have to explain why hybrid females can't produce more hybrid females as offspring when mating with parasite males; if they could, we'd be left to wonder why this does not result in simply discarding the host species and adopting the hybrids as the new females of the formerly-parasitic species. Once again, we can go in many directions with this, but we'll pick the simplest--as in option 1, hybrid meiosis discards the identifiably-maternal genome, so hybrids can in fact *only* produce parasite male offspring, not new hybrid females after all. This results in fully-recombinant sexual reproduction between members of the all-male species, spread out over an intermediate generation; and while unlike option 1 it does permit some gene flow between parasite and host species, that can be limited to only a fraction of the chromosome complement of each species, which would have to remain similar anyway for hybridization to remain viable, and does not impact the purity of the distinctive male genetic line or allow the distinctive genes of the parasite species to flow into the host species population.
For a (somewhat more complicated) real-life example of this kind of all-male species that reproduces through hybridization consider [a certain clade of Australian fish in a four-way species complex](https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-all-male-species-and-if-so-how-do-they-reproduce/answer/Madsen-Zimbric). Now, not 100% of them are male, but it's *pretty dang close*.
Now, why is this two-or-three-part species complex not just considered one species with a bunch of different gender morphs, regardless of their ancestry from two originally separate species? Aside from the genetic arguments (which would not necessarily be readily available to them or to humans at first glance), it is not difficult to come up with cultural ones. A fairly straightforward explanation, for example, could be that the host species is just not that smart--equivalent to, say, bonobos, while the parasite species is on-par with modern humans. This is analogous to the situation with Larry Niven's Pierson's Puppeteers--their sexual host species (with whom they have zero genetic transfer, as it requires *two* Puppeteers to inseminate a host female, completely ignoring the female's contribution) is essentially livestock. If they don't *want* to consider their sexual hosts to be of the same species as them, and the hosts can't exactly protest that categorization, humans are likely to along with it.
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Oglaf, a totally NSFW comic which I won't link to, has an all male tribe. It's mostly a joke though, with men impregnating men and babies magically coming out of their assets.
For a purely male species **with the requirements you provided**, you could have it like this:
* Individuals reproduce by binary fission;
* If an individual has received sperm from another individual, the receiver can mix their own original genes with those they received; and not in a small group of special cells, but throughout their whole body.
Some bacteria like our symbiont *E. coli* do something similar, it's called [conjugation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_conjugation) and goes like this:
It wouldn't be a stretch to adapt this to multicellular life in a work of fiction.
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Virii also seem to match what you want. The absolute vast majority of them only ever impregnates other life with their DNA; only a small minority may be impregnated, and always by virii of other species. Now, granted, they are acellular; but that, again, can be adapted to multicellular life.
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Last thing I can think of are hybrids of any two species, for which only the male hybrids are viable. They don't belong to either of their parents' species, and the whole population will be male. What allows them to reproduce is mating with a female of either parents' species; the amount of viable offspring may be small, producing one might be like winning the lottery. This would keep their numbers really low. Add that for some reason the male cares for the egg, which is not unusual in nature, and there you have it.
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**The eggs are ancient.**
In this scenario, the males fertilize eggs in the manner of fish or amphibians, spraying milt on one or more eggs and so triggering their development.
The eggs in question come from a huge secret cache, a shrine of sorts to this species. In this cave are hundreds of thousands of unfertilized eggs, left there by the long vanished females. The males tend these unfertilized eggs and keep them viable. When reproduction is in order a male will take one out, fertilize it and tend it much in the way a male fish like a bass or a tilapia will tend his nest of fertilized eggs.
There will never be any more eggs. When they run out the species goes extinct. But that will not be for a long time - there are a lot of eggs in this cave.
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**Haldane's Rule says unlikely (but doesn't always hold, even on Earth.)**
Back in 1922, a smart guy named [Haldane formulated a rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldane%27s_rule): if, in a species hybrid, only one sex is inviable or sterile, that sex is *more likely* to be the heterogametic sex. (The heterogametic sex is the one with two different sex chromosomes; in therian mammals, for example, this is the male.)
Or you could read up on [an all-female fish species](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161017083704.htm) if that also interests you.
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# Extreme sexual dimorphism
You can have a "female" organism that has evolved into a [sessile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sessility_(motility)), predatory form, and a "male" organism that is motile.
The female produces ova, and also secretes pheromones that attract mature males (as well as other prey). Similar to the praying mantis, if the female is well fed enough it won't kill the male. With the development of male sentience, this is pretty easy to accomplish. Older and weaker males get absorbed, similar to what happens to [anglerfish](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler).
Being a top predator and having no natural enemies, the female organism never developed intelligence and is optimized for reproduction. Very young females are motile, and can wander far enough from the mother to establish a new lair. Males, on the other hand, can go wherever they want.
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While flatworms are technically considered hermaphroditic, they may stand as a close existing example to what you have in mind. Flatworms have penises without vaginas; so, from the outside they appear to be an all male species. The way they reproduce is to basically stab each other with their male organs, and the sperm has to find its way to the eggs <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_fencing>.
If you want to take it a step further into fiction such that there are not even internal female organs, female like systems could be made ad hoc via stem cells as a natural reaction to being stabbed and inseminated. Imaging a scenario where stem cells from the creature's bone marrow goes through the blood to the injury the same way we do when our bodies try to heal after being stabbed, but the semon causes a biological reaction where by the first stem cell forms into an egg, and then the following stem cells respond by surrounding the egg in a uterus like cyst. Once the fetus matures enough, the cyst ruptures or the baby eats its way out.
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For a species like Bortas, it could be that sexual functions are not coded in exactly one pair of chromosomes, like most sexual species on earth. It would seem that Bortas and his mate, Klyden, are both functionally capable of reproduction, by way of laying an egg and fertilizing said egg. Remember, if they were traditionally sexed, Bortas is Topha's mother (he lays the egg) and Klyden is the father, but we learn Klyden was born Female while Bortas is definitely male by birth. The rate of female births is once every 70 years, but we see three Moclan born-women in the episode, which doesn't track.
My theory is that Mochlins have three or more independent sexual codings: One coding would produce female genetalia and the ability to produce female gametes (Eggs) while another coding would produce the male gametes (sperm) and a third would produce male genitalia. This could produce a species that could functionally be hermaphroditic but visually be sexually dimorphic. While the female aspects of reproduction and the production of male gametes are always functional, it could be that the male genetalia exists on an XY type chromosome where a YY or XY pairing will produce the genetalia but an XX will not.
This would preserve the single sex nature of the Moclans as "males" and "females" are both capable of producing a healthy off spring, but men could reproduce with men or women where as women could only reproduce with men. It's conceivable that somewhere in the evolution of the modern Moclan, it was reasoned that having a mate who was both capable of laying eggs and fertilizing your eggs was more desirable than having a mate that could not fertilize your eggs.
This fits with Moclans rather subtle but still present dislike of women and their tendency to be quite hostile in their social mechanisms. Their favorite sport is a game of hot potato where the ball will eventually stab you through the hand... at which point you win. Their divorce proceedings are basically stab your partner in the chest... if he dies, you are divorced... the one woman who remained as such hid in caves to conceal her identity and in the instance of a male Moclin who fancied women over men, Klyden, who long seems to be the cultural norm of typical Moclin society, is ready to ruin the straight Moclin's life and seeths with hatred equal to the most extremen homophobe on earth. It could be, that in pre-space flight Moclin culuture, women were not desirable by the vast majority of Moclins and those males that desired females were ostracized to the point of extreme closeting of their true sexual urges. Trans-sexual surgeries were eventually developed and refined so that the attached male genitalia was functionally indistinguishable from a natural one.
If so, it would explain the rarity in the 2400s as in order to possibly have a girl, you would have to have a taboo love of a man and a woman Moclan that produced offspring which would have a greater chance of female genetics. If we assume that the Y chromosome is dominant, then the following parings are possible YY-YY, YY-YX, YY-XX, YX-XX. In the first, all resulting children are YY Males. In the second, half the children are YY Male and half are YX Male. In the third, half of the children are YX Male and Half are XX Female, and in the final one, one quarter are YX Males, and three/quarters are XX Female. This means that if we start with an even number of parings, the ration of men to women in the next generation is 11-5 with all things being equal, and with more generations, these chances are likely to go up.
This uneven gender birth ratio is bad on it's own, but if being female is a big taboo in Moclin Society, and heterophobia is as common as Klyden's display of it, then it would increase the rate of appearence of a naturally born female to much higher territory. Even on Earth, enforced gender preferences are more likely to cause greater troubles down the line. We can observe that under the One Child Policy, China's population stagnated as families perfered boys to girls and would often abort female fetus or abandon them to the their deaths. This culling would further inflate the numbers... and given the surgery and the fact that Klyden wasn't aware he was really a she at birth until he was seen by a non Moclin Medical doctor, who could identify the signs of the transition, it's quite likely that Moclin children aren't reported as female to male trans all that often. Most who know who they are don't want to speak about it because it might make them less desirable for a mate.
And as to a male-female differences being more nuanced to humans than Moclins, consider Moclins are more reptillian and thus have no mammalries, and that the reason that Klyden and Bortas' speaking is so stilted and formal is attributed to the fact that English isn't their native language, it could be this very concept that confused the issues for Moclins and Humans upon first Contact. Among the delegation in Earth's First Contact package about their culture was the Ancient Classic movie "Kindergarten Cop" which has the famous scene in which a Kindergartener explains to Arnie the difference between boys and girls (Moclins seem to love literature and Bortas learned about how differences could be strengths from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, so Moclins learning genders from Kindergarten Cop is perfectly possible in the Orville-verse). The Moclins probably missed the humor, and used the words to describe their own sexual society... and the fact that sex is a taboo subject for all of them, it could be that's where they left the discussion.
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The fundamental difference between the gametes in "typical" Earth sexual reproduction is that the egg contains the full compliment of organelles required to be a living cell that can reproduce, while sperm are trimmed down to contain only the bare necessities needed to reach an egg.
Fundamentally *someone* needs to bring enough organelles to function once fertilization occurs. But there's no reason that has to be just one side.
Consider a species which gestates via a common sperm pool. Each sperm contains some of the organelles needed to function, but not all. If the sperm fuze (fertilization), they pool their resources (organelles) in order to try to become the winning ovum. It then engages in a hostile takeover of other sperm in the pool, seeking to acquire all of the organelles that its pair of sperm lacked.
In effect, it's a cellular level equivalent to how some sharks reproduce. Some sharks will have a litter of 4 sharks, but the womb does not contain enough resources for 4. The biggest most aggressive shark kills and eats the other sharks and their yolk sacks and uses that to fuel its own growth. Thus, for those species, every shark born is already a murderer, having killed several of its siblings in a fight to the death.
The fun part of the design will be trying to define the equilibrium which prevents this solution from degenerating into the more traditional egg and sperm pattern. There may be a Nash equilibria in their reproductive tactics which prevent them from choosing to go to this traditional approach.
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Since Female tends to imply bearing young, no unless the males impregnate some other host that will then bear young. In this case the race of all males is more like a race of parasites.
The trick here is that the second race must be able to mate viably with itself (has males and females and can make babies). That keeps that other race as a separate race whose biological systems are hijacked by the parasitical race.
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Some fishes have rudimentary males. Rudimentary females are not known, but can be imagined. If males are something as sea horses, with eggs growing in the pocket on the male's body with females very small and living also on the males, in the same pocket, only forever.
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**Moties?**
Larry Niven's moties sprang to mind.
They change sex.
They had a problem, in that the only way to get from female back to male was to have a baby. But perhaps the answer for this question is that they cycle between male and female for their entire life, without problems, being male 95%+ of the time. I'm imagining them as somewhat like marsupials, with a permanent pouch. Or maybe they lay eggs, like birds. The change from biological male to biological female is quite slight in physical terms. It's like a terrestrial mammalian female coming into heat. The male organ becomes inhibited, and an egg becomes available for fertilisation. If it is fertilized, soon afterwards a tiny almost-embryonic baby crawls into the pouch. Its parent shortly afterwards reverts to being "male", whether or not s/he has a baby in ver pouch.
Not hermaphrodite, because only one sexual role is expressible at once. Not a big thing, either. All of these creatures have the same ability to bear babies in a pouch all their lives -- it is not seen as anything special. Ditto child-rearing. "Female" is just a transient phase everybody goes though for a few days maybe once a year.
(On the evolutionary front, rape probably has to be impossible, with so many males and so few females. Sexual arrangements like many birds? Non-penetrative, and futile without cooperation by the "female". Possibly also "promiscuous" like domestic cats, and some birds)
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I think you could use some kind of jellyfish with the ability to reproduce by fragmentation (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragmentation_(reproduction)> ) like a hydra, but bigger, like a Nomura jellyfish, or maybe would be better a kind of giant annelid worm. However, before evolving this reproduction this species used to reproduce with males and females, they still have the characteristics of male to be able to fecundate, sometimes they do with females of other similar species, because it is a gene that they have not lost, they only remain males because the first to evolve the characteristics to this type of asexual reproduction were male.
if you want your species to be more like an aware one, well... with time and necessity your nervous system could came to develop the equivalent of a brain, i guess, and from time to time they allow themselves to cross with other species with which they can hybridize, to have genetic variability.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/P9jl7.png)
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Yes, in the case of long-term hybridisation.
There is a famous species complex within the cyprinids: <https://web.archive.org/web/20101018022453/http://eobasileus.blogspot.com/2008/03/male-chauvinist-minnows-form-all-male.html>
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You would need to mean something entirely different by male.
It's probably reasonable to have a hermaphroditic, or asexually species which is all masculinity by human standards, but in general this is really the sort of thing that you decide you want and find a way to justify afterwards.
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Lets suppose there is a race of Immortal beings. What are possible solutions to them slowly losing their teeth due to wear and tear? After all, if a normal human lived for hundreds of years at some point he'd lose his teeth.
Edit: I meant immortal like elves in The Lord of the Rings, they can be killed but are immune to aging. Dentures are not an option (at least not for them). And since teeth that don't stop growing could cause awkward scenariors and are a potential health hazard (squirrels can die from that, if I remember correctly...) I'd rather not use that.
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It depends on the nature of the immortal being.
If by immortal you mean completely impervious to harm then their teeth shouldn't really wear at all and they have nothing to worry about.
Lots of animals can just regrow their teeth continuously throughout their lives, sharks and crocodiles are the two that come to mind (though crocodiles at least do have a limit on how many times they can [replace their teeth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile#Teeth))
But assuming you mean an immortal human (or human like creature) then the obvious answer would be that what ever keeps their cells alive and unageing also works on their teeth. Whether that means that their teeth can regenerate in a way normal humans cannot or that they are able to grow more pairs of teeth because the function which does so doesn't stop after one set (that is to say it is immortal too) is up to you.
Failing that, immortals just get dentures once their real teeth have all worn away and fallen out.
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Just replace them.
Plenty of animals replace their teeth continually, throughout their lives. Some grow new teeth in the back / front, let old ones fall out in the front / back, and all the intermediate teeth slowly migrate in between. That really only works for animals that have uniform teeth, though--not varied teeth for varied purposes in specific positions, like we do. Other animals, though, let their teeth fall out and grow new ones from underneath in the same positions; that leaves without one or two teeth in a particular position for a short time, which is inconvenient, but generally survivable--and certainly much better than just losing all your teeth permanently!
Notably, humans *are already in the second group*! We replace our teeth once as children. Partially, that's to allow for small mouths to have small, and fewer, teeth, and adult mouths to gain bigger teeth. But there is no fundamental reason why a creature otherwise physically identical to a normal human, but incidentally immortal, couldn't replace their teeth *again* later in life, a potentially unlimited number of times.
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Think beavers. Their teeth never stop growing, like human finger nails and hair. Beavers have to keep chomping and gnawing to wear down their teeth, otherwise they grow through the roof of their mouth and into their brain.
So a race of immortal beings would just keep growing their body parts.
But it does beg the question be asked, 'Can an immortal being ever go bald?'
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I would like some fighter to use chains as weapons, I already have the evident pro and con of the weapon set out, but I need help to see if that weapon would be useful or quickly abandoned, even when only against infantry.
What would be top notch for me is a chain ~1m to ~1.5m long, with a weight put at the end (think a long poi) and dual wielded.
Pro:
* Cheap
* Can pass through some parade/shield and strike (depending on the length of the chains)
* If short enough, is equivalent to a flail.
* By putting the weight on fire, it can have a psychological impact
Con:
* Defence is almost non existent.
* You can't fight easily more than a single opponent at a time.
* You need time to "restart" the weapon after almost each strike.
**What modification can be made to the unit carrying that weapon / to the weapon itself to make it useful?**
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Additional info:
The setting is medieval fantastic, basic firearms (black powder handgun/musquet) are available, but too expensive to see in extensive use.
Magic exists, and can be used to handwave some modification/element, but I'd like to keep it for specialized units.
The users are mercenaries, usually fighting against other mercenaries, sometimes against small detachment of professional army/wildlife.
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Chain weapons were popular in feudal Japan, including the manrikigusari and [Kusari-fundo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusari-fundo).
There are [several schools](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusarigamajutsu) of fighting based on the use of these weapons, which include blocking weapons and unarmed attacks, tripping opponents and even breaking opponents weapons by wrapping the chain around the blade or haft.
Additionally these weapons are actually very good at fighting multiple opponents (at least with training) as the wielder can spin the chain around them to create a hazardous zone into which opponents are unable to step without being struck.
As the original question is about fighting in formation the above 'circle of death' fighting style wouldn't really work. As far as I am aware, there are no historical fighting styles involving formation fighting with chains but a double-ranked formation could work, with each rank striking with their chain, falling back and the next rank striking while the first recoiled their weapons. In a way they could work like a spear formation, but with much more flexible spears.
Another formation would involve a front rank of shields forming a wall, with the chain users in the rank behind striking over and around the shieldwall.
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What you are describing is basically a chained mace.
And yes they were reasonably effective. Especially against armor. In many ways they would be used like a waraxe, in that you have a heavy head the is frightening to be in front of but can give time to get behind because of the weight and momentum in the head.
Likely it would take a bit of training to use it well in army combat, and not threaten or hurt your own troops.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7XdNl.jpg)
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Depending on the fighting style of your fighters, The Japanese and Chinese used chain weapons,
[Kusari Gama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusarigama)
[Chain Whip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_whip)
[Chinese Meteor Hammer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_hammer)
These could be used in a similar fashion, but as westerner/medieval fighters, particularly barbarians, tend to be larger and more muscle bound than traditional japanese warriors, you could enlarge the chains, add very heavy weights on the end. The Meteor hammer in particular would be good for use in breaking shields, provided the weight was large enough/gentleman throwing it was strong enough.
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*War elephants* John M. Kistler, page 216, says:`
>
> In a 1659 battle, Mughal ruler Aurangzeb was confronted with three elephants, "each of them dashing about with his trunk a chain of two or three men's weight.
> <https://books.google.com/books?id=Y0sqI1fxfnMC&pg=PA216&lpg=PA216&dq=elephants+using+chains+in+battle&source=bl&ots=zy9xJTLir1&sig=5IfD-dLNKoII0tpy7ZVz0MoP1vo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjSn--dqtrLAhVM2R4KHbybAAcQ6AEIMjAG#v=onepage&q=elephants%20using%20chains%20in%20battle&f=false[1]>
>
>
>
Clearly chains can be very devastating if used with superhuman force. If your characters are of merely human strength you need to adapt chain weapons used by humans in historic times as mentioned by other answers.
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They would be useless except against unarmed rabble and probably not even then, a club would be better.
Dual wielding poi's is ridiculous in a fight. Your moves are repetitive, constrained & predictable. Even a single would be better than dual wielding. At least then you can chop and change and use your free hand to shorten, lengthen or redirect. Dual wielding you cannot without tying your arms in knots.
Poi's were never supposed to be weapons or even based on weapons. They were for training wrist strength, flexibility, speed and coordination for club type weapons. Setting them on fire doesn't make a difference.
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There's a pretty common trope that what you post on the internet is there for ever which can make for some good story lines, but how realistic is that really?
After all, all content is held on physical servers maintained by (for the most part) by companies with a smattering of other organisations & private individuals & few companies persist for longer than a couple of hundred years on average, even if we ignore that, servers die or are replaced, accidents & disasters such as fires that can wipe out a server & it's backups happen.
So common sense seems to suggest that like the human body replaces every cell over a number of years so to with the internet, over time every extant server will end up replaced piecemeal over the decades & though some server content may be loaded onto new servers several times eventually through the vagaries of chance every old post will be lost.
*Question: So how long can we realistically expect posts & content to last on average?*
*The most ubiquitous literature copied into multiple formats in multiple languages both on & off the web it can be copied back from aside of course, it's the average persons posts we're looking at here.*
*I am not asking how long any literature (& especially not those with any hard copy existence beyond the web) that may be posted entire or referenced many times in many posts may survive but how long on average most ordinary individual 'everyday' posts can be expected to persist.*
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Yes, Internet Archaeology is already a thing, because people already use the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to investigate web content that is no longer hosted at its original URL.
Much like real-life archaeology, not everything will survive and what does survive may not be a representative sample of the culture of any particular time. There’s a lot of transient data on the current internet for which there is no archiving tooling - things like voice calls, private messages, chats on game servers, …
Here are some things you can do to increase the chances that your content will survive long-term:
1. Make compelling content that people will want to store lots of copies of, like bestselling books or blockbuster movies.
2. Make lightweight content that lives for near-free in the margins of wider corpuses. An example might be Neocities: the value of preserving any one Neocities site is low, but the full set of all Neocities sites might form a valuable collection. “Lightweight” is key here, to make it economically feasible to store the collection. It’s fully feasible with a set of small, basic HTML websites like Neocities, but very much infeasible if the content is trillions of hours of video like YouTube.
3. Family historians might preserve the non-notable content of their ancestors indefinitely, subject to similar constraints on size/economics. It’s easy to store a bunch of your grandparents’ emails as interesting heirlooms, but not so much a hypothetical 3-tonne newspaper hoard that they left.
Ultimately, storing data costs money, so you need to think of ways to make that cost worth it, or small enough not to matter.
[Answer]
Data survives for as long as someone is willing to pay the costs (equipment, power, cooling and labor) of preserving it.
Accidental loss of data is pretty much not a thing anymore, at least for professionally managed data. Everything will be replicated in multiple physical locations, and if a disk or server dies, you just insert a new one into the cluster and it automagically repopulates all its data from the remaining copies. As long as there is someone *paying* for those replacements, data will never get lost. And the newer equipment will have more capacity too, so you get an upgrade (lower costs per bit) as a side effect.
A more pernicious problem is having data but not the software to read it. This is very common with closed data formats, but as an industry, we’ve (mostly) learned to either preserve software along with its data or just switch to open formats.
[Answer]
According to @Andy's research [here](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/300916/4751173), a whopping **10%** of all links in Stack Overflow posts were gone, and this was only **seven years** after the inception of the network. That can probably be extrapolated if you assume it's some kind of [Poisson distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution).
This fact was one of my inspirations for creating the [Broken Image Repairer](https://gist.github.com/Glorfindel83/9d954d34385d2ac2597bbe864466259f) and various offshoots which repair broken links across the Stack Exchange network. Sometimes, the script is able to find the original source in the [Wayback Machine](https://web.archive.org/); on other occasions, often after contributions by other users in the network, we were able to locate the content in other places.
So, yes, Internet archaeology is happening, in a certain sense, already *right here right now*. There is even [a badge](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help/badges/74/archaeologist) named after it.
[Answer]
Content can way outlast its original form. Many classic works of 'literature' came from spoken tradition. Eg: Grimms fairy tales, many Roman/Greek plays. The same with paintings. Have you seen the Mona Lisa - no, but you have almost certainly seen images of it.
If my memory serves, the average website life expectancy is ~3 years. That includes long lived behemoths like yahoo, google, facebook. It also includes the myriad of blogs with a single 'look, I started a blog' post.
The thing is: you can never tell if a site will be up for 5 days or 5 decades, and you can never tell if someone has downloaded the content and will make it available without you knowing. My local hard drive has a couple websites mirrored on it that simply don't exist anywhere anymore.....
Unless you're an odd person like me who likes to fiddle with hosting websites on a microcontroller, the servers themselves are immaterial. These days most people host on AWS. The data is stored redundantly across multiple locations, and the serving of content is probably handled by a distributed CDN like cloudflare. I have no clue how long a single 'server machine' lasts because the service is never tied to a single machine.
But think realistically. 200 years ago was the telegram, today we have the internet, tomorrow we'll have something else. I am fairly sure that whatever replaces the internet will mantain some of the content from it - just as the internet contains screenshots of photos of sketches of cave-paintings of cats.
[Answer]
## It'll depend on which society you're performing your internet archeology from, and what information that society intends to preserve, especially if data types have to be converted to be forward compatible, or have tools that are backwards compatible as necessary.
A lot of the other answers have discussed the hosting aspect of a site, but I'd like to approach this from the worldbuilding consideration of which society is the one you're viewing the internet from.
Some sites might still be up, technically, but if your internet archaeology is from other countries than the one where the content is hosted, you may run into outright blocks on the content you're attempting to gather archaeology of. This video from the [Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj about Saudia Arabia + Censorship in China](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad-YqwhUsTE) is an easy example of some of the issues with regards to censorship of internet properties or content making it hard to view them from an archaeologist approach, but also skims a little bit over the case of a workaround, known as a VPN (Or Virtual Private Network).
VPNs here would allow a user to view a website as if they're in another region (i.e. I personally can't watch Last Week Tonight videos uploaded to YouTube on their channel immediately, as being in Canada, they're blocked for ~2 weeks, but if I VPN'd into the U.S., I would then be able to view them when they were initially uploaded), provided that region still exists, and has a VPN that you can connect to in their region.
In a society post our current one, if, say, a localized Mad Max situation localized to the U.K., no longer has computers on its land due to an extinction event (That probably removed people too, or people tied to the culture of the U.K. in this example.), if Netflix still has the licensing setup for the U.K. to have U.K. specific content, someone in the U.S. would need to travel to the U.K., set up the VPN connection and subsequent internet cabling to allow for a remote connection to Netflix, and then attempt to view it that way, if you wanted to see how the U.K. had been able to view Netflix, and perhaps see what was Trending before the Mad Max situation was involved.
