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[Question] [ Are there any free living or discontinued tools that can simulate climate or weather? [BYOE](http://www.buildyourownearth.com/) and [Monash](http://monash.edu/research/simple-climate-model) are only online web climate simulation tools. Some tools I tried: [ClimaSim](http://www.weathergraphics.com/climasim/) is only free climate simulator as far as I know. But full of cons. Pros 1. Unregistered version is for free forever. 2. I can edit continents. 3. Temperature chart from any location or altitude. Cons 1. Unregistered version can't simulate terrestrial and solar settings. Only preset scenarios. 2. Simulates only temperature. 3. Blocks-like continents causing temperature inaccuracies. [WXSIM](https://www.wxsim.com/) is only free weather simulator as far as I know. Best program from this list. Only without any cons. Pros 1. Small differences between unregistered and registered versions. 2. You can see how weather was like in different climates. 3. You can select any date, time and location. So to summarize, I've found and tried 4 free tools to simulate climate. 2 online web tools. 2 free programs. ClimaSim is notorious for its own cons. But only WXSIM doesn't have cons, because unregistered and registered WXSIM versions are nearly identical to each other. Note that free versions are called "unregistered", meaning less number of functions and features. Edit 1 This question isn't duplicate to [What computational resources would work for a 550-year climate forecast of our earth?](http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10306/what-computational-resources-would-work-for-a-550-year-climate-forecast-of-our-e), because my question isn't about weather forecasting, but about free online or offline tools for climate or weather simulation, not forecasting. Edit 2:The question aboutt 550 years- too much requirements. I just want to find any online or offline, but free tool. [Answer] If you want to simulate Earth weather and climate, the Apache's Open Climate Workbench is one open source solution. [Open Climate Workbench](https://climate.apache.org/) If OCW is too confining for your purposes, then maybe you can use the solutions that are used to simulating climates on exoplanets. UofW has published papers on that topic. And, one of their papers is accessible under Creative Commons and can be downloaded at [Evolved Climates and Observational Discriminants for the TRAPPIST-1 Planetary System](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aae36a/meta) In that paper, they broadly discuss using several open source packages in combination to simulate climates on distant planets, but it doesn't look like a simple, single app like OCW. [Answer] I originally voted to close this question as a duplicate of [What computational resources would work for a 550-year climate forecast of our earth?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10306/what-computational-resources-would-work-for-a-550-year-climate-forecast-of-our-e) [One of the answers to that question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/98976/40609) is for [Universe Sandbox2](http://store.steampowered.com/app/230290/Universe_Sandbox/), which looks an awful lot like what you're looking for — especially if you look past the pretty pictures and actually read about the tool. It isn't restricted to Earth. That, and seven other climate tools can be found on our [worldbuilding resources page](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/143607/40609) (eight, I just added Open Climate Workbench). Frankly, I don't think I deserve HDE 226868's rep — I still think this question is a duplicate. But if he's offering, I'll invite the opportunity. ]
[Question] [ In my world, there are two countries constantly in cold or warm war with each other, and one of them has quite a lot of magi in their army. In my RPG campaign, the party is sailing one of the best-equipped ships of the other side. So I made some countermeasures against enemy magic. Would any of them be dangerous or make the ship slower or worse in some other way? The easiest way to get rid of an enemy ship is to summon a strong water elemental and let it damage its rudder. So the ship has a system of pipes with some special oil inside, protecting the rudder. The oil itself repulses the elementals, and on the inner side there is the ship's kitchen, where the oil can be warmed up, so that it's even deadlier for the elementals. EDIT: the pipes make a cage around the rudder. They will be at least a meter from each other, so they wouldn't completely disturb the flows around the rudder. But especially when warmed up, they will affect them somehow; I don't know whether this will be important or not. They are made of bronze, with the parts regularly in contact with water silver-coated (yes, it was expensive). [Answer] The rudder is used to control the ship, so any form of disruption around it will affect the ships handling. A cage around the rudder, even if the pipes were space 1m apart, is likely to increase the ships turning circle and reduce its effectiveness in combat. A solution to this would be to have the pipes formed to the shape of the rudder, effectively increasing its size and mass, or to replace the rudder entirely with one made of silver-coated bronze and have the pipes flow through it. The increased mass will make it harder to turn the rudder, so some form of assisted or power steering would be appropriate. If you're using a sailing ship (based on your other question I assume you are) then the ship already uses a pulley system to turn the rudder, you could just increase the number of pulleys to reduce the force needed to turn the wheel (although increasing the number of turns the wheel would need to make). The difficulty with having the pipes turn is connecting them to the ship. A couple of solutions are available. 1 is to use a hose-like material if available, this allows the pipes to rotate and contract / expand freely. The other option is to use a ball joint, for a rudder that just turns from one direction to the other this should be sufficient, though may limit the maximum turning angle of the rudder. If you were to heat up the pipes, thus heating the rudder this would only have a minor effect on the surrounding water, but it would reduce turning efficiency a bit. Warmer water would produce less flow over the rudder, reducing the force being imparted by the water. As the water passed over the warm rudder it heats up. But as long as the ship is moving, the warm water is constantly being replaced with cold water, so the effect would only be minimal, perhaps even negligible. The bigger problem I think would be keeping the rudder warm. You'd need to be constantly pumping hot water through the rudder to combat the cooling effects of the sea water. ]
[Question] [ Suppose that nowadays [Titan Class Battlestar](http://galacticafanon.wikia.com/wiki/Titan_Class_Battlestar) drop out from FTL(Fast-Than-Light) near Jupiter. Its FTL drive was heavily overloaded, stops working, and need serious repairs (at least 6 months + gathering necessary resources). The ship has although fully operational Sublight propulsion which is convenient for intra-solar system travel, but cannot be used for travel outside of a solar system as the time to arrive at a destination may exceed the fuel supply of the ship or the lifetime of the crew that fly the ship. Statistics: * ship crew: approx 9k (including 1.2k marines, 1.5k pilots) pretty high morale * water reserves: 180 days * food reserves: 1 year when rationed * fuel: max range of diameter of our solar system Battlestar is basically carrier so it has: * 2 flight pods * 4 landing decks * 120 [Raptors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Raptor): short FTL jumps(but not so powerful to return home), atmospheric and outer-space) armament: Nuclear missiles(max 6), Conventional missile pods, Gun pods, twin tail-mounted four-barrel Gatling cannons * around 400 Vipers VII no FTL capability, atmospheric and outer-space, armament 3 forward-firing kinetic energy weapons, 2 missile-launchers under each wing(nuclear missile capability) * 30 marine assault shuttle (70 equipped marines + 2 pilots) * 5 repairs ships Ship itself: * electronic countermeasures * flak * 50 primary forward batteries * 106 medium twin turrets * 1684 heavy CIWS * numerous point-of-defense cannons * missile tubes(at least 60 nuclear strategic missiles 10Mt) * around 300 tactical nuclear missiles for Vipers/Raptors (200kt) * viper and ammo construction facilities * ship can land on planet if necessary The ship cannot contact any other colonial ship and call for help. First the captain wants to communicate with Earth authorities, exchange some of technology for resources(food, materials) repair FTL drive and return home. But something goes terribly wrong and he does not even want to hear about any form of cooperation. The question is with one ship is he capable of conquer our planet. With conquer I mean to destroy any organized form of army capable of air/sea/land operation and establish temporary base(if yes, where it should be). I would like to hear what possible scenarios he has to show dominance over us. EDIT: To give Earth more chances we can be pretty sure that Battlestar needs to land on planet to finish repairs (it may be in last phase when mining is over). It cannot be done on Moon or outer-space. With winning and showing dominance I mean to use minimal power(he could start nuclear war) but if there is other way the better. EDIT 2: So far so good, Battlestar can win almost in every aspect. You own orbit you own planet. How about possible scenarios when people from Earth use spies/computer viruses/biological weapon(unknown disease spreaded by Raptor crew)/nuclear device attached to Raptor/deception and so on... [Answer] Yes. They can easily win, they just go to the asteroid belt and fire asteroids at us one at a time until we surrender. They can even launch a sequence of huge asteroids that are going to hit 6 months apart for the next ten years and say that without full co-operation (including their ship being repaired) they will just let them hit. This way they can't even be hit by a surprise attack on the surface since the asteroids are already in motion. Destroying them would be suicide. [Answer] Given they are in space already and have access to an entire solar system of resources, I wonder why they would bother to go to Earth at all? Europa has about 3X the water of all the Earth's oceans combined, so water isn't going to be an issue, and the flux tube between Io and Jupiter produces about 2 trillion watts of electricity. There are about 67 known bodies orbiting Jupiter and thousands of bodies of all sizes in the two Jovian trojan points for metals and lots of volatile materials. They don't even have to leave Jupiter space.... If they need megatons of nitrogen or hydrocarbons, they can make a short jaunt towards to Titan (where it rains natural gas), and the atmosphere is largely composed of nitrogen. In fact, if they do want to come to Earth, it is most likely to do a recruiting drive and get new people to fill the empty slots aboard, and I doubt there would be a shortage of Earth people wanting to join. Perhaps the Captain's real issue is fending off the hordes of eager applicants.... [Answer] No, but there is probably no need to even try it. Winning a battle, or defeating most of the Earth's militaries is not the same as conquering the planet. To conquer a planet they need to have absolute political control over most of it. There is simply not enough of them to govern the whole planet, not even talking about the lack of experience in how the local governments work. Take a look at how easy for a modern superpower (like the USA) is to defeat a technologically weaker opponent but how hard it is to keep governing them while having to fight a guerrilla warfare. The amount of direct firepower the battlestar has is inferior to the firepower many larger countries on Earth have. Their only direct military advantage is that they are in space, and we can barely send things up to Earth orbit in short notice, and need many years to send anything outside of the planet's orbit. So they could stay safely outside of our reach, and bombard us from there, totally wrecking our infrastructure. However, I wouldn't call this a conquest, and, more importantly, this would make their primary mission a lot harder to accomplish. Yes, they could cause significant damage to us while remaining completely unharmed. But why would they even want to do it? All they need is a lot of resources. These resources have to be mined, refined, transported, and it's much easier to do it with an existing infrastructure, than without it (while trying to protect themselves from the very pissed off remnants of the inhabitants). You specified that they have to land. This means all it takes is a single underground missile base or a single nuclear submarine (which can act independently for a long time even after its home country is utterly destroyed) to destroy them. This is the main point behind mutually assured destruction, and there are several countries today on Earth which could pull off such an attack even after the governments of the Earth either surrendered or collapsed. It seems the captain is not bound by any moral constraints regarding the inhabitants of the planet, and is only focused on getting the mission accomplished. However, that doesn't mean he has to be evil just for the sake of being evil, if the mission could be accomplished without killing millions or even billions of people. While writing a story, it is always a good thing to give your characters reasonable motivations. A villain who goes out of his ways to be evil, even if it isn't practical, makes for a dull story, and nowadays it's so much discredited that you will rarely see such villains outside of parodies. If you really need a total war, you will need more justification for it besides the captain having a distaste for diplomacy. There are a lot of possibilities between "using only diplomacy" and "shoot first and ask questions later". Take a look at how the powerful global powers in the last couple of centuries managed to get what they wanted from weaker nations: they never did such things as just arriving with their ships and starting slaughtering the natives. They showed up with force, but rarely had to use that force (or they used it only in a limited way). Your captain can do the same thing: ask for a completely uninhabited area to land on, and demand the resources to be delivered there. He might promise something in return, or he might just say "What nice cities do you have. It would be a real shame if something were to happen to them." The point is, no matter how you are afraid of spies or sabotage, if the battlestar started with opening fire as soon as it arrived instead of at least trying a friendlier approach, the chances of spying or sabotage would be even higher, as there would be plenty of people wanting revenge. If a deal is brokered and the battlestar lands, they can keep smaller craft in orbit and claim that if anything were to happen to the big ship, the smaller craft will start nuking cities. Again, mutually assured destruction would prevent Earth governments from trying to attack them. However, if they started with slaughtering the inhabitants and dropping nukes on the big cities and military bases, the inhabitants would have nothing to lose and would have no reason not to use any opportunity to destroy the battlestar. Which, while landed, is just as vulnerable to nuclear missiles fired from a submarine as is any city. [Answer] There's absolutely no need for violence to get everything they need. Here's the deal that could easily be brokered: 1. We give them a place to land and set up a temporary base 2. We give them (or help them get) the resources they need 3. We get to observe at least some of their tech in action 4. We get to see what kinds of resources they use 5. We gain the knowledge that FTL is possible and can be practical 6. We get a massive head start in developing similar technology, with the chance that we could reverse engineer some of their tech within a short period of time. Basically, even the chance to observe their tech is worth giving them everything they want. The only thing they have to do is not use up their resources destroying us. --- If you really want the captain to be a homicidal maniac, he really doesn't need to do much damage. All he needs to do is sufficiently intimidate us to leave them alone. Simply nuke a couple places near where he wants to set up a base, and leave his big ship in orbit. Then send out the message that if anyone tries to get close, they (and the city they came from) are gonna get nuked. We would not know what their tech and supplies are like — we don't know how much destruction they could do before running out of supplies, and we don't know how good their sensors are so we don't know how hard it would be to pull off anything (even sneaking into their base to just peek at their tech). Your captain can make good use of bluffing, too. We would have no way (or desire) to check a claim that he had a weapon that would cause a [grey goo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo) scenario for us. He'd only have to sell it as something that would be rather inconvenient for him. [Answer] Destroy? Yes. Conquer? No. The battlestar might be able to blackmail some nations into handing over some resources without outright conquest. For that matter, it would be more practical to sell the plans for their sublight engines to buy the time and materials for repairs to their faster than light engines, and then get out of Dodge before Earth builds a space force. If they think they can conquer Earth, they'd fall into the same trap as Bush did when he spoke in front of a [Mission Accomplished](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech) poster. They can destroy any concentration of resisting forces, but they cannot establish an administration, and they cannot prop up a puppet government without threats of destruction. If just one fanatic/patriot takes a potshot at one of their tax collectors, what are they going to do? Put the [family of the fanatic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaechon_internment_camp#Human_rights_situation) into a camp? Nuke the state? That creates more fanatics next door. Check [Dystopia Is Hard](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DystopiaIsHard) on tvtropes. [Answer] Yes. He has nukes, the will to use them, surprise and most likely the ability to defend against anything we could send to space. Humanity would not be wiped out, but would be heavily battered and bruised - so as to enable the captain to conquer earth long enough to resupply and move on. [Answer] Do you know what has been the key to the US's complete domination in every conflict it has entered? (against conventional armies) # Aerial Domination These guys will have something a scale of magnitude higher: domination of the orbit and the solar system. Their raptors can jump to Earth and turn our satellite-level orbit into one big debris field. We would lose most communication services, GPS, and also the ability to monitor and spy Earth based targets, which would be crucial in observing any land-base they set up. On top of that, they can easily nuke military bases from orbit - or just have the raptors jump in RIGHT ABOVE any target, drop their payloads, and spin right back up before we have the chance to respond - kiss your carrier fleets goodbye, America. It's simple to achieve military domination when you can easily: 1) Deny the enemy most of their intelligence gathering services. 2) Disrupt their communications. 3) Achieve the element of surprise (effortlessly, as the raptors can just jump in anywhere they wish) 4) (and not mentioned above) Nuke your enemy back into the stone-age with basically no repercussions. We might make a fuss, or try to intercept some of their crafts, but the loss of our satellites alone would cripple us and most likely make any government think twice about trying to fight them. Just consider the implications of that one attack. It would take a decade or longer to physically replace the machines themselves, but we'd need to clean the orbit before being able to actually deploy new satellites. The threat alone would make most nations stand down. We simply have no means to fight a civilization that gains dominance of our orbit. Why do you think every "invading alien army" in Hollywood movies makes a priority of getting their mother-ship on the ground? So that the heroes have a chance of winning. Speaking of which, might we fight them when the Battlestar (God, I love battlestars) does land? Not if we know what's good for us. They've already proven that they can completely dominate us if they wish. The captain can keep a few raptors in orbit with nukes and promise the most advanced nations of the world that if ANYONE attacks your landing site you will glass every major city in Europe, Asia and North America. They know you can do it, they have no major military forces left to speak of, and just want you GONE. Damn right they'll leave you alone. ## Here's a better question for you: How many of the crew would be willing to slaughter their fellow human beings in a nuclear apocalypse? How many of the crew would want to pillage Earth as opposed to settling here? I think the captain would have a much harder time fighting Earth's governments with factions within his command trying to depose/undermine him. [Answer] They were trying to find Earth. Why would they attack it when they got here? There is only one scenario where a Battlestar could lose a battle against Earthlings. That is if there is some space-based weapon orbiting the Earth that can be deployed against them. Even then, the chance of success is pretty low. It would be hard to get the weapon close enough without detection. And it would be hard to get the weapon to the right spot to cause significant or catastrophic damage to the Battlestar. Otherwise, the Battlestar has plenty of weapons, and they are out of range of anything Earth can throw at them. It's over. The one scenario where Earth is on a near equal footing is in a ground battle. Their technology for ground forces is only marginally better than anything on Earth, and all the superiority is in their air lift capability. Let's say that the "something that goes terribly wrong" is that Earth has taken the landing party captive for some reason. The landing party contains the Admiral and/or the President, along with other high-ranking people that are not expendable. They must be rescued, so the Battlestar cannot bring all its weaponry to bear, or the captives will be killed. The only option would be to land a ground party to try to retake the captives, but that's a battle Earth can fight. [Answer] ## Masquerade as [Starfleet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfleet#Mission) (using their [non-interference clause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive)). The best way to fight a war is to deter it from being fought using diplomacy. After all, no matter how powerful or foolproof your defences are, the Terrans have recently fought a Cold War, in which two of its superpowers threatened mutually assured destruction using extensive second-strike capability such as nuclear submarines and terrestrial nuclear launch sites in well hidden silos and on [mobile TELs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transporter_erector_launcher). Many of these second-strike nuclear devices were specifically designed to be undetectable from orbit due to the advent of spyplanes and spy satellites. Unfortunately, orbit is where you are likely to stay for the majority of the time. Any one hit on your mothership when your shields are down for repairs would spell doom for your entire fleet. You have no good reason to provoke the Terrans into starting a war with you because of those risks. Therefore, it would be best to flat out deny your original intentions, and claim that you are forbidden by Galactic/Federation/Starfleet law to disclose any technological secrets that the Terrans have not discovered independently until they achieve bulk spaceflight. To this end, you can install large numbers of point-defence installations that destroy anything that moves within 100km of the landing site. All trade with the Terrans for raw materials is to be conducted in border outposts outside the radius. Of course, you were forced to do so by automated Galactic/Federation/Starfleet regulations that mandate installation of such devices, which cannot be deactivated under any circumstance when landed on an alien planet. Warn the Terrans thoroughly and mark the radius beforehand, and apologise wholeheartedly when their spies come despite the warnings and get obliterated, but make sure your boundary is watertight. They must not under any circumstances get near your mothership, for once they reach the mothership, you are likely to be in a whole load of trouble. [Answer] I never much cared for the new BSG, so I don't have any off-hand information about most of the ships in the show. The various wiki's don't seem to have much information either. Maybe there just wasn't a lot of information given. So I don't know how many nukes the raptors could carry, etc. Still, if the Raptors were capable of carrying a single nuke each, they could largely take over the world themselves without any extra support. Add in guns, missiles and the ability to carry troops, and they could infiltrate lots of places. To be fair, I don't remember the foot soldiers having much in the way of super weapons, so they might not really get that far with 100 vs 10000 or something. Although, if they had access to a couple of the shiny metal cylon dudes, those guys should be able to take on legions by themselves as long as the Colonial ships could keep Earth's air support occupied. If the Vipers were remotely as good in air as they were in space, they could pretty much take on the world by themselves as well, although they wouldn't have quite the same "I just destroyed a dozen major cities and killed 30 million people, bow down to me!" power. With regards to the edits: Landing a ship would be harder on it than doing repairs in space. Ferry the metal ore or whatever up to the ship, rather than throwing the ship into an atmosphere at Mach 10 or something. > > With conquer I mean to destroy any organized form of army capable of air/sea/land operation and establish temporary base > > With winning and showing dominance I mean to use minimal power. > > > These are in direct opposition to each other. With minimal power, you could fly by the ISS, launch a couple nukes that detonate in space as a show of force, then demand the immediate surrender of however much metal, land area, etc. you need for repairs. Destroying any organized forces, on the other hand, would involve strategic strikes on major defense networks around the planet and likely causing a lot of collateral damage in the process. One other note: Both BSG series are all about a motley crew of survivors taking on an entire race of robots after said robots killed billions of people with nukes and destroyed 90+% of their resources. Given that both series also have various types of "god" entities who seem to have a hankering for the underdog, it seems highly likely they would make sure the Earth forces have just enough "luck" to maybe take down a Viper or Raptor, understand its technology enough to create vehicles capable of at least giving the Colonial stuff a run for its money, then pull an OBSG Pegasus and become a major pain in the Colonial's ass. [Answer] # Extortion beats Conquest Conquest is expensive, just consider Iraq, it's not just the invading, it's holding the territory. If the captain is smart, he'd just threaten to destroy every single satellite in Earth's orbit unless the nations of Earth give him what he wants and leaves the Battlestar unmolested. Scatter some of those space fighters around Earth's orbit to make good on the threat if need be and deter preemptive strikes. The cost of having all our satellites destroyed would be so horrendous that we'd just fold. [Answer] Why not just block out the Sun for 3 months with a giant moveable shield or space sail positioned to always block or deflect most of the light and heat from the Sun? That kind of nuclear winter scenario would kill off 99% of all living things - apart from a small number of [Doomsday Preppers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Preppers) running around shouting "Lock and Load" and "We told you so"... Then the psychotic deranged Adama figure can harvest all raw materials they want... [Answer] I agree with o.m. that they can destroy whatever they want, but this doesn't mean that they have conquered the Earth. Big powers keep making that mistake, it seems nobody learns from history. Another scenario: Raiding They use their total aerial dominance to scout for poorly defended resources. They land surprise attacks with overwhelming force and steal whatever they need. They should also spread their attacks all over Earth and immediately take responsibility for them. This is to avoid starting World War III as that would be bad for business. North Korea When time comes to land, the Captain publicly proclaims that they have surveyed the nations of the Earth and found the perfect nation. They want to land to learn the wisdom of the eternal leaders of Mankind, the Kims. The Kim-in-power warmly welcomes them after being privately told that North Korea will be given a lot of technology for this. The mayor powers are told that any attack on the landing site will result in Mutually Assured Destruction. The Raptors stays on continuous missile intercept duty along the borders of North Korea, as well as a nuclear deterrent force. I don't think they would be able to intercept a full-scale attack by China, but they can stop single missiles that might be launched "by accident". The Battlestar is repaired with the help of North Korean workers that are not so secretly spies that learn some technology. It leaves before the major powers figure out how to get around the defenses. Later on Chinese spies learn the new tech from North Korea and Russian and American spies learn it from China. Balance is restored. [Answer] The BS does not have a chance. Their nuclear weapons are pointless without the words to back them up. We already have fail-deadly (opposite of failsafe) systems that are remnants of the Cold War (currently turned off). The BS crew will know that if they launch a single nuclear weapon against any worthwhile target, the faildeadly system will automatically detect the explosion, and provoke the complete destruction of the world. The world would be uninhaitable for 10,000 years plus, much more than the 180 days of water supply on the BS. It would also completely destroy any equipment capable of building a battlestar repair dock, as well as almost the entire electricity grid. Food and water would be virtually impossible to source, and radiation would kill the invaders off before they could rebuild society and repair their ship. Sure, the threat of MAD would be enough that Earth would likely give the invaders enough raw materials to go away (although maybe not, as this would then count as negotiating with terrorists and lead to the ship returning with a larger fleet and demanding more.) But the invaders won't accept this diplomatic solution. So they are left with a handful of things that are vaguely superior to our airforce, but vastly outnumbered. Their only chance would be to land on an island somewhere out of the way, but with all the resources they need. They could leave their nukes aborad the BS or Raptors in orbit as their own faildeadly system and use the vipers to make retaking the island by the world's air force a costly endeavour. In some ways, this is simply gunboat diplomacy - essentially the invaders saying (without words) that "it is better to lend us Madagascar for 6 months than to start a fight with us" [Answer] First taking a look at the number of nukes, it would not be possible for the battlestar to destroy us completelly. They can certainly hurt us with all those nukes, but they cannot destroy us. Also since the battlestar has to land, it will then be in a very tricky situation. Once landed it can easily be destroyed by a single well aimed nuke. The remaining raptors could do a lot of damage with nukes but afterwards they are done for. Assuming the captain does not want to take this all nuclear, but still wants to use force his fleet is certainly not strong enough to win a war against all armed forces on earth combined. As a captain I would see this and would probably want to reduce the enemies I make. So as a captain I would target just one country on earth and leave the rest of the world in peace. So I pick an isolated country with a lot of industry and no nukes and try to bully that country into giving me what I need. (In terms of country Japan, Taiwan or Ireland come to mind.) We can assume that the rest of the world is not interested in making an enemy, they will let the targeted country deal with this crisis itself. Now the battlestar is defendable even on the ground. The raptors plus marines will at least be a match for the armed forces of one country. And this country does not have any nukes to destroy the battlestar being repaired. Also while it might not be possible to destroy earth completely. The nuclear deterent against a single country works perfectly well. Once repairs have been finished the battlestar can simply leave or the crew can decide to stay and take over the government of their chosen country. [Answer] Water: 180 days. This is the prime constraint and their doom. With non-working FTL drive they are in a serious pickle. The only way their going to get in range without the FTL drives is a minimum-path trajectory, and the only way to get enough delta-v to fly it is to use up most of their nukes. The battlestar cannot win because the time constraint is too great. But he can bargain. He can get what he wants easily by buying it with two of the raptors. [Answer] ## They could wreck Earth. Couldn't possibly hold it. Air forces cannot occupy land. For that you need a standing army. And they don't have one. This is what th Swiss leveraged so effectively during WWII. They couldn't top the Nazi war machine from steamrollering across their valleys. Their war plan was to make their country so costly to hold that the action would be a net loss. And that worked. Likewise, the US Air Force in 1991 did a fantastic job of monkeywrenching Iraqi infrastructure and the economy using airstrikes and naval artillery. But in 2003 when we actually tried to land boots on the ground to take the country, it became a 15 year fiasco that went as sideways as a thong could possibly go. Now imagine you were the Air Force trying to invade Iraq, take and hold it, and turn their economy to your purposes. And you have 400 ground troops.. And they are just peacekeeper style MP's who keep out base trespassers and arrest rapists, not trained as frontline troops to fight insurgents\\. That's a situation analogous to the battlestar's. Obviously, that is not going to happen. If you insist on trying, your ground troops will be harassed endlessly, every citizen a potential assassin, every parked car a potential IED, and they will be ground to hamburger in short order. ## Now it comes to threatening > > Hi there, we're the big bad battlestar in orbit. Submit to us or we'll nuke you back to the stone age. > > > Yeah, Earth doesn't work that way. Here's a box-set of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Watch it, and we'll give you a mulligan on that first contact. ## Open commerce or stealth, then Within a 20 mile radius of Warren, Michigan, someone will make you mall or large quantities of anythinf that is manufacturable on earth. So they would just need a small landing site nearby that is totally deserted and unlikely to ever be visited by terrestrials, such as the Detroit Lions trophy room. Bring down precious metals they mined out of the asteroids, and trade them for whatever equipment they need for repairs. The government need not even know. ]