**But, okay, those are extreme situations - that's a localized societal collapse view of archeology of the internet, and ideally, we're thinking these computers are still up and running, and their information can be accessed, perhaps miracle-hosted by a few Internet Archive style groups. Surely the technology will be kept up to date and accessible?**
That requires Unicode to continue being the standard for transcribing texts online (Specifically, that it'll work in UTF-8, or at least that UTF-8 will continue to be supported in the future.), and that old documentation won't be replaced as they continue to add new codepoints and specific characters, if by chance, they run out filling spaces for [Wingdings to be supported by the Unicode Consortium](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tITwM5GDIAI). That's *unlikely* to change anytime too soon, but if we're looking at attempting to preserve internet content across every website regardless of if someone is willing to update their libraries, then the concern of forward compatibility in those documents could be of concern. Unicode itself is relatively new, and there were quite a lot of other codepoints that needed to be put together at that point that were subsets of other character sets and their ordering of characters, that to expect it to stay absolutely locked in place is unlikely. At which point, you run into issues like the one described by the Wingdings addition (Specifically, if some characters did not render correctly, they would instead jump to an unrelated character - like a "smiley face" Wingdings character into a "J" ASCII character.) In a Mad Max world with technology still around but without international internet cables, there may be a drive to develop devices that specifically jump back to older, more limited character sets, thus ruining the ability to really be able to read the documents.
**Okay, that's not great, but at least the presentation will stand up for the document, right?**
This is more of a minor detail than the others, but if you're looking for them to stay the same look and feel, on occasion, [HTML document elements have been known to be deprecated.](https://css-tricks.com/why-do-some-html-elements-become-deprecated/)
[Depending on how a specific site is developed with CSS components expected in question, the deprecation of a feature there could cause documents to fall out of the regular presentation as well](https://caniuse.com/css-canvas). Admittedly, this is cherry picking at the moment, but could be more widespread after a few decades, or centuries, of internet developments being made.
## Conversions of all of these aspects could be done to keep them preserved, especially at an automated scale, but if society evolves to not update especially older documents, or comment systems, to update their compatibility with newer devices, that could lead to some specific subsections of posts on the internet to become difficult to preserve from an archaeology standpoint, and may lead to deteriorating conditions of the documents in question.
[Answer]
Here's my best guesses:
* Files uploaded to cloud storage, sure they'll be around as long as the company hosting it.
* Free plans of web hosting like Github Pages, Wordpress, or Neocities could be up for quite a while, again, until the company shuts down, or in some cases, shuts down particular pages if not in use.
* Shared hosting - as long as the owner keeps paying. I would expect this to have a much shorter life than, say, cloud storage.
* VPS (my hosting plan) or Dedicated Server - Even shorter after the owner stops updating. These plans are much more expensive, and probably won't be used at all if the owner doesn't see them as worth the cost.
---
However, there is another option. I would like to point you to the [WaybackMachine](https://archive.org/web/). Their project is to take static snapshots of as many webpages as possible and preserve them for as long a time as possible. Depending on how long they stay up, there could be a lot preserved for decades, or even (possibly) centuries. (do not a lot of content just can't be captured by this project, but most static information can)
Internetarchaeologists of the future, look to WaybackMachine as your savior.
[Answer]
Data tends to accumulate rapidly over time and it becomes very difficult after a point to decide what to keep and what to delete. Chances are all individuals and institutions will keep on backing up and archiving all the time without thinking too much about how much of it is useful.
Data storage costs will keep on falling along with advancements in searching technology(AI/ML/NLP etc) and these trends will continue far out into the distant future.
That said, Organizations can have a policy like non-critical data that has not been "touched" for 3 decades maybe safely deleted. For example if your tweets(assuming you are not a celebrity or famous) remain untouched for 30 years, delete it. So some of your data will remain forever and the rest will outlive you by a few decades.
[Answer]
Historians made a lot of work relying just on few fragments of the already scarce material written in the past. Given the amount of data we are storing now even if a very small percentage of that data will survive, there will be more than enough to conduct long and detailed studies. So rather than thinking about the average lifespan you can take into account extreme cases, those cases might involve:
* Replication in new formats when the old ones become outdated. This requires that our society goes on for millennia without a collapse.
* New technologies able to recover data from CDs whose plastic re-crystallised making them unreadable with our technologies. Or the ability to recover any other degraded support. This could imply sci-fi tech, but it would extend the lifespan for millennia even in case of a social collapse and the growth of a new civilization.
BTW Don't rule out the classic old paper. Some good airtight vaults with the proper choice of sources might render internet archaeology useless
[Answer]
Forever. Or at least, the lifetime of the Universe and infinity.
The same as ANY electronic spectrum information.
It will propagate forever, just as we are now receiving light from the cosmos that originated billions of years ago.
The trick is, reading it.
] |
[Question]
[
In a fantasy world I'm building I wanted a group of tundra dwellers to live within a large city that is in reality the frozen remains of a pod of this world's equivalent of sperm whales.
Is there any logical way to explain how a whale pod became trapped in ice? Preferably with the ice somehow being above the surface and looking like a small mountain.
[Answer]
1: **Sperm whales can get beached in large numbers.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PR4wY.jpg)
2: **Sperm whales can apparently get beached on icebergs.**
<http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1985-05-16/news/8501190541_1_killer-whales-marine-biologists-iceberg>
>
> Dead, Decaying Whale Poses Puzzle: How Did It Land On Top Of An
> Iceberg? May 16, 1985|United Press International NUUK, GREENLAND — A
> dead whale frozen in an iceberg 13 feet above the surface of the
> frigid waters off south Greenland is mystifying scientists and curious
> residents of a tiny Greenland settlement.
>
>
> No one can figure out how the 59-foot sperm whale died or how it ended
> up in an icy grave high above the water drifting a few miles off the
> tiny settlement of Alluitsup...
>
>
> Close inspection reveals the whale may have been the victim of a
> hunter`s harpoon. In its neck is a cylindrical hole 15 inches in
> diameter and three feet.
>
>
> But that does not explain how the beast came to rest in an icy grave
> bobbing 13 feet above the water...
>
>
> They believe the whale, weakened or dead, could have drifted over the
> submerged portion of an iceberg and become an involuntary hitchhiker
> when the iceberg separated and a submerged portion rose under the
> whale.
>
>
>
3: **Big icebergs can get beached too.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SkvuJ.jpg)
<https://www.npr.org/2017/04/20/524833709/grounded-glacier-in-canada-reinforces-iceberg-alleys-moniker>
So:
1: Sperm whale herd beaches itself on floating iceberg.
2: Iceberg pivots in the water as it melts, lifting beached whales to new topmost portion (as with above pasted story).
3: Iceberg itself is beached on land and there it sits. Maybe it gets wedged in a fork in an existing glacier.
4: Whales atop iceberg rot and are eaten by seabirds / foxes etc.
5: Snow and ice accumulate atop iceberg which is incorporated into glacier.
6: Later, whale skeletons are found entombed in the ice.
7: People move in and make cozy cottages.
---
This scenario would mean the dwelling are right on the coast, where the iceberg came to rest. Another possibility is that the whales were moved one at a time to the high spot where your tundra dwellers found them.
A thunderbird would do that.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lu5A3.jpg)
<https://www.pinterest.com/pin/347269821244629823/>
[Answer]
As [this Skeptics answer](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/19126/did-the-ocean-freeze-suddenly-trapping-fish/19132) shows, fish getting frozen in ice is entirely possible.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6AVuCm.jpg)
The whales entered a near-freezing bay with a small inlet. A shift in the wind caused the inlet to freeze over, trapping the whales in the bay. As the winter grew colder, the bay froze as well and trapped the whales in the ice.
As spring approached, the inlet thawed and the whale-filled iceberg drifted out to sea. It eventually beached itself in the tundra where your dwellers could find to create their new frozen home.
[Answer]
Whales are mammals that must break the water surface to breath.
Whales often die with their heads stuck in an ice hole.
There is no need for an elaborate trap or chain of events. Their deaths and frozen bodies are often found stuck in ice. Here is why:
Whales can find themselves swimming underneath a frozen sea. The diameter of the ice shelf can be greater than they can hold their breath. As the sea surface continues to freeze over they search for air holes and become stationary. Holding their heads through the holes to breath unable to swim to another location (there are no more holes).
They die when the hole freezes and traps their head into position. Their bodies become part of the ice shelf with their heads sticking out. Other whales die under the water and become frozen into the ice.
I'm sure a larger sperm whale could die in the same manner.
## References:
[Operation Breakthrough](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Breakthrough) was an international effort to free three gray whales from pack ice in the Beaufort Sea near Point Barrow in the U.S. state of Alaska in 1988.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lVgoB.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kSxiI.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KUcXC.jpg)
] |
[Question]
[
My world - think 13th century medieval Europe - has a gigantic waterfall. Imagine Niagara Falls but even bigger, consuming multiple sides of a big mountain. People don't climb the mountain, as it is too steep or the waterfalls make it impossible. One day, the water stops pouring down. The world is shocked and sends a unit to find out what happened. No more water means they can now climb the mountain, which they do.
Now, I want the waterfall to be stopped by unknown people living on the mountain, but we're talking about a massive load of water. My current thoughts are: all the water up the mountains streams through a big cave/tunnel while flowing down, which now is blocked with rocks.
My questions are...
* How big should this tunnel be, to realistically process enough water to keep a waterfall of my magnitude going?
* How would these people block the tunnel, as we probably need gigantic rocks, and explosions aren't possible?
* Does everything I say make sense?
---
Thank you all so far for your awesome replies. Very interesting. To put some things together:
**Where does the water come from?**
Rain is an option, but as @HDE226868 puts it, this asks for a gigantic surface. Probably too big. Question: can't the mountain be very high with permanent melting snow on top, which creates the flow? Does my mountain still has to be the same size, @RobWatts?
**How big can the mountain and tunnel be?**
@ArtOfCode's calculations say 9m diameter for the tunnel, which is possible to block. Great! @DoubleDouble points out the lake has to be as width as the waterfall. Good point
**What blocks the tunnel?**
Rerouting is a great idea by Mikey, but creates question (posted multiple times): where does the water go to. @youstay-igo suggests to stop multiple small rivers, but I think this will be hard to do simultaneously. Putting a plug in the tunnel that can sustain the pressure can work, combined with rerouting.
**Where does the water now go?**
Would it be possible to be rerouted into the mountain, in a cave system? Of course it will be huge. It streams under the surface & finds a way to the sea. Other options without creating a new waterfall seem impossible, no?
[Answer]
# Reroute It Upstream
Somewhere at a higher elevation, there's a section of the river that winds near an alternate route for the river. Your mischeivous folks up the mountain cut through the barrier (ice, rocks, or just plain land) and the river suddenly has an entirely new route.
The river now floods down the opposite side of the great mountain.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qa7gY.jpg)
Of course, this is assuming you can be flexible with your highland geography, and with flooding the people on the other side of your great mountain.
---
EDIT: as recommended in the comments, perhaps a dam could have burst, re-directing the river suddenly to its natural course.
[Answer]
Let's define some variables. Given that $Q$ is the [volumetric flow rate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volumetric_flow_rate), $V$ is volume, $m$ is mass, $t$ is time, $z$ is elevation, $\rho$ is density, and $R$ is the radius of the tunnel,
$$Q\equiv\frac{\mathrm{d}V}{\mathrm{d}t}=\frac{\mathrm{d}m}{\mathrm{d}t}\cdot\frac{\mathrm{d}V}{\mathrm{d}m}=\frac{\mathrm{d}m}{\mathrm{d}z}\cdot\frac{\mathrm{d}z}{\mathrm{d}t}\cdot\frac{\mathrm{d}V}{\mathrm{d}m}=\pi R^2\rho \cdot v \cdot \frac{1}{\rho}=\pi R^2v$$
This is really only valid as an approximation, because some of these quantities (and others) are interrelated by and change according to [Bernoulli's principle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli%27s_principle). We'll have to work off of the initial velocity.
[Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Falls) tells me that for Niagara Falls,
$$Q=\frac{168,000\text{ meters}^3}{\text{minute}}\approx 2800 \text{ m}^3/\text{s}$$
The [maximum speed of the water in the river](http://www.niagaraparks.com/about-niagara-falls/geology-facts-figures.html) is
$$\frac{25\text{ miles}}{\text{hour}}\approx \frac{40,000\text{ meters}}{3600\text{ seconds}}\approx 11\text{ m}/\text{s}$$
Therefore
$$R=\sqrt{\frac{Q}{\pi v}}=9\text{ meters}$$
Wow. That's small. Plausible to be created by natural processes, or by humans? Yes. [Qanats in Egypt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat#Egypt) could reach this size (see [this paper](http://www.academia.edu/2346052/The_Qanats_of_Ayn_Manawir_Kharga_Oasis_Egypt_) for more information). Possible to block? Yes. Absolutely. If you can excavate a tunnel, you can fill it in.
For everyone who thinks, "That can't be right. 9 meters is way too small," I have the following picture (courtesy of ArtOfCode in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/24094686#24094686)):
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4e/Alaskan_Way_Viaduct_tunnel_visualization.jpg)
Used under Fair Use policy. See [this page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alaskan_Way_Viaduct_tunnel_visualization.jpg) for more details about this particular case.
[Answer]
One issue with your setup is: where does this water come from?
Generally speaking, I see three sources of water for rivers:
* A lake: but that gets its water from something else (see below), more than a source it would an intermediate step.
* from springs: but even in springs, water does not go upwards, the spring flows as long as the aquifer it feeds from keeps at the same level or higher than the spring itself, so it is unlikely that it will be any significant spring on the top of the mountain.
* from the sky, as rain or snow. But either it is constantly raining with as much volume as it falls down the waterfall, or the waterfall will peridically become dry. To make my point, the water that falls from Niagara falls comes from the rain and snow fallen over a great, great area of North America; your model proposes to use only the precipitacions fallen *over one single mountain*.
Not that the proposal is unsalvageable, but maybe you need to consider another solution. The obvious idea would be a big, big plateau instead of a mountain, but we do not know of anything similar that at the same time is as inacccessible as you plain it to be.
[Answer]
Let's take a look at how big your mountain needs to be. Looking at [rainfall in the USA](http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/average-annual-state-precipitation.php), we can say that 1.5m is a realistic value for annual rainfall in a rather wet climate. This means that for every m2, there would be 1.5m3 annually.
So how much water do we need? Using the number from Wikipedia for [Niagara falls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Falls)
$$2400\text{ m}^3/\text{s}\*3.15\*10^7\text{ s}/\text{yr}=7.57\*10^{10}\text{ m}^3/\text{yr}$$
So if your waterfall has the same output as Niagara falls, you need an area of about $50,000 \text{ km}^2$, which you could get using a square with $224 \text{ km}$ long sides or a circle with a $126\text{ km}$ radius.
How big is that? [Bigger than Maryland, and almost as big as West Virginia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_area), and [between Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area) in land area.
"Big" is not sufficient to describe this mountain. An average grade of 7 (4 degrees/0.07 radians), which is a rather gentle incline, would put the peak as high as Everest.
Your waterfall needs to use up almost all the water provided by a very large area. I'm not sure what you can do to make this setup realistic, but one step would be to make it possible to go around the mountain. Perhaps there is a jungle or something else that makes it difficult to get around, but the other side of the mountain is much more accessible than the waterfall side. This also makes it easier to explain how there are already people up there.
Remember that 13th century Europe is before the [Age of Discovery](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery), so there are not explorers going around that would discover the other side of the mountain.
[Answer]
Waterfalls are generally streams and rivers, which just happen to come across a path that involves a very sudden drop in elevation.
Over time, streams and rivers cut a path into the rock of your mountain. The path will eventually form to fit the amount of water coming down the river. To have a river coming down across the entire mountain means you have a river as wide as your mountain. Luckily, the hole you have upstream can be a bit smaller, the water will just be pushed through it faster and with more pressure. It would still have to be a pretty massive hole though.
---
If your example were much smaller, I could imagine maybe a giant "plug" crafted of some sort which could just go along with the river and then be too wide for the hole. However, with the amount of water I can't imagine any realistic "plug" which would be wide enough *and* be able to withstand the incredibly heavy force of water that is on top of it.
Granted, with proper man-force and engineering, many great structures have been built in medieval times. It would take a *lot* of people and a *lot* of work to get that much rock, and then the power required to dump all that rock at the entrance. The more spread out (time-wise) you dump the rocks, the more you have to worry about the river just forcing it down-stream. I personally think the amount of effort required for it is unrealistic compared to whatever benefits they would get for it. But, maybe this is for the mighty new King's ego and he has an incredible amount of man-labor available.
What I find more likely, is that there is a spot in the river where a slight nudge could push the entire thing into a new direction. Even a slight nudge in this instance is an incredible amount of work. However, the river is now travelling in an entirely new direction and if you'd like to change it back then you'd have essentially the same issue we started with.
[Answer]
I am attaching two concept images of the waterfall. One images shows the waterfall as it looks from the people living in the valley. They only see the water falling from above. The second image is from the perspective of the people living atop the mountain who can see and access the source of the water.
**The Method**
As you can see in the second diagram, the waterfall is made of not one huge, but a lot of small water inlets which join behind the large mountain, thus forming the waterfall which the people of the valley can see.
Since the people living atop the mountain(s) can backtrack the source of water, they can block the water channels with boulders before they join and form an unstoppable rush of water inside the mountain. It is theoretically possible and should have no problems practically either. However, the people living atop the mountains will have to employ heavy beasts of burden (oxen, yaks, bulls etc) to drag the heavy boulders and place them in the right location to stop the water channels.
**The Problem**
Since you have used the reality-check tag for your question, so I must ask this question: have you decided *where* the water will discharge to, after being blocked from going into the mountain and making the waterfall? Of course you are not expecting that stopping the flow of water would simply make it disappear.
The water will have to change it's course and you will have to allow another exit for it. Maybe it turns around in different directions in the cave-network in the mountain and makes another waterfall, further away from this valley? Maybe the mountain people stop the water channels much further than the mountain (we are talking 10-15 miles here) so that the water floods the plain and forms a rushing river? You decide. Just make sure you find another outlet for the water you have stopped.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bsSoq.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LPZfI.png)
[Answer]
**A massive rock fall or glacier fall could stop a river that large.**
If the river wends between two large rock formations, an earthquake might dislodge sufficient rock to dam up the river. If the rock fall breaks after the water reaches a certain height then anything below that point in the river is going to have a really really bad day when many days/weeks/months worth of water let loose all at the same time in a [megaflood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outburst_flood). The [Scablands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channeled_Scablands) are one such example of a megaflood.
An ice fall or avalanche might achieve the same effect as a rock fall though may not last as long.
**The giant tunnel**
You *could* do a huge tunnel but that requires explosives and heavy moving equipment both of which are outside the capacity of medieval technology. Or, perhaps you could but it would require tens or hundreds of thousands of men to pull off.
[Answer]
Instead of the water being blocked or redirected, what if it just ran out?
If the waterfall was an engineered feature, maybe they just turned it off using existing infrastructure; perhaps for maintenance on the spillways or mill wheels. Or a new policy of concervation was enacted and they need to stop running it until the lake is higher, or they don't need it as a power source anymore.
[Answer]
The water vaporised by the heat of a giant meteor.
Or frose bij sudden climate change.
Or a combination of the two.
] |
[Question]
[
When a massive handwavium accident happened on Earth, 99.9% of all flight-capable birds worldwide, instead of dealing with it, answered with *"Nope, gone to heaven."*
Basically, they died instantly.
Birds that do not fly, like chickens, penguins, ostriches, and so on, are fine. Birds that were able to fly but weren't flying at the moment, not so much (not at all).
What are the worst-case scenario for this mass-extinction event? How screwed is the rest of the world, the surviving species, like, dunno, humans?
Assume an ordinary 2020's world, just like ours.
[Answer]
# Insects swarm, crops die, people starve, society collapses
The death of all birds would be apocalyptic in short order.
While John O's question covers a lot of aspects of birds' place in the ecosystem, it misses a very important one. Birds *eat insects*. A *lot* of insects. [400,000,000 *tons*](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00114-018-1571-z) of insects a year. For a sense of scale, that's more than the combined mass of all of humanity.
One of the causes of the [Great Chinese Famine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine#Four_Pests_Campaign), which killed >10,000,000 people, was the systematic and misguided extermination of sparrows, which resulted in massive spikes in insect populations.
Removing the world's bird population will turn every habitable area into something like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QbM13.gif)
At which point they will very rapidly become non-habitable.
Wheat, rice, potatoes, corn, soybeans, all will become food for the endless swarming pests. Everything that grows will be eaten, down to the last shred of grass. Cattle and wild animals alike will starve for lack of feed. The world will slowly but inexorably starve.
You might have a few holdouts survive on preserved food for a few years, but since agriculture will be impossible, eventually, they will likely starve as well.
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You do get to tell us how your premise works, of course... but chickens fly just fine. Modern breeds are heavier (more meat), and being heavy they have trouble with *sustained* flight. They'll never fly 5000 miles south for winter, but to get to a low roost above where predators will get them is pretty doable for all but the heaviest.
Turkeys, too. Ducks. Geese. Most of the fowl that we eat, all of them gone.
Thus, no more chicken tendies... for anyone.
If that weren't bad enough, we have some birds who are competent pollinators of exotic plants. Hummingbirds mostly, but others as well. Some of those plant species are already endangered, so you're looking at a minor extinction event beyond just the birds themselves.
Other ecosystems rely on birds for food... reptiles a bit. Those populations if already endangered, could easily be pushed over the edge. Snakes, lizards, alligators and crocodiles maybe.
The good news is that this isn't without its benefits. So-called "bird flu" will be a thing of the past. The flu, as you all are no doubt aware, is a virus that likes to jump species. In particular, it will favor pigs and birds as well as ourselves... and birds being highly mobile are very good vectors. It's not as if one farmer's pigs are visiting the other farmer's pigs 10 miles down the road late at night. But birds will easily cover that distance in minutes, and may do so every day. They'll poop in the pig pens, pick it over for food, and then move on to the next. And then go poop on your car door handle. (Feces aren't a particularly viable mechanism, just one chosen to illustrate things in general.)
With those birds gone, it's quite possible that the flu will become less adaptive and widespread. It's possible flu epidemics would become a thing of the past entirely (though there's little hope for it becoming extinct itself).
Longer term though, there are other problems. Some of the richest phosphate deposits are from birds (bird poop again, I keep circling back to it). These things take tens of thousands of years to develop, but when ocean birds nest on certain islands generation after generation, their feeding on fish but pooping on shore in places where it doesn't wash away quickly tends to concentrate good old phosphorous there. That will cease. This won't become a problem for a long time, if ever, but it does demonstrate how many cycles and systems are being affected by their absence.
Similarly, birds have alot to do with how new islands are colonized at sea. Some seeds and animals can be washed ashore aboard detritus, but birds tend to carry alot with them as well. And not just islands, new lakes may actually be seeded by birds, who carry fish eggs with them in their guts, or snails on their feet.
If evolution ever replaces birds with something else (it's not guaranteed, some niches are difficult to learn to exploit), it will be many millions of years before that organism takes over the skies again.
We aren't in any immediate danger of becoming extinct in this world, or even becoming involuntary vegetarians. But the loss of the turducken as the pinnacle of culinary art will be grieved for all eternity.
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# We'll survive, but it's gonna take alot of lasers
Lasers have [already been shown](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGjP9SE7tsM) capable of being employed to take down mosquitoes. We'll just need to modify and scale this existing technology to handle the bugs of all the shapes and sizes normally eaten by birds that are now extinct. Note that we won't have to fight the bugs forever:
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> 99.9% of all flight-capable birds worldwide [will be dead].
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>
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This still leaves 0.1% alive. [Assuming 100 billion birds were alive](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/how-many-birds-are-there-in-the-world-science-estimates#:%7E:text=New%20research%20estimates%20there%20are,430%20billion%20birds%20on%20Earth.) before the disaster (I'm rounding to 100B for convenience), then 0.1% left makes 100M birds. Assuming birds grow at a rate of 2x/year, then in around 3 decades the avion population should return to origonal levels (2^30 = 1024). Correction: 1 decade (2^10=1,024; 100M•1024≈100B).
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(This answer assumes only flying bird species would be affected directly by this event, no other species!)
## God hates dinosaurs ?
**Another dinosaur disaster.. but some of the usual suspects will survive.. again..**
Extinction events. Dino's have been there. One giant asteroid and a 20 years nuclear winter.. And they were already on the way out before that, for a few million years.. most of them cold-blooded and afraid of water. But some dinosaurs had managed to transform themselves into flying birds, or thrive in water. Only few dinosaurs remained unchanged, like crocodiles and ostriches.. Others developed not depending on flight, like chicken, penguins and partridges. These non-flying dinosaurs will survive this "handwavium event". But most of the other dinosaurs will just vanish again. Poor birds. 99.9%, This blow seems fatal. Is it, really ?
**Some flying birds will survive, but loose their wings**
According to the opening, *flying* birds would vanish. True for all predator birds and sea-thriving birds like seagulls: these really depend on flight every day and go extinct. But you'd get certain e.g. migratory birds, e.g. sparrows or geese individuals would survive the event. You'd have many jugs, that never flew. Some individuals will survive the event. Some were born with short wings, or non-functional wings. They don't fly, they try to survive on land, many would die in winter season - but they don't really *depend* on flight either. These birds can learn to live and thrive on land, in sunshine regions.
The main reasons birds *need* to fly: hunting, predators and season. Now suppose there's no predators used to chasing these surviving birds, and there is no relevant winter. The flight-incapacitated sparrow is in the right place; there is plenty of food. When the "hand-waved" event occurred, they were just lucky. This species will survive. It will copulate, lay eggs and their offspring will change the shape of their beak (see Darwin) and start to pick fruit and seeds all year.