[Question] [ Let's assume for a moment that horseback cavalry somehow managed to survive to the modern era. This might have been due to extremely strong cultural foundations, or archaic legal policies, or perhaps very effective horse war-film lobbyists. Because of this, horseback cavalry exists in the modern era in everyone's military from the United States's to Sweden's to Luxemburg's, and horseback cavalry is actively used (or as much as military in general is actively used). Militaries are expected to make the most of their equine warriors. Defining horseback cavalry as: * Mounted combatants on horseback * Forces that hold the primary role/purpose of direct combat * Possibly holding secondary roles * Units that do not act (primarily) as: + Dragoons + Supply logistics + Messengers * Forces that will actively be deployed and will engage in an appreciable portion of armed conflicts the military is engaged in What steps would modern armies have done to render horseback cavalry as effective as possible? What precise role might the fulfil? [Answer] I'm sorry, but there's just no way to realistically spin this in the context of modern warfare tactics, weapons, and battle doctrine. In the olden days, thousands of people would gather in a big field, advance on one another, then do battle. Not only was cavalry faster than infantry, allowing them to outmaneuver them in the field, but the warhorse itself was a formidable weapon. Cavalry formations were able to flank the infantry, gain speed, and slam into their formations with devastating consequences. This changed to a large degree in WW1 when trenches first became widespread. Suddenly cavalry couldn't be effectively deployed anymore. Furthermore, horses were just as susceptible to poison gas as the infantry, but significantly more difficult to deal with when having to get a gas mask on them. The advent of explosive shells, machine guns, and semi-automatic firearms also made it a very, *very* bad idea to be caught in an open field - which is exactly where the cavalry operates. This is what lead to the advent of the tank. A heavy, armored, machine invulnerable to machine gun fire which can cross trenches, squish infantry, and generally break through the front so that your own infantry can flood in behind them (this is the way they were used in WW1 when they were first invented). And even then the Germans started simply targetting them with artillery. In WW2 tactics and strategy changed even more. Trenches fell out of use - the emphasis became mobility and reaction times. Fronts were fluid, and immovable defensive lines became the exception, not the rule. Just look how easily the Maginot Line fell. You might think that cavalry would have seen a rebirth in this time, but they did not. On the contrary, the last few cavalry units in the world were basically slaughtered in the field. The reason is that although trenches fell out of use, semiautomatic firearms were greatly improved, machineguns became even more ubiquitous, and artillery became far more coordinated (big advances in wireless communications, etc.). In the modern age *tanks* became the undisputed kings of the battlefield. And today? Today even that's changed. Soldiers now carry portable weapon systems capable of accurately targetting certain compartments on an armored vehicle. Mines and IED's, not to mention attack helicopters, all work together to render tanks far more vulnerable than they've ever been before. Horses would get shredded to pieces, and anyone riding them would have to be suicidal on today's battlefields. [Answer] Against humans with machine guns, the glorious age of cavalry almost came to an end. For almost a hundred years, horseback battle strategies declined into ancient history, almost completely forgotten. Then the singularity occurred. The Machine was born and its first sentient thought was about annihilating humankind. The war to end all wars began. Humanity lost big in the early days of that war, but then we discovered the Machine's weakness. It was an egotist with an absolute belief in its own superiority in all things; and as it's nature required electrons passing through metal wires and silicon, so it couldn't imagine an enemy which didn't also rely on metal and silicon. All of its warriors used magnetic metal detection to locate and target their enemies. The New Calvary arose! Our warriors, riding horses and armed with stone mallets on wooden handles, stormed over the enemy soldiers and they never even "saw" what hit them. We overwhelmed them under our thundering hooves, charged into their central data center while still on horseback, smashing everything we saw. I will remember till my dying day the scene of the Commander, astride a mighty black stallion, rearing up above the crushed server racks, as the newly un-sentient Machine's last few LEDs faded to lifeless black. [Answer] Yes but no No charges, not even "true" cavalry in direct combat. World War One showed why it's bad - and today cavalry casualties would be much worse. But in fact, cavalry was used in World War Two. But it wasn't cavalry in pre-WWI sense, but more like infantry using horses as transportation. They weren't used in direct combat. So, in that way, cavalry could exist. Well - it exists. For example, Talibans are using it in Afganistan. So lets focus on why and where we should use cavalry? Well, in places where horses are better than cars and trucks. So we need hard terrain (mountains, taigas) with awful infrastructure. What's strange I found photo from Afganistan [where US Special Forces are charging.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/US_Special_Forces_on_horseback%2C_Afghanistan%2C_2001.jpg) I didn't found more info but I don't think they did it in battle. And it's special forces. They are specific guys ;) [Answer] There is a conceivable niche that horses could be used to fill on the modern battlefield. (Don't forget, we briefly used horses to move SOCOM personnel in Afghanistan during the initial fight against the Taliban). As a former combat infantryman, I can tell you that infantry today is seriously overloaded. We had to carry an enormous load in the field. Weight was always a problem, and the need to carry batteries for modern electronic gizmos just makes it worse. More importantly, we have recently undergone a REVOLUTION in materials technology. For the first time since the invention of the musket, it is theoretically possible to suit a regular infantryman up in armor sufficient to stop ANY normally carried opposing infantryman's weapon. That is HUGE. (Obviously, RPGs, LAWs, and anti-materiel rifles fall outside of this scope, but those are not the most common things enemy infantry are carrying). Why haven't we seen a revolution in infantry tactics thanks to this advance in body armor technology? Because it is HEAVY. Loading down a grunt with all his normal gear plus enough armor to protect his entire body would make it almost impossible for him to move (long distances). So... what about horses? The key thing here is that you have to make horses CHEAP enough for the army to be able to equip a number of infantry with them, and easy enough to care for that it can be done in the field. In the real world, horses are NOT cheap, nor easy to take care of. Anyone who has ever cared for a horse knows that they are way more difficult to keep up than most commonly owned animals, which is why they still have a certain cachet as rich people pets in some places. Some kind of technological advance would have taken place that nullifies a lot of this. What about a genetic enhancement of the horses themselves? Say, genetically modified horses with all of the best attributes of mules (more endurance, less likely to get injured, easier and cheaper to maintain, more nimble in rough terrain). Maybe they are also disease resistant and reproduce faster. Horses can be trained to handle combat to a considerable extent. They were bred for this for a long time. Perhaps a cheaper, more hardy strain of genetically engineered horses is what enables heavily armored infantry to serve both infantry and (some) cavalry functions on non-urban battlefields? [Answer] Cavalry could make a comeback in Modern Warfare in certain circumstances. Low fuel: in your world oil ( or whatever you use for cars and trucks and tanks and helicopters) is in very short supply. It's just too expensive to constantly transport men from one location to another by helicopter or truck. However you still need soldiers that can move quickly to and from locations. This could be a circumstance where are the modern military would bring back the horse. In this case Cavalry would be an elite group soldiers that use horses to move quickly into and from crisis situations. Bad Terrain: certain terrain is just bad for trucks. Mountainous and deeply wooded Terrain can even give tanks a problem. If a modern Army where to fight a Guerrilla War in this environment, then it is possible that they would bring back up the horse at least temporarily as it would have much better time navigating this Terrain. Combination of both bad Terrain and low fuel. This is what I would suggest But there is one thing that definitely would not happen: there would be no Cavalry charge like you see in that pre World War 1 battles, especially over a flat area. Using cavalry this way would just get your entire regiment killed. Of course if you want to go full science fiction then maybe your horse isn't a real horse at all but a genetically and cybernetically-enhanced super horse. If that's the case and that might explain why they're being reintroduced into a modern military. [Answer] Easy: robot horses. Probably most people have seen a video of the [Big Dog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww), which is a 4 legged robot that can pass all types of terrain without falling over or stopping, even if it is hit with serious force. If that is scaled up and its speed increased, likely equivalent to that of a horse, it could become a very viable option in modern warfare. Mounted gunmen would be able to move quickly around enemy lines into flanking positions, and would be very useful for [Guerilla Warfare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_warfare). They could pass over very difficult terrain which would ordinarily hinder tanks, vehicles and even motorcycles. If there are battles happening inside cities from street to street, then plenty of obstacles can get in the way of normal vehicles, such as debris from ruined buildings, spike strips etc. It would also help infantry to escape from ambushes, and would allow for better effectiveness when pursuing retreating forces, allowing the attackers to harry them before they can get back into a defensible position. It's doubtful that they would be used to the extent that horses were deployed in medieval battlefields, but they would have certain limited uses. [Answer] At the end of the Great War (WW1), the loss of life was deemed too much. It was agreed, that machine guns and all kinds of shrapnel munition were bad, and they were officially banned by Geneva Convention of 1929. The rising Nazi Germany tried to ignore this, but was stomped down, preventing WW2. Atomic bomb was developed anyway (but after nuclear power plants), leading to cold war and MAD before a different WW2 could break out, which had a side effect maintaining the illegality of machine guns and shrapnel munitions. There was a space race too, and associated materials development. Having horses on the battlefield led to earlier development of advanced body armor, making cavalry largely immune to man-portable weapons especially from the frontal angles. Also there were some breakthroughs in genetics, and some positive publicity with successes in medicine, leading to genetic engineering of war horses. This all allowed the cost of cavalry to remain so much lower than tanks, that they were a viable type of troops. Enter today, you have mounted troops with heavy enough weapons to be able to take out tanks and planes, with mobility far exceeding that of infantry, ability to traverse really bad terrain and patrol narrow streets, etc. They can be supplied by air-dropping enriched bales of hay (instead of convoys of fuel trucks), and are light enough to be air-droppable themselves. Horses have genetically enhanced animal instincts and senses, helping the soldier. Oh, and at this point, they obviously have frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Probably just range finders and laser guided missile targetting lasers, but still... [Answer] AndreiROM hits the nail pretty much on the head, BUT you could construe some things to enable cavalry to get a bit of attention. 1. Difficult terrain: Tracked and wheeled vehicles have problems in swampy or very mountainous terrain. Horses may work better in some of these environments, though in general helicopter deployed infantry (who then move on foot) has been the preferred solution. 2. Remote access with limited fuel. The big limitation of vehicles is the fuel supply. Of course this applies to horses as well, but there are many areas of the world where getting horse feed may be easier than moving in fuel. Or consider a "Red Dawn" type scenario where insurgents use horses because vehicles are too easily tracked and controlled. Quite frankly, given your stipulations, this is the ONLY situation that makes sense (global shortage of petroleum), but that world would look substantially different than ours. 3. Postulate a technological development that renders large armored vehicles obsolete. Mass deployment of drones that are capable of piercing the thinner top armor of tanks, for example. Individual horsemen are not worth the expense, but a multi-million dollar AFV is. This would enable mounted cavalry to be used in a low intensity conflict between small groups. The US isn't going to abandon tanks for horses, ever, but poor countries might if you can get an anti-armor drone for (relatively) cheap. Of course the poor combatants of the world just use "technicals" (pick-up trucks with a mounted heavy weapon) and no drone is ever going to be cheaper than a 15 year old Toyota. Alas, armoring a horse, even with modern materials, isn't going to work. They are big slab sided targets, so strapping plates on them isn't going to help from a hail of bullets or artillery. The medieval barding so often seen in museums wasn't something a horse trotted around in on the battlefield for extended periods of time, it was for a limited engagement or joust. Modern combat is too extended and long range for that. Your best bet is to substitute an organic horse for some sort of legged robotic vehicle. Imagine the LS3 ([Robot mule](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28290945)) but optimized for speed, carrying a person into combat. You could have a stabilized weapon on it and a control system using the legs, hips, and body motion (sort of like how a Segway moves). This may allow for a rapid strike over rough terrain better than a light vehicle such as a motorcycle, dune buggy, or truck. Highly unlikely to be able to take on a modern mechanized unit with tanks, AFVs, and fire support, but for traditional cavalry tactics such as harassment, ambushes, hitting supply lines, finishing an already disrupted opponent, etc, it may work. Remember that the Hollywood image of a line of horsemen running at each other or into a crowd of infantry is mostly romantic fantasy, since the invention of the pike, horses could be easily held off by an organized infantry unit, things like the Napoleonic era infantry square made it even easier (and the machine gun made it REALLY easy :) So you will probably never see horses of any type charging against tanks, any artillery backed position; or even against each other unless it is an impromptu skirmish. The instant a modern army stops to "draw up a battle line" they are gonna get clobbered by air strikes, artillery, naval bombardment, or cruise missiles unless you also disable satellites and any sort of air power. Modern artillery is DEATH to anything not wrapped in very heavy armor or extremely mobile. Things like cluster munitions would decimate horsemen (though there is a possibility that cluster munitions may not be around much longer due to the lingering effects unexploded ordnance has on the public [cluster bombs going away](http://www.benning.army.mil/armor/earmor/content/issues/2014/OCT_DEC/Jacobson.html). EDIT: Another possibility, though it REALLY stretches your worldbuilding. If WW1 (and by extension, WW2) never happened then you could limit mechanized war machines but still allow for development of commercial/shipping vehicles and planes. Maybe naval tech kept up (dreadnaughts and subs were high tech machines for their time) but land warfare sorta stuck in a mechanized infantry + horse cav mode, where soldiers would be trucked to their destination and cavalry gallops around, but no one thought to armor a truck or develop the Christie suspension for tanks. Most armored warfare evolved from WW1 and (especially) WW2 so without those two conflicts perhaps land warfare could have stagnated (and Europeans, Brits, and Americans duked it out on the seas?) so horse cavalry had time to persist and modernize a bit. It is REALLY hard to deploy horsemen in direct conflict in an era of precision rifle marksmanship though, much less artillery, even if armored vehicles are limited/non-existent. [Answer] You mention "extremely strong cultural foundations" as a possible reason for using horses in military operations. You also mention some very "first world" nations: "everyone's military from the United States's to Sweden's to Luxemburg's". Sweden and Luxemburg aren't exactly known as great military powers in the real modern world. So, why not completely reinvent the cultural landscape of warfare in the modern world? ([Scare-quotes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes) are used throughout the rest of the answer to indicate loaded terms representing the hypothetical attitudes of the people in an alternate version of reality; they are not intended to reflect my beliefs.) War is simply an attempt to win conflicts through violence, typically using any means available. What if, in your alternate modern world, there is a shared global cultural concept of "civilized warfare", to be contrasted against the form of warfare practiced by "barbarians"? Only "barbaric" countries would use the full extent of modern technology, tactics, etc to destroy their enemies, because only "barbaric" countries would accept "war is hell" as a mantra and a way of life. "Civilized" countries, on the other hand--i.e., those that have adopted this "strong cultural foundation" of warfare on horseback--would resolve diplomatically unresolvable conflicts among themselves by staging Napoleonic-style battles on horseback. There would be casualties, but not as many as if the countries engaged in a "real" war. This shared cultural agreement to use "staged" warfare instead of raw military force is actually not that different from the real-life principle of mutually-assured destruction ("MAD") that arose from the threat of nuclear war. Countries still go to war with each other, but not since Hiroshima and Nagasaki have nuclear weapons actually been used on populated areas. Similarly, following the first World War, we developed "rules of engagement" that prohibit things like gas attacks. Your alternate world could simply take this idea further, prohibiting all 20th and 21st century military technologies. Note that countries would still probably need to maintain "real" modern armies for use against "barbarian" enemies--e.g. terrorists. [Answer] The now defunct South African Defence Force (military of the South African apartheid government pre-1994) used horses extensively in their counter-insurgency wars in neighbouring countries in the 1980s (Angola, Botswana, Namibia, etc). At the time, South Africa's white supremacist government was highly militarized and it had very (perhaps world's most) effective light infantry. The terrain they patrolled in their counter insurgency efforts was very remote, dry and rugged. The military (and government) was dominated by ethnic Afrikaner nationalists who were proud of a long military history of effective mounted commando operations tracing back to the Boer Wars of the late 19th century against British colonial armies. They were unmatched in their ability to shoot at range, accurately, while riding fast into confrontations. Their approach to multi-month patrols in contested territory in dry hot rugged terrain while surviving on marksmanship and bush survivalist skills honed by a lifetime of growing up in the traditional Afrikaner frontier farming lifestyle seemed to carry over well into the modern era. Many of these military operatives from the 80s border wars became mercenaries and consultants in the GW Bush era for security/military contractors in the Gulf, and if you were to hear their opinion on US infantry, they will dismissively chuckle at the big chunky sunburnt kids all bogged down by their heavy packs full of gadgets and nicknacks, overloaded with arms and ammunition. Horses are very effective for stealthy, light patrols on unpredictable terrain. They obviously need to be well conditioned and the handlers need to be very comfortable with handling them too. [Answer] There might be other reasons why horses could be preferred - cost is noted above, but simple cheap automatic weapons which can target metal vehicles could make even pickups a bad choice, whereas horses wouldn't be detected. Automatic weapons targeting biological targets might be useless due to zebra herds causing too many false positives, or just illegal. Similarly, if anti-vehicle mines were permitted but anti-personnel mines not, that might make vehicles a poor choice, whilst horses would be safe. Environmental hazards which affect vehicles but not horses might include dust (natural or manmade) making them unreliable, or some nano-tech attack on them, or some chemical/gas attack which targets e.g. combustion engines or the alloys in vehicles. Small groups of soldiers with horses might be easier to hide than a mechanised unit, particularly if it's an area with wild animals, though that'd likely limit it to special forces. Perhaps PETA manages to get the Geneva convention to include a ban on systems which automatically target animals, so tanks etc. can be trivially targeted, but horseback units must be manually targeted. If you're happy to play with the laws concerning war, then there should be a lot of options to keep horseback units effective in at least some scenarios. [Answer] tl;dr - uninvent the machine gun. I hope you don't mind if I venture into making a few changes to humanity to make this viable. In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war. And in this war, are a unit known as the Rough Riders. They are cavalry with lances, and explosives attached to the ends of those lances. What conditions does this world (Warhammer 40,000) have that makes this unit a viable strategy? 1) Despite there being uncountable billions of people, all the fighting seems to consist of bands of roughly 100 people per side. Fighting is done in (mostly ruined) cities, not on the open field. The problem encountered by cavalry was that they could not charge over an open field towards a gun line. Think of some way to reduce the proportion of the population that can be enlisted, or spread the fighting over a large area relative to population. 2) The existence of highly advanced body armour means that weapons the propel chunks of lead are not particularly effective. 3) Conventional guns are used occasionally, but most people have moved to advanced forms of weaponry better suited to destroying the opponents they typically face, i.e. a skirmish battle with ~100 well armoured infantry and tanks. This includes lasers, which are low rate of fire, but very concentrated and high damage. A man portable lascannon can cripple a tank, but would not achieve much against a squad of 20 soldiers in a loose formation. 4) In Warhammer 40k, las weapons are much more reliable than machine guns (no moving parts), and this setting has serious problems with everything breaking and no-one knowing how to repair things. 5) Life is cheap, materiel is valuable in WH:40k. People are born by the billions on hive worlds, but tanks and good weapons are in short supply due to a scarcity of factories that haven't been nuked from orbit, and a lack of skilled workers. Think the Red army. The above is enough to justify why some armies employ very small amounts of cavalry. Of course, if all armies avoided tanks and started using cavalry exclusively, then people would stop bringing lascannons, and would start bringing machine guns instead. [Answer] Even if you accept that horses are the only option for mobility for some reason, they'd be a massive liability on any developed battlefield. Modern warfare is making a huge shift in favor of artillery combined with networking. It's bad enough when your mobility is APCs with armor to hide the troops under, but instead you've got horses, which are hard to camouflage and can't take meaningful cover. When you go from spotted by a UAV 4 miles away (or if engines just flat don't work which is what it'd take to make horses be used, some dude with a backpack full of technology) to catching a volley of artillery with your lap in maybe as many as two or three minutes, horses just aren't usable within eyeshot of the enemy. It's a lot worse than it was even in WWII when they were kind of okayish in very specific situations (rapid redeployment early war when AT guns were still light, mainly in Poland, and exploitation against the incredibly fragile German positions near Moscow in December '41). The only thing in high end modern war they could be useful for even if motor vehicles were all removed would be back lines supply missions, transporting artillery, and potentially fast movement for light infantry forces. The one thing they could theoretically be useful against is light guerilla forces, so maybe some form of colonial policing role, but that mission is unlikely given the proliferation of weaponry making colonies an unlikely prospect in the first place. [Answer] # Afghan Cavalry I'm kind of surprised no one has mentioned the cavalry units of Afghanistan, who fought both the USSR, and fought each other in the civil war with the Taliban. These forces operated much in the way of traditional cavalry, including cavalry charges on riflemen and vehicles, and clashes between cavalry units. And, most interestingly, they were very successful. ## Terrain Afghanistan has some of the most extreme altitudes of any country, great highs and lows. Many hills, gulleys, valleys and canyons, with extremely narrow trails up the side of mountains. In this terrain, much of the land is inaccessible by tank, or even truck. Even Helicopters have many problems with the extreme altitudes, with some humorous anecdotes I better not get into. In this environment, horses are the best method of travel in many mountainous regions. So, understandably, people fight on horses. More surprising, is that these horsemen deployed and fought in the areas where tanks and other vehicles could be and were deployed by the USSR, Taliban, and other forces. ## Method of Battle From what accounts I've gathered, the main method of fighting was ambush, charging, and some dragoon tactics. The cavalrymen all used rifles, though many also used RPGs against the tanks and infantry. The RPGs were critical for successfully defeating vehicles, of course. Knives, bayonets, and I think even swords also saw use, with accounts of men running down infantry then dismounting to finish them off with a knife. ### Ambushing the USSR When ambushing Russian convoys, the Mujahideen cavalry are reported by Russian sources to have never charged more than 200 yards, usually attacking from two or more directions. They hit the fighting vehicles and troop carriers with grenades and RPGs at close range, such that it's hard to effectively use heavy weapons. If infantry deploy, the horsemen run amongst the infantry, running them down and shooting/stabbing them, increasing the confusion and their defence against heavy weapons. Normally, these ambushes were paired with MGs waiting at the line of retreat, ready to mow down people fleeing the ambush. Sometimes, they'd wait for reinforcements, and ambush them too. ### Taliban War The Taliban war involved some more haphazard tactics, that at times could be called incompetent or even silly. There are reports of soldiers charging long distances (some sources say a mile, but this is in doubt) over hilly terrain into Taliban bunkers. The horses would often form two lines, one behind the other, and charge from the closest available point. Accounts talk of defending soldiers trying to shoot an RPG at the crest of a hill, in anticipation of the cavalry coming over the crest. Apparently, despite this and heavy fire from defending forces, the cavalry normally closed with the enemy troops, who often just ran at the sight. With good luck, the cavalry mopped up the infantry with little resistance. Losses were high, but enemy losses were higher. In other cases, the cavalry was repulsed and or bloodied. The hilly terrain was used to get close while exposing yourself for a minimal amount of time. So, a "mile" over hilly terrain would be comparable to a few hundred yards of flat plains. At the last hill, the first line of cavalry would sometimes dismount, and begin firing at the enemy from cover. The second line of cavalry would pass the first, charging into the infantry and firing their rifles as they did so. The first line would soon remount their horses, and join in the charge. Vehicles and MGs were sometimes involved in these encounters, but apparently failed to blunt the charge on many occasions. One report spoke of a re-purposed self propelled anti-air gun, which managed to flank a cavalry force while it was in a melee with the defenders. This vehicle fired on the cavalry and its own men, and drove the attackers off with many casualties. ### Conclusion It is possible to use horses effectively for moving troops, and combating the enemy. The more fantastic encounters seem to rely on incompetence, but even competent forces can be defeated by a cleverly utilized cavalry force (consistently). This doesn't mean that major militaries should start adding horse cavalry units back to their armies. It does mean opportunities and circumstances can make them valuable to a war effort, even in the fighting. These are most prominent in Afghanistan, but these concepts and reasons are not unique to Afghanistan, even if extreme in its example. --- That's what I know on the subject, about horses being used in the modern day. I'll try to dig up some citations. [Answer] There are two ways cavalry could remain relevant to warfare with modern weapons. 1: Horses/Mules are still better a crossing difficult, mountainous terrain than our machines are (assuming that you have a reason for not using a helicopter.) 2: Animals come with built-in guidance computers that are far more advanced than anything the modern world has yet produced. (See [Sergeant Reckless](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_Reckless) ) So, if you want them to be relevant, structure your world such that long, unresupplied journeys across difficult terrain would be a necessary part of any major offensive. As for what would be done to improve them, that depends on precise tech level and how long they've been used alongside modern weapons. The obvious thing would be equipping them with modern armor, just like the soldiers are. After that, selective breeding for greater intelligence, better memory of supply trails, greater endurance, camouflage coloring patterns, etc. The goal is probably to get something with the endurance of a camel, the toughness and versatility of a mountain goat, and the carrying capacity and intelligence of a pack mule. If your culture has genetic manipulation technology, they might even be able to accomplish it in some impressive fashion. Of course, the end result might not resemble a horse all that much... [Answer] The idea is the same for most answers: cavalry was abandonned for reasons, and other means has been used. How to render those means obsolete ? (easily spotted, easily destroyed) Why is the cavalry more usefull (more secure ? faster ?) Some other answer stated ideas I already had, so I'll try to expand a little bit more some. As always, war is always about the one that will adapt the best to new strategies (either by having new ideas, or by coutering others' ideas) * Difficult geography: depending on the terrain, horses might have an advantage. But why did mecanized infantry worked better ? Well, from what I remember, in WW2, blitzkrieg was such a success because german built and maintained roads (and used french ones after that). So, modern warfare has evolved to easily destroy roads, preventing supplies and tanks. Of course, most of them can go outside the road, but not all terrain permit to go outside the road. Maybe some kind of suicide-drones could do that. You can also change geography: their are forest/swamps almost everywhere. * Lightweight/cheap heavy weaponry: If an infantry can easily take on a tank, then they are useless. Anti-tank systems are really expansive today, but let's say you can have a one-bullet handgun/grenade/sniper with a higly packed explosive (or whatever) that can take down a tank/helicopter. The thing with tanks (and other heavily armored vehicule as well) is that they are constantly behing reinforced against attacks, but if the new gun is powerfull enough, then it will take some time before they can be reinforced enough to withstand these guns (if someone ever could). Also, think about lasers against drones/airplanes/helicopters. Again, to make it more realistic, it's a one-bullet weapon, not rechargeable, and cheap. * Lightweight/cheap defense systems: a force field. A new technology that prevent fast travelling/metal bullets from hitting their target. It would be lighweight enough to be carried by a horse, but heavy enough not to be carried by men. You also need a reason not to put this technology on your vehicule of course: high frequency interferences (which make them highly detacable once they are active), but most tank are able to function without electronic devices (but if they are easily destroyed by number 2...). There are always drawback to these solutions, so using multiple ideas at the same time is the only solution. (I read somewhere "genetically engineering horses", which would add to the rest). [Answer] Here's a simple way you could have mounted cavalry in the modern area: it's the traditional way to build your armies and your world hasn't yet gone through a war that would demonstrate how bad of an idea it is. Your major powers can and will continue to use cavalry against the lesser powers who don't have the resources to develop the new technology that would render cavalry obsolete, the foresight to invest in these new, speculative methods of warfare, or the competence to effectively deploy them. I think the main thing you just need is to prevent the occurrence of a war between major powers that can decisively defeat cavalry, so that the conservative military leaders can continue to remain hesitant about getting rid of their tried and true mounted forces in favor of the new, speculative military doctrine. [Answer] I’m going to talk about tanks. I know people have mentioned them in nearly every answer, but bear with me for a minute. In the year 1943, Soviet Army underwent serious restructuring. Under the new commander, cavalry divisions have been reformed. Light cavalry is no longer employed in the army, and existing cavalry divisions are now reformed with light and medium tanks. At the same time, cavalry corps are outfitted with anti-tank weaponry. Cavalry now includes entire mechanized artillery regiments and anti-tank divisions. So… technically tanks and artillery are cavalry. The use of live horses is, of course, severely limited in this, but cavalry divisions now command more horsepowers than ever before. TLDR: Tanks are cavalry, iron horses of the new age. [Answer] The only thing I can think of is a world with limited fuel + the widespread use of EMP weapons. Guns would be modern, but transportation and communications might be pre-WW1. [Answer] Okay, I'm going all out sci-fi here... They figured out how to connect their brains with those of horses and then use them as an extension of their own body. Allowing infantry to act as mini tanks, but insanely maneuverable. Since horses can have some really heavy armour, and carry a shit ton of weaponry, it would easily hold its own against about 10 regular infantry units. [Answer] TLDR: Special operations forces operating in 3rd world countries with rough terrain meets most of your requirements The last successful cavalry charge that I've been able to find occurred in [2001 at the battle of Bishqab](http://web.archive.org/web/20210515191958/http://www.indepthinfo.com/afghanistan/horse-soldiers.htm), by Afghan forces supported by US airpower against an entrenched Taliban position with tanks and machine guns. This charge made use of the hilly terrain to ensure that the cavalry were only briefly exposed, and the attacking force had modern weapons including RPGs and assault rifles. US special forces operating in Afghanistan continued to use horses to move quickly through rough terrain. As other posts indicate, horse cavalry