## Other species ?
What species would care.. Some plants depend on birds, to spread their seeds. But most birds are just seed-picking and mouse-eating anarchists, out of reach and not competing. Of course, mammal predators fancy a bird now and then, and everyone loves to eat doves, but prey-wise, there are few predator species that would especially suffer when birds vanish.
**destabilized biome**
Sure, the biome will be destabilized. With hordes of birds suddenly disappearing, their food will remain on the ground. Rodents could profit considerably; the real issue will be flying seed-eating insects like locusts, that were already mentioned in an earlier answer. They would cause havoc, but in time, locust swarms will disappear again, because the food gets exhausted. While the locusts roam around and procreate, other seed-eating species like hamsters and mice would suffer the consequences; many of these small mammal species could be overrun and get extinct.
## Humans
Don't worry. Humans are a different league. They don't rely on evolution to adjust to changes - they have technology to compensate. Any biomass will do; humans can eat wood if needed. In the first years, the locust plague could cause ⅔ of the human population to die of hunger, but areas with high-tech means will adjust quickly. Humans won't go extinct easily.
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**Chickens will diversify to fill empty niches.**
There are a lot of chickens. Chickens alone account for a substantial minority of all birds. In a fit of humility and passion these will be released to spread over the globe. Chickens will naturally fill the roles of their departed birdly brethren and sistren. In circumstances where chickens physiologically struggle to fill those roles, the world will react with understanding and accomodations.
I was thinking the penguin role might be the hardest but forgot penguins will be also be exempt from the great bird dying. Penguins can be imported from antartica to other places in the world where they will take over for ducks.
Also kakapos can come fill in for the goats if the goats have any trouble, or maybe stand ready as emergency goat backups.
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Some humans have been genetically engineered to be able to detect ionizing radiation to better survive the harsh environments found outside of earth's protective magnetosphere. What could be the physiological mechanism for such a biological Geiger counter, and would they be able to tell what direction the radiation is coming from?
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*Editted to take account of the fact that cosmic radiation \*is\* important for this question*
Important thing to note: what benefit do you expect to gain from your enhancements? In space, and on the surface of airless worlds, cosmic radiation is basically omnipresent. Neutron radiation is only really a risk around badly shielded nuclear reactors and engines (so don't hang around those). Alpha and beta radiation is mostly a risk from nuclear waste. Most people simply won't benefit from being able to detect radiation, and those people whose job involves radioactive hazards can just carry a regular geiger counter.
Colonisation of space isn't a good justification. Recolonisation after a nuclear war might well be.
You should also consider how your new senses interact with medical technology. If you need macroscopic metal deposits in your body, you might find yourself having problems if you ever need an MRI, and they'll obscure x-rays, too. If you're sensitive to x-rays, then medical x-ray imaging may become quite unpleasant and require sedation instead of being a simple and painless procedure. If you're sensitive to beta radiation, [branchytherapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachytherapy) becomes more difficult... radiotherapy in general is may be problematic and unpleasant. Better hope you have other good cancer treatment options!
With that out of the way:
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You can roughly divide ionising radiation into three categories:
* minimally penetrating particles, such as alpha or beta radiation
* highly penetrating particles, such as neutrons or cosmic radiation
* short wavelength EM, such as x-rays or gamma rays
You can't trivially detect all of them with the same sort of device... even "geiger counters" need special materials for their windows to allow alpha and beta particles in, and carefully chosen materials that will convert EM radiation to charged particle radiation (ionisation via the [photoelectric effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect)) to make it easier to detect these wavelengths that don't interact readily with the gas inside the tube. Neutrons are also inconvenient and [various strategies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_detection#Classic_neutron_detection_options) are needed to reliably detect them.
Each of these probably needs a separate sensing mechanism; there's unlikely to be one single organ that will do it all.
**Alpha and beta**
The principle source of these is from nuclear reactions and radioactive decay. Outside of earth's magnetosphere, a good source of these is of course the sun, plus any nuclear powerplant (fission or fusion) you might have brought with you.
Alpha particles won't penetrate the skin, and beta particles wont *readily* penetrate the skin unless the source is close and the flux is high. You can't easily have a sense for these that which uses [sensory neurons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_neuron) in the skin, because the [epidermis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidermis) (outermost layer of the skin) will block too much of the radiation to be useful.
Sensors for these, then, will have to be *inside* the body. I'm not totally certain how you'd make an alpha or beta sensitive nerve, unfortunately, but the particle do very readily give up their energy so artificially evolving or maybe even designing a suitable mechanism seems like it might be possible. L'Dutch's suggestion of an ion channel is *part* of a solution, but is unlikely to be a solution in itself
In Ken MacLeod's book *The Stone Canal*, one of the characters has modified [olfactory receptors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfactory_receptor) in her nose which tickle when she inhales radioactive gas or dust. When the stimulus is strong enough she sneezes, which isn't a bad reflex to have if you've just snorted a noseful of radioactive materials. This same approach might be extended to the lining of the lungs and maybe the eye mucosa... exposure to radioactive materials might then cause hayfever-like symptoms which might be a good way to clear the material out of the lungs and breathing passages even if it isn't big enough or irritating enough to trigger the normal coughing and sneezing reflexes.
Making the lining of the disgestive tract more irritable, resulting in vomiting and diarrhoea on exposure to radiation (but crucially, *before* that radiation has had much time to actually kill enough cells to cause sickness) will help speed the offending material out of the body before it can do too much damage.
Shielding against these kinds of radiation is straightfoward and lightweight. Furthermore, there's not a lot of air in most places in space, so being sensitive to it isn't particularly useful, as your spacesuit or clothing will block external sources and a portable air supply will prevent you inhaling any sources. This is only really a useful trait if you work around badly made fission reactors or have to deal with fallout from nuclear weapons.
**Neutrons and cosmic rays**
For people on earth, the easy option here is to just not bother. If you're not in space and not hanging around things undergoing fission or fusion you just won't encounter them ([neutron emission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_emission) is rare except in very short lived isotopes being formed as part of an ongoing nuclear reaction). They're also very highly penetrating, which would make them very difficult to localise, but at least means you could have your sensory organs for them almost anywhere.
One possible solution is to have some kind of moderating material that converts them into another kind of radiation that you *are* sensitive to... charged particles hitting metal will release [bremmstrahlung radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung) and if you're sensitive to x- and gamma rays you could feel that. Large natural deposits of metal in your body might be awkward to form, however, but carrying around a bit of metal sheet as an external moderator might work. If you're in a metal-hulled spacecraft without adequate particle shielding, some of the incoming charged particle radiation will have already generated x-rays via this mechanism.
Other approaches exist to convert [neutron radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_detection#Classic_neutron_detection_options) into more easily detectable forms. Natural internal deposits of suitable boron compounds might be practical, or again, you can carry around a piece of suitable material with you and wait til your ~~spidey~~ radiation senses near it start tingling.
Trying to localise the source of cosmic radiation will be largely pointless. In space, it comes from everywhere, more or less. On a world without a decent atmosphere and magnetosphere, it will come from the sky. because it is so highly penetrating, your sensory bits will probably be triggered regardless of their orientation or meagre shielding; you'll simply be able to feel that you're exposed to a hostile environment and maybe you'll be able to tell *how* hostile it is.
Localising sources of neutron radiation will be quite difficult, again because they are highly penetrating (moreso than charged particles, for the same energy levels) and so shielding your sensory gear so it can detect neutrons from a specific direction is probably impractical. You'd probably just get a sense of impending doom, and maybe a rough idea of the strength of the neutron flux.
**Gamma rays and x-rays**
Another kind of highly penetrating radiation. In space, a major source of these will be charged particle radiation hitting metal objects and releasing [bremmstrahlung radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung). Your nuclear reactors will also be a good source of x- and gamma rays.
Interestingly, there already exist some naturally (ish) evolved [radiotrophic fungi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus) which have been found in the Chernobyl sarcophagus and use [a form of photosynthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosynthesis_(metabolism)) using melanin that reacts to short wavelength light like gamma radiation.
Humans can't be photosynthetic, but they *do* have melanin so copying the same approach could potentially be used... specialist [melanosomes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanosome) could be formed in some skin [sensory neurons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_neuron) that could provide whole-body sensitivity to short wavelength radiation. It might feel like someone is shining a heat lamp at you, for example.
This would also improve UV sensitivity, so you'd be less likely to hang around in the sun and get sunburnt, though increased levels of melanin in the skin would make you less prone to sunburn anyway.
Highly penetrating radiation might be difficult to sense with directionality (because it might trigger the sensory nerves when it enters and leaves the body, and if it passes through your arms and torso you'll get multiple entrace an exit points, etc) but if you bring a handy metal sheet as a partial shield and you *still* feel the radiation with no change in intensity, then it is probably coming from the unshielded direction. If you can get your body to naturally grow highly x-ray opaque materials around sensory clusters, that would probably help too.
You might be able to modify retinal cells to respond to x-rays and gamma rays using the same sort of techniques, but because your eyes will not be able to focus or block much short wavelength radiation you won't be able to get a very good idea of what is emitting the xrays becuase your whole retina will be stimulated. The sensation may be fainter or absent for sources behind you where your skull is providing shielding. You might just end up with foggy vision or a sort of optical glare which might be irritating or extremely debilitating, and *not* what you want when you're in a highly radioactive environment!
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Actually the human body already has an organ that comes close to this; the eye.
Astronauts since the 1960s have reported seeing [flashes in their eyes](https://www.universetoday.com/94714/seeing-cosmic-rays-in-space/), even when closed while in space. It turns out the flashes are the retina being impacted with cosmic rays outside the Earth's magnetosphere. In effect this means that astronauts that received more rapid flashes would be experiencing higher doses of cosmic rays than those with only an occasional flash.
Directionality is difficult because these things go so fast and radiation would be in a similar vein. Besides, we know the source of cosmic rays in our solar system; it's the sun. Something similar would be happening in other harsh environments and to put it bluntly, people would likely just head in the direction that leads to a lower rate of flashes occurring.
This is not a perfect system; these cosmic rays are doing damage to the eye and to the body every time they pass through you, so eventually you're going to be blind if this is a regular occurrence. Also, this is not a finely tuned mechanism for detecting different kinds of radiation, but then neither is a Geiger Counter. If all you're looking for is a reading on the radiation levels in a given location, then the best approach may well be to modify the eye to 'see' radiation a little better (after all, light is just radiation of a specific wavelength, and different colours are just minor differences in that wavelength) and toughen the eye a little more biologically to be able to withstand long term exposure to low levels of radiation over a longer period.
Ultimately, nature is far more likely to adapt an existing system to a new purpose than it is to generate a new organ from scratch, and we already have organs that detect very specific wavelengths of radiation called light. It just seems far more likely that humans in the conditions you describe would have their eyes enhanced over time by evolution to detect more bands of radiation as visible light to meet the need you describe.
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Ionizing radiation, as the name says, induce ionization in the matter with which it interacts.
Cells are able to interact and control ionized charges (see for instance the [$Na^+$/$K^+$ pump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%2B/K%2B-ATPase)), so it is plausible that a mechanism able to detect charge formation can be obtained by the cells: as soon as a meaningful charge is balanced by the cells, this trigger a signal.
In order to detect the direction of the impinging radiation, considering that the probability of interaction is proportional to the depth of penetration, one can imagine 3 orthogonal tubes as a mean for directionality discrimination.
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You don't want a [Geiger counter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger_counter): that just tells you how much radiation there is. To figure out where the radiation is coming from, you want a [scintillation detector](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillator).
A scintillator is a material that gives off visible light when struck by ionizing radiation. Engineer your modified humans to accumulate suitable compounds in the retina, and you've got someone who can see radiation. The classic scintillator is [zinc sulfide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_sulfide), which is sensitive to X-rays and beta radiation, but there are a wide range of other organic and inorganic substances (usually crystals) that you can use, with different sensitivities. The vitreous humor of the eye, for example, [appears to be sensitive to high-energy nuclei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena).
Keep in mind that most radiation passes through the human body without trouble. Except for low-energy beta radiation, your modified humans won't be able to tell where the radiation is coming from without assistance. But give them radiation-blocking helmets with eyeholes to provide a [pinhole lens effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_camera), and they'll be able to look around for the source, rather than just seeing a general radiation glow.
You're probably not going to be able to engineer someone to see alpha radiation: although there are substances that glow in response to the radiation, it's too easy to block. Suitable substances for alpha shielding include "clothes", "skin", and "air".
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The body is able to detect radiation. When there is enough radiation in the enviroment to make you sick, the telltale sign is that you get sick. Just the same, when the level of radiation is lethal, the body signals that by dying.
That is a characteristic shared with most animals. Humans, however, have evolved beyond that and gained a skill that allows us to detect radiation without suffering any ill effects. It's called taming. Send a dog into the cave first, and if he comes back alive after an hour, you're probably good. Usually small vertebrates are affected faster and more strongly than humans.
In the absence of animals, you can use the skills of language and bullying to send others to test radiation levels for you.
To find the direction of the source, have three sacrificial aninals or people stand in different places and triangulate based on how long they take to get sick. Make sure all test subjects belong to the same species and have approximately the same body mass and age.
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I asked myself the same question (except for evolution instead of genetical engineering). The answer I found back then was more basic but if you go for full genetical engineering, here are my thoughts:
Unfortunately, I could not find a reference but I know that there are some bacteria that benefit from radiation by using it for their energy conversion. They basically use the radiation energy to create some ATP. Based on that, we could engineer an organ that produces heat or fires pain signals only if this form of energy is available.
For natural evolution this probably would be a single organ that changes its purpose (like a Lymph node that becomes a sense organ) but if we get to jump to the most desirable form I would spread this across the skin so the subject could detect the source of alpha and probably beta radiation (alpha radiation does not penetrate and beta radiation gets severely reduced). That way one would feel radiation as a form of heat/pain (under the skin/ only at certain locations/ unlike the not-modified companions). This way one might even be able to tell the types of radiation apart, considering how alpha radiation only affects one side and gamma radiation merely gets reduced at all.
You could, for example, mix in plant DNA that encodes the structure of the lower epidermis of leaves modifying the [stoma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoma) to heat up/ firing pain signals when there is enough radiation to use it for cellular respiration.
It is worth mentioning though, that genetical engineering is neither our only nor our best option. Cyborgs are. For example, the colorblind Neil Harbisson got an artificial sensor implanted that allows him to sense colors (ranging from ultraviolet to infrared) as vibrations in his skull. It took time for his brain to adjust but now it can process the information and he has a natural feeling for it (he can even stream a camera's point of view allowing him to take "VR" tours through space and so on). In an interview, he mentioned that he considers adding more artificial senses and named radiation as one.
Creating a cyborg takes way less time and its outcome is way easier to predict than genetical engineering. Given enough knowledge and simulation, you could engineer someone who has the character traits and physiology you need but building an artificial sensor and implanting it to someone with the required character traits is way easier and cheaper. Given the level of technology needed to make the genetical engineering work at all, we could easily build an [Edit: conveniently small] implant with little to no maintenance and little to no risk of rejection.
Also, note that plot tools like blackmailing these people with implanted bombs or artificial needs that only you can cover or addressing moral questions are possible for both scenarios though I'd expect a genetically engineered person to be programmed to be loyal, fearless and so on. If this is what you want to play with you can use brain implants and/or hormone-based brainwashing for the cyborg but if you don't want obedient soldiers, going for genetical engineering would rise a minor plot whole since loyalty is much easier to genetically engineer than new organs. [Eidt: that is, as long as it's a rare and expensive procedure available only to the government. If this is available for civilians as well, they would make their children smart rather than oediant.]
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As said elsewhere, the body already detects radiation in the form of radiation sickness. The root cause of this is the death of cells, especially rapidly dividing ones. The cause of the cell death is DNA damage - radiation breaks the chemical structure of DNA.
Because DNA damage can lead to mutations and cancer, many organisms actually terminate cells when it occurs. Eukaryotic DNA is linear, and the ends (telomeres) are capped with special structures and proteins. When there are uncapped free ends, these almost certainly come from some sort of DNA damage event, and can be recognized by proteins. The famous p53 protein is present in all human cells, and when it detects DNA damage it triggers a special mechanism (apoptosis) for the cell to kill itself. In the majority of cancers, p53 must first be impaired before the carcinogen can produce a cancer cell.
You can imagine a specialized group of cells that have extremely fragile DNA (not all base sequences are equally strong, so this is quite easy). They arise from specialized stem cells, but then terminally differentiate (ie. cannot divide anymore). Their purpose is to be a radiation detector - whenever there is radiation, their DNA breaks first. Modified versions of proteins like p53 detect this, but instead of triggering apoptosis they effect some other signal. This could even be directly stimulating neurons for instant radiation sensation, or it could be slow release of some chemicals for delayed sensing. These cells are very differentiated, like red blood cells, and are wholly incapable of replicating, so despite their lack of anti-DNA damage machinery they are not likely to become cancerous (or maybe their stem cells *are* likely to become cancerous, and that is the drawback?).
This is not feasible with today's biotechnology (we don't understand differentiation enough to create new organs and we don't understand DNA damage that well) but certainly plausible as a molecular mechanism. Creating a whole new category of sensation in the brain seems like a hopelessly complex task, so the neural feedback of such an organ would probably hijack an existing one - so radiation might feel "hot", "wet", "sweet", "fuzzy" depending on which existing sense you pick. Keep in mind that there are actually not just 5 senses as per the colloquialism - there's at least 12 or 13.
If the organ is internal, it can detect only gamma rays, which penetrate many materials. Beta and alpha radiation cannot pass through the outer layer of dead skin. The exception is that beta-emitting radioactive particles might be inhaled and there get very close to cells, so perhaps your organ should be in the airways to detect beta-emitting airborne particles. However, you could also have small organs (the "rad eyes") on some part of the body that people scan over an object like you would with a Geiger counter.
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One of the ways radiation kills you is by dissolving the blood-brain barrier. When the cells start detecting radiation damage, they could send a signal to your brain and you would know if you are being exposed to an abnormal amount of radiation.
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**Closed**. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/79065/edit).
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In my world, we have two cities, each on a high mountaintop, separated by a vast valley. In order to wage war, the warriors of each city bridge the huge gap between them by using flying creatures.
Now, these flying creatures are of various natures... Some are dragon-like pterodactyls, others are giant eagles. But each one can carry only one warrior and his gear. The warriors saddle and mount the beasts like they would do with horses.
Their technology is on the medieval level. Warriors can only use swords, spears, bows and arrows and such. The cities may, however, be furnished with catapults.
Since these battles never existed in real life, I'm a little overwhelmed at how these battles would be. On the one hand, I'm inclined to base myself on real medieval calvary battles, since we're dealing with knights riding living creatures. On the other hand, the specifics of these creatures make me feel tempted to base myself on real aerial WW2 battles to know how they would move in battle and keep formations.
So, my questions would be as such:
1. Could these warriors make the same kinds of acrobatic flights that airplanes did on real aerial battles?
2. How would the military formations be?
3. What would be the best tactics for warriors to fight each other? Would long range fighting bow and arrows be sufficiently precise? Would short range joust-like figthing be feasible?
4. Would the catapults from the cities be able to disrupt the battle, or inflict any damage, knowing that the warriors could dodge on all three axes?
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**Edit**: not a duplicate from [How to make a viable flying mount?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/69163/how-to-make-a-viable-flying-mount), since I'm not interested in the anatomy of the creatures, but in battle details.
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**Edit 2**: I'm not interested in the creatures' feasibility. Their anatomy would be the anatomy of a giant eagle and pterodactyls with a size able to sustain a warrior. The physics are similar to our world's.
I would like the answers not to focus on the creatures themselves, but rather on how the warriors would fight with them and on them.
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**Edit 3**
Since the question was put [on hold] for being too broad, I have split this question into three separate ones. Below are the links:
1. [Aerial battle of knights riding flying creatures - preferred weapons for the warriors](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/79255/aerial-battle-of-knights-riding-flying-creatures-preferred-weapons-for-the-war)
2. [Aerial battle of knights riding flying creatures - how would their military formations be?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/79346/aerial-battle-of-knights-riding-flying-creatures-how-would-their-military-form)
3. [How can a city protect itself from the invasion from knights flying riding creatures?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/79481/how-can-a-city-protect-itself-from-the-invasion-from-knights-flying-riding-creat)
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I would imagine the fights to be more like bird combat than like anything humans have ever done.
Consider for a moment that you are seated on top of a large bird in the manner of a horse. First problem is that the bird would need you to sit near the middle of the wing in order to maintain it's front-rear balance. This means the wings/head/tail are in your way for shooting or lances, unless you're aiming up. Also, you have a 30+mph headwind or so, so archery would require an extreme level of skill.
For physical melee, birds usually gain height and dive into their prey for a beak or talon strike to the exposed back. If the goal were just to have humans guide the bird's attacks, then the bird would probably gain height then try to dive from above. I would think that strategy would always be about trying to get the upper positioning on an opponent. There might be coordinated strategies where they try to bait upper enemies into dives, then dodge, leaving the enemy at a lower altitude afterward. If one or two fighters bait the enemy well, it could leave many enemies at a lower altitude so that allies can then attack them from above.
Another thing to consider is weight. The animal with the least extra weight will have the best maneuverability and ability to gain altitude. Since the rider isn't using strength, I think you'd end up in a horse racing situation where the smallest lightest jockeys win the most. It could even be a job for children. But on the topic of gaining altitude, birds do this by circling in thermals (hot air that naturally lifts them upward, saving the very great effort of flapping their wings). So then, thermals will be a strategic feature of the battleground, which both sides would seek to control. Whoever is highest in the thermal would have the best ability to strike those below, and also re-gain altitude afterward if their side maintains control of the thermal.
And finally, you have to consider what their goal is if the enemy air force is defeated. Recon was a good enough reason in WWI, but if you want this to be a long-running technology then they will probably have moved to things like dropping burning pitch on enemy structures or something. I would imagine that smaller lighter "fighters" would guard the more encumbered "bombers" in much the same way that the modern airforce does, simply because an encumbered bird can't do much in an air-fight, and an un-equipped bird can't do much against ground targets.
For a final image of all this, imagine that you have the pilot hanging from straps *under* the bird, able to see where they're going easily and fire a crossbow at lower targets or pull a pin to drop burning pitch, while a child rides on top facing backward with a crossbow to defend the bird from attacks from above/behind. The crossbow would be for last-second counters against an incoming dive, and not for long-range attack. The squadron sends the fastest fliers out first to find the thermals, gain altitude, and defend them as the rest of the fighters reach the thermal, while the "bombers" follow a bit later (once they determine the skies are under control) to make a direct route for enemy targets before they get tired or the pitch cools off. The bombers have to maintain high enough altitude to not get hit by arrows from the ground, but low enough to actually hit their targets.
## Update
Thinking more on this, the under-pilot and rear-gunner configuration I described might be ok for a "bomber", but if the animals are in fact coming into contact then a lance might still be a useful weapon. Also a single-person configuration would be ideal for the fighter role. But, I still think a saddle/sitting position is unlikely to work. However, if the pilot were to lay flat on the back of the mount, then their weight would be relatively centered while still being able to look over the wing and see below. Also much more aerodynamic this way. There might be a strap-based harness that allows the pilot to flip over onto his back to watch for attacks from above/behind, and then there could be lances mounted to the bird and trailing in the wind which the pilot would grab and aim in the event of an attack. If the attacker didn't abort the dive or dodge, the enemy mount would be impaled while the defending mount would just be knocked downward a few hundred feet as the pilot either frees or discards the lance. This would change dives from a standard attack to more of a surprise/opportunistic attack if they thought the other pilot wasn't going to be able to ready a lance in time. (or if he runs out of lances) Crossbow would probably still be a useful weapon, but now that the pilot is handling multiple weapons and laying down it might need to be tethered to their shoulder or something.
* [Peregrine Falcon dive attack](https://youtu.be/Hpz66RYD110)
* [Mid-air eagle fight](https://youtu.be/tufnqWNP9AA?t=48)
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I will base my answer according the the following details:
* The Knights are harnessed onto these animals in such a way that they can ride with their hands free
* The animals are capable of sufficient thrust to not "stall out" during a near-vertical climb (at least for a short distance)
* There are at least two "classes" of flying creature: 1 that can carry heavier burdens but is comparably slower, and one that can only carry light burdens with greater agility
In aerial combat with a floor and a sky, you're dealing with one major physical consideration: gravity. The nature of gravity makes it clear that going up requires power and loses speed, and going down returns speed and requires no power. As your height increases so to do your options; conversely, as your height decreases so to do your options. Take this in mind with the answers below.
1. In short - No. These warriors would be limited by the power output of the mount. They could climb for short distances, certainly, but not nearly at the same speed as planes in almost any era. However, the creatures will have one clear strength: the ability to manipulate their control surfaces (wings). A plan does not have the ability to makes its wings effectively disappear, but a flying creature can pull its wings in, offering interesting possibilities for maneuvers and aerobatics that a plane does not have.
2. Formation in the context of aerial maneuver is less about form and more about protection. In any given air combat scenario, an attacker is somewhat limited because he must be moving forward at all times, which is to say that he can only focus on one target at any given time. In practice, this transforms into the notion that a formation is about keeping a group together that can at least match - and hopefully exceed - an enemy group's numbers, and also allow every pilot to have a wingman, which generally means using even numbers. Aside from that, your formation can either reveal or conceal your numbers, and either limit or increase individuals visibility. This lends to the standard V-formation as being a balanced deployment: Your group as the lowest possible silhouette and the great possible sight-lines while still being close enough to one another to provide support.
3. In air combat, the usual standby concept is: Get on your enemy's tail while keeping yours safe. In this context, I can see that still being relevant, with some modifications. First off, if a mount is damaged, the rider can be as safe as he wants, he will fall and likely die. Therefore, first-target should probably be the mount. It's large silhouette compared to the rider makes it a more ideal target as well. Any disabling weapon would be useful here: bolas, weighted-nets, etc. would allow a flier to render a combatant flightless with relative ease. Long-range weapons would be ideal. At flying speeds, the weapon must have sufficient speed to be effective. A powerful cross-bow would be ideal, especially since the rider could still be evasive while reloading. Close range weapons should be of last resort, as in the case where a rider is close enough to use such a weapon, even a standard pole arm, it is as likely some complication in combat could kill both mounts and render both fliers downed.
4. Catapults could be useful, but only if fired in large groups according to the enemies anticipated trajectory. One boulder would be ineffective, but tens of them raining on the approaching fliers would at least limit their mobility options. If timed correctly, such a tactic could render entire portions of an approaching group defeated outright, allowing the defenders a more advantageous position.
There is a reason that the most effective defenses against bombers for many years were flak cannons. Rounds that detonate into deadly shards make short work of planes, as would also be the case with fleshy mounts. Any dabbling with explosives, no matter how minor, would give one of the two armies a massive advantage in both defensive and offensive power.
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**Could these warriors make the same kinds of acrobatic flights that airplanes did on real aerial battles?** I hope I'm not spoiling the fun, but in order for the creature to sustain flight with an armored person on their back, they would have to be so large the person probably wouldn't be engaging in any melee. There would have to be something preventing the wind resistance from snapping their neck if undergoing a barrel roll or something, and anchoring them firmly enough to somehow aim a weapon would be pretty tricky. I would imagine they would stick mostly to holding on to their steering mechanism, and helping guide the creature. The stakes would be higher with no cockpit, so I would think they'd be more effective guiding the dragon or griffin or not bothering to ride at all. Intelligence of the creature also matters.
**How would the military formations be?**
This depends on how in control of the creatures they riders are. If they are in complete control, it would depend on the capabilities of the creatures. If we're talking teeth and claws, the creatures would probably make the rules of their own melee and the riders could only provide basic commands like go, stay, that way, attack, flee, and any special commands. If the creatures can be equipped with a sword like extension on their face, now we're talking some serious trainable strategy. Flanking would be ideal to bite off wings (see below).
**What would be the best tactics for warriors to fight each other? Would long range fighting bow and arrows be sufficiently precise? Would short range joust-like fighting be feasible?**
I think I've kind of answered this, but I don't see how they could muster the strength to throw a spear or aim a bow (straight back). I would think they would have to use crossbows if anything. The creatures would be encouraged to bite off each others wings as that would result in instant victory. However, the counter-attack would be to grab on to the enemy once your wing is damaged. It would be risky to latch on to another creature since there is no leverage in the air to throw an opponent. So they'd stick to slashing and wing-biting.
**Would the catapults from the cities be able to disrupt the battle, or inflict any damage, knowing that the warriors could dodge on all three axes?**
There may be ways to spray and pray with arrows, use nets, huge ballistic bolts, distracting fireworks, or other weapons depending on the technology of the time. If the creatures fly high enough (which any sensible creature/rider would) the cities would not be able to attack, unless first drawing the creatures in. The only way I can see ground support being involved is if the creatures are attacking something on the ground or caught unaware, otherwise the riders would be using the creatures to attack each other for ownership of the skies whereby they could have the military advantage of dropping stuff or scouting at great distances.
Sorry for being so practical, but to me this kind of fighting seems mostly fantastic and a smart military leader would probably make the battles less epic, and more aimed at military advantage. In any case, we need more information about the world to flesh this out. You have a lot of good directions to go. What about some kind of Geneva convention where they forbid attacking wings at the threat of all creature clans ganging up against violators.
I would stay the heck off, personally =D
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More importantly, WHY would they fight? The "why" will tell you the "how."
Armored cavalry (kights) were a terrifyingly effective force. It smashed through most infantry formations, and often caused them to break. Since infantry is what lets you actually conquer an area (I know that's a huge simplification), having something which beats infantry is pretty great.
Flying knights are cool. But what do they **do**?
* They fight like Mongol raiders. They have bows and arrows, and rain down arrows until the opposing force is softened up enough for them to land and engage. Once engaged, they fight a very mobile battle, harrying and retreating so that they always have a local numerical advantage. If the opposing force stays in good enough order to prevent that, they keep shooting from way high in the sky. They are probably lightly armored, and survive by not being reachable. In this case, skycav fights look like archery battles. Mongol-ish may mean crazy athletic sky-horsemanship though, so you might have people leaping from one skyhorse to another.
* They fight like Dragoons. The knights are an infantry force, but are mounted to gain mobility. In a pitched battle, they land in some tactically useful place, and fight there. This fits well with being armored, which would make fighting while cut off from a supporting army much more survivable. This style also lends itself to raids. Duels probably look like both knights landing, then fighting on the ground. That's not unreasonable; You're essentially looking at fights between two airborne groups which look more like naval conflicts without cannons.
* They fight like armored cavalry. They carry lances and charge through infantry, or carry sabers and charge through infantry. This is the least good option, because it means regular knights are *better* than flying knights (if nothing else, trampling is better than not-trampling). Their biggest advantage is probably that they can line up charges from unexpected directions more easily. If they like lances, this looks awesome. If they like swords, they probably can't duel at all (except by landing).
* They fight like spitfires. The mounts are a primary weapon (e.g. fire-breathing dragons). They strafe infantry and kill them from far enough away that infantry can't respond. In this case, they dogfight like spitfires too.
* They fight like engineers (the original, military kind). In this case, they probably drop stuff on infantry from way high up. Maybe they drop stuff on forts too. Fire, rocks, whatever. In this case, they probably duel by trying to drop stuff on each other: everything is careful maneuver, etc.
* They fight like fighter planes. Aircav *generally* have some other role, which is effective enough that you have dedicated anti-air flyers. They probably are very lightly armored, and use nets and bolos (or whatever). Killing the opposing guy doesn't matter, making it so his mount falls out of the sky is easier and more effective.
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All the other answers seem to give great visuals, but don't seem to me to have much practicality. In particular, as an ex hang-glider pilot, they don't resemble actual unpowered flight, and they're all thinking in terms of the mechanics of a tussle rather than the tactics required.
If you don't have an engine, there are two main ways of gaining and keeping height: either you use [ridge lift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridge_lift), where wind blowing towards a hill/cliff rises up the face; or you use [thermals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal) and spiral up inside the rising air. Large soaring birds only ever use flapping to get clear of the ground, and after that they entirely rely on natural lift in the same way as a hang-glider, so we can state as a simple fact that flapping will never be used by a dragon/bird/bat/whatever which is large enough to carry people. The big feature of unpowered flight is that gaining height by either of these means is ***SLOW***. Ridge lift can be quicker, but ridge lift tends to run out a little way above the ridge - and of course you're stuck on your ridge. If you want serious height, it's all about thermals, and it takes a long time to get decent height. If you want to get from one place to another, that's also all about thermals, as you gain height in one thermal and then glide across (losing height as you go) until you hit another.
Next up, how to attack. It's always easier to defend a higher point. If it was simple swords and teeth, the person on top has the advantage of being able to drop their weight on the person below. But more usefully, it's very hard to shoot arrows uphill and very much easier to shoot arrows downhill.
For me, this gives a natural structure of a human pilot in a harness below their mount, very much like a hang-glider. If you're attacked from above, a human pilot is likely to add very little to a dragon's ability to defend itself. Where a human scores is in their ability to use ranged weapons, so they all have bows and they can pick off anyone below them pretty much at will.
This means the attackers will always be at a huge disadvantage. The defenders will have the advantage of height, because thermals only work during the day and the defenders will already have had plenty of time to get high before the attackers can cross the gap. Attackers will be coming in on a glide from their last thermal, so they'll be lower than the defenders. This means attackers will always be sitting ducks in a straight fight, and there's absolutely nothing they can do about it, because physics.
So if the attackers can't hit the defenders in the air, why would they attack anyway? Answer: they're bombers. Fighting the defenders' flyers has no military purpose - the reason for flying over is to attack the ***city***. The WWII scenario this leads to is not dogfights but bombing raids, in particular the kind of bombing done using [Mosquitos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito). If the bombers are actually suicide bombers, it may more closely resemble [V1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb) or [V2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket) attacks.
It may seem that the attackers are onto a losing proposition here, but there is another significant way to gain height - [wave lift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_wave). This can create exceptional lift, and all the highest soaring flights have used wave lift. More significantly, it's entirely possible that only one side could have the wave lift, and the other side could be in wave sink. In that case the side with wave lift could use it to get huge height before they glide across the gap, and potentially still arrive at the other side with a height advantage, which turns it from a straight fight into a very uneven fight indeed. It won't last them long, because once they get there they'll be gliding down until they're the same height as their opponents, but it may still give them a few minutes to make their bombing run without aerial opposition. It seems likely therefore that attackers would generally wait until wave lift was in their favour before launching their bombing raid.
If the city can't get flyers in the air, what do they do? Answer: hunker down and hope. On the plus side though, the bombs are unlikely to be very powerful - they're more likely to be fire-bombs, so the best ways to counter the bombs would be to build out of stone, set up air raid bunkers, and have a good fire brigade. Catapults would be utterly pointless because you can't aim a high-arcing projectile at a fast-moving aerial target, but [ballistas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista) may be very useful against lower-flying attackers. And of course you would try to pick off the attackers on their way back, because the lesson the RAF and Luftwaffe both learnt in WWII is that you can replace planes but you can't easily replace pilots.
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This would depend on the maneuverability of the animal as well as how securely the rider is attached to the mount. Giant Eagles could probably do loop-de-loops, but if the rider is just sitting in a saddle equivalent to a horse's saddle, there's a decent chance he might fall out!
(I'm assuming significant G-forces - the likes of which might make a rider black out - wouldn't come into play, because a giant eagle would be moving more slowly than an airplane, but if I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will correct me.)
**Edit:** As Peter mentions in the comments, some real-life birds have been clocked pulling upwards of 10Gs, so the G-Force issue could be a concern for these riders, subject to the abilities of the mount itself.
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Whenever I think of fighting formations in 3D, I think of the video game [Homeworld.](http://homeworld.wikia.com/wiki/Formations) You have your standard "wall" and "sphere" formations, an "arrow-head" formation for breaking enemy formations and a "claw" formation for quickly surrounding outnumbered enemy units. I imagine many of these formations would work well for flying cavalry, with perhaps some tweaking. Sphere, for example, would be better as a defensive formation - protecting the "target" from all sides, rather than surrounding and firing upon an enemy target.
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I feel like evasion would be more effective as a defensive measure on flying animals than armor. If ranges are long and speeds high, landing a blow will be hard anyway, and everything you can do to lighten the load on the mount would increase the odds of avoiding incoming fire. Heavy armour would only have real value if the creatures regularly close to melee ranges in order to strike with talons and such.
Regardless of how riders are armoured, the easiest way to take them out of the fight would be to either dismount the rider (so he falls to his death) or to attack the mount and force it to retreat/land. So lances and other long pole-arms would be favoured over swords or axes (as dismounting the rider is easier and more effective than stabbing them until they die in the saddle.)
The mount probably can't fly with too much barding, so bows & arrows could be viable weapons as well - aiming at the mount's wings or face rather than the rider directly. **Flaming arrows** would be doubly effective - not only would the fire damage the mount if it hits, but even a near miss could cause the mount to panic. It might flee the battle regardless of its rider, or make sudden course changes that end up dislodging the rider entirely.
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Depends on the range between the city and the battle, of course. I feel like ballistae might be a better fit than catapults in most cases.
If people have access to any kind of explosives, then explosive rounds would obviously be favoured. Fire into a clump of enemy units and aiming becomes much less important (which is important, because aiming at fast-moving flying units over long distances is hard.)
Aside from explosives, flaming ammunition would also be useful, as discussed above. Also, nets. A big net with weights around the edges so it spreads out in flight and has enough inertia to entangle targets and send them plummeting to the ground. Range would be relatively short without some kind of delayed deployment system, but that's up the details of your world, I suppose.
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When designing a weapon we must always keep the 3 main things in mind: **Offensive power, defensive power and mobility**. To strike a good balance between these is hard. See [tanks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank), [airplanes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_design_process) or just the gear a soldier uses. If a soldier has a heavy weapon he (mostly) becomes more lethal. But also slower to move and harder to hide. Not to mention supply problems it might generate.
## The Team
I assume the rider and mount function at least at the level of a competent horseman and his mount. That is, they work smoothly as a team and the rider has his hands free to do other stuff then ride. And does not fall off during flying under normal conditions.
While your Giant Flying Creatures will have awesome mobility, their defense will sorely lack. With the rider providing the longer range offensive power and the creature the tooth to claw department. Arrows are likely to bring a big flying thing down. Might need more then one, but still.
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## Group Option:
The big flying beasts are numerous and so are the people that can ride them.
When your flying opponents will meet between the cities it might look like a cross between [horse archers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mounted_archery) and WW1 [aerial tactics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_combat_manoeuvring).
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## Solo, or small group Option:
There are few knights of the sky. The few that fly are or rich or extremely skilled. Rare are the ones that are both. (Depending on government system, of course)
The combat itself can be more like the knights, but with bow and arrow. It might even evolve into a ritualized combated, where no one is killed due to the high cost.
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## But...
([Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gumuNn2PAQo) links) When groups of people can prepare and the flying knights have to get close, they are easy prey. Think of nets ([how to train Your Dragon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzOXF7qklGg)), ballista or other big arrow throwing thing. And worse of all: [archers volly fire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ADhF_paQOk). They will blood out the sun. And so you will fight in the shade of you falling knights of the wing.
As always you can use you fliers to just [drop stones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMFbW-3FAK8) on the enemy, out of reach of the archers, naturally. Even [Sabaton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLo3-e3cZKQ) [sings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cneR4iDG9N0) about it.
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Assuming mounted riders with some sort of harness for stability, I would discount any type of hand held melee weapon or even lances - too much chance of a mid-air between mounts and both sides would go down. You need to use some sort of distance weapon. That said, crossbows are too hard to reload, long bows are too ungainly - a mid size bow might be reasonable. Still, with the air currents your mount, other mounts and the enemy mounts are generating, hits are low probability. An entanglement weapon like a bola might work.
Regarding the citidels, assuming you're using the mount as a bomber (dropping incendiary or explosives) then catapults and arbalests might be like the flak gun of WW2. Load the catapult with shot or even hot shot (getting hit with burning hot rocks - not fun) and if you can - some sort of timed explosive with shrapnel. The arbalests would be nicer with explosives or with some sort of deployed net.
Regarding maneuvers - individual maneuvering is usually for air-to-air combat where hitting the other flyer is the main objective. When bombing, you usually have a set formation with the defensive gunnery hopefully overlapping and interlocking and providing for your defense.
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Considering flying battles, I would suggest inspiration from the WW1 dogfights rather than medieval style fighting. It also depends to a large deal on the kind of armour your warriors prefer to use. Using anything but greatswords or gigantic battle axes against full plate armour might be almost useless.
Personally, I feel rather than having actual weapons to the fight, the flying animals themselves can be used as weapons. The creatures will certainly have talons and beaks that can be used to attack each other, with the warrior actually guiding the animal to do the dirty work.
If you want weapons, something like giant lances can do the trick by simply dismounting their opponents so that they fall to their deaths.(similar to jousting in medieval Europe, just the distance of the fall is greater)
If mail armour is being worn, might I suggest a handheld Chinese Repeating Crossbow. It could fire arrow bolts at a staggering rate, almost like a medieval machine gun. In case of plate armour, you can make it a larger Repeating Crossbow fixed onto the creature, allowing for the use of larger arrows or even small spears that might pierce the armour.As for the arrows, they can be carried as a line of arrows on a stripper clip (Similar to the ones used in WW1 rifles like Gwehr)
Hope this helped. :)
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This has been done (sort of) an old Nintendo Arcade Game called JOUSTE. Check it out - it's my all time favourite arcade game.
Needless to say, I think this new idea you have is fantastic. :)
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I would think that the problem with catapults is the lack of accuracy, especially with such high moving targets. Might be something to think about. Perhaps a more accurate land to air weapon. Idk, in a fictional universe perhaps you can make the catapults more accurate somehow. With the whole debacle on fighting, I would think if the mounts are capable of aerial dogfight-esque movements, it wouldn't be steady enough for good archery technique. Long weapons might be cool though, like spears and such. A bit like jousting in medieval times. Formation wise, they should move a bit like a flock of birds no? Maybe like hawks.
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I want to write a novel situated in a “reversed planet”: there are two stars orbiting each other, and there is a little spot exactly in the middle of the two that is suitable for life. A normal planet wouldn’t be possible, because of the intense heat, light, and the gravity on the outside of the crust, but the inside could be suitable for life.
The planet is hollow. There is a very bright molten core in the middle of it. The crust is very thick, and although outside of it there is the void of space, neither air nor water pass through it. Because of the gravity of the stars and the rotation of the planet, everything lives pointing outwards: the opposite of our perception of gravity, but the gravity of the dense molten core make it so that the crust doesn’t just crumble away.
On the inside of the crust, there is an environment full of life, and there are humanoid species that live there.
I know that a planet like this can’t really exist, but I would like to know if there are some real theories or just some crazy “pseudo-scientists” that could "scientifically" back up this extravagant planet.
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The only thing that would let me believe this planet exists is if it were some sort of **artificial planet**. Like you could say that the thing is actually an artifact of some long lost space faring civilization (or point out that that's what the planets residents theorize if they've gotten to the point where they know that their planet is really really weird).
This is feasible in today's understanding of physics, it's just an absurd engineering problem to build a structure like this. However, I'm sure that some super civilization with vast vast resources and some completely nutter motivation to build this thing could probably do it. It would need to be made of exceptionally strong materials (you probably don't even need unobtanium) and a brilliant structure design. The structure would just need to survive rotating fast enough that anything on the inside of the "crust" is experiencing 1 g of net centrifugal force outwards.
As a result, I can imagine that all sorts of dirt and crud could build up along the equator of this structure (maybe seeded there by the lost civilization). You may be better off with a cylinder or like a ring (i.e. like in Halo) so that you can have a wider strip of "land" on the equator. then on this dirt you could get an atmosphere and critter and whatnot so long as stuff couldn't "spill out" of the planet at comical speeds.
Btw... you're planet would have SUCH an easy time getting ships into space... not so easy getting back though.
Edit: Oh, and I had an Idea about the "molten core". Possibly the stations' original intent was to harness the immense solar energy from the two nearby rotating suns. The core used to house the storage device for this power, but due to centuries without proper maintenance, the whole structure now only collects a small portion of the energy it used to. Another side effect is most of the remaining energy collected is leaking from it's core in the form of radiated heat (i.e. approximated as a mini-sun, possibly a ball of plasma held in place by magnetic suspension).
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Well, as you accept *crazy pseudo-physics* we can do a lot here:
Assuming the molten inner core keeps its form due to its sheer mass compressing itself we could argue that it forms a magnetic field. Further assuming we can *handwave* this magnetic field to be very very very strong we can continue with our *crazy pseudo-scienceTM* by having the very thick outer crust containing ferromagnetic materials that hold the same charge as the magnetic field provided by our core.
Thus we would have an outer shell with a more or less even distance from the inner shell; and, as far as I see it, the core and shell could even rotate in different directions.
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I read a vignette about life on [Europa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)#Subsurface_ocean). The twist at the end is when the NASA probe breaks through from the *ground*. The perception of up/down experienced by the natives is from boyancy, and they live on a reef under the ice cover. Their idea of down is toward the surface.
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I don't know that there is any natural explanation for this planet, even within the confines of Pseudoscience. Certainly it is possible in the realm of sci-fi technology to create such a planet.
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This is probably possible in theory that a planet happens to have formed exactly at the [Lagranian Point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point) between the two stars. I find it extremely unlikely to happen.
TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION: As this is probably extremely unlikely to have occured naturally, it's more likely that someone (doesn't have to be your people) PUT the planet there
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This is a very improbable scenario. If the force of gravity pulls people and objects away from the molten core, then it is also pulling the crust away from the molten core at the "surface" level. If the crust is very thick, the gravity on the outward facing crust will be stronger than the gravity at the surface. Further, unless the molten core is extremely large then you are doubling its radius very frequently and it is getting weaker and weaker.
If gravity from the stars is pulling people away from the molten core, then the crust should crumble and fall away.
TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION: The crust is contained inside a stronger substance such as a metallic shell which allows it to maintain its structure. Your planet (or at least the inside) would need to be something other than a sphere (cylinder seems likely) or all the people would mercilessly fall to the equator from rotation/gravity. But since the planet was constructed, picking the shape of the interior is easy -- the outside could still be spherical which would be easier to balance with gravity
Additional Problems:
Heat: Your core is molten rock radiating heat towards the crust, your external surface is heated by constant daylight enough that you say the heat on the surface is enough to prevent light. If there is never darkness then your crust will continually get hotter. If you have heat inside and heat outside, where is all the heat going to keep your people from dying?
TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION: If the external surface is engineered instead of natural (see gravity issue). Then surface could be reflective, sending most of the external light away from the planet. OR it could be an advanced solar array
The Stars themselves: I don't think we know of any natural object with a perfectly circular orbit. For two stars to stay in a perfectly circular orbit such that a planet at the center of the orbit was always in a stable position would be extremely difficult. The masses of both stars would have to be just right, the placement and timing would have to be just right and there would have to be nothing of any size operating in their vicinity to disturb the delicate balance.
TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION: This is a hard one, to move stars into an orbit defies even the craziest ideas we have right now. In the pseudo-science realm, I suppose if you had a race that could manipulate gravity to the point they could create black hole levels of gravitational force then they could manipulate the paths of stars and put them where they want them using basic orbital mechanics. More likely I suppose is that they were so determined to find such a place that they put considerable resources into searching, finding and traveling to the only star system within their galaxy that happened to be right.
Side note: If a builder race could control gravity, the planet could be spherical on the inside and natural outside by making gravity pull towards the center of the crust -- this locally over powers the stars, accounts for all the gravitational issues with the crust/people without an external protective shell, and if finely tuned could be suspending the core in the center of the planet (instead of the core holding the planet together in a delicate balance).
This side note actually has me excited as possibilities go though. Let's say some race of builders long ago (maybe your people and they just lost technology over the eons, maybe a race seeding life, whatever). This race could manipulate gravity. They find two stars in a near circular orbit, manipulate gravity a bit to get them perfect, then construct the planet at the center assuming no one would ever find it.
They probably put solar arrays on the surface to power their gravity technology they build into the crust, then put the core in the center to provide heat and natural light (not enough comes from the stars because it's being harnessed for gravity). The core needs a source of energy itself, but this could perhaps be gravity powered as well, IE using tidal forces or such.
When everything was ready, they put their colonists or whatever in the planet, thinking inside a planet in an impossible location in an inhospitable area of a solar system would never be found and would be able to live safely. An Ark of sorts.
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The structural problem can be solved with handwavium as others have pointed. Anyway, I think there is a harder problem with temperature: if the outside of the planet is very hot due to the stars, and the interior is under the light of the molten core, after some time the inner surface will reach thermal equilibrium at some temperature between that of the core and that of the outer surface.
Therefore, you need to put the stars far away enough to get a colder outer surface to allow the planet inner side keep a liveable temperature.
Another problem is that the planet is in the inner Lagrange point of the two stars, and that position is unstable. Then, or the planet has an active mechanism to control position (like big rocket engines) or it is massive enough that the stars orbit it - but if the stars orbit it won't be always in the middle or the stars orbits won't be stable.
**Edit (about the comment)**
As cst1992 pointed, an object more massive than a planet would be an star. However there are some practical solutions - at least, as practical as a hollow planet.
The planet or its molten core can be very dense (like a neutron star or just like heavy handwavium) and made of anything unfusionable, like iron. Furthermore, it needs to be fairy cold, so it needs to be different than stars, that would heat up while acreting just by transforming gravitational energy into heat.
Of course, the more massive is the planet, the more difficult becomes to prevent its shell from falling, and the more difficult becomes to keep "gravity" pulling people outwards, but at this point we have supposed so many weird things that a couple more isn't a big deal.
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There's a problem with your description of this world, but really it ends up helping anyway.
The stars are undoubtably very far away if the planet is in a location suitable for life, which means that their gravitational pull on your lifeforms will be largely undetectable unless they have an extremely sensitive sense of acceleration/orientation.
$$F\_g = -\frac{GMm}{r^2}$$
Since the stars are very far away, this $r^2$ factor is very *very* high, which means the comparatively tiny distance that is the diameter of the planet will make very little difference between the two opposing gravitational forces from the two stars, meaning that the net acceleration due to gravity of these lifeforms will be very small.
But this is a good thing, actually, since your planet will have to rotate much more quickly than your stars will orbit each other, in order to produce an acceleration that the lifeforms can appreciate. If the acceleration due to gravity were significant, then your lifeforms would find themselves experiencing all kinds of weird phenomena, like weighing more or less depending on the time of day, having to stand at an angle on the ground depending on the time of day, or in extreme cases, even falling over and rolling every evening to the side of the planet closest to the nearer star. Architecture would be near-impossible and the whole thing would just be a mess. It would get even messier if the rotation of the planet and the orbit of the stars are not coplanar.
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padleyj explained it well, **it could be only an artificial structure**.
* Every orbit between binary stars (two stars) is unstable and every celestial object will be sooner or later kicked out.
* You cannot have a natural hollow planet. Either the planet is big and that means high gravity and forming a sphere (no hollowness) or it is small, but then it cools out *fast* and it is impossible to prevent atmospheric loss because gravity is too small.
So as already mentioned, the planet is artifical. A good idea is a combined research station and a new home for emigrants.
* It has auto correction, it was put in the correct spot and corrects the orbit by shifting internal mass.
* The "ground" is really a light, strong and airtight material artificially created. Only that is able to prevent catastrophic atmospheric loss.
* The "molten core" is in reality a fusion reactor, a little sun.
This project failed for unknown reasons, only some creatures as pets/slaves whatever survived and live now in the artifical structure.
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Lots of answers here...the Dyson Sphere was also featured in the Star Trek: Next Generation episode, "Relics."
Your molten core's gravity pulls in. The stars pull out. The stars need to have more gravity at the point where people are living, in order to keep things on the inside surface, but the core needs its own gravity to hold itself together.
Somewhere in-between, is a gravity dead zone, which complicates things. Ideally it would be "above" the inside surface, but not close enough to the core that it would be torn apart.