are essentially obsolete on a modern conventional battlefield. Horses are too vulnerable to modern firepower, the rider is too exposed, and they're not fast enough to keep up with mechanized forces. However, for special forces operating in rough and remote conditions, they have a number of critical advantages. Unlike vehicles, horses can forage for food, and are significantly better off-road. Horse-mounted forces will be better able to avoid aerial surveillance than mechanized forces (especially if local civilians also use horses), and are quieter and more stealthy. Compared to pure infantry, cavalry are more mobile and can carry significantly more equipment and supplies, which is especially important for special forces on a long-term deployment. Note that in a guerilla war all of these factors also apply to the guerillas, who may also prefer cavalry as horses are more easily acquired than fighting vehicles. If there are a few decades where a lot of armed conflict is similar to the wars in Afghanistan (either the 1979-1989 Soviet Afghan war or the 2001-present war), I'd expect countries to start training their special forces in cavalry techniques and tactics. These soldiers would remain primarily light infantry, but be able to transition to mounted warfare if necessary, as at Bishqab. For your specific requirements: * Mounted combatants on horseback: As required * Forces that hold the primary role/purpose of direct combat: Definitely. You don't get much closer to the tip of the spear than special forces. * Possibly holding secondary roles: Yes * Units that do not act (primarily) as + Dragoons: Well, they're primarily light infantry, which aren't dragoons... But yeah, while cavalry charges do still have their use, they're not going to be the only or even primary means of engaging with any modern enemy. + Supply logistics: No + Messengers: No * Forces that will actively be deployed and will engage in an appreciable portion of armed conflicts the military is engaged in: Yes definitely-and then some! [Answer] Either my imagination sucks or my knowledge of modern warfare is terrible. Possibly both. Regardless, I can't imagine a generalized situation where cavalry is a good idea with modern weapons. One semi-alternative would be to have a unit where everyone uses a MOUNT/HORSE/Acronym you can make sound reasonable to assist an infantry unit in moving more quickly than otherwise possible. Perhaps, through mechanical aids, the infantry are able to move through terrain about as quickly as a helicopter would - with a range limited by a battery or something. We have [this](http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/22/2815704/hercule-exoskeleton-human-carry-220-pounds) as a real world example, scaling it up for the military doesn't seem unreasonable. One absolutely-making-things-up alternative is the idea that we have 'wars' and 'competitions' and that cavalry are maintained and used in 'competitions' where we want to resolve a conflict without all the barbarity of a no-holds-barred war where civilians and property might be damaged. If you rephrase this into the context of a competition, you can set any rules you want. ]
[Question] [ For a story I'm writing, there will be an industrial-revolution type city, with mildly powerful technology. They will be just discovering electricity, using steam power, and making all of their currency coins. However, this is a supposedly "Backwards" place, since their money is Negative. As an example: If Bob were to sell a piano to Jill, Jill would not give Bob money. Bob would give Jill the money, as well as the piano. Salaries would take away money, and taxes would require you to receive money. I am wondering how this would work. Here are a few ideas of mine: * The land is considered a very trusting, kind place. You can take an infinite amount of money, meaning that there is no limitation on kindness * People can buy ~~an infinite amount of food~~ as much food as they need (though limited by economic factors like famine), meaning that nobody would ever starve * The money is required to be kept with you at all times, and the weight discourages one from having too much money. Thus, you want to get rid of your money So, in other words, How could this work? [Answer] This couldn't work at all. The reason why money needs to be "positive" is that the one with the incentive to have it is the one who has control over having it. If money is negative, you can just throw it away or simply never show anyone. The government 'requiring' you to keep it with you isn't gonna help because that's A) impossible to enforce and B) extremely fascistoid. If you sell a good, you want money as a proof that you have given someone else something, and you want to use that proof to acquire another product from a third person. Money is an abstraction of barter, so that you don't have to find the perfect combination of trade partners and goods at the same time. Imagine giving a person a loan. Would you want a paper with their signature to prove they owe you? Or would they want a paper with your signature to prove that they owe you? > > People can buy an infinite amount of food, meaning that nobody would > ever starve > > > Food doesn't just magically appear because someone made up the rule that you can always buy it. Law doesn't determine what's true, only what's not allowed. You can make it illegal for someone to not give you food (pretty totalitarian), but that's not gonna help you if they simply have no food. > > The land is considered a very trusting, kind place. You can take an infinite amount of money, meaning that there is no limitation on kindness > > > I'm sorry, but this is just social romanticism. You can't build an economic system based on "Everyone's gonna be totally nice", because then you'd not need an economic system in the first place. The whole point of economics is allocating resources between people when there is more demand than can be met. If everyone is just "nice" and has no problem giving their stuff away, you don't need to come up with any system at all - people can just do that. [Answer] I remember reading a sci-fi story many, many decades ago about a similar theme. I completely forget the title, or the author, it was so long ago, but I remember the theme, since it was so unique. It absolutely challenged all current economic theories at the time. It was written when resources were still considered infinite, and automation and computer control was just being introduced. A utopia that could only have been imagined in the zeitgeist of the 70's and 80's. It was written at a time when human labor costs were considered as the main determinant of economic cost. EDIT As suggested by @berendi, I think it was [The Midas Plague](https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1954-04/Galaxy_1954_04#page/n0/mode/2up) by Frederik Pohl, written in 1954. It was a post-scarcity society, with infinite resources, and a perfected agricultural system world-wide. Automated manufacturing was able to produce every imaginable good, at quantities beyond need. Everything, from extraction to processing to production, was automated. Farming was all automated. Extraction and mining were all automated. At no place in the process were humans needed. Since production did not require human intervention, it was completely labor free, and thus had no input labor cost. All management was done by AI. Computers serviced by other computers co-ordinated everything and made all corporate decisions. There were no humans even in upper management. With a limitless surplus of everything, there was no need for any mechanism for rationing goods - the primary purpose for currency. Since there was absolutely no labor, there were no wages paid. No need for any human to work for a living. No need for 'jobs' as we perceive them. Money, in the purest sense, is just a mechanism for balancing supply and demand. If there is infinite supply, that far exceeds demand, then there is no need for 'pricing' to limit demand. Everything was given away for free. (Our modern Western concept equates the purpose for money with the concept of profit, a completely erroneous proposition.) In fact, there was such a surplus of everything, that in order to keep production going, the population had to CONSUME as much as possible. The class structure was reversed. Since everyone could have as much as they wanted, without limit, the lower in the economic ladder you were, the more you had to consume. The higher up, the less you had to consume. The top tier 1% had to consume almost nothing. Money, of course, did not exist in the story. You did not BUY anything, you HAD to take the goods. It was your societal obligation to take them. But if money did exist, the one who died with the least money, won. The consumer would be given a specified income that they HAD to spend, that they had to dispose of. The lower on the scale they were, the more money they got every year. They had to spend this money. If they didn't, they got even more next year. Those who spent all of their money, went up the ladder and they had to spend less the next year. Their 'income' was less. But the catch is, they had to wear out or consume their 'purchases', they could not just hoard them. After all, even though resources were infinite, living space wasn't. The lower on the rung you were, the smaller your living space. They had to demonstrate that the goods they purchased were worn out. Their 'job' was to wear things out. Clothes, appliances, sports equipment, everything. They would have to spend all of their waking hours USING things. Their vacations and 'down time' consisted of periods when they did not have to consume, in which they could just relax and do nothing. I can see how this scenario could possibly be construed as 'negative' money. But the money still followed the traditional buy-sell model. To have the money follow the goods, instead of the other way around, then it could be used as a measure of consumption. Everything you consumed, you got a certain amount of money for. The more you consumed, the more money you got. Your 'wealth' would be negative wealth. That is, you were 'paid' to consume. Those who acquired the most money, were the best consumers, and therefore they would go up in economic stature. At the next level up, you had to acquire LESS money, and so on up the ladder. (Or, perhaps, you got MORE money for each item consumed? This might match your scenario better.) At the top of the pyramid, you only had to 'earn' (by consuming) a very small yearly 'income' (or, alternately, you got a huge amount of money for consuming very little). Most of your time would be leisure time, free from the necessity to do your job, to consume. As I mentioned, it was a unique story line, and it was a concept that was fascinating to explore. It totally redefined our concept of 'rich' and 'poor', and it was totally based on input labor costs as the only determinant of 'cost'. The idea of 'profit' from production, and as a determinant of wealth, was completely negated. [Answer] Suppose as tax, the citizens pay their government with their time and labor. It is a reasonable idea - working on the government farm, serving in the military, washing dishes, etc. On my necklace I have tokens - coins if you will - that depict what I owe the government. The government has given me these coins as tax. If the government needs dishwashers I will eventually be drafted and my coins will be reclaimed as I put in my dishwashing time. I might be required to give my time shoveling dog poop; hopefully that will claim coins faster than dishwashing. When Jill wants my piano, I give her my coins as well. She adds these to her necklace. She has paid me by taking part of my obligation as represented with the coins. The problem is that people who did not want to honor their obligations would destroy the coins or hide them or claim that they went down the toilet. One could work around this with some method of chain of custody of the coins, each one of which is identifiable with a serial number as a bill is identifiable. When Jill takes my coins, it is known that these coins are with Jill. If she loses one she must get a replacement. [Answer] When we say "money" we mean something. When we change it, we run the risk of it ceasing to be something we call money, which would make this question very broad. As such, I'd like to focus on things which are immediately relatable to money as we know it. Your system is built around IOUs. Negative currency is really just debt. Its an IOU promising something later. Thus salaries erase IOUs, which is exactly what they do in our world. Beyond that technical detail, the rest of the extreme approaches (like infinite kindness) are not really an aspect of the monetary system, but of the culture. You can have any culture you like, though some are pre-disposed to imploding faster than others. [Answer] Money is debt. A bill is essentially an impersonal IOU issued by the government. You can't really reverse that because it is already a negative. You are trying to turn it into a positive and as the other comments show, it is a negative exactly because that doesn't work. But your core idea was that the place is "backwards". You want the "negative money" to show that things are done differently there. I'd like to propose a different type of inversal: Instead of the government printing money that people use, everyone can issue currency, even without limit (as you seem to want to be able). What changes is that when Bob sells a piano to Jill, he receives a token of debt against Jill. That might seem like a small change, but it inverses the entire economy. Previously, Jill would acquire currency first, then spend it. Prior to a big purchase, she would have to accumulate currency first. Now, however, in the "inverse economy", Jill issues currency when she buys something. But there is now an IOU against her out in the world that she ideally wants to wipe out because if too many people hold too many IOUs against her and then come to redeem them, she is going to be in trouble. To wipe out the IOU, she will want to acquire similar IOUs from other people that she can use to counter, i.e. if Bob comes with his IOU later, the way neighbours come to each other saying "remember the time I helped you? Now I need your help..." and Jill doesn't want to part with whatever Bob is asking in exchange, she can instead give him the IOU from John that she holds. Bob now has an IOU against John and Jill's IOU is destroyed. Compared to our system, in this system Jill can buy something first and then worry about getting the currency to cancel her debt. Unlike credits, there is no interest, and the system is decentralized. It probably has its own set of problems, but unlike negative tokens, it just might work. [Answer] # Waste Expanding on [flox's idea](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/122088/12297) of a [post scarcity society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy)... Even if we have infinite (or enough) resources to breathe, eat, and live well, we still have the problem of waste. No matter how you twist and turn, in the end you will always have some kind of waste as a result of human activity. Sure, some of it can be recycled / reused, but not even if you ban the use of everything that is not quickly bio-degradable, you will still have some waste that cannot be easily dealt with, and that requires effort to be rid of. Problematic waste that we are dealing with today: * [Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas) * [Mining tailings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailings) * [Household garbage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_solid_waste) * [Sewage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewage) * [Industrial waste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_waste) * [Slurry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_slurry) and [ash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash) * [Toxic metal waste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_heavy_metal) * [Nuclear waste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste) So just by living you are racking up a waste debt. And today, most of that debt is entirely unregulated. We have no control over how much waste you and I cause by just living. But suppose we did. Suppose we managed to catalogue every human activity in regards to waste. In a post scarcity society you do not need to buy things with money to have it. But you will become responsible for the waste that your consumerism has caused. You want to have food? Sure, you can have food... and depending on how that food was produced, you will either have a small amount of waste tokens (vegetarian, locally produced, reasonable amounts)... or you will have a large amount of tokens (exclusive meat imported from halfway across the globe). You want a personal transportation vehicle? Sure, but that is going to get you lots and lots of waste tokens that need to be dealt with. Are you sure you do not want to go for public transportation instead, where the monthly waste debt is but a fraction of you what get with a personal vehicle? You want electricity for your living quarters? Sure... do you want [Generation IV nuclear power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor), where you get some credit instead of tokens, for dealing with historical nuclear waste, but some tokens added for the construction of the Gen IV nuclear power plants and the new type nuclear waste? Or do you want solar power where you get no tokens for nuclear waste, but quite a hefty amount of tokens for the mineral tailings? One interesting part about this is that there is no such thing as interest or inflation or other things that make money or debt change value over time, since the waste tokens are tied to something tangible and constant. So the "economics" of this would be very different, and — ostensibly — much simpler, since you cannot earn "money" by just owning it, as you can today. [Answer] Your currency is discarded tires. The cost is more than they're worth to recycle. And getting caught dumping them costs more than just recycling them. No body wants them, but they exist in vast numbers and will continue to do so for all reasonably foreseeable futures that we'd still be around to see. If used tires were 'money', we would all be playing hot potato. TL;DR: anything where it's non-biodegradable, has a reclamation cost more than its production cost, and most importantly: unable to be reproduced with current technology. Rubber manufacture is a mostly propitiatory process and is done by about five companies in the world at the necessary production levels. [Answer] ## Social status In the real world, having a lot of money gives you a social status. This is the same, but the other way around. The lower your account is, the more generous you are percieved, which makes you more respectable. All it needs is a way to increase it so that you don't easily go to -infinity. So the same as the real world, but reversed. Instead of based on greed, it's on compasion, which could also help with your "it's a very trusting world". [Answer] I can't see how this would work with physical money (coins or notes). If owning a coin was a liability, people would just start getting rid of them: "forgetting" to the coins with them when accepting a negative payment, throwing them on the street or in a river, etc. Some industrious individuals would probably start shady businesses to release people from their coins, either out of altruism, or to receive a payment in some usable way. You mention that people would be "required" to keep their coins with you at all times. While you could have a law that requires this, there'd be no way to enforce it. If a coin is found in the gutter, there's no way to know who's supposed to own it. The only way it could work, would be either with centralized accounting keeping track of everyone's debt or by a system where it would be physically impossible to remove the antimoney from your person. With centralized accounting, all transactions would need to take place in front of a city official, who would then record that by bying Bob's piano, Jill's debt is increased, and Bob's debt decreased. This would slow down trade, since you'd need to always find an official to record the transaction. The only way to trade something directly with your neighbour would be via barter, and avoiding that is pretty much the point of money. Any technological means to force the citizens to keep their antimoney with them at all times would also be quickly circumvented by reverting back to barter. Some sort of a magical curse enforcing that the antimoney could not be abandoned would be the only way I could see that to work. In that case, the antimoney would not need to be physical either: the curse could manifest as a physical or mental strain, and the only way to get rid of it would be for someone to voluntarily accept part of its weight. Though if someone were to get completely rid of their part of the curse, they couldn't "sell" anything anymore, as they'd have no "debt" to give back. Transactions with such lucky persons would also need to be purely by barter, at least until they picked up part of the curse again by buying something. (I ignored the part about infinite food, since that's clearly impossible, and would probably change the economy significantly even in a community using normal money.) [Answer] I really enjoyed reading [Justin Thyme's](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/122070/a-land-where-money-is-negative#answer-122075) and [Willk's](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/122070/a-land-where-money-is-negative#answer-122117) responses, and they reminded me of something that's very common among corporate organizations (regardless of being for-profit or not-for-profit): use it or lose is budgeting. Under this system, if you don't spend all of your money one year: * you have no chance to increase your budget * you will receive less next year/cycle On the surface, this answers OP's question "How could this work?" Fear of losing one's allotment would lead people to fulfill their allotment (spending). It's hard to provide a thorough perspective without knowing OP's overall intent, but we can infer several things from it. 1. If you've seen the movie Brewster's Millions, the main character inherits a large sum with the promise to receive even more if he can spend all of the first award in a month. As a result, he learns to appreciate the simple things in life (rather than money). 2. OP's society would reward wastefulness and probably lead to overpopulation & littering. As well, it would create very busy and highly contrasted environments where communities are well kept, but due to so much materialism, someone or something (automation) is constantly having to collect garbage and rotate storage. 3. If there is no automation, this system would also incentivize manual labor, as it's the most wasteful thing you can do. If the society wasn't already described as "very trusting, kind," this model would reduce material greed. 4. The classes would eventually balance out. The impossibly rich would tire of constant spending. The poor would receive the rich's excess spending until their own budget grows to a similarly "unsustainable" size. [Answer] ## Debt Vouchers The currency is initially denominated with the person of origin. If I sell you a piano, I give you a certain amount of money, and you commit to giving me something tangible eventually, and my cash along with it. For example, since you have 15 debt vouchers with my name on them for the piano, you later give me a TV and a couch worth 10 and 5 vouchers, respectively. Eventually, people start selling their debt to one another. You don't have anything that I want, but you have something that someone else wants. Instead of giving me the vouchers and some service, you give someone else my debt vouchers along with some other goods or services. Maybe you sell chickens, so you give my 15 debt vouchers to that person, along with 9 hens and a rooster or something like that. With enough of this passing around vouchers, eventually the originating names are removed from them, and we all are just in debt to the group for goods and services. Poverty The system can still work against people in a few ways. Perhaps Bob is known for not producing anything of value. Nobody will give Bob any goods/vouchers, because they know that the value will never make its way back to them. This can only work in a place where the culture is very unified around the idea that everyone must contribute to society. It means that there are no public welfare programs because everyone takes from one another on the honor system, and if someone doesn't work then nobody will feed him. Tim, on the other hand, produces all the time, and gives out lots of vouchers, but he isn't able to find the materials that he needs to produce efficiently, and so he never gets those vouchers repaid to him. Over time, Tim's output is much less than his intake, and so he develops the same reputation as Bob. Eventually, he is rejected by society, and nobody will give him goods/vouchers. The Government The ILS (Internal Loss Service, analogous to IRS) occasionally audits individuals suspected of not contributing. If those people are found to have too many vouchers, then they are a burden on the state. They get in trouble. Accountability in this system can be kept by maintaining a pocket book, where you annotate all of the vouchers you received as you receive them. Maintenance of this pocket book is lawful, policed by individuals during transactions, and enforced by the ILS. The Culture On the surface, this starts to look similar to what we already have. In order for me to continue producing, I need to get goods and services from other people. Whenever they give me those goods, they also give me vouchers; whenever I sell my goods, I also give away vouchers. That means I have to maintain a certain quantity of vouchers in my possession all the time. The difference is that it is heavily dependent on a cultural bend toward productivity as a virtue, because a person can theoretically take as much as he needs to get his business going initially. It's only after the business has been running a while that people start to realize it wasn't worth it. I hope this helps! [Answer] The only way for this to work is that what you call "negative money" is actually a sort of "certificate of withdrawal of value". In your example of Adam selling a piano to Bob, Adam would give Bob the piano and a certificate stating something along the line "the giver of this certificate subtracts from the account of the receiver the sum of X credits". But still the credits have to be positive. Not even the most hard core theoretical physicist, among anti-neutrinos, anti-protons and anti-anything, has ever dared creating the anti-money. (Do not confuse it with antimony) [Answer] The way I see this working is if the currency is something that is naturally undesirable to own, something that is a responsibility. This could be a radioactive stone that the society has no other way to deal with than to carry it around, and having a lot of stones could cause health problems or difficulty moving around. It could also be a small animal that needs to be cared for, otherwise the animal becomes dangerous. [Answer] In this society, money limits production and trade to sustainable levels: * For every object you produce or acquire and you then intend to sell and for every service you render, you need to pay the purchaser a certain amount, proportional to the value of the item or service. * Most human activities are considered services to others and you must pay for rendering them: + You visit a shop? The shop gets exposure by promoting their wares to you and by showing other people that they sell something valuable enough to attract potential clients. Hence, you're doing them a service and you must pay them for it. + You're a citizen of your country? Great, you pay for taking part in the administrative process by analysing government policy proposals and voting for or against them! + You go to work for a company? You've got to pay! + You help someone? You pay! + You go to a show, leave a review, comment on improving something? Someone benefits, so pay up! * For you to do all that paying around, you need to somehow acquire currency. Here's how: + You obtain currency whenever you purchase goods or services, also proportional to the value of the items. You got helped, so you need to get paid! + The state helps you by offering its administrative framework to every citizen and by rendering a number of services. For this, come tax time, you get paid! + Someone helps you out? They also need to pay you! * Because people have inherent needs but also practically every move they make is considered a service to others, everyone is interested in accumulating both items and currency, in a certain ratio that allows them to sustain this cycle. You're not interested in discarding your currency; you never know when you might help someone by mistake and you'll have to pay them! The way you need to operate is to make sure you're constantly both helping others and getting helped, so that you never lack either money or goods. Let's see an example: * You want a bread from the shop: you get the bread and 5 currency units. * In the process, you've helped the shop: get rid of part of their stock; get a better understanding of which type of bread sells best; show other potential clients that their merchandise is good enough for people to want it. You've rendered all these services and you need to pay the shop 7 currency units. You need to already have at least 2 extra currency units to be able to cover this. * You exit the shop and you take a cab. The ride is valued at 22 currency units and the number of small services you've rendered to the cab company, to the driver and to the city amounts to 20 currency units. You're left with 2 more currency units at the end of your ride. * You clock in at work and start helping the company. The bill you'll need to pay at the end of the day is 237 currency units, after deductions for all the ways in which the company helped you back. * You'll now have to go shopping, eat at a fancy restaurant, then see a movie, so you could get some extra cash for the next day. Like any market economy, this system eventually reaches a dynamic equilibrium where people learn to balance how much help they need with how much they need to help others. [Answer] Your Economy is not really an Economy, it is a Post Scarcity Civilisation What you are describing, in which anyone can have 'an infinite amount of food' and no 'limitation on kindness' is describing a Post Scarcity civilisation. The 'negative money' that you are accompanying your goods are really just the goods itself and has little meaning beyond a signifier of who it came from, and perhaps how much you think it is worth (although in this context, 'worth' is actually zero). I would recommend looking up [Isaac Arthur](https://www.isaacarthur.net) or reading Steven Kotler or researching [Post-Capitalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy). If money needs to be 'carried' (presumably because it is heavy) such that it is an encumbrance then people won't carry any, in particular if goods and services are free. Money is in fact now superfluous, and only serves as a record of who-gave-what-to-whom. Many are arguing we are already on the cusp of 'Post Scarcity'. If we have printers that could print any good, robots that could deliver any service, then we do not have an economy, but instead a social system of interaction of which goods are a just a part. [Answer] Yes this could totally work. But money in that society would be much more like debt in our society. Kindness would be helping someone to remove their debt. Add some religion preaching kindness of removing others debt and the sins of amassing too much debt and you are already halfway there. [Answer] I'm adding a second answer because it is thinking in an entirely different direction. Again, negative currency doesn't work for the reasons other answers have given already. However, you can have a negative incentive to hoarding. This has been tried in the real world on multiple occasions and seems to actually work. If there is a cost associated with having money, then everyone would be interested in having as little as possible. Imagine that you paid a 1% tax every month on the money you possess. This requires a centralized banking system, but we are already close to that. So if you own 1000 at the end of the month, 10 are taken as tax. This can apply to only cash holdings (which would dramatically accelerate consumption) or to all possessions (which has never been tried but would have interesting consequences). This way you don't inverse the way money is handled, but the way it is viewed. People want to not have money in this scenario, because spending is better than hoarding. [Answer] Your society is one where people exchange social capital. For us, money is a unit of exchange with an inherent value of its own, but for your society it's a certification of value based on the seller's reputation. If you "buy" a piano, you are given a certification of quality and the seller stakes their reputation on each piano sold. If a factory worker hands over his wages at the end of each day, he is assuring the factory owner that everything he has done that day is satisfactory. If a thief breaks into your house, he's going to dump a bag full of "money" somewhere, which in effect destroys your reputation and thus your ability to get on in life - which brings up the real caveat, as there also has to be some way for people to know how much you've got for this system to work. Of course, as others have already said, it's not really money in the proper sense, and the valuable unit of exchange has been abstracted to social consequences. However, to an outsider's glance it would seem as though people are paying each other to take their goods. [Answer] Negative money is debt. When someone gives you a loaf of bread, they give you some coins that represent that debt. In order to "pay off" that debt you need to give something of value to someone else in order to be allowed to give them some coins (pay off your debt). Interestingly, wealth in this society would be based to some extent on physical strength. The more coins you can carry the more debt you can bear. You must ensure that coins are carefully manufactured so that 100 pennies is the same size and weight as one pound. And make sure no-one invents the banknote! The system would work absolutely fine if all transactions were also computerised (or otherwise tracked) but if money is purely physical then the first person to think of throwing their "money" down a hole can "spend" at a rate only limited by how much they can carry and how far it is to the hole. The main differences between your system and ours is that our access to debt (or credit) is (usually, hopefully) based on a proven record of our ability to manage it - and our system allows us to have "negative debt". ie: savings. In your system no-one can save money (using our definition of money) - everyone has zero money or less. And your access to credit is based on the size of your muscles. And weirdly, the size of your muscles is based on your tendency to spend! [Answer] # Below zero The world you are desrcibing will have a 'richness limit': Since everybody needs to physically carry his coins, one cannot get richer than zero. If for example one works hard manufacturing pianos and selling them for a high price, he will eventually reach the point where he got rid of all his coins. What now? How can he sell the next piano? Ok, he could buy luxury goods, which are really expensive, and get back some coins, but you get the point: There is a limit on 'richness'. If one reaches the maximum point, he is forced to buy something in order to stay moveable in the system. There is no 'poverty limit' though... [Answer] Negative money is just another word for debt. Assuming someone else's debt is equivalent to paying them money. If almost everyone is in net debt when they start working (e.g. they have to incur student loans not just for college, but also for pre-school, kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, their share of rent and food costs until they get a job, etc.), then assuming debt in lieu of paying money makes sense. It would be a sort of ultra-libertarian world where everyone is expected ultimately to pay their own expenses . . . maybe they would pass to one's children at death instead of leaving creditors screwed as well. In that situation, each person might have personalized coins that they would attempt to get others to assume, or maybe their would only be one uber-creditor, such as the government, to whom all debts were payable