The next issue is the livable area. Your outer binary star system provides the problem of high gravity at the system's equator and, most likely, zero gravity at the system's poles. Gravity would need to be artificially sustained.
I think you've got a big issue having both the molten core and the stars together. Either one could provide energy to sustain life and even having a small star suspended inside a Dyson Sphere seems more believable than anything soaking through the sphere, without tearing it apart. The sphere needs no external help, as it is wholly contained, energy and gravity and all. It can also function as a massive spacecraft, going where its people need.
Based on all of the above, I have to ask – what's the point of the stars on the outside, beyond being an interesting concept? It is an interesting concept, but seems the least realistic part of this fantastic scenario. You'd need some reason for it to really make sense, if you want your audience to buy the story.
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***(Warning: heavy pseudoscience ahead; allergic people should stop reading here. The author holds no liability for any health hazards or other consequences. Proceed at your own risk.)***
We all know that, contrary to electromagetism, gravity has no polarity. All matter attracts matter, there is no negative or positive gravity.
Well, we know wrong. There is something like negative gravity. Unlike electromagnetism, where opposite polarities attract each other, and same polarity implies repulsion, gravity works the other way: polar opposites repel each other, the same polarity implies attraction. Which is the reason we never see gravitationally negatively charged objects: they have long be repelled to the outrfrontiers of our observable universe. Except... in very rare cases where a bit of gravitationally negative matter has been accidentaly encapsulated within a sphere of gravitationalyy positive matter (or, of course, the other way round). In these extremely rare "space geodes", the core repels the surface, which is kept in place by its own traditional gravity, which counter balances the neg-gravity of the core.
... it has the advantage that the whole thing is extremely light, for the two opposite kinds of gravity cancel or almost cancel each other, so it doesn't even need to gravitationally interfere with other objects.
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A planet with two 'cores' isn't outside the realms of possibility, it takes time to even things out, but it's hard to imagine how the planet would maintain equilibrium if either of those cores (or both) were molten. creating chambers inside rock formations isn't difficult at all and nature has dozens and dozens of specific mechanics to 'make it happen,' the problem an 'internal world' has is in structural stability and nature not filling the gap.
Your location in a high solar energy position might help this, as deep crust punctures of a molten core planet might not trigger 'cooling' sufficient to quell the resulting bleed off of mantle and outer core, this would naturally result in a shift in center of mass as a significant proportion of the internal matter bled to the surface and the
core is drawn (by gravity and pressure differential) towards the punctures. This would produce an uneven distribution of mass on one side of the object in the short term as the core cooled(lower internal pressure unless the crust suffers a general collapse), but as the surface is molten due to the proximity of the stars, the rotational motion would be accentuated in nature's desire to form a sphere.
It seems to me that the crust could not suffer a general collapse without an incredibly quick exchange of volume, but rather that it would get thicker (internal depth) as the core cooled and 'sloshed' with the rotational characteristics. Atmospheric pressure would clearly initially be intense and poisonous.
Not sure how biogenesis occurs under these conditions.
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Related but not a duplicate: [How long can a river physically be on a planet?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/34354/how-long-can-a-river-physically-be-on-a-planet)
How wide can a river possibly be? Many river are over 10 kilometers wide, but how wide can a river be before it is no longer a river? Are there any physical limits on its width based on relative location to the ocean or to the mountains?
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This is largely a question of semantics.
The widest body of water in North America that is actually *called* a river is probably the Saint Lawrence. I measure the estuary at 133km at the upstream tip of Anticosti Island.
Further upstream on the same system, we have Lake Superior, the largest (Freshwater\*) lake in the world by area. There is a peninsula on the southern shore which limits its width, but I measure it at 173km at the widest point. This is probably the widest body of fresh water in the world.
The gulf of California, if considered part of the Colorado River, would be wider. But that would not really count today, as a lot of the time the Colorado River does not reach the sea, because its entire flow is used for irrigation.
A more useful measure is the [discharge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_by_discharge), which is about 200000m3/s for the Amazon, and about a fifth of that for the next largest river by discharge. If we imagine a point on the Amazon of width 10km and average depth 20m, the average velocity would be 1 m/s. Some kind of definition by velocity would be useful to differentiate between rivers and lakes.
The two largest rivers in North America by discharge are the Saint Lawrence and the Mississippi, at around 17000m3/s each.
So far this has been a somewhat North America centric answer because I found the statistics there interesting, but now a shout out for my own continent: The Baltic Sea in Europe has a salinity of less than 1%, which by some stretch gives it a claim to being a "river." It is over 300km wide at its widest point, before it squeezes out into the Atlantic at Denmark.
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\*The Caspian sea, if you consider it a lake, is larger than Lake Superior. To me it is a sea, not a lake, as it is salty and has no outflow.
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The [Amazon is up to 11 kilometers wide](http://www.extremescience.com/amazon-river.htm) at certain points, and the [Lena River is 14 km wide](http://geography.howstuffworks.com/asia/the-lena-river.htm). Both are above your goal of 6.3 km. There are probably more examples, just some quick 'net searching turned up two.
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EDIT (In response to question edit):
The updated phrasing of the question is now "When is a river so wide it is no longer a river?" This is now a question of culture, language, and philosophy.
Suppose I have an arbitrarily long table, and at one end I place the smallest grain of sand I can, then next to that the next smallest grain, then the next smallest, and so on , until at the far end I place a massive boulder. Where on the table is the first pebble? Where is the first stone? Where is the first rock? Why?
Is the Chesapeake Bay just a wide part of the Susquehanna River? Is Falcon Lake just a wide part of the Rio Grande? We can define it anyway we want.
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This question might be more appropriate for [English Language & Usage (Stack Exchange)](http://English.StackExchange.com), but I'll answer it here anyway.
Width is not much of an issue, as long as you have suitable length that the water can travel down, and the other topographical features that ensure that those droplets keep moving.
In my mind, the definition of a river is that it is flowing. Unlike, say, an ocean/sea/lake, which basically sits but does not have a direction.
This is even consistent with the phrase, "the rivers of time". Time flows, and so does the water within rivers.
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The real limit is when people start to argue that the river flows into a lake rather than being a wide river any more. According to the [Encyclopedia Brittanica](http://www.britannica.com/science/lake), a lake may flow slowly.
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The Florida Everglades is known as the River of Grass.
See <http://www.nps.gov/ever/learn/nature/hydrologicactivity.htm> , from the National Parks Service website for the Everglades.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades> (for what that's worth) notes the Everglades as "a slow-moving river 60 miles (97 km) wide and over 100 miles (160 km) long, flowing southward across a limestone shelf to Florida Bay at the southern end of the state."
A different question is whether the East River (separating Manhattan from Queens and Brooklyn) should really be called a "river" since it is entirely at sea level. Or is it a branch from the Harlem (a branch of the Hudson)?
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The [Río de la Plata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%ADo_de_la_Plata) (historically translated as Plate River although "plata" really means "silver") is generally called a river, although the term is open to argument. It's 219 km wide at its widest point, defined by an international treaty between Argentina and Uruguay.
"For those who regard it to be a river, it is the widest in the world." (Wikipedia doesn't take sides.)
 There's a clear division roughly where the river flows past Montevideo; up to that point, the river is coloured by the sediment flowing from its sources. A huge shoal (sandbar) blocks the entry of oceanic water, so the "inner" river is still essentially freshwater. It's about 100 km wide at that point.
Beyond that point, in the "outer" river, there is clearly still water flowing out to the sea, and the salinity has not yet increased to marine levels. (There's another nice satellite view on Wikipedia which shows the flows.)
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6.3 KM isn't wide at all.
Plenty of rivers we know about are wider then that.
Just take a map and look closely at the Amazon, Ganges, Yellow River, the Nile. They all are wider in places.
And many smaller rivers have wider sections too, when they flow through a lake. A lake that is either artificial (power-plant with dam) or natural if the river filled up a large valley until the water rose high enough it could flow out at the other side.
In general rivers are wider near the sea and less wide near their origin, just because of the volume of water. As you go from origin to the sea tributary rivers add more volume.
But there are exceptions:
Some rivers flow not to the sea, but to a dead-end in a desert. Due to evaporation they can actually loose water so they just dry up as you move towards their end-point.
Other rivers go from running through a narrow riverbed (river is narrow, but deep and/or has a fast current) to flowing out onto a very flat plane. Then the river flows out to a very wide bed, but will be very shallow and have little current. (Volume of water doesn't change, so as the riverbed becomes wider the depth/current must go down.)
And further downstream the river may again become narrow.
In short: It all depends on the terrain the river flows through. Whatever size of river you want for world, you just need to play a bit with the terrain to make it happen.
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It's a matter of flow, when a river goes wider then it goes slower. Hence, if the river is wide enough you'll see it like a swamp, because the water would look almost static.
The most known case are the Everglades. Which might be a river of 60 miles wide.
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Since we're talking about world-building and not the actual real world, it seems to me that a river can be a river if it's a body of water (or some fluid) which has a directional flow. (and is bigger than a stream, rivulet, creek, etc) Depending on how fantastical you want your world to be, you could get away with variations on the theme (round rivers and infinite rivers come to mind) but if you stick with "a body of water with a direction" you're probably going to be okay.
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Would a Dyson sphere make a [red dwarf](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_dwarf) appear to be a [Brown Dwarf](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf)? Would it disguise a star enough to misidentify it what size it is? I'm just wondering if it could be possible that some Dyson spheres are out there drifting around, camouflaged like a rather innocuous and innocent star?
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No, you could not. Temperature probably isn't an issue, but a Dyson sphere shouldn't show the proper spectral lines.
## The-best case scenario
[This](http://www.aleph.se/Nada/dysonFAQ.html#LOOK) site gives the formula for the temperature of a Dyson Sphere as
$$T=\left( \frac{E}{4 \pi r^2 \eta\sigma} \right)^{\frac{1}{4}}$$
where $E$ is the star's energy output, $r$ is the Dyson Sphere's radius, $\eta$ is the emissivity and $\sigma$ is the [Stefan-Boltzmann constant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_constant). The [Stefan-Boltzmann law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law) says that the energy output (luminosity, $L$) of a star is
$$L=4 \pi \sigma R^2 T\_\*^4$$
The energy output is $L$, so substituting this into the first expression gives
$$T=\left( \frac{4 \pi \sigma R^2 T\_\*^4}{4 \pi r^2 \eta\sigma} \right)^{\frac{1}{4}}$$
Which is
$$T=\left( \frac{R^2 T\_{\odot}^4}{r^2\eta} \right)^{\frac{1}{4}}$$
$$T=T\_\*\left( \frac{R^2}{r^2\eta} \right)^{\frac{1}{4}}$$
[Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissivity) gives the emissivity of concrete - my Dyson-Sphere-building-material of choice - as $0.91$. Let's say the Dyson Sphere has a radius of $1.5$ times that of the star. That gives me
$$T=T\_\*(1.5^2 \times 0.91)^{-\frac{1}{4}} \approx 0.836 T\_{\odot}$$
[Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_dwarf) and [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GD_165) say that a temperature of a red dwarf could be as low as 2300 K, and a brown dwarf could have a temperature of about 1900 K - $0.826$ times the temperature of a red dwarf and so in the acceptable range for our Dyson Sphere.
## A more realistic radius
A more commonly-used radius is $r\approx1\text{ AU}$ - the distance from Earth to the Sun. when substituted in, this gives $r=215R$ and $T=0.07T\_\*$, a *much* lower value. Interestingly, this fits with previous results. [Slysh (1985)](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1985IAUS..112..315S) looked at things from the perspective of thermodynamic efficiency. The efficiency, $\eta\_T$, is given by
$$\eta\_T=1-\frac{T}{T\_\*}$$
It should be expected, at best, that $\eta\_T\approx0.95$, so we get $T=0.05T\_\*$ - pretty close to what our result above was.
As Serban Tanasa rightfully pointed out, there are some problems with concrete. Steel or iron would be a better choice. Their emissivities are given [here](http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/emissivity-coefficients-d_447.html):
$$
\begin{array}{|c|c|}\hline
\text{Material} & \text{Emissivity}\\\hline
\text{Concrete} & 0.81\\\hline
\text{Cement} & 0.54\\\hline
\text{Galvanized steel} & 0.88\\\hline
\text{Iron} & 0.87\text{-}0.95\\\hline
\end{array}
$$
Note the lower value for concrete than the one I used above. The difference in values turns out to have little effect. At any rate, if we use iron, and choose the lower limit for $\eta$, we get $T=0.071T\_\*$ - essentially the same as above.
Let's do some recalculations, using both the derivation from scratch and Slysh's results. We'll use a number of stars:
$$
\begin{array}{|c|c|c|c|c|}\hline
\text{Star} & \text{Spectral type} & T\_\*\text{ (K)} & T\text{ (K)}\text{ (via emissivity)} & T\text{ (K)}\text{ (Slysh)}\\\hline
\text{Zeta Puppis} & \text{O4} & 40000 & 2840 & 2000\\\hline
\text{Eta Aurigae} & \text{B3} & 17200 & 1220 & 860\\\hline
\text{Fomalhaut} & \text{A3} & 8590 & 610 & 430\\\hline
\text{Tau Boötis} & \text{F6} & 6360 & 450 & 320\\\hline
\text{Sun} & \text{G2} & 5770 & 410 & 290\\\hline
\text{Alpha Centauri B} & \text{K1} & 5260 & 370 & 260\\\hline
\text{Gliese 581} & \text{M3} & 3480 & 250 & 170\\\hline
\end{array}
$$
Here, I assume $r=1\text{ AU}$ and $\eta=0.87$.
These temperatures are reasonable values. If we accept a lower temperature limit of $300\text{-}400\text{ K}$ for a brown dwarf, Slysh's rule lets us choose stars *roughly* as hot as the Sun, or hotter. The emissivity calculations let us choose, in general, any star hotter than a red dwarf.
From a temperature perspective alone, there shouldn't be serious issues.
## The spectral line problem
There have been questions as to whether or not the emission spectrum of a Dyson Sphere would match that of a brown dwarf. It is certainly the case that the peak wavelengths would match that of a brown dwarf, with the most light radiated in the infrared. In other words, if you looked at a Dyson Sphere and a brown dwarf with an infrared telescope, you would see two similar sources.
If you measured the emission lines, though, you would definitely see different materials in the two objects - there's no way around that. And yes, the radius of the Dyson Sphere would be much larger than that of a red dwarf - so certainly larger than that of a brown dwarf, as pointed out by JDlugosz.
Here are some lines you'd expect to see in a brown dwarf:
* Lithium[[1]](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/20740/2153)
* Titanium monoxide[[2]](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/astronomy/chapter/the-spectra-of-stars-and-brown-dwarfs/)
* Ammonia[[2]](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/astronomy/chapter/the-spectra-of-stars-and-brown-dwarfs/)
* Methane[[2]](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/astronomy/chapter/the-spectra-of-stars-and-brown-dwarfs/)
* Heavier molecules *a la* titanium monoxide
Not all of these are necessarily going to be present in a brown dwarf's spectrum, but the absence of *all* of them in the spectrum of a Dyson sphere is going to raise some red flags. That's you main problem.
Thanks to all those who commented and pointed out inaccuracies and errors; the answer is the better for that.
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**No**. A Dyson sphere would emit something closely matching black-body radiation. A star, while also emitting something close to black-body radiation, has tell-tale spikes in its spectrum. Below is the sun's spectrum compared to what its ideal black-body spectrum would look like:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oTUIb.png)
Brown and red dwarfs have their own "fingerprint" signatures, which differ from that of both the sun and an ideal black body. This fingerprint is the first thing astronomers look at, so I would not expect them to be fooled for long.
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I don't think so, because a dyson sphere would not have the same emission spectrum of a star.
Consider two cases: we can have a translucent dyson sphere that lets out some of the light of the star, or we can have a dyson sphere that is opaque and emits light as blackbody radiation due to being heated by the star.
The light initially emitted by the star will have an emission spectrum that is dependent on its temperature. Elements which are either fully ionized in a star or which are too cold to absorb energy will not absorb light. Based on this, [we can identify the temperature of a star,](http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr1/en/proj/advanced/spectraltypes/lines.asp) not based on its luminosity, but based on its emission spectrum.
Now consider the light emitted by the dyson sphere. If we emit as a black body, we will not have the same emission spectrum as our star unless the dyson sphere has the same elemental makeup as the star in question. Since stars are made up mostly of gasses, this would be difficult to achieve. If we emit through transparency, we will still have the same emission spectrum as a red dwarf, but appear less luminous. Most materials also have a transparency that varies based on spectrum, so we'll see the spectrum of the red dwarf reduced at different frequencies dependent on the material of the sphere.
A [search for Dyson spheres](http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/infrared_astronomy/Other_searches.htm) has actually been carried out under a similar theoretical framework. Under the assumption that most terrestrial objects radiate mostly in the infrared spectrum, astronomers searched for stars that had a spectrum shifted more towards that part of the spectrum than the star would otherwise be expected to emit under. The search did not successfully find anything that looked like even a partial Dyson sphere.
Even if we manage to get our Dyson sphere to emit the same spectrum of a brown dwarf, though, it will still appear too big and too massive to be a brown dwarf. Brown dwarves are smaller than red dwarves, and a Dyson sphere would need to be significantly bigger than a red dwarf.
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Not an expert on blackbody radiation, so you might get a more competent answer on (Astro)Physics, but conceptually if you have a [matrioshka system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain), where each layer captures and uses the radiation of the more inward layer, you can bring the blackbody radiation level down to an arbitrarily low level >= CMB.
The only "disguise" issue would be that brown dwarfs are generally capped around $80 M\_J$ (Jupiter Masses), while red dwarfs are generally at $[0.1-0.5] M\_S =[100-500]M\_J$. There might be a small overlap at the lowest of the low red dwarfs. But generally, your apparent stellar radii might mismatch, and the orbits of any remaining planets would be anomalous, upon closer inspection.
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First - Brown Dwarfs are small. A Dyson Sphere for our Solar System to duplicate Earth like environments would have to be about 2 AU in diameter to give Earth-like solar radiation incoming. A Dyson Sphere would be BIG.
The mass of the Dyson Sphere would be large - the sun itself and the mass of the sphere - so in a double star would look very different than a light brown dwarf.
The Dyson Sphere, in the end, would have to re-radiate all the incoming solar energy out the shell as heat. So the total luminosity would be the equivalent of the star inside, not the small amount reported. If you trapped heat in, you bake your sphere until it glows on its own.
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I just thought of another test. A Dyson sphere, due to its large size, will rotate very slowly if at all. A planet or sun rotates about its axis in hours or days. This speed difference between the limbs of the object give splits to the spectral lines that can be seen. So a visible Dyson sphere would look anomalous due to its slow rotation. I'd think that to get a sphere to revolve about its axis in months or less would require unreasonably strong materials.
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Look on YouTube for the weekly SETI seminars. Not too long ago they discussed exactly that, and what instruments are needed to be able to tell if that were the case!
I seem to recall that it's not brown dwarfs that it looks like (a brown dwarf is only just larger than Jupiter) but some types of dusty systems or star formation. Models of spectra show that a particular spectral band that is not distinguished in current readings would show the difference between Dyson spheres and imposters.
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Most of the answers above assume a shell of material located at a radius around a star which would support Earth-like habitats. However, colonization by robotic life would produce a significantly different architecture. And, the other respondents assume that a dyson sphere (or Dyson swarm, rather) would be orbiting a luminous star - if, instead, a swarm was harvesting material from a Jupiter, it may be dim enough to go unnoticed. If I was a space-faring artificial life form, I would prefer to orbit and mine a Jupiter - lower gravity would make siphoning gas much simpler, and there is no risk of a nova (with a star, loss of gasses would lead to cessation of fusion at its core, followed by collapse, then explosion as fusion re-ignites...). We do not have the sophistication to detect cool, wayward Jupiters, so this possibility may fit your goal of a 'hidden Dyson'. For example, the recently discovered super-magnetic Jupiter: <https://phys.org/news/2018-08-vla-extrasolar-planetary-mass-magnetic-powerhouse.html>
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My universe was created without stars, of any kind (which includes the sun!), and has continued that way for about 2000 years. To clarify, all life (intelligent life) was created by the deities around the same time as the universe.
I'm aware this poses several problems, but my main concern is whether I can heat up space enough that life can survive (intelligent life, that is, not bacteria), without breaking physics too much.
Can I just make the universe warmer?
Or is there something else in the universe that provides heat other than stars?
Thanks in advance!
[Answer]
There are two ways to transfer heat: convection and radiation. Convection is what you get when you touch something hot, radiation is when high energy photons touch you.
Since there's not a lot of things to touch in space, convection is basically right out. Sure you get some high energy plasma fields and so on, but generally there's not a lot of matter hanging out in the vaccuum... by definition, really. In space what really matters is radiative heating/cooling.
A body with a lot of thermal energy is constantly emitting photons in the infrared band, and each one of those photons carries away a small amount of the thermal energy. Over time the body cools to the lowest possible level due to radiative cooling. At the same time you're receiving photons from everything you can see. Those photons that are absorbed add their meagre energy to your body, exciting your electrons and warming you up. Those excited electrons eventually settle back down and emit photons again.
The equilibrium point, where you are receiving as much as you are emitting is what we often refer to as the temperature of space. In deep space, far from any pesky radiation sources, you're still awash in remnant photons from the microwave background. Leftover energy packets from the pre-expansion universe are still kicking around, and an ideal radiator will still receive enough of them to keep its temperature above absolute zero. Not by much though.
But that's the "real" universe, to the best of my knowledge at least. In your divinely created young universe the rules are clearly different. It's small enough that any reasonable collection of remnant photons would be absorbed fairly quickly, so it won't have a lot of longevity. The ones that aren't quickly absorbed will likely wander off on paths that take them out of the local space and be effectively lost forever.
Unless they have a reason to turn back.
The simplest solution would be a perfect black-body envelope with only one side. If the entire universe is enclosed in a shell of perfectly absorbtive material that radiates energy back into the universe at the same rate then you can maintain an enclosed system at any temperature you like. Objects in space would then be heated fairly evenly from all directions, and any heat they lose would eventually return to them.
Of course now you have the problem that the entire universe will settle into thermal equilibrium pretty quickly. With everything at the same temperature it's hard to get any work done from it. You'd need some way to produce variations in the temperature to get this to work.
One option would be to have significant anisotrophy in the envelope. Instead of releasing energy uniformly the shell could have specific areas that absorb the heat and other areas that emit heat back into the system. This would give you temperature gradients across the enclosed volume, allowing work to be done between areas of differing temperature. Objects in space would have a hot side and a cold side, etc. You could even have the shell emit from different areas in a cycle, vary the emission temperatures and so on. All in IR photons, of course. No lights in the sky, just patches of warm and cold.
Might be quite a pretty sight once you develop IR cameras. But I digress.
Physics in our own universe wouldn't allow a truly closed system like this to exist, but we're talking about a micro-verse created by gods with access to literal miracles. I'm sure they can whip up some perfect perfect heat transfer materials in no time. Or just... make it work by magic. That seems to be the way most godly stuff happens.
[Answer]
**Radioactivity and gravity.**
In the real universe, radioactive elements are created in supernovas. In your universe, we can just assume radioactive elements are created in the planet formation by the deities. Really, this, alone, could account for all the heat you need.
But you can also factor in heat from [tidal forces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_heating). The moons of Jupiter get this, for example. The moon is pulled on by the gravity of Jupiter, creating internal friction that adds heat to the planet.
Also note that it's relatively difficult to shed heat in space. Typically we lose heat via conduction: the atoms of cold air or cold water absorb the heat from your atoms, basically sucking the energy out of you. In space, there is practically no conduction, so you must lose energy by radiating it away, which is far slower. Space *is* cold, but you'd asphyxiate [long before you froze](https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmsutter/2019/04/05/you-will-not-freeze-to-death-in-space/). Heat is a big deal for satellites, because they need to radiate the heat they generate, which they typically do via deployable radiators.
So I think you're safe. Your planets tend to orbit gas giants and come packed with plenty of radioactive materials to keep the core cooking.
If anything, your deities will have to be careful how they form the planets. They must be made all at once (as in poof, here's a planet) because planetary formation -- condensing dust and gas into a planetary body -- is itself a very hot process and 2000 years is actually not nearly enough time to recover from that! They'd be lavaworlds. But we'll assume deities can also set start conditions.
[Answer]
**In your [alternate-reality](/questions/tagged/alternate-reality "show questions tagged 'alternate-reality'"), your worlds swim through an actual [Luminiferous Aether](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether)**
In the good old days, long before humanity actually understood that space is [remarkably empty](https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/space-is-big-empty-and-very-very-lonely), we though there was *stuff* that the worlds swam through. We called it a "aether," and believed it's what allowed light to travel between the sun and the Earth.
Today, the ability to simply declare such an aether exists in the Real Universe (or something close to it) is difficult because the motion of planets through their orbits and gravity would sweep the aether clear very quickly (on a cosmological scale).
*But that's not how your universe works!*
In your universe, the aether, let's call it "Dark Matter" (if only for the sake of poking fun at what could be a very realistic way of asserting such an aether in the Real World) is something you can't see... *but it is something that can be warmed up...* and since there's no where particularly for the heat to go (I'm about the throw thermodynamics out the window, but breaking windows is fun), it's available to warm your planets.
**A rule like this does have consequences**
If you set a rule that says the aether exists but basically doesn't interact with your planets (meaning it's not just dust being sucked down to the planet surface), that means it's being pushed aside (by the magnetosphere, dontchaknow) as the planet orbits. But that means you have a [bow wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_wave) leading the planet in its orbit and a [wake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_(physics)) trailing the planet. That would have some fun consequences with how light is seen by people on your planet, especially at dawn and dusk.
It also means there could be the consequences of friction as your planet moves. In the Real World, friction would eventually slow the planet, causing it to spiral into the Sun. But in your [alternate-reality](/questions/tagged/alternate-reality "show questions tagged 'alternate-reality'"), this doesn't happen. The sun's gravity, perhaps, impels the planet, keeping it moving and overcoming the friction. This means you could have some amazing [aurora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora)-like effects during dawn. And if your story includes space flight, avoiding the friction effects would be a whomping big deal.
Another benefit is that spacecraft could get rid of excess heat through convection rather than radiation. Ooooh, that would be a beni. Ridding a craft of heat in the Real World is a big deal.
Finally, allowing a solar system full of planets to swirl around in what can only be called a lovely soup means that the aether is also being stirred, resulting in a whirlpool or vortex around the sun. I'd like to imagine that the aether's natural state is to *not do this,* otherwise it would negate both of my previous two suggestions. But it does mean that celestial navigators must deal with currents, eddies, and other navigational hazards in three dimensions that are usually only seen by seafaring craft in (simplifying) two dimensions.
[Answer]
Yes, this is possible and is no problem. In fact, since our universe started at an infinite temperature and gradually cooled to its preset overall temperature of about 3 kelvin (-270 °C), there must have been a time when it was a nice warm 25 °C itself. (This is indeed the case, but that happened before there were any stars or any elements besides hydrogen or helium, so there wasn't any life at that time.)
What does it mean for space to be warm? Simply that it is filled with infrared radiation at the right range of frequencies. Our universe is filled with thermal radiation at about 3 kelvin, which is known as the cosmic microwave background, but yours could be filled with thermal radiation at some other temperature. That's all you really need to do to have a warm universe.
Our universe started out really hot and cooled down as it expanded. Since you want your universe to start out warm and stay warm, you probably don't want it to expand. But that's ok. It's your universe and the laws of physics are what you want them to be.
One thing you might have to worry about though is photosynthesis. Life is only possible in our universe because space is cold and the sun is hot. This allows plants to capture high-energy photons from the sun and turn it into useable energy in the form of sugar. When that energy is eventually used up it radiates away into space, which is what prevents our planet from overheating. In your universe there won't be any sunlight and space won't be cold, so you'll need to figure out some other way for your organisms to obtain energy and eventually dissipate it. But I'm sure you'll think of something.
[Answer]
## The Warm Embrace of The Gods
The space is cold. Terribly so. Life wouldn't be able to survive in this cold, uncaring void.
But it does exist, as it was brought forth by the Old Ones. All-mighty beings of pure energy, manifesting themselves as tears in the fabric of space from which they exert their influence. Those beings care deeply for what they created - the planets and the life within them.
So, they safeguard them, in a gentle, loving embrace.
On your cosmos, the deities themselves are the source of heat. They manifest as everflowing loops of potential, circling the planets that watch over, as mighty rivers of starflow.
Those rivers of energy feed life and heat into the planets they come near, allowing them to flourish and prosper, and giving them the much-needed light to break the encroaching, all-devouring darkness that surrounds all.
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If those mystical, galactic leylines are actually gods, or some natural phenomena of your universe... that's up for the writer to decide. In any case, they provide the heatsource for the universe to work, without the need for actual, proper stars. Normally things like those wouldn't come up naturally in a regular universe, but yours is no regular universe - with deities being able to break the rules and creating what they need to create life in the cosmos, such unexplicable sources of heat wouldn't be the strangest things around.
[Answer]
## You don't need to. Your life needs to worry about staying cool not keeping warm.
living things generate heat, anything alive is constantly generating heat. things get cold in space because they don't generate any heat. As soon as you are generating heat in space getting rid of heat is a bigger problem. Any life that evolves in space will have no problem staying warm. If you could somehow keep a human alive while naked in space they would be fine in terms of staying warm. In fact cooling off might be a bigger problem since heavy exercise will will generate excess heat they will have a hard time getting rid of. They will likely need some elaborate cooling radiators they can deploy. Cooling off after heavy exercise will be a dominate evolutionary factor for life in your setting.
Also at the point you have life without stars your universe is so far from reality you can just set whatever rules you want and no one can argue. All elements heavier than lithium are made in big stars as they die so if you have life (which has carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, ect) you are already completely unrealistic.
[Answer]
Akin to [JBH's Aether suggestion](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/239846/4896) but closer to our physics:
## Your universe is full of regular gas¹ — which has not *yet* condensed into stars.
Gravity *will* eventually amplify density variations, compressing the gas on various scales into proto-galaxies & proto-star systems, translating random velocity unbalances into overall rotation of those systems around heavy centers, and eventually ignite fusion.
But that will take much more than 2000 years!
To make that gas a source of significant life-supporting heat (the whole point of *this* answer), it should be pretty dense, like an atmosphere.
#### That doesn't explain presence of any planets!
If you want planets, you could try saying they were "seeded by deities".
They should be small enough (asteroids?) so they don't capture too much inter-planetary gas over 2000 years to reach un-livable pressures...
Or maybe make the global gravitational constant be much weaker than ours (this would slow the all galaxy/star/planet formation).
* You could have solid structures to live "on" that are not gravity-formed rocks. Say humongous "space trees".
* But, once you have a cosmos-wide atmosphere, do you really need planets?
Make it breathable gas(es) — either hydrogen-breathing life, or have the deities seed the universe with whatever mix life needs — and have fun with "space whales" / space birds / winged "angels"...
¹ These all make your universe resemble one giant ocean... Hmm, what if you generalize to **universe is full of *fluid***? Liquids are un-compressable (up to a point) — which could limit or slow cosmological processes driven by gravity. E.g. gas giants like Jupiter have no surface, but a smooth transition from "atmosphere" to "sea" (though at very high pressures). This also helps vary where life can travel — "fish" swim inside "planets" but only "birds" can cross "space"! (Again, better with a low gravitational constant, and maybe invent a fluid with desired phase diagram — e.g. use fictional elements).
#### Travel limitation ~ speed of sound
Not having vacuum makes cosmic-scale travel impractical. You can't accelerate then coast like spaceships do; air resistance (especially supersonic) eats energy all the way :-(.
But perhaps the gas has fast "cosmic currents" one can ride?
#### Thermodynamics remains a problem — life wants temperature *difference*
As other answers have pointed out, life needs somewhere to dump excess heat, and really uses the *difference* between hot & cold to support useful work.
If your whole universe is equally warm, that's what we call "thermal death of the universe".
So unless deities send you [ever-bigger ice cubes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SYpUSjSgFg&t=66s), you may want to tweak (or violate) the 2nd law of thermodynamics...
You *can* use other energy sources, like chemical energy, but will it deplete? (Earth's ecosystem *locally* uses chemical energy everywhere — food + oxygen — but *globally* it re-creates those from Sun-light, in a way that wouldn't work if Earth didn't cool into space.)
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[Question]
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I'm about to break rule seven of superpowers: don't think too hard about what it does to the air.
A superhero has the ability to disappear any atoms that come within 2 cm of their skin (atoms that are already in that region do not disappear unless they exit and re-enter, so their clothing is fine if they stick to the standard tight-fitting superhero attire). More specifically, they pick any area(s) of their skin, and any atoms that enter the area 2 cm above it simply vanish. It also doesn't affect living things (dunno if anyone here reads Worm, but it's similar to the Manton effect from that).
This power has a lot of interesting implications. Effortlessly walking through walls, leaving a person-shaped hole! Vaporizing bullets as they hit them! Draining a room completely of air in a second! Leaving a vacuum in front of their fist so that they punch twice as hard! Heck, atmospheric pressure on the surface area of a person is hundreds of g's - they could *fly* if they could control it well enough!
...wait a second, those last few open up a Pandora's box of sorts. Realistically *any* time this power is used, it should create a region of total vacuum, implying that it produces a deafening blast.
**So my question is: what does using this power sound like?**
If they activate a small area of skin very briefly, how loud would it be? What does it sound like if they use the power continuously? (Assume for that last one that it's being used outside, so the answer isn't just "it doesn't sound like anything because they sucked out all the air.")
[Answer]
While the various answers to the effect that "sound can't escape a vacuum" are technically correct, anyone nearby is certainly going to hear *something*, and it will likely be loud.
If the power is used for a just a moment, then the low-pressure shock-wave will propagate outward and make a pop like any other shock-wave. You can listen to it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ydJXOTf1-4), although more perfect demonstrations are possible.
If the effect is kept active, then there will be a *strong* wind toward the person. This probably wouldn't sound like a vacuum cleaner. There'd be no noise from moving parts inside or the exhaust; on the other hand it would be more *intense*. I'd expect the exact sound to depend a lot on the shape of the obliteration region, and on any nearby stationary objects. In general just a "woosh" noise, but melodic sounds are probably possible.
In general, the forces, momentum, and energy involved in the use of this power will be finite, and as long as the character is careful they'll be safe. 14psi isn't a big deal when applied over a single square inch, but, but applied across a square foot it's over a tonne.
You mention that the power could be used to remove the air from a room. This is unlikely to work, and very dangerous to attempt. The air in the room will be replenished through leaks, if there are any. If the room is large enough and leaky enough this won't be much different than using the power outside. If it's small and leaky then the rushing wind through those small gaps will rapidly enlarge those gaps, like an earthen damn collapsing from a small overflow. If the room is tightly sealed then it will probably implode. A space that wasn't designed to house a vacuum is unlikely to survive.
I think JBH is wrong that it doesn't matter how big the obliteration area is; the energy involved is going to scale more-or-less with the area. I do think that if the character were to use this on a large fraction of their body (excepting, at minimum, the bottoms of their feet), then they'd start a tornado-like phenomenon just like when you pull the plug at the bottom of a pool. It could take a few minutes for the rotational aspect to build up though.
[Answer]
>
> The actual diameter of a lightning channel is one-to two inches.1 ([Source](https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/lightning/types/))
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I had the privilege of being outside, walking for exercise in Texas, when a lightening bolt struck within a quarter-mile of me and my house. *I was literally blown off my feet* by the resulting thunder, which hit so fast my eyes barely had time to register the light of the lightning strike. Yup, it took me a bit to stand back up.2
So, 1-2 inches of channel diameter is enough to blow me off my feet. But before we start analyzing this useful piece of information, let's look at your situation.
The "channel diameter" caused by your superhero is *zero.* An infinitely thin *surface* that, whenever any atom or molecule touches it, said atom or molecule vanishes. How big is that channel?
No bigger than the largest molecule that touches it an any given moment.
How large a molecule is depends on the molecule, but they tend to be measured in *angstroms* or 10-10. I know that, worst-case, 5.08 cm worth of lightening 400 meters away will blow me off my feet. If the channel was only one angstrom wide, I would need to stand about 0.79e-5 millimeters away from the discharge.
Which is a fancy way of saying, *it ain't gonna happen.* The size of the vacuum (angstroms, at most) is so small that the "crash" of air wouldn't be heard by the superhero, much less anyone else.
***But we're forgetting something!***
Thunder is the sound made by the air refilling the vacuum from all sides,3 like hands clapping. *You don't have that situation!* At least, not until the superhero turns his superpower off. Until then you have, for example, air, rushing in to be *obliterated by the danger zone!* Woo-hoo! When your superhero turns this power on he quickly becomes the *center of a tornado* with air rushing toward him as fast as air possibly can under any terrestrial ground-level conditions. And it doesn't matter how small the area of his skin he involves in the superpower! It's like punching a hole in the side of a space ship. "Bad Things Happen."
The obvious consequence is the lawsuits filed against him for all the property damage and death (oh yeah! Death!) due to people, places, and things being sucked toward him at beyond hurricane-force wind speeds. And, of course, when they come within 2cm of him, they vanish (in neat little atomic slices!).
But those lawsuits aren't really a problem because, unless he has super durability (like, *Superman* level super durability!), he's dead the moment he shuts off his superpower. Because that's when all that air/matter/stuff/people hits ***him*** at more than the speed of sound. Being dead, he won't hear a thing.4
But the "bang!" it would make would be heard the proverbial hundreds of miles away.
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1 *Totally unrelated to the question is the reality that anyone reading that quote and then thinking about the fact that the channel is pure, unadulterated electron flow should now be peeing their pants. It's a good example of why Mother Nature usually wins.*
2 *I don't actually remember the sound of thunder, I do remember having all the wind knocked out of me. I don't recommend experiencing this.*
3 *"As the superheated air cools it produces a resonating tube of partial vacuum surrounding the lightning's path. The nearby air rapidly expands and contracts. This causes the column to vibrate like a tubular drum head and produces a tremendous crack. As the vibrations gradually die out, the sound echoes and reverberates, generating the rumbling we call thunder." ([Source](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-causes-thunder/)) Yes, the development of thunder is more complex than described in the text, but not much and it's beside the point — you still don't have that situation.*
4 *Let's look at this from opening only a dime-sized area (2.5 cm) rather than his entire body surface area. the [world-record tornado wind speed record is 301 mph or 134 m/s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_records#Highest_winds_observed_in_a_tornado) - and that wasn't sinking air into a vacuum. I found a [calculation online for a 1 ft square hole (929 sqcm)](https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/at-what-volumetric-flow-rate-will-air-fill-a-space-vacuum-at-earths-stp.568712/) that suggests roughly 1.74 SCFS or 49.3 l/s for a dime-sized area. People standing next to the SH and the SH himself are in danger, but the force is dispersed quickly with distance. However, when he deactivates his power, the force of impact will break bones and potentially punch a hole in his hand (it depends if anything other than air is being carried by the wind). While active, the dime-size hole will try to pull his hand with the same force as the force of wind being sucked toward his hand (Newton's 3rd law), which is going to dislocate his shoulder and drag him around like a wild fire hose. This guy can get very hurt playing with this superpower.*
[Answer]
# Initially, there will be no sound
The air will rush towards the person so fast, that no sound can travel *away* from the person against that rush of air. What people farther away will hear is the rush of the air passing them, and it will sound like a strong wind.
# Then there will be the sound of the world crashing into that person
When you remove all the air from a room in a normal house, the atmospheric pressure will crush that room.
The [weight of the atmosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_pressure) is ten metric tonnes on one square meter of the ceiling of a room. If your room is, say, five by four meters (as my living room), there will be 200 metric tonnes pressing down on the ceiling of that vacuum. No common house will withstand that.
And then the ceiling will disappear when it hits the 2 cm zone, and the whole world will start to implode on your superhero, and the sound will be like the sound of a tornado picking you up and throwing you around, when you are near that person, and you will hear a huge blast until *you* hit the 2 cm zone and die.
But the effect will be catastrophic outdoors, as well. As Tyler S. Loeper has noted in their answer, air will be sucked into a vacuum at a speed between [380 m/s](https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/at-what-volumetric-flow-rate-will-air-fill-a-space-vacuum-at-earths-stp.568712/) and [500 m/s](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/32680y/how_fast_does_air_get_sucked_into_space/). The fastest wind speed that has ever been recorded was [113 m/s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_speed). This means that your superhero will cause air to flow towards him at a speed three to four times as fast as the strongest winds naturally happening on Earth. That is a tremendous force, and will likely destroy most of his surroundings – and everything else on the planetary surface, if he keeps the zone active for long enough.
All that is assuming he doesn't activate the soles of his feet. Because if he does – of if he stumbles –, he'll fall into the ground as if he were falling through thin air and drop into the Earth's core and suck up the Earth.
[Answer]
This would be very dangerous.
Let's replace our superhero with a spherical cow with a surface area of about 2 square meters. That's roughly the surface area of a human, but now we can ignore a whole ton of details. Spheres are simple!
Your superhero is going to create a discontinuous boundary condition. Usually air obeys wave-mechanics rules because information propagates upstream at the speed of sound. When this ceases to happen, air does "different" things. Sonic booms occur because an object moves fast enough to disrupt this simple assumption. Air ends up moving subsonic with respect to the object near the object, and subsonic with respect to the outside airflow far from the object. Between them, we get a "discontinuity," a region a few nanometers thick where we cannot treat air with simple wave-mechanics equations. This is the shockwave that leads to a sonic boom. In these regions, you have funny things like "there is no pressure." Pressure occurs in all directions, thanks to the rules of wave-mechanics. This means the thermal velocity of the particles is isotropic. Inside a shockwave, it's anisotropic -- it's directional. Very directional.
In this case, we are creating one of those anisotropies. There will be *no* air molecules moving away from our sphere. They all got absorbed. So this means all of the thermal velocity of the air, which is usually in all directions, is now going to be highly directional.
There's going to be some stratifiction of the air in this strange situation, but we can consider the [mean thermal velocity of air](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_velocity): 464m/s. Without any molecules of air pushing back, the thermal motion of the air molecules will cause air to dissapear into our sphere at 464m/s. [Other answers](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/145973/2252) have mentioned numbers between 380 and 500 are considered reasonable, depending on how choked the airflow is. My expectation is that it won't choke much in this unusual configuration.
So now you have the scary number. 464m/s multiplied by 2 square meters is nearly 1000 cubic meters per second. 1000 cubic meters of air is going to disappear into your superhero/sphere every second.
For perspective, one of the largest buildings in the world is the [Boeing Everett Factory](https://medium.com/@ILMM_Magazine/10-largest-warehouses-in-the-world-ilmm-1185e9ea8de5). It's 14 million cubic meters. If you ran this ability full bore for 4 hours, you'd suck all of the air out of that building.
Other perspective: a 3000 square foot house with 10 foot ceilings is on the order of 1000 cubic meters. So you'd pull all the air out of a house in a second.
So what's the sound of this vacuum superhero ability? It's the sound of wood snapping and shattered glass as entire buildings collapse under strains buildings were never built to withstands.
[Answer]
## There will be almost no sound, except for air passing by very fast.
To understand why, we have to understand the following things about sound.
* Sound requires air to propagate through. If there is no air, most
likely there will be no sound *reaching our ears*.
Though propagation through the ground is possible. Our hero might also be falling to the center of the planet as they destroy all the ground 2cm underneath them, constantly.
* Sound travels at … well the speed of sound: 343 m/s.
* Sound is the propagation of energy.
**The Speed of Sound vs. the Speed of Air Being Sucked into a Vacuum**:
I googled a bit, and found a guestimation for the speed at which room temperature air is sucked into a vacuum, which is somewhere between [380 m/s](https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/at-what-volumetric-flow-rate-will-air-fill-a-space-vacuum-at-earths-stp.568712/) and [500 m/s](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/32680y/how_fast_does_air_get_sucked_into_space/). You may notice that both of these numbers are larger than the speed of sound, 343 m/s. This means that ambient air will fall into your vacuum faster than any sound from it will be getting back out. So for sure there will be no sound travelling outwards.
Your hero is a blackhole for sound. People will be able to see what your hero is doing, but not hear anything he is doing. This is because the direction of sound travel is only towards the hero, not away from him/her.
**An Energy Source for the Propagation of Energy:**
Sound is the propagation of energy. So where is the energy for the sound coming from? This is not an implosion, so there is no rebound of energy (air sucked in then expelled). The air is sucked in, and then it is gone. All anyone would be able to hear, even if the speed of sound was fast enough, is the whistling of air as it rushes by towards the hero.
What might be observable is the visible implosion, as things get displaced and sucked towards the hero, rather than the sound itself.
**No Air:**
Obviously no air means no sound travelling through the air, so for sure by the time a room is cleared it will be silent.
**Conclusion:**
Most likely there will be no sound, at least as it relates to a sonic boom or any other kind of sound blast. There will however be the sound of air passing by at 380-500 m/s, which is quite fast. The sound of air forcing its way through cracks (whistling), the sound of things falling over further upstream, these are the things that an observer might hear.
[Answer]
# Forget the effects of air, gravity is a bigger problem.
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> atoms that are already in that region do not disappear unless they exit and re-enter, so their clothing is fine if they stick to the standard tight-fitting superhero attire
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As you take a step, the material that makes up your socks and shoes deforms and compacts under your weight. It then elastically reforms and returns back into a form similar to its shape. This causes the atoms making up your socks and shoes to exit and re-enter the region of disappearance.
This means that the mere act of walking cause the hero to make holes in their shoes, socks and whatever else is under their feet, including the ground. This will cause them to sink into the earth (or floors in a building) as the particles beneath them disappear. Activating the power too long will cause them to disappear into the depths of the earth. Even a short period of activation can cause them to be trapped in the hole caused by them sinking down (moving around before releasing the power can cause a large enough gap that they are able to exit).
**Response to Comments:**
Let's say your shoes are exactly 2cm thick and do not expand beyond that, when they touch the ground the material will still contract, resulting in the matter making up the ground being consumed in the small gap caused by that contraction, causing you to create a hole that you sink into.
The only way for this to work is to have the outfit be made of some magical material that cannot expand or contract (or requires high forces to do so), and is at least 2 cm thick. Due to the nature of this material (since it cannot expand or contract), it would have to be cast onto the feet of the superhero to never be removed (think of a metal cast).
This is because the material would be unable to form itself to fit the hero as a sock or chain mail would because it cannot move or else it risks expanding and then contracting, thereby causing a gap for atoms to disappear and the hero to fall inside the earth. Additionally, due to the nature of this shoe, it would be incredibly uncomfortable to walk in, let alone run-in.
Then we have the fact that this material would need to be removed and recast often in order to adjust for physical changes to the hero's feet. Otherwise we risk a gap in the cast that causes the feet to shift around inside, thus beginning to cause the ground to disappear and them to fall again.
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I think JBH etc. have offered great answers for what it would likely sound like, and how when the power is switched off the great wind generated may impact pretty hard.
**But what would the power look like?**
But, if I can, I would like to maybe go slightly beyond the scope of the question to ask what the power would LOOK like.
As each atom approaches the "line of death" the electron orbitals will be the first part to hit this line. As they do it will constitute a position measurement which will essentially find that either the electron fell in before the nucleus, or after it (at random).
This means that the approaching atom (charge neutral) will first loose some electrons (you can think of this as some of the electrons orbiting like planets happened to be in front of the nuclues) becoming net positive in charge. It will then loose its nucleus and the remaining electrons (those who happened to be behind the nucleus on their orbits) are released as free-floating electrons.
So while the power is on many charged particles will briefly appear near the surface, attract/repel one another and be accelerated, releasing electromagnetic radiation.
I expect the spectrum of all this light will be fairly broad - your superhero may appear to be glowing or white-hot over the parts of their body using the power. If their power allows photons to enter the region around them (so that they can see while using it) then they will see all this light, and feel all this heat.
That's what the power does as it cuts atoms in half. But a perfect particle-cut guillotine is worse than that. Zoom in further. The nucleus was at one point half missing! Depending on the order the neutrons and protons are lost you may have had a nucleus that was very, very, unstable for a split second before falling in entirely, so expect some radioactivity.
Zoom in again and it may get even worse, neutrons cut apart, Quakrs cut apart... you may sample some very interesting high-energy physics.
**Final Points**
Hawking Radiation : The above is somewhat related to the comment of Ruadhan's about Hawking Radiation. Hawking radiation itself is predicted to be a very weak effect for black holes (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation>) IE they emmit very little light. This superpower would presumably also release light by this mechanism, but if it was at all similar in brightness to the black hole effect it would be un-detectable.
Space Suit : When our hero uses his/her power they are not just subjecting the world around them to an open vacuum like a space-craft breach, he/she is also subjecting themselves to one. Even if the power wraps around his/her entire body their is now no pressure to hold the air in the 2cm zone around them in place. (The outside air cannot apply any pressure as it is being spirited away). So they will experience the same effect as being thrown into vacuum themselves.
Its an awesome superpower by the way.
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I think it would make a very loud roar, but not a blast.
Average speed of an air molecule is about 1.5 times the speed of sound. So air on your side of the barrier is going to deplete very fast. Collisions will slow it down some, but I expect the 2cm close to you will be an effective vacuum in milliseconds.
Around you, you effectively are a vacuum cleaner. Air rushing toward you vanishes. You create a zone of zero pressure that extends outward, limited by the resistance of the air to acceleration, and it's convergence into a smaller volume, and the general cooling effect as it expands into the vacuum. If you stood still, I suspect a large cyclonic storm would form around you. You'd become the centre of a walking hurricane, or perhaps only a tornado.
Note that while to outsiders you are a roar, inside, you hear nothing -- that 2 cm of vacuum around you cuts off all sound.
Note also: What are you standing on? Do we see a Superhero shaped hole in the ground?
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It depends how much and how fast; on the small scale something like a frying oil crackling as tiny bubbles of vacuum only a few molecules across collapse. On the largest possible scale you're talking about 0.03 cubic metres (30 litres), of vacuum collapsing at once, that's probably going to cause a rather load bang, unless it was a continuous effect in which case it would be a roar, either way it will probably be dangerously loud for the hero and those standing too close to them.
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[The question, Reference to Earth in Intergalactic Universe](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/100907/reference-to-earth-in-intergalactic-universe) illuminates the shortcomings of the term "light-year", which defines a distance by mixing the universally constant speed of light in a vacuum with our far less universally recognizable measure of time known as a "year".
So my question is...
**What measure of time would be universally constant and automatically recognizable by all species who achieve space-travel?**
Some element's half-life seems like a good starting point, but which element and which isotope of that element?
**Also, what would we call the resulting measure of distance?** A "Light-HalfLifeOfFrancium233" doesn't exactly roll off of the tongue.
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This same problem was faced by Sagan et al. when they made the golden records to travel on the Voyager probes. They decided to define time using the wavelength of light produced by a ubiquitous spin transition in Hydrogen molecules that I'm unfamiliar with. Still, if it's good enough for Sagan!
It would be just as natural to define length in this way. As I understand it, this 21cm wavelength microwave permeates the known universe (going through dust clouds even), and the stack exchange answer linked describes it as 'notorious'. A most charming description. In any case, the single unit is convenient for daily measurements, our homely lightyear is 2^55 (ish) of them, and the diameter of the known universe is about 2^91 of them.
I hope that helps, best of luck with your universe building!
Here is a [Physics.SE link](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/118647/what-is-the-unit-of-time-on-the-voyager-golden-record) describing the Voyager records and the H2 spin transition. A Wikipedia article is [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_line).
Edit: Thank you to Kingledion for the formatting edit, very appreciated! I embarrassingly only noticed on rereading that our OP additionally asked about a universal time. For this same Hydrogen line, a second is about 1.4Billion wave periods, or (perhaps more universal) 3 seconds is about 2^32 wave periods. 2^42 (important number) wave periods is about 51min, and a year is about 2^55.3 of them. If November and December were optional, more like 2^55. :)
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There is no obvious one. There's lots that can be understood and interpreted, but then you run into the translation issue that what one civilization may find intuitive, another will not.