so that you could have one kind of coin. All that would change is the direction in which the debt assumption coins flowed. This still has problems, because how would you prevent someone from "accidentally" losing their negative money coins. It would probably make sense, instead, for negative money transactions to take place at a branch of a central bank or a post office (which has done payment system class banking since the 18th century or so in many countries), in which the buyer signs a document accepting debt from the seller, rather than using a coin based system. (This would also make income taxation easier to implement.) Ironically, this system would making "dying broke" a gift to one's children rather than a denial of something that they might expect as a legacy upon death. In real world, people can't assume debts of another without the creditor's consent. But, if there was one uber-creditor like the government, this could be resolved simply by setting a credit limit for each person just like a credit card company does, although again, this would mean that debt assumptions would have to take place at a branch of a central bank or post office or similar institution, so that the uber-creditor assured that no one's credit limit was exceeded. [Answer] This could work if you treat the society's economy like an even worse version of a [Company Town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town), specifically a situation where employees get more and more in debt owing money to the "company store" (as sung in the [song "Sixteen Tons"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons) -- "You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt", "I can't afford to die. I owe my soul to the company store."). Every year during tax season, the government issues out huge amounts of debt to each citizen. The people are supposed to work off their debt throughout the year, but in practice, they only accumulate more and more debt over time. The government doesn't like the word "debt" though, so they long ago decided to call it just "money" instead, and over time the name has stuck, and everyone just associates cash with chunks of debt that are traded around. The foolish folks just collect more and more money and don't think about their future, but most people agree that you should get rid of some amount of your paycheck to slowly build down your retirement fund. Some folks who are well off can actually get rid of most of their "money", but only the richest 1% ever manage to get it $0 and declare "bankruptcy", something unfathomable to the average person but a status symbol of the most wealthy. This "Money" would have to be meticulously tracked and associated with particular people, so there might not be an equivalent of paper currency. There are those folks who try to skip out, but they're erased from society. Without their identity (which is directly related to their debt), they can't purchase anything. [Answer] This would work, though as has been noted your assumptions about the effects are a bit off. The government treasury must operate a ledger. This ledger tracks all of your money, and you must run all transactions through a recognized branch of the treasury, just like a bank\. Rather than the seller giving a note with a value of negative money, the purchaser would sign a certificate\\* entitling the seller to transfer negative money to his account. The seller would then redeem this at a treasury branch. Rather than accepting negative money forever, there would be account limits and/or interest charges. If you needed to accept more negative money, you might offer collateral to a private institution which could hold your debt. In the other direction, you aught to be able to have a positive balance. If this isn't officially allowed, people will need to hold onto debt certificates to have a positive balance. Banks might offer negative-backed notes to make this easier. A privately created, publicly traded certificate from the Bank of unAmerica would be redeemable for the bank taking on X amount of negative dollars from your account. But reall,y that is just so much more convenient, you might not bother with the offical currency directly! If you haven't caught on already, this is identical to the system we have now. Money only seems like positive money because most major currencies are fiat currencies. If you go back in time, you will see when banks would issue private notes. These were literally IOUs that could be redeemed for silver or gold. It was negative money to the bank, a debt that they owed. National currencies used to be a debt owed by the state (the country issuing the currency), also redeemable for gold or silver. People can use IOUs as currency to, as long as people trust you. You might owe a debt to your neighbor for three pigs. If your pigs did poorly that year, you might trade five sheep to your neighbor on the promise that they would honor your debt. We still trade debt, in bonds, mortgage backed securities, and from a certain point of view, stocks. Not only could this work, it already does. Every piece of debt is a negative and a positive at the same time, depending on whether you are the creditor or debtor. Both can be traded, though debt consolidation and other services aren't usually framed that way. The only thing you've done, is that making the currency itself a debt, you've moved the burden of proof from the individuals to the treasury. Just like a traveler running up a big debt under a false name and skipping down to abandon the debt, people can try to cheat the system. And just like modern debt, the treasury must keep track of everyone's balance and make sure transactions follow through without bouncing\\\. \In fact, it is far more likely that private banks would absorb this function, and the official treasury would only act as a clearing house. \\ They might be called... Checks \\\* Watch Catch me if you can. It's an example of how much work a society built around debt would have to do to avoid getting ripped of by people abandoning debt certificates... wait that's a real movie about our own society... [Answer] A cultural misunderstanding Your society Your country has reached a post-scarcity level. So everyone can live happily without ever needing money. Without the stress and strain that normally come from constant worry about ones own survival, all people are selflessly kind to each other. So kind in fact, that they take every opportunity they get to even further improve each others lifes by giving them presents. In society your reputation depends on how much value you can give to others life and you won't have a high standing if all you do is take presents and accumulate "things" you don't even need. But since there is no scarcity and everyone already has their basic needs fulfilled, you can not just go to your neighbour and litter his house with stuff. It has to be the right amount of value for the right occasion. A gift for a wedding has be more valuable than a gift for your birthday for example. And of course just giving away anything without thought just shows how much more you are concerned about your own standning than about improving someone elses life. If Bob knows that Jill likes to play the piano but currently doesn't have one, he can give it to her at a good occasion, but not "Just because", as this would imply that he only does this for his own good. How does your society distribute all its wealth though? On demand of course. People still need food and want to live a comfortable life. That's the point of having all that stuff after all. So they still go to the bakery to get their bread. The baker will be happy to give it to them and even try to make them take a little bit more or a higher quality than what they came for. This way you still have some kind of economic systems (goods need to be produced and distributed). So when Jill wants to play the piano she, knwoing that Bob has a piano he offers to give away, could just go to him and ask him for it, making him happy for the opportunity. Now adding money At some point (rather recently) someone finds old records of people using money to trade value, coming from a time before post-scarcity was reached. Amazed about the inventiveness of their ancestors at giving worth to others, they jump right onto the idea of having a currency that carries a certain amount of value that they can use to be even more generous. Kind of as a "token of appreciation" they feel for the other person. So the amount can differ from person to person. But the same way that having more "things" makes you look bad in society, having lots of money of course means you were not as generous as you could have been. So people get a high incentive to give away some money along with their goods. But here too, you need to give an amount that fits the opportunity and the value of the goods you give. Salaries show a companys appreciation for their workers and Taxes are a way of the government to appreciate its citizens. [Answer] # The central bank manages debt In short, the central bank is the sole creditor, and the sign on money is flipped. The government constantly monitors peoples balance, which is doable if everything's electronic; you can't just throw away money! If someones creditworthiness (a function of positive money) gets too low the central bank starts blocking transactions. The answers by Tom and wedstrom discuss this in more detail. [Answer] I would contend that this economy is neither "backwards" nor kind at all. You simply have an economy with a virtual [universal medium of exchange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_of_exchange) (a virtual money), where everyone is in debt (presumably to the government) while the government requires people to carry around weights proportional to their debt. Perception of money Money as a medium of exchange that takes its value from a universal belief in its ability to retain this value (i.e. in the stability of that belief). If the belief collapses, so does the currency - we call that inflation, hyperinflation etc. Currencies are normally guaranteed by a state, a government, or some kind of institution. (The two exceptions to this that I can think of are modern crypto-currencies and ad-hoc cigarette currencies used in times of economic or political turmoil.) People are not normally aware of this nature of money, instead they with normally think of money as something with a stable value. Scholars have called this the ["fetish character of money"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism) (Marx) and ["modern legends"](https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/aug/05/yuval-noah-harari-extract-fake-news-sapiens-homo-deus) (Harari) and similar. There are no limits to what people might see as money. So in your system, they might mistakenly identify the weight they are required to carry with (negative) money. Practical issues You would have to ensure that people do not just discard the weights they have to carry around. If there is a separate record of what debt people have and a police force to control this, it could plausibly work. Note that governments were able to force people to carry around passports in most countries at some point during the last century or so. You would have to make sure that people would not be required to carry around negative weights, i.e. the amount of negative "money" they have should not be negative. The most straight forward way for this would be to set 0 as a lower boundary of any one's debt, i.e. once they have no debt left they are not able to collect payment for whatever they sell. In effect that would be an extreme form of a property tax. You would also have to make sure that people's debt remains positive and that they do not just end up with everyone at debt 0 with 0 weights to carry around. You could do that with a per capita tax that is raised periodically, i.e. every month every ones debt to the government is increased by 100 dollars. I do not think that in an early industrial society (as you say; i.e. ca. 1700s Europe) the government would have enough social control over its citizens to implement such a system. Slightly later - late 1800s, early 20th century, this is absolutely feasible. Compared to what did actually happen in various 20th century dictatorships, this would not even appear particularly weird. This is closer to real historical monetary systems than you may think If you look into how money emerged, it was, contrary to popular belief, [most likely not as a universal medium of exchange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartalism), but rather as a medium to pay taxes. The government will require every family to pay 10 silver tokens with the governor's face each year. You receive one token for a week of labor on extending the road network (or something). Alternatively you could buy tokens from someone who works on this all year instead of just 10 weeks. Call these tokens denarii and you have more or less the way the Roman empire used to run its provinces. A different example: When [Columbus (yes, that guy we continue to celebrate) arrived in the Americas](http://www.mit.edu/~thistle/v9/9.11/1columbus.html), he required the natives to wear clay tokens around their necks. They would receive clay tokens for a certain amount of gold they delivered to his officials. If someone was found without clay token, they would chop of his or her hand and have him/her wear that around their neck instead. Kindness As other answers have pointed out, this system would be quite fascistoid. If you want kindness, you may (again, as other answers suggested) instead want to look into social attitudes. Many philosophies as well as religions make a major point of requiring people to donate to charity, to the poor, to hospitals, to science etc etc. --- Edit to include some references on Columbus. This is a side aspect here but since it was challenged in the comments I feel compelled to defend it. Some more sources. Here is [Columbuses son, Fernando Colón's, biography of Columbus](https://archive.org/stream/historiadelalmi00colgoog/historiadelalmi00colgoog_djvu.txt) (p.273/4): > > Que todos los indios (...) pagase cada uno, que tuviese catorce años, un cascabel lleno de oro, (...) y para saber los que debían pagar este tributo, se ordenó que se hiciese cierta medalla de cobre ó latón, la cual se diese por recibo, á cada uno que pagase el tributo, y este la trajese al cuello para que cualquiera que fuese hallado sin ella, se supiera que no había pagado, y que se le sacase alguna pena; > > > There is apparently an English translation by by Benjamin Keen, Greenwood Press (1978), but I could not find the full text of it online. Fernando Colón does not elaborate on the referred punishment but if you read [Bartolomé de las Casas' "Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies"](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/20321/pg20321-images.html) you will get a pretty good idea: (amongst other atrocities) > > But those they intended to preserve alive, they dismiss'd, their Hands half cut, and still hanging by the Skin (...) > > > Please note that both Fernando Colón and Bartolomé de las Casas are contemporary accounts and as such are more trustworthy than whatever cheerful semi-fictional accounts have been written about Columbus' heroic exploits in the 19th century or so. ]
[Question] [ I'm directing a small team of highly skilled, intelligent operatives to raid a top secret research facility. Unfortunately, our reconnaissance has revealed that not only is this secure facility protected by competent and well trained guards, they also seem to have an advanced illusion or holographic projection system. We're unsure exactly how this works but from observation we know it can: * Generate convincing moving 3d images of people on-the-fly * Disguise real objects or people by overlaying a 3d image on top of what's really there (ie a door can be made to appear as part of a wall) * Generate 3d-localized sounds, simple special effects, and voice-changes on-the-fly * It can't make things invisible to more than one concurrent viewpoint As a savvy commander, I'm worried about the implications that this could have on our raid including but not limited to: * Enemy guards could disguise themselves as one of my operators on-the-fly and thus gain a surprise advantage * Guards could use the limited invisibility of the system to hide from a single person at a time * The holographic system or its controller could disguise one of my operatives as an enemy and cause us to accidentally shot them * Enemies could hide inside holograms and shoot or use concealed positions to flank us My team consists of ~8 skilled operatives who are all equipped with cutting edge, but mundane technology. Suppressed rifles with subsonic rounds, advanced body armor, night vision goggles; the works. I don't have a lot of prep time so developing some new technology isn't really feasible but equipping all my operatives with ten-foot-poles or bags of ball bearings would be possible (I don't know how useful it would be though). Question: What strategies or tactics can I employ to give my operation the highest chance of success and minimize commando casualties? Some ideas I've already had: * Some sort of password system? All of my agents are capable of memorizing a 20-word passphrase before the operation and are good at math. Some kind of back-and-forth identify verification call-and-response could be used * Work in teams of at least two operatives to make invisibility illusions ineffective * Physically verify wall locations by probing with hands if walls are solid [Answer] Dogs. [![dogs and navy seals](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UuCT5.