Consider converting "light-year" into something else, as you suggest the half-life of a given isotope. Humans might gravitate toward define a base universal measure--call it the Stellar Distance Unit--as the distance light travels in a vacuum in the period of the half life of the ruthenium-106 isotope. Why that one? Because its half-life is 373.59 days, which is just a tad longer than an Earth year, which makes the Stellar Distance Unit conveniently close to the light-year. A species on TRAPPIST-1g might consider thullium-170 to be the obvious candidate instead: at 128.6 (Earth) days half-life, it's just a tad longer than ten of the planet's orbits around TRAPPIST-1 (123.5 days). That assumes, of course, a base-10 counting system. They might use another entirely which would change what numbers they would find relevant.
Whatever the case, it's fairly easy to translate a given half-life into another language of a technological civilization so they know which one you're talking about, so why worry about trying to assume there's some standard everyone will agree with? If you're talking to another civilization, assuming they have access to basic calculators capable of doing conversions is a reasonable assumption to make, and they'll be able to convert a light-year into whatever unit they commonly use.
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Planck length to a large power will suffice if you want a universal constant that is actually universal.
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If you want to detach completely from non-universal measurements of time, you could measure things in intervals of the plank length. According to the wikipedia page:
>
> The Planck length is believed to be the shortest meaningful length, the limiting distance below which the very notions of space and length cease to exist. Any attempt to investigate the possible existence of shorter distances, by performing higher-energy collisions, would inevitably result in black hole production. Higher-energy collisions, rather than splitting matter into finer pieces, would simply produce bigger black holes.
>
>
>
So it's a fairly universal constant, which, (assuming current theory holds) would translate to any civilization advanced enough to discover it. It's value is $1.616×10^{-35}\ meters$. Rather conveniently, there are [$5.854×10^{50}\ plank\ lengths$ in a light year](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+many+plank+lengths+in+a+light+year), so you could quite easily make up your own unit defined as $10^{50}\ plank\ lengths$ and have a similarly sized unit that's detached from any non-universal measurement of time.
The problem with this answer is that it uses our (relatively arbitrary) base 10 system. I recommend switching to a base 2 system, which gives us $~2^{169}\ plank\ lengths$ in a light year. This you can round to whatever you see fit. I would recommend going for either 128 or 256, as both are powers of two.
After this, naming depends on what you want to make your "standard length". In SI it's the meter, which is $~2^{34}\ plank\ lengths$. From there scale up with SI prefixes until you reach your stand-in for the light-year.
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The problem of finding a universal time unit has been addressed by physicists for a long time and the current best solution is exact to ten significant figures. The present [definition of the second](https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/second.html) is *"the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom"*. Therefore we already have an universal unit of time: the period of that radiation.
Since this period is a very short time, a light period will be small: about 0.032612256 meters. For astronomical distances we should use a reasonable multiple. As one year is about $2.9·10^{17}$ periods, the light exaperiod could be a useful unit (1 light exaperiod = 3.44 light year).
It must be noted that the period has already been selected to define the second because it can be measured with large precision. Other natural phenomena, as Earth rotation aren't regular enough or measurable enough to provide a good definition of a time unit. That's true for half lives of unstable isotopes: they can't be measured with precision beyond a few significant figures.
Interestingly, adopting this period as base time unit could have some advantages that would ease transition:
* For astronomers, 1 light exaperiod is just a bit more than one parsec.
* For countries still not completely metricated, a light period is about one tenth of a foot, therefore transitioning to period units could be easier than metricating.
* For metricated countries, 30 light periods are close to 1 meter - more close than 3 feet are. Therefore, it's easier to translate both imperial and metric units to periods than to translate between imperial and metric units.
Furthermore, using the petaperiod (about 30 hours) instead of the old fashioned day could lead to a longer number of productive hours, although it could put some stress of circadian cicles of Earthlings.
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## What is the best unit of measure for the time portion of a non-earth-bound light“year”?
There is none, because [time is relative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation):
>
> According to the theory of relativity, time dilation is a difference in the elapsed time measured by two observers, **either due to a velocity difference relative to each other**, or by **being differently situated relative to a gravitational field**. As a result of the nature of spacetime, a clock that is moving relative to an observer **will be measured to tick slower than a clock that is at rest in the observer's own frame of reference**. A clock that is under the influence of a stronger gravitational field than an observer's will also be measured to tick slower than the observer's own clock.
>
>
>
Even satellites in orbit around the Earth exhibit this phenomenon:
>
> Such time dilation has been repeatedly demonstrated, for instance by small disparities in a pair of atomic clocks after one of them is sent on a space trip, or by clocks on the Space Shuttle running slightly slower than reference clocks on Earth, or clocks on GPS and Galileo satellites running slightly faster.
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>
>
Thus, even the atomic clocks referenced in other answers are going to tick at different rates on different planets and different space ships.
All we can be sure of is that **the arrow of time always points forward**.
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## Assumptions
I'm assuming you are talking about `time` and `distance` within the same relative frame of reference.
## Earth Time
From Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second>
>
> The SI definition of second is "the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods
> of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two
> hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom"
>
>
>
## Earth Distance
From Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre>
>
> The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a
> vacuum in 1/299 792 458 second
>
>
>
This comes out to be about 30.66 periods of Cesium 133
## Universe Time/Distance
If we were to "start over" `time` and `distance` could still be based on Cesium 133. Whatever the rest of the universe uses will be dependent on their technologies.
However, instead of an arbitrary count of Cesium 133, it would probably be something more universal like $\ 2^x$ periods of Cesium 133.
You could base your universal prefixes to those used in computers. That is, instead of `kilo-`,`mega-`,`giga-`, you would use `bit-`, `byte-`, `word-`.
Example Measurements
* 1 meter = Distance light travels in 30.66... Periods of Cesium 133
* 1 half-byte distance (~0.5 meters) = Distance light travels in $\ 2^4$ Periods of Cesium 133
* 1 light year = Distance light travels in $\ 28.9915 \* 10^{16}$ Periods of Cesium 133
* 1 qword distance ( ~63.3 light years) = Distance light travels in $\ 2^{64}$ Periods of Cesium 133
* 1 second = $\ 9.1923 \* 10^9$ Periods of Cesium 133
* 1 word time ( ~7.13 µs) = $\ 2^{16}$ Periods of Cesium 133
* 1 dword time ( ~467 ms ) = $\ 2^{32}$ Periods of Cesium 133
* 1 qword time ( ~63.3 years) = $\ 2^{64}$ Periods of Cesium 133
## Cesium 133
I'm only using Cesium 133 as a reference because that is how a second is officially defined.
Earth's Atomic clocks are improving. There is no doubt that the rest of the universe is using something else. Besides, Cesium 133 clocks may not have a high enough resolution for accurate FTL jumps. Eventually, time resolution could have the resolution of 1 plank-time - a slight variation to A.C.A.C.'s answer.
From Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock>
>
> 21st century experimental atomic clocks that provide non-caesium-based
> secondary representations of the second are becoming so precise that
> they are likely to be used as extremely sensitive detectors for other
> things besides measuring frequency and time. For example, the
> frequency of atomic clocks is altered slightly by gravity, magnetic
> fields, electrical fields, force, motion, temperature and other
> phenomena. The experimental clocks tend to continue improving, and
> leadership in performance has been shifted back and forth between
> various types of experimental clocks.
>
>
>
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The main setting for a piece I'm planning is a lab whose purpose is to find the cause of the orcs in my world (they're basically [hypermuscular humans](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10232/what-sort-of-problems-might-occur-if-every-human-gained-extra-muscle-mass), but nobody knows this in-universe yet). It's unsanctioned, so the dwarven scientist owning/running it is trying to keep it quiet. Some nearby orcs suspect something is up, but I want somebody in the dwarven military to notice this as well.
Some details about the lab:
* It's based on a remote island ([Google Maps reference](https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.5314905,-10.1575674,14z?hl=en) for what I'm basing this on). Any official traffic to the island consists of supply ships to a military observation post.
* It has enough room for 10 subjects, 30-50 guards, and 10 medical staff.
* There is at least one operating/observation room to gather tissue samples and expose the subjects to whatever turns people into orcs.
* The technological level is roughly WW1-era.
My question is two-fold:
1. How would the owner try to hide it?
2. How would the dwarven military start to notice this?
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# Hiding
I'd probably assume that most of the buildings on the surface would be camouflaged against the trees or rocks that they built the lab. That would make it harder to see along the water. Putting stuff underground is also good, but it depends on the resources. Plus you have to put the dirt somewhere if you bury it.
They would need to funnel everything through the military traffic to the observation post, which means getting shipments through those channels. Hiding it properly would take some time, but it is doable (adjusting manifests/shipments, hiring fishermen to hang around, etc.).
# Detection
The dwarf's best approach is probably noticing unusual traffic of boats and/or the materials on them. Someone might notice the manifest having weird stuff (why does an observation post need thirty hammers?) or that there is too much being shipped for the manifest (why does someone need a box that big for thirty hammers?). You also have a ship unloading in the wrong place (why are they taking thirty hammers into the woods?) People always talk, that's frequently a good one for revealing secrets.
You have incidentals such as a fire in the base and someone notices smoke. Or a ship that breaks down near the unloading point where it doesn't make sense to weigh anchor or to be there for a while. Or footprints along a trail that someone notices.
If they are doing flybys, someone might notice that a rock or terrain changed. Or that a path has been created by something being dragged (or people simply walking along it).
You also could have radio waves or signals from an unexpected source (RF interference is always a good one). Or flashes of light.
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# Overheard Bar Chatter
The lab had to be built by someone, whether the island lab is remote and out in the open, or hidden underground. Presumably the dwarves that built it also go out for a drink from time to time. Perhaps one of them has a little too much to drink and says something along the lines of "don't worry, I just finished a big offshore contract, I won't have to worry about money for a while."
Someone asks the dwarf what he meant by that. He immediately goes quiet, pays his tab, and leaves.
This exchange catches the attention of a member of the dwarf military. Maybe they're a proto-Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden, driven by ambitions of truth and justice in their society. Perhaps they work in some sort of internal affairs department, and this could be the bust that makes their career. Or they are on the need-to-know for the lab, and the more they try to plug the potential leaks, the more attention it ends up receiving, through what we call the [Streisand Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect).
Either way, this lab could catch attention from the right people, without any of them ever having to see it in the first place.
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**Supplies**
A smart and capable scientist with adequate funding and WWI technology could build a largely subterranean facility with little difficulty. Hiding it from the air is not a big deal. Strict operational security keeps anyone from going in or out. Any locals who stumble by might need to come join the party.
Keeping that many people fed is going to be a challenge though. You're going to need regular supply smuggling runs. Assuming supply by sea (I'm not sure if you want that bridge there and it's easier to hide sea smuggling.)
I was initially thinking every three months, but smaller, more frequent trips is probably better. A single stocked rowboat from a ship offshore every month should do the trick and help prevent major problems in the case of a missed delivery. Lets assume a well for water supply since transporting that much water would really be a challenge.
That much supply traffic is still going to raise eyebrows.
If you want to be doubly clever you can have the scientist bribe the logistics people in the Dwarven army. An investigation into missing supplies could slowly uncover the fact that something is going on.
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I'd say that such tiny lab would be quite easy to hide. 10 test subjects and 10 medical personnel?
Damn, it could be built as underground storage facility. Or as an underground emergency infirmary in case of naval bombardment.
Not sure what is an acceptable explanation in your setting, but one could even consider a mental asylum for schizophrenic orcs. ;) Or with this size, one could even hide everything in the cellar of the scientist's villa, and officially pretend that all these medical personnel are his friends / servants.
I'd consider as the highest risk:
* need for some unusual medical equipment
* being ratted (perhaps unintentionally) by one of soldiers
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Things in the WWI era were much easier to hide, since the means of collecting and collating large amounts of data did not exist the way the did in WWII or today.
Even if the secret base was dug by contractors, it could take months for the contractors to get back home via ship and train. Shipments to the base could come from Argentina, the UK or America, leaving massive gaps in any observer logs. And communications over long ranges was very low bandwidth. One famous example from WWI was the detachment of the armoured cruiser SMS Emden from the German Pacific fleet. The single vessel was able to cruise the Indian ocean, tie up almost 100 allied warships searching for it and terrorize the sea lanes taking prizes for a period of three months and steaming thousands of miles. She actually spent some time in places like Dutch Batavia where the locals had not yet been informed of the outbreak of WWI, and treated the ship's crew as visitors and guests.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T4umE.jpg)
So long as the lab's staff is clever and patient, they might not even have to carry out a lot of overt security measures. Even the cover story could be kept in that era by simply doing things in stages: hire one crew to clear space for a resort, hire another crew later to dig the foundations for a mine, hire yet another crew to build a hospital for the natives, etc. Using tramp steamers on an irregular basis makes things even more convoluted, you break the pattern of regular shipments, and captains are not going to look too closely at manifests if the price is right.
So the interesting part of the story would then be how the intelligence service hunts these clues down and pieces them together. The clues will be all there, but widely distributed across both time and space, minimizing the damage that is caused by people talking, and keeping things compartmentalized so even inadvertent clues such as the ideas dropped in other answers don't add up very easily.
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I don't have any good suggestions for how the lab should be hidden, however one way it could become noticeable is a **laboratory accident**.
Perhaps you may find some inspiration in the Star Trek TNG episode, ["Who Watches the Watchers?"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Watches_the_Watchers). There, their observation station was cloaked by a holographic wall. They were discovered when the station ran into technical problems, an explosion occurred. The power began to fluctuate, leading to the holographic wall momentarily shutting down in places, and they were noticed by the natives. The situation became more complicated when one of the natives approached and was accidentally injured. So e.g. cloaking and a power failure for your lab.
I know that doesn't fit your WW1-era tech requirement, but the concept of an accident leading to discovery is the take-home idea there. Perhaps a visible explosion, perhaps something more drawn out like a dwarf is injured near the lab or something else happens, some orc witnesses the clean-up effort, is captured to protect secrecy, and the ensuing investigation ultimately leads other orcs to the site, or whatever (or maybe the dwarven military witnesses and investigates, and the info about the military discovery of the lab somehow trickles down to the orcs), but you know what I mean.
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Hide in plain sight: you build a secret lab or medical facility, in cooperation with the dwarven military to research "X", but you really research "Y".
After a while, the dwarven military start noticing the smell of that special plant or compound used to research "Y". The smell draws attention and questions...what does that rare plant or flower have anything to do with "X"?
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If they are keeping the supplies to the lab hidden, you could probably have the character notice that a ship has an unusually high waterline or maybe have some stevedores struggling when loading a crate that is labeled with something that wouldn't normally be very heavy.
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1. Have a house or lighthouse or some other structure on top of the lab in order to hide any human/dwarven activity in the area.
2. Depending on the experiments/tests being run at the lab electricity may required. Perhaps someone monitoring the power grid may notice an unusual amount of power (compared to what the generally expected level of power use for whatever structure is there should be) being drawn at that location.
This all depends on whether or not they use/have electricity or use their own generator instead, and probably a bunch of other factors also.
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The flora and fauna could be affected by experiments on the island and may be noticed by locals who would have spread such gossip to be overhead. The owner may attempt to hide such evidence by applying strongarm tactics to threaten the locals who ask too many questions or attempt to erase such evidence themselves, thereby exposing themselves to being caught in the act by spies or the dwarven military.
Examples:
* Sea birds which usually swarm around the island beaches in their hundreds have mysteriously avoided the area since the base was built (due to ultralow frequency machinery noise, or eletro-magnetic radiation, etc)
* Dead fish with unhealthy green pallor have been washing up (due to strange chemicals leeching out into the surrounding waters or eating the corpses of failed experiments, etc) or plants of unusual size or hue growing on the island
* Plants which grow abundantly everywhere on the island seem to avoid a particular area or the reverse, particularly abundant growths in an otherwise barren island (due to the hidden entrance, or excessive heat generated, special chemicals in the fumes, etc)
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Let one of the hypermuscular humans escape. After 3 weeks swimming the shark-ridden seas, he washes up on the shore, is found by a local division of the dwarven militia. Half unconscious and fully mad, he starts babbling about Hell going down on a small island far to the east...
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There are some great answers here that you could mix and match.
Hide the lab in plain sight, a quarantined medical facility to study infectious diseases, which would justify the medical technical people. As the facility is being built build a secret lair underneath with the holding cells and all the Tesla coils and such.
Then have a fire or something in a generator and plucky government inspector Bob comes out on a Zeppelin and starts wondering why a 10 bed medical quarantine island needs a 1.21 gigawatt steam generator and a bunch of lightning rods.
Bob knows some Dwarven engineers who make that kind of equipment....
I like this idea, sounds like Shadowrun but more steampunky. :)
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Would it be loud enough to hear and is there any risk of dangerously loud sound waves being generated if the object being teleported is large enough?
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# A noticeable pop, but not that loud.
I've used vacuum chambers a fair bit at work, and it's not that loud. You definitely notice it when that much air pops back in, but it's not loud enough to hurt your ears or do any notable damage.
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# Loud
This is not the same as air entering a vacuum chamber. In that case, air only enters from one direction instead of moving in from all sides. Instead, it is more similar to the collapse of a cavitation bubble, where the object being collapsed is surrounded on all sides by fluid. Or maybe, the collapse of a container (like a can) filled with a vacuum. There are plently of youtube videos of that being loud, and some of the energy is being used to deform the container.
A human-sized void in the atmosphere has a volume of about $70l=0.07m^3$. At a pressure of $1atm\approx 100kPa$, the void will have an energy of $7kJ$. Only some proportion $p$ of this energy will go into sound. In liquids, it appears to be about [$35\%$](https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1542669), but this is probably different in gases. I will look through 2 scenarios, if compressibility does not make a different ($p=0.1$) and the scenario where compressibility makes a difference ($p=0.01$, I doubt this could be too different from $p$ in liquids and a factor of 30 is a lot). Sound is measured in units of power per meter squared, so the power will be the total sound energy divided by the time it takes for the collapse to take place, which is approximately $\frac{1m}{\text{speed of sound}}\approx 0.003s$. Then, the power released as sound will be about $2\cdot10^6pW$.
$p=0.1$. Here, the power will be $2\*10^6W$, in the vicinity of the void (less than 1 meter away), it will have a intensity of $170dB$, loud enough to [rupture ear drums](https://greentreeaudiology.com/blog/everyday-noises-cause-hearing-loss) but not [loud enough to be deadly](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/175996-can-a-loud-enough-sound-kill-you). An intensity of $130 db$, [loud enough to cause permanent ear damage](https://www.creativefieldrecording.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Decibels-Etymotic-Blanked-Out.jpg) will occur up to about $100m$ away.
$p=0.01$ Now, the power will be $2\*10^5W$, so near the teleported, the intensity will be about $160dB$. Permanent ear damage will occur up to $30$ meters away
It would require $p<0.00001$ (which seems implausible) to not give permanent hearing damage to those in the vicinity.
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This all depends on how fast the teleportation is. Is it truly "instant" or does it take time?
This is important because it is very difficult to create an experiment where we instantly create a void accessible from all directions but I suspect it would be *very* loud. Forcefully opening a vacuum chamber or similar is not a good approximation, because in such a scenario, the atmospheric movement is restricted and fills the chamber much slower than at maximum velocity.
An approach that could be used to estimate this would be seeing the amount of gas we would need to "instantly" generate using explosives: Assuming (ballpark) that one gram of TNT (Trinitrotoluene explosive) generates about one liter of hot gas at atmospheric pressure when it detonates, and the average human has a volume of 62 liters, one would require 62 grams of TNT detonating right at when the person teleports away to result in a "net zero" pressure change.
I found [this somewhat sketchy video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4dK1EyqS-c) which alleges to 100g of TNT being detonated and although it is difficult to convey loudness of something through recording, you can hear the echo and scale of the sound after the explosion.
**Without ear protection, people nearby would suffer instantaneous hearing loss and the actual sound would be audible from a long distance away.**
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*Tl;dr: In a medieval setting, what would be the key steps to gain control (tax, army, police) of a region similar to a city-state?*
The region has a central city, with access to the sea, surrounded by few villages in the woods and hills. Its territory is around 3,000 square miles (~7.700 km²). There isn't any local government as the city was recently partially destroyed and its ruling class was wiped out. It is now in the process of being recolonized. In the surrounding area, there isn't a global government, but an alliance of cities. The city of the region was part of this alliance before being partially destroyed.
For the purpose of clarity, consider the region as an Italian city state (like Pisa or Milan, with a Prince, not a republic) that was partially destroyed by a sudden eruption that killed the noble families and ruling class, leaving no legal descendant. What are the key steps someone with lots of money, but otherwise unknown in the political scene, would need to take to take control (tax, army, police) of the unoccupied region? What would be the mistakes to avoid and what would give him an advantage against other ambitious persons having the same idea?
Bonus points for taking in account specifics details of my setting:
* No local authority or owner
* Growing population of former and new residents. These are people that have abandoned their home after the disaster, but who are trying to come back and new people trying to take advantage of the abandoned buildings
* Destroyed local economy, which means that lots of rebuilding needs to be done
But in the end, the main question remains of how to become the ruler of a little city and its surrounding lands, when all you have is money and ambition, but there is no 'land owner' from which you can buy this land.
[Answer]
## First, you have to have resources
To take over, you'll need resources, primarily money in some fashion. Things like the funds to back an army or hire mercenaries. Funds to feed people displaced during the crisis. Funds to rebuild things. If your world still depends more on barter/trade than coinage, then these funds could be in the form of luxury goods or a well-stocked set of granaries... but you'll need money in some fashion.
## You need people
You need people. These need to be loyal. Some need to be the sort of brutes you can send in to forcefully restore order. Some need to be cunning strategists who will help navigate the political intrigues sure to come up. And some need to be spies that no one knows are loyal to you.
## You need information
Those spies need to keep you informed. Because in the midst of a power vacuum, you won't be only one trying to seize control. You need to know who your potential rivals are, where they are, and how they plan to take over. You need that information quickly, so you can respond with appropriate countermeasures before their plans can take off.
## You need initiative
If another person has already seized some portion of control, then you've lost the initiative and your fight just got harder. Act before they do.
## You need the charisma to gain local support
You need the backing of people already there. People of multiple social strata. If only lowest income brackets support you, it won't be enough. If only the merchant guilds back you, still, not enough. You need to win over at least some portion of each faction within your area.
## You need to be flexible
Make deals. Let others win when they make bargains with you. Give them something they want. Don't be a rigid, unbending force of nature. Work with people.
## But not too flexible
But you can't be soft. You have to be powerful and dominant. So make deals, bargain with the powerful, but don't let them take control of the situation.
## You need strength
If anyone challenges your ability to rise, they need to be put down. Fast and hard. If someone threatens you, that must be stopped before it becomes a habit. Mercy might be an option later, but right now, you have to treat rivals as wartime enemies. Mercy will get you killed.
[Answer]
# Solve the crisis
1. Be the kind of person other people look to for leadership
2. Be there when leadership is required
Normal people don't look for solutions to major problems themselves, they look for someone to solve it for them. They look for leadership. Whether war or natural crisis, most people look for someone else to make the problems go away.
Charisma is a deciding factor here. The people want a leader, and now a leader can step forward and take control.
This doesn't allow the person to be a total unknown on the local political scene, you actually have to be somebody to do this as people will look to a leader when in crisis. However you've said your person has money, hence they are by definition somebody, it's just a matter of what sort of somebody.
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> Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees. - Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
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# Be the crisis
Using the definition of government as the group with a monopoly on violence. Claim leadership by applied violence with enough spare violence to maintain the position. Put simply, march in at the head of an army and declare yourself to be in charge, kill anyone who disagrees.
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Once either of these courses of action have been followed you then need to secure your position. This will be done by collecting taxes, repairing city walls, roads and civic buildings, actually being a leader.
Machiavelli goes into considerable detail about appropriate actions for a wise prince taking control of a city. You would do well to read his [Prince](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince). For example, he suggests not leading the army yourself but sending a total psychopath to suppress the population. When the population is suitably traumatised, enter the city yourself to take charge, receive reports of the brutality of your prefect from the people and proceed to spread bits of him around the city to show the population that he has been punished for his treatment of them. You then become the saviour of the city from the oppressor.
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Just a side note: There would've always been a heir, a next guy or girl in line. Many families needed a couple of generations (take the Carolingian dynasty) to seize power. This would've been incredibly difficult.
I think to properly answer this question, one needs to study a lot of medieval history and law. If this is supposed to be a serious book you want to sell, I would advice you do that. I didn't do that beforehand, I hope you do not mind. Here are some ideas, I believe combinations of those would be better than each one individually:
1. **Straight up lie**. Tell them you are a legal heir. Forge some documents. If you do some bribes, they might believe you.
2. **Get religious support**. You can most likely buy a local bishop (or whatever they have in your world). That doesn't mean he has to be corrupt, maybe just make a large donation to some monastery. He might not have the possibility to say no. If you have the church behind you, you have god-given authority.
3. **Get the city elite to vote for you**. You should maybe transform your city state into something other than a monarchy in the process (what exactly is up to you), but many leaders in the middle ages got their authority from votes, even monarchs. You, the ruler, are only as powerful as other people with influence allow you to be. A medieval ruler was nothing without nobility or at least the patriciate behind them. You have to secure alliances either way, so you might as well secure your control via vote. How do you do that? That's a topic for another question and has various answers.
4. **Talk to another (local) power**. So everyone in that city state that didn't marry much with anyone and was rather independent is dead? Did anyone ever truly like them? Well, what a great opportunity for local powers to get a ruler on that throne that will change all of that. One might be able to (slowly) take control of the city and solve some problems. There were always problems and disputes between states. If you have a local power backing you up, others might stay quiet because they are scared. Maybe you can even get the support of a bigger empire nearby. Alliances of cities were a nasty business for bigger empires (that had enough on their hands staying a single entity), they would very much welcome to break that alliance the easy way and if they get some bribes and promises from you in the process - all the better. You do not have to weaken your state with this option if the foreign power behind you wants to keep an equilibrium between the various states in the region. They might even support a strong and independent "fantasy Pisa". Very often a strong ally is a good ally.