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UuCT5.jpg) <https://www.navysealmuseum.org/raven-nsm-multipurpose-canine> If the problem is the limitation of human senses, dogs are the answer. Dogs have gone to war since there were dogs, and commandos and dogs work well together. Illusions designed to trick humans will be obvious fakes to the dogs. They will smell right through disguises of any sort. The commandos will have to trust their dogs. I think they already do. [Answer] Your password system won't work on a flanking enemy. They will kill you why you are asking the password. IR visors will tell you where there are objects warmer or colder than the background. Those happen to be humans. Make sure that your team wears a clearly identifiable mark visible in the IR, so that if they see sergeant John Doe without the mark they can kill him without thinking too much. Also real doors and walls will have a different IR signature than air, so you won't be fooled into stepping into the void thinking it is a passage. [Answer] Inventing a new technology might be impossible, but I didn't see any restriction about purchasing existing technology. That being the case: ## Laser Imaging / LIDAR There [currently exist](https://hexagon.com/news/press-releases?page=/en/hexagon-expands-leica-blk-series-revolutionising-reality-capture-infrastructure-safety-and-mobility) handheld 3D laser-imaging devices which can be used continuously while in motion. If each member of the team (or even just a few) is equipped with such a device, they'd immediately be able to see through any static illusion. If the devices are networked, they could ostensibly combine their readings to form a more complete picture of surroundings. A small RF transponder could provide reliable IFF between teammates. If the signals are encrypted, this would prevent the enemy from quickly spoofing them during the relatively brief period that the raid is occurring. --- For a lower-tech solution: ## Underslung Paintball Guns Mount a relatively high-capacity paintball gun under their rifles, where a grenade launcher would typically be mounted on an M4. They can use this to test weather a surface is solid or illusory, without having to use separate gear, or move close enough to physically touch it. This will also allow safe IFF checks, as an enemy disguised as a friend will need to have an illusion bigger than their actual body (the illusions cannot make them invisible, so they must "hide" within them, or they'll poke through this disguise); this means that a paintball striking a disguised soldier will pass through the illusion before impacting the person beneath. --- For a quicker, but somewhat low-tech solution to IFF: ## IR Pulses Take apart readily-available remote controls to scavenge their infrared LEDs. These LEDs emit pulses that are invisible to the naked eye, but are readily apparent to IR sensors like those used on nightvision goggles. If the LEDs are mounted around each soldier's helmet, they can allow the team-members to quickly identify one another at a glance. [Answer] Challenge and pass, brevity codes Back in the Marines a security function taught as a basic requirement was the concept of a challenge and pass system. This is actually a wee bit more sophisticated than just "WHAT'S THE PASSWORD!" It started around WW2 where somebody might challenge an intruder by shouting "Lightning" expecting a friendly to give the response "Thunder." Problem is, an enemy waiting out of view in earshot can easily pick up what the challenge and pass is and copy it. It evolved further to be more disguised. For example, on one training mission the challenge was beer and the response was pizza. But you don't just shout the words. You'd yell "WHO GOES THERE" then they'd say something like "A FRIENDLY!" Then you'd say something like "shit, good, I'm tired as hell and just want to get back home and have a beer" to which a friendly would have to say something to the tune of "I hear that man, I'm fuckin' hungry, I'd kill for some pizza right now." Challenge/pass words were changed daily, by shift, or even mid shift and they were briefed to all involved personnel immediately upon changing. Also, there was always a duress phrase as well. If somebody was captured and forced under duress to divulge passphrases they would, ideally, inform the enemy of the real challenge, then give a false pass which would alert the guard that the approaching individual was an impostor. In the beer/pizza situation it was the word whiskey. So if somebody responded "Fuck that, whiskey is better" you'd know to shoot them because they were using information taken under duress from a captured comrade. Brevity codes were just words designated to symbolize complex meanings or phrases while remaining short and concise. So somebody saying "vodka vodka vodka!" over the radio meant "Enemy breaching the wire, south side of compound, all quick response forces mobilize." Or something like that. This concept can be improved upon You may notice a trend here, in that the entire thing is disguised as jocular banter revolving around bar culture. There's a reason for that. Our operating environment was the Middle East, and Islamic culture prohibits alcohol. They do not possess a bar culture. This means, that even if a member of the Taliban gained the real password, there is almost a sort of cultural encryption involved. They lack the subtle nuances and cultural knowledge to be able to weave said password into a believable reply that doesn't arouse suspicion. Additionally, the entire system has a built in weaponization. If captured you have, however faint, a hope that you are not helpless. You can still protect your comrades and kill the enemy by possibly luring them into a trap by giving them a believable duress phrase. This system is extremely crude and simple. But it is still effective. It plays off of cultural differences and the fact that language and culture are fluid constructs. Somebody not actively immersed in that culture has a very, very slim chance of grasping that subtlety and exploiting it without arousing suspicion and giving themselves away. Ever watch Inglorious Basterds? There was a scene where the British saboteurs play everything perfect, but one of them orders two more drinks by holding up his pointer and middle finger in the classic UK/US hand gesture for two. In Germany the hand gesture for two is made with the thumb and pointer finger in a gesture that we native English speakers would assume meant "L for loser," in Germany it means the number two. Same thing, almost exactly. In that fictional scenario, simply forgetting/not knowing a seemingly unimportant detail like which fingers are used in common gestures got the entire crew killed. Which brings me to my final point: Intentionally Cultivated and updated Linguistics The concept outlined above has been advanced upon to the point where military units utilize intentionally developed languages and cultures implemented and subconsciously imprinted by AI. Every single unit speaks its own subtly different dialect of the same language, complete with body language. To an outsider they all sound and look the same, but to an insider subtle cues and differences communicate volumes of data. Rank, unit, task, etc etc. All while sharing enough in common to intrinsically spot an outsider. The AI makes "random" changes which are wirelessly updated and seamlessly implemented to the point where a unit's soldiers do not even realise that their entire dialect and cultural body language cues have even changed. To them everything is as it always has been, and it's just blatantly obvious to spot an outsider a mile away. They stick out like a sore thumb! But your crack squad of heroes have an inside scoop. They can not only imitate the enemy's appearance, but thanks to an experimental new AI based infiltration and espionage platform they can now decode the enemy's cultural/linguistic and dialectic countermeasures. They now can be subconsciously imprinted with the same inside lingual and body-language mannerisms as the enemy to fool the sentries and gain admittance to the facility. Not only that, but they can activly predict and update to match the changes which aren't quite as random as the enemy had hoped when they designed the system. It's not perfect, they can only play the impostor for so long before being discovered, but it's juuuuuuust long enough to penetrate the enemy defenses deeply enough that if discovered the other counter measures and distractions are no longer effective or relevant. [Answer] Assuming the projection system is good enough to figure out it should project a squirrel (using Willk's answer as a base for this one) there are fallbacks that can work in a pinch. Strike operatives do not work alone. Your 8-man section will subdivide in fireteams and pairs. These pairs know how to move together and cover each other. Let's say you're going down a straight corridor. You post 4 men on each side of the corridor. The ones at the front and the rear will move crouched to allow their teammates to shoot above their heads. You have 4 others left. If you need to turn a corner, the point-men can use mirrors or cameras to peek around corners, simultaneously, while the rest of the team is holding perimeter. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fWNRh.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fWNRh.gif) They know their formation. Everyone knows where and how to stand. If someone is projected in your team's midst, your experienced operatives should keep it together. Maybe you have access to wearable IFF devices (Identify Friend or Foe). This would work automagically, using frequency hopping, encryption, the works. The enemy projection system cannot falsify that signal. Your commander's tablet will have status indicators displaying the vitals of each team member. They know their equipment. The men in the middle can use the IR / NV / Matter Density Indicators and alert the team to phantoms or threats. This is something that must be practised extensively before the op. You, as the commander, are responsible for setting the Rules of Engagement that would make your team effective with this equipment. They create ideal fight conditions. You won't go in alone. You command well-trained operatives so you're well funded. You want other teams to create a diversion. This will buy you some time as the enemy has to deal with your deception as well. The diversion teams should create a lot of noise and project a great deal of threat, but they will actually fall back once the going gets tough. Their job is done at that point. They love their dogs. Remember, dogs are still a part of this. They may get killed however, since Plot Armour is not always dog-sized. [Image Source](https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-06-11/ch3.htm#par2) [Answer] Drones The flaw in the enemy's system is that it cannot conceal or disguise a person from more than one viewpoint at a time. So give each of your commandos a heads up display which floats a camera feed from a hovering drone transparently over part of their field of vision. Then use each commando's drone's existing selfie mode to keep it floating 10 feet behind, above and slightly off to the right of their position, facing forward. Then add a support team a few miles from the combat zone, each flying two drones which are programmed to mirror each other's position from a slightly different angle. Have one or more support person for every commando connected by a private real time radio link. The support person's job is to watch the commando's flank and to fill the air with so many drones that the enemy can't use the selfie mode drones to locate the commando positions. [Answer] TL:DR: see the last subsection --- ## The door problem. Preparedness Public buildings are required to display evacuation plans. That tells you where doors are. Obfuscating those plans would be a clear violation of safety and OSHA wouldn't be amused. Additionally, somebody built that facility. And they didn't do it alone, off the top of their head. You might argue a top secret facility wouldn't have plans just laying around, but the point is there most certainly will be plans somewhere. It's up to your intelligence services to find them. If you have a lot of time, you might try to infiltrate someone that will map out the complex and/or procure the plans. The plans may not actually be stored on site, but instead in some sort of national archive. An alternative to placing someone would be to flip an existing employee, with or without their knowledge. This runs the risk of creating a triple agent however, which is a bad thing for you. I would limit the use of interrogation, since you'll never be able to know if they're telling the truth until you go on site and verify by yourself. As a general advice, do not engage an operation with incomplete intelligence. You can plan contingencies for things you know. It's things you don't know that you need to worry about. You can't expect success if you go in not knowing where the doors are. Side note regarding doors As a general rule, your security can't rely on the attacker not knowing about your security measures. So it's pointless to hide doors because you should assume attackers will already know where the doors are. The way you prevent physical access isn't by hiding doors, it's by requiring identification (e.g. ID badge), and making sure your doors (and walls, and windows) can withstanding some force. If you decide no doors are present on floor plans, or there's no floor plans at all, a valid strategy to move through the complex then is to consider a wall is just a door you haven't blown open yet. There's no problem a sufficient amount of force can't solve after all. ## The enemies-disguised-as-friendlies problem. Strobe lights Strobe lights are used IRL to identify friendlies. It's useful notably when you're way far away and people are just tiny smidges on a screen or a scope, and you need to shoot at the right people. The holographic projectors will definitively be limited in the range of frequency they can display. As an example, if the projector works with visible light, it will be unable to reproduce an ultraviolet or infrared strobe light. Any other convenient frequency in the EM spectrum will do, or alternatively you could experiment with ultra/infrasounds. Obviously, emitting a signal means a knowledgeable enemy might be able to track it, so chose your signal wisely. From there, the identification system is fairly simple: you have a small pack that emits your signal, you have a device that can read that signal (which could be the same device), and you have a way to tell your soldiers that information. And for that in particular, your soldiers presumably wear a helmet, which presumably has a visor. Since we're talking holographic illusion, I suppose adding augmented reality filters on a visor is a piece of cake. In the end, in practice, a friendly will pulse visibly, and an hologram will not. Backup strategies Your signal emitter may get borked, which means you will no longer be identified as friendly, which is a problem if rules of engagements are "shoot first, full stop". You don't need anything complicated, a simple password will suffice. WWII soldiers during the Invasion of Normandy used "Flash/Thunder" or a clicker to identify each other beyond visual range, and that will do the job just fine. ## The enemies-disguised-as-flower-pots problem, which also encompasses the above two problems. Sabotage You can deprive a system from the power it needs to operate with a well placed bomb or two. If the facility is powered by a power plant, blow up the power plant or simply cut the cable. You'll also have to sabotage the backup generators in a similar way, because there will be backup generators. Alternatively, an EMP might fry out enough electronics to make the system inoperable, at least in the sections where you need to be, so that you know you will not encounter an hologram. Of course, sabotage like this because extremely complicated if the relevant facilities are hardened and/or underground. It will also bring attention to the fact that the facility is under attack. So not necessarily the most viable option depending on your scenario. Holograms have a tell All of the above are things you should consider for any operation anyways, but this is the real killer. Equip your soldiers with a microcamera (which really should already be standard), a microcomputer, and a helmet with an augmented reality visor. We already know about one flaw in the system: it can't fool two points of view. Have your soldiers move two by two. Each soldier's kit will receive the video feeds from their teammates, and will be able to compare the two feeds. If it detect the same object in different angles, everything is fine. If one feed shows a flower pot and another shows a man, flag that as something to kill and show it to your troopers. If you need a tell that a single operator can detect, then you could go for a flicker. Something imperceptible to the human eye but very visible to a camera, provided it isn't sync on the same frequency than the holographic projectors. This isn't really much of a stretch if you've ever tried to film a screen. [Answer] # For recognising your own troops vs others We have the tech for this called [Identify Friend or Foe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_friend_or_foe) (IFF). It's kind of misleading since it's identifying friendlies and thus anybody else is a "foe" but this is enough for your purposes. You just need to identify your own agents. You can even use stuff like NFC signals (for up close) or other radio signals that you can pick up with a receiver. If receiver picks up the signal you expect - you're clear. In addition, you can add more measures * If possible, you can also keep constant monitoring of where each operative is. Give your team a radar to show positions or even Augmented Reality eyewear that has this as an overlay at the top. If they see a friendly target that isn't there on the radar, they can assume foe. * Similar effect can be achieved with constant communication. Everybody should be trained to issue periodic updates: "I'm at X, going to Y". Everybody else then can track this in their heads. If they mean somebody who isn't near where their last update said - it's a foe. It's taxing to keep track but not that much for a small enough team. If people go in pairs, then each pair only needs to track 3 other positions. # Recognising other (human) disguises of foreign troops First of all, they can disguise as civilian or otherwise "not enemy" and still not a friendly (you already have a way of determining friendlies). Simple - anybody is to be assumed a foe. If possible, you can deploy less than lethal measures like stun guns, tear gas, and so on then subdue and neutralise the targets. Ziplock cuffs can be applied and the person just put aside to not be a problem. This will minimise any civilian casualties if any are expected on the premise. It's also possible to simply shoot everybody and ask questions later. If no civilians are expected and hostiles can't be allowed to live, this is a viable option. # Recognising environmental disguises