[Answer]
Look back at history, look back at how feudalism or mafia grew up.
If an authority is missing it doesn't mean people won't have issues needing an authority to take care of them.
Let's say there are thieves raiding the properties of the locals. Mr. Bossy has no appointed authority, but has the means (people, money) and the will to take care of the issue. So let's say he sends out a party to catch the thieves, and conveniently gets them and hangs some of their corpses on the border of the village, as memento for wanna-be thieves.
He suddenly has shown power and will be relied upon by other people for managing other issues. That's how control is built.
[Answer]
## Mafioso
"It'd be awful if something happened to that lovely daughter of yours... I'm here to clean up this mess and protect the people of Italy-town." People who pay are paying "taxes", and people who don't get harassed by your thugs at night. The transition from this to governance is pretty short, though the profits of sin may prove too tempting...
## Warrior
"It looks like the [neighboring city-state] wants our fields for themselves, our men for their army and our daughters for their slaves. [lets fear build] Let's take the fight to them!" Depending on how you play this one, you could get 2 city-states in one go. You could also lose both, depending on how clever/cut-throat the neighbors are.
## Capitalist
From sugar to silk, there are always opportunities for actual profit. If you employ half a town with a new enterprise (filling the vacuum left by the dearly departed royals), you become the de-facto leader. The only remaining duty to fulfill is practicing diplomacy with the neighboring city-states, though you've done nothing to bolster your legitimacy as a ruler.
The primary role of government in that time period was ensuring the safety of the citizenry. Make a threat seem real (or perhaps there are real threats) and then fix the threat.
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[Question]
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~~Considering the nuclear arsenal that existed in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, could it have destroyed the entire world, following the events below?~~
*Edited question a bit:*
Considering the nuclear arsenal that existed in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, could it have destroyed all life on the surface of the world, following the events below?
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27 October, 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis is at its peak, the USS Beale dropped depth charges on a Russian submarine below it, the B-59. Unbeknownst to the US, this submarine contained a nuclear missile of 15kt. Running out of air, the three Russian officers bickered amongst themselves what to do, and in the end unanimously decided on launching the nuclear missile at the USS Randolf, a giant aircraft carrier. The US then probably would’ve quickly invaded Cuba to neutralise the Russian missiles stationed there, as was already suggested by the Joint Chiefs, before the Russians could prepare the missiles for launch. Although there were short range nuclear missiles on Cuba for exactly such an attempt, and the approaching US forces would have been decimated by these short range missiles. Then the US would most likely retaliate again by just dropping nuclear bombs on Cuba using the Air Force Bombers that were already in the air.
Following this is retaliation after retaliation until there were no bombs left or until bombs couldn't be launched anymore.
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**So considering the powers that held the nuclear weapons, mostly the US and USSR (and a couple European countries), would their squabble destroy all life on the surface of the world?**
I'd imagine that neither the US and USSR or any of the European countries had any interest in throwing a nuke at, for example, New Zealand.
* Would this place still be destroyed by the following radiation and/or nuclear winter?
* And how destroyed would it be? Could plants survive, insects, or nothing at all?
* Could humans, that sheltered underground, survive and grow crops on the land again in the near future after the war? (Near future would be within 50 years)
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**Edit:** *After reading all the comments and answers going in the direction of how to kill all life on earth, that was not my intention. I only wanted to know if, back then, the amount of nuclear warheads that existed would have killed all/most life on earth - which was actually not what I wanted.*
*I am building a post nuclear war world that escalated from the Cold War, with a destroyed surface, but capable of rebuilding a society (fairly) quickly. Thanks to a couple answers I now know that the southern hemisphere would be less affected, giving me many great ideas.*
*Apologies for the lack of motive behind this question that got some people going in an unintended direction!*
[Answer]
This is 1962.
At this stage, Russia did not have a huge nuclear stockpile:
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> [Wikimedia Commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_arms_race#/media/File:US_and_USSR_nuclear_stockpiles.svg)
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Furthermore, the first ICBMs had only been around since c. 1959. So basically this represents the last point in the Cold War where the USA could reasonably expect to survive a nuclear exchange with the USSR in some shape or form. Remember that the vast majority of weapons were still dropped by bombers, and it's not clear how many USSR bombers would have gotten through at this stage.
So...
The USA get perhaps 50-100 nuke hits, many off-target. There's a lot of fallout, but not civilization-ending. The USSR might get over 1000 (The USA stockpile is much bigger) and be wiped out as a country; a Warsaw pact invasion through the Fulda Gap and North German Plain is stopped with the extensive use of nuclear landmines and shells; no doubt nukes also hit the UK and France. Western Europe comes off very badly. Eastern European forces rebel against the Soviets, probably with success. China sits it out.
Nuclear winter is not really a 'thing' at this stage, there are just not enough missiles. Indeed, it never gets worse than a Mount Pinatubo-style eruption. Fallout is dangerous locally for for a month or two regionally—but radiation dangers are frequently overstated. Your risk of cancer may increase by a factor of 10, but will you notice as you struggle to find enough food to eat?
Fast forward 5-10 years and the results are very different—both the USA and USSR become nuclear wastelands. Even so, it's mostly a northern hemisphere thing, no one is going to bother wasting nukes on most of Africa, or India, or much of South America.
[Answer]
The world is a sphere of rock and metal, and nothing that humanity can do or is ever likely to be able to do will have any significant effect on its continued existence. There's a thin film of volatiles on the surface, and some interesting emergent systems of complex chemicals mixed in with those volatiles, and we could probably have a significant effect on those, but it's only a tiny tiny part of the world.
Adding to this answer to cover the edited question, the answer is still no. Bacteria are incredibly tough, diverse and versatile, and it's not within our capacity to kill them all. Even if we did, sub-surface bacteria would very quickly recolonise the surface.
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# Distinguishing between destroying the world and merely killing everyone on it.
In short, yes there were certainly enough nukes to kill everyone several times over.
[New York Times: March 6, 1984](http://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/06/science/q-a-032387.html)
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> Q. How many tons of TNT equivalent do all the nuclear weapons in the world add up to, per person? [...]
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> A.Governments do not reveal how many megatons (the equivalent of a million tons of TNT) they have, but fairly recently the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London estimated the total megatonnage of the United States and the Soviet Union at approximately 10,000. The population of the world is about 4.7 billion. Setting aside the comparatively trivial megatonnage of the smaller nuclear powers and dividing the 10 billion tons by the 4.7 billion people yields about 2.1 tons, or 4,200 pounds of TNT equivalent for every man, woman and child on earth. [...] In 1960, it has been estimated, the world total was about 30,000 megatons, though you may feel that 2.1 tons per person is still plenty.
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After this simple consideration, you need to ask the questions about where these weapons were targetted. Would everyone have been killed or would, say, Africa and South America have been left largely untouched by the direct exchanges. A lot of the cold war targetting data has now been declassified and is available on the web so you can see whether your home would have been on somebody's list.
The comments are questioning whether this is a viable way to explain how many warheads were available. It's not, it's a political way to challenge the stupid numbers of warheads that were available, used by anti-nuclear protesters for decades.
Comments are also saying that Russia didn't have so many warheads, they didn't, not as many as the US anyway.
1960
Russia: 1905
USA: 18638
1965
Russia: 6129
USA: 31139
Plot those two on a graph together and no, it doesn't look so good for Russia, but think about what those numbers really mean. Each warhead is a city killer. Maybe 3 warheads for a very large city, many were later stacked in MIRVs anyway so that's already 3-14 as a cluster.
The US only has 300 cities with a population over 100,000. How many nukes do you really need to effectively wipe out that population? Sure there'll be a few survivors here and there, but the job is effectively done, the fallout and firestorms can do the rest.
Sure you're going to have trouble killing off every last African tribesman but that's not to say it's impossible, the bigger question is would anyone have actually fired anything at them, to which the answer is no. There would most likely be a lot of survivors in the southern hemisphere even after a major exchange, but not many in the north.
The nuclear arms race was entirely political, very expensive, and completely pointless. The idea was to bankrupt the Russian economy by challenging them to keep up, not actually create an effective military arsenal (spoiler: it worked).
I'm torn between leaving you with a cheerful note from [Flanders and Swann](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48waPFTXJvY) or [Tom Lehrer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs) on this, so you get both.
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The whole arsenal could not cover the whole world. But what would be devastating are the radioactive clouds.
So even if New Zealand or Australia wouldn't be nuked the air and water would sooner or later travel there and poison everything.
Such case is talked in the novel
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Atmospheric and ground atomic tests in the '60s were conducted on a rather small scale, exploding one bomb at a time.
Nevertheless they had a global impact, by spreading radioctive nuclides on large areas thanks to atmospheric circulation. See the increase in atmospheric C14 content or the incident of Daigo Fukuryu Maru.
Basically the impact of an atomic bombardment is heavy locally, due to fireball and air blast, but the combined effect of dust launched on the upper atmosphere and radioactive nuclides spread by atmospheric circulation does not limit the damage to a small area.
Expecially the dust, shielding solar radiation, will have as a consequence the notorius nuclear winter on a planet scale, New Zealand (or whatever country untouched by nukes) included.
Chernobyl shows us that plants and animals can manage to survive a nuclear incident, but we didn't have a nuclear winter in that case.
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[Question]
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While we have notable variation in grammar certain patterns can be found in almost all human languages. For example verbs, nouns and adjectives can be found in some form. They are strung together into sentences and paragraphs.
The most famous "alien grammar" is probably Yoda. Speak differently, he does. However even in his case it's a fairly simple switch around and it wouldn't surprise me if many earth languages could be found that follow that pattern.
So my question is - is there such a thing as a truly alien grammar? Is it even possible to come up with a language structure completely different to that used by humans? Ideally something that reflects the alien nature of the speakers in some way.
Note that I've added a follow on question about transmission: [How alien can a language be - transmission?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/30441/how-alien-can-a-language-be-transmission)
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One example would be aliens that communicate in a **parallel** fashion. Take an alien that has multiple mouths, and talks with all of them simultaneously (using pitch or some other factor to differentiate). Or possibly it just has a more complex vocal apparatus.
They might therefore simultaneously communicate nouns, verbs, and adjectives all at once, grouping them appropriately or in some kind of contextually important rule.
So while we say: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
The alien might say:
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> brown ---> over ----> dog
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> fox
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This isn't an extraordinarily alien *language* - it would be comprehensible by humans, or at least by humans with basic computer assistance - but we are literally incapable of handling the grammar, so I'd say that makes it fit the question.
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The answer is, we do not know.
There are indeed some universal grammar features, Chomsky hypothesised that those are inborn to human brains. Even if that is true, alien brains can differ.
On the other hand, we have no idea of knowing if there could be a human language that differs markedly in some aspects from every known language, or indeed if there has been one. If the history went differently and the subsaharan languages died out, would we ever think that [clicks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant) can be incorporated into a language as normal phonemes? Without east Asian languages, would we consider normal to have a language without obligatory grammatical number or gender? Without Vietnamese, would it seem possible that language can function without personal pronouns? Without ergative languages, would it ever occur to us that the subject might not be in the nominative? Limiting the focus to Europe, without Polish and Russian, would we realize that the colour "blue" can be analyzed as two different colours? Likewise, with Hungarian, the same goes for "red". Without English, would we consider normal that every noun can be verbed? Whatever you consider normal in your language, some other language on the Earth breaks it.
For really alien concepts: consider sign languages. Not the medium of expression, but the grammar. It is still highly linear, but there are some parallelisms. And some sign languages [can create pronouns](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384113002167) "on the fly" (in other words, they have infinite number of them). Yet, these are normal, widely used human languages.
For constructed languages created by humans, but deliberately breaking some of those language universals (and thus being extremely hard to learn), see [loglan](http://www.frathwiki.com/Loglan)/[lojban](http://www.frathwiki.com/Lojban) for languages based on predicates,
or the stack based language [Fith](http://www.frathwiki.com/Fith).
[Answer]
I think the answer is actually "clearly, yes, you can have a truly alien grammar".
The reason I think this is that to be truly alien the language must have none of the elements we think of. These are (simplistically) nouns, verbs, adjective and adverbs.
So - candidate alien grammar: every word means a sentence.
```
foo: how are you today
bar: I'm well, how are you
frob: not so well
frobs: not so well, how are you
eckythump: I'm well
ni!: I hate Mondays
```
etc.
This grammar is alien. It has only words, and each word is a sentence.
It's so alien it's hard to see how it would "work", but it might. And since I could think of this one in a few minutes, there are likely other grammars that don't have the elements that we have, but are more convincing in their complexity and workability.
Another such grammar is the foundation-language-phrase-grammar of the language of the aliens in the Star Trek episode where Picard is forced to fight their leader in single combat on the planet while the ships are helpless above.
This is a language that is built on another langauge using metaphor. So for example. "Grr-un-gecky" was translated by the universal translator as "With sails unfurled". But that's just the translation of the underlying foundation language - it's like saying what the letters of our language are.
What the person was actually communicating in their language was "let's go". Instead of using words as the building blocks of their language, these aliens have come to use phrases of a different language. Another example was something like "Damok and Jalad at Tanagra". This was a reference to a myth, but it was a sentence that meant something like "We need to negotiate".
That's an alien grammar.
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Syntactic components of spoken languages (which most of the times are not context-free but context-aware) are defined by human interaction. There are a lot of problems:
1. Semantic elements like pronouns are defined in a per-language basis. We could say that in English we have a pronoun "nosotros" which can be translated as "we" in english. It is the same in each aspect. However in Quichua they have a distinction between "we (but not you; I'm describing a situation involving *my* people)" translated to *noqayku* (exclusive-we), and "we (you and me, or you and exclusive-we)" translated to *noqanchis* or *noqanchik* (it depends on the region), but people talking *mapudzungu* (lit. *language of the Earth* from *Mapuche* tribe in Argentina/Chile) has a strange form of *dual we* (you and me, just 2 people).
2. Entire words or particles? It is also a matter of language! In English you can say "my dog" where "my" is a possessive for 1st-singular and "dog" is the man's best friend. In quichua you say just a word: *allkuy* (or *allqoy* or *ashqoy* in other regions) where *allku* is dog, and an aggregate *·y* particle is the possessive (not a separate word).
3. Communicating with words or world-alike sounds is just too *mammalic*. Perhaps you can even imagine a world without words (ej. bees, ants). Perhaps lights, lower-frequency waves, farts. **Spoken languages are spoken sequentially** and depending on the sequence they will also define the involved culture (Quichua and German speaking people will not tend to interrupt a lot as people from Argentina does, because the verb comes at the end!). Sequence becomes important in spoken languages, but not necessarily in other type of communications (e.g. if I insult you saying *Gordo Puto* I'm remarking the 2nd insult which could be translated as "gay", whereas if I'm insulting you as "Puto Gordo", I'm assuming you're gay but remarking the "fat" part: even when they are two distinct elements in the same syntactical category, the order matters). If you are bound to use a word-system (i.e. language) and need words with different structure you will need a different conception about surrounding phenomena (alikes, objects, stuff moving, attributes, time, senses), and you will have to even redesign (shallowly) the most important matters about their brain and interaction. Before you define the language, ensure you define the brain somehow. If you conceive aliens from a human perspective, you will get human-like aliens.
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Their communication could be more rudimentary: They say they are sad, angry, happy, etc... But with no information why. That's quite different than our communication, where we would often give the information (why) but not the emotion. The aliens could, for example, say what they see in a way that transmits their emotion, but to understand what they mean - is a matter of context and logical deduction.
Or, they could be more developed than us: they read the situation much better, know all the data, so their communication is not understandable to us because it is a few steps ahead. Like, when you ask someone if they have a watch, and they tell you the time. Now, take this further!
You ask an alien if they come for peace, they see our horrible political system and understand peace is not an option with us barbarians so they want to say no, then they see this will mean you open fire on them so they say they come in peace and eradicate us nonetheless.
Or a hive mind: Each part only knows and communicates a little bit. So, if you talk to one element, you intercept something like: "left eye move left" and that's totally not understandable to you. You need to speak with a certain % of the hive mind to understand what they mean.
"left eye move left" "right eye move left" "mouth make consonants" "throat make vowels" - the verbs/nouns here are not part of speech, they are an instruction set
[Answer]
Kind of. Natural languages and most practical computer languages tend to fall between context free and [context sensitive languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-sensitive_language). Thus an alien language that would have fully context sensitive grammar (**no** structures not expressible as context free) would be almost certainly too complex for humans to use and entirely different from any human language. Truly alien. But still probably comprehensible for most practical sentences.
Additionally a language could be [recursive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_language), the next step up in the hierarchy, and still be usable by aliens. To humans such language would be incomprehensible.
So it is possible. It is however extremely unlikely. Computer languages manage to be Turing-complete with mostly context-free grammars and mostly context-free grammars are much simpler to parse and thus languages based on them with few extensions would be more efficient in practice and preferred by the evolution of languages. There isn't really, as far as we know anything to gain by using more complex recursive grammars for communication.
But that could of course be just a human limitation. Maybe a recursive grammar would enable compression of communication and thought or something if our brains just could support it natively. Or maybe the aliens just think that communicating in a needlessly complex language is sexy. Or maybe it helps comprehend some problems in mathematical logic that help them deal with some issues our evolution did not have to deal with.
And yes, I know this answer is not very useful in practice as it gives no real idea what such languages would be like.
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# [Reverse Polish Notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation) Linguistics
Consider that every word is either a noun, a verb or a modifier on another word. Grammatically would then become possible to create a completely unambiguous (but very irritating) language based on reverse polish notation.
Consider:
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The dog (definite article) (noun)
```
Here, `the` modifies the noun `dog` to inform us that dog is a
In RPNL:
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Dog the
```
We can extend this further:
```
The brown dog -> Dog brown the
```
In `The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog`, `jumps over` is a single verb related to two other objects, so this become:
```
(The quick brown fox) (jumps over) (the lazy dog) -> (Fox brown quick the) (dog lazy the) (jumps over)
```
Here, we can precisely parse this, as the verb `jumps over` works on two nouns, or noun structures.
Why is this irritating and how would it cause conflict... well, consider a person who interupts mid-sentence after 5 words:
A: How did this mess happen?
B: The quick brown fox jumped...
A: Get to the point man!
Versus:
A: How did this mess happen?
Alien: (Fox brown quick the) (dog...
A: Get to the point man!
Whenever an alien talks, it needs to finish a sentence in its entirety, otherwise you only get fragments of thought, with no relation until right at the end.
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Try Star Trek: "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra".
For another alien grammar, Sheri Tepper's "The Companions" features scent as a major communication method, and how this forms messages is definitely interesting.
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Languages can be as different as the experience of the alien species is.
Imagine something as alien as possible: Sentient crystal formations (a favorite of mine). They perceive the world only through vibrations and electromagnetic waves of some frequencies, using radio to communicate with each other. They recognize each other by shared resonance frequencies that are unique to each pair and change over time as the crystals grow.
What is their grammar like?
* The crystals have no verbs as they have no concept of action. Even outside forces acting on them are only described in terms of the end results, since the how does not matter if they cannot change or prevent it.
* The crystals address each other by the shared resonances, mixing in more frequencies if they are talking to or about more crystals. They have no subject-object distinction. Something is either present in the harmony or not.
* The environment is described by reproducing vibrations and light/radiation frequencies.
* Time is expressed by using older resonances after the initial hail and flow of time by a progression through the past frequencies. The future is only roughly defined by continuing a progression past the current resonances.
[Answer]
I think a common property of all human languages is their ambiguity. E.g. english is full of these, on very different levels including homonymes, grammar and syntax, often all munched together ("Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana").
An alien race communicating completely "logical", exact and unambigous would be very hard to understand. There are attempts to create such languages, e.g. the [Loglan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan) language family.
[Answer]
"Alien nature of the *speakers*" contains an assumption that may be completely unwarranted: that your aliens communicate by means of sound waves. Even here on earth, we have creatures that communicate visually, and creatures that can create complex patterns on their skins and vary those patterns at high speed (using chromatophores).
So how about aliens who evolved with (an) extra eye(s) dedicated to communication, and patches of skin-like tissue on which they can form fast-moving patterns of considerable complexity? I'd hazard a guess that such communication would be far more impenetrable than a mere succession of glyphs mapping onto human words.
Or even if they use sound: an ultrasonic carrier may have sufficient bandwidth to be modulated in several of the ways used by humans for radio communications. Multiple sidebands, for example. Human speech breaks down into words, with (in European languages) a non-verbal but emotional side-channel conveyed by pitch. Imagine several channels, each conveying a stream of information of similar density to speech, with meaning conveyed via their inter-relationships rather than each as a unit. Being able to appreciate every note and harmony in a Bach fugue might get you as far as one of their babies.
back on Earth: we're still unable to talk to dolphins. Are they just not that intelligent (ie less intelligent than great apes, African Grey parrots, and domesticated dogs)? Many observations suggest otherwise. What other wild animals not only have sufficient empathy to realize that another species (humans) are in trouble in the water and need help, but also enough intelligence to know that to help them these "aliens" have to be assisted back to land, a place where dolphins cannot go and the margins of which are perilous to the rescuers. My own guess is that they do have language, and it is sufficiently alien that we can't map their language onto ours.
[Answer]
One thing that I think is universal throughout human languages is that they are a sequence of words. So how if this principle doesn't hold for alien languages? While the aliens would still have syntactic units, those units would not fulfil the role that words fulfil in human languages. A single concept, like "dog" or "bite" would be distributed over several syntactic units, while each syntactic unit would express some relationship that would be encoded by things like the word order in our languages.
For example, consider the sentence "Yesterday I saw a dog biting a man."
There are several relationships here:
* A relationship between "yesterday" and "saw" that gives the time of the act of seeing.
* A relationship between "I" and "saw" that gives the subject of the seeing.
* A relationship between "saw" and "biting" giving the object of the seeing.
* A relationship between "a dog" and "biting" giving the subject of the biting.
* A relationship between "biting" and "a man" giving the object of the biting.
So in this sentence we have three types of relationships: time, subject and object. Let's say these types of relationships are associated with the following sounds:
* "s" for the subject relationship
* "b" for the object relationship
* "tr" for the time relationship (I chose a more complex one because it's less basic)
Now the concepts described by our words may be related to vowel combinations which then are distributed over the syntactic components they are associated with. Say the vowel combinations are
* "aio" for "yesterday"
* "eua" for "I"
* "iauau" for "to see"
* "ouia" for "dog"
* "eaieu" for "to bite"
* "oiau" for "man"
Those vowel combinations are then distributed over the syntactic units of the relationships they are in. So for example the sentence above may translate into
>
> aiotria euasua ubeai ouiasie uboiau
>
>
>
Of course to make that into a complete and viable language, obviously much more consideration (and probably also some tweaking of the above concepts) would be needed. But the above should be enough to give an idea what the language might look like.
[Answer]
In terms of grammar, there isn't much of a variation in what you can change.
In it's simplest form, a language needs to have words that refer to things, (such as objects, people etc.), and also words to describe what that object is currently doing. Extrapolate this to all other variations of 'things to refer to' (emotions for example), and the most variation you can have is what already varies in most languages on earth.
However, alien life may communicate in many different ways. They may whistle at different pitches, shake their bodies in specific movements as a form of sign language, or have a bio-luminescent antenna that brightens and dims in order to communicate. They could even be telepathic.
In this case, what would one recognize as grammar? Being able to project a picture into another being's head of exactly what you mean would avoid the need for 'language' altogether.
Although, in order to communicate coherently, any language would need at least some form of consistent structure in order for the aliens to understand each other. So grammar would always be needed in some form or other.
If the language is translated (from shiny lights to English, for example), the grammar would need to be translated too, so I don't think there is much wiggle room to adapt an entirely new system of grammar for a current language.
However, you can always use an incorrect grammar system that is still coherent, as Yoda does. In Terry Prachett's Discworld novels, I remember in at least one that the merchants could not speak with the correct punctuation, but it was still coherently readable. So as long as the grammar is understandable, it could be changed to simply be incorrect.
[Answer]
I think that the answer is around us. Just listen to the animals. Birds, mammals, reptiles, insects all speak differently and we can't understand its grammar. We even think that they don't speak. We assume they just make simple anger, threat, alarm, invitation sounds without intelligence.
Also a word can be pronounced in infinitely different ways. It means a whole language can be consist of only one word's different pronounciations.
Furthermore, there are no need of sounds to form a language. Colors, light, pressure, scent can also be ways to communicate.
[Answer]
Grammar is not only order of words in sentence. I would say many things depends on aliens society and culture.
Imagine if your alien race is swarm type society with one collective mind who controls drones. That type of alien will more likely will use different grammatical person than us. Maybe wont have singular form, or maybe if each entity has own independent will, it will have another from, ie singular form to describe single entity, plural form to describe multiple entities influence by different minds/queens and hive form to describe multiple entities control by same queen.
Different alien race might develop different tenses, earthlings use from two to nine different tenses. Aliens might have similar range, or if they master time travel, they might have more.
If your alien race will have different than two genders, this might affect grammatical conjugation.
This is only small snow snow flake, on the top of iceberg, there are so many possibilities within grammatical features which we known and defined. There are some possibilities aliens might have their own, unknown to us.
[Answer]
I would recommend that you read the short story "Story of your Life" by Ted Chiang that is precisely about this topic.
In it, he describes a language that is so different from humans' that learning it changes your perception of time (i.e. you have to "perceive" the future and the past in order to use it).
The core of Chiang's work is on languages, you can also read the other stories in his collection, which I find excellent.
[Answer]
The answer is, sadly, no.
In many ways it's like computing: once you've got the fundamental parts down, you can translate anything.
If you do want something that seems totally alien though you can have the rules of grammatical construction, suffixing, prefixing, tenses etc change mid conversation. If the rules are clear to the aliens (past participals use the oi suffix if they're even numbered words but the eo prefix if they're odd), they the effect will be baffling to anyone who doesn't have the full immersion.
Even then though the grammar can be worked out, but it might take a long, long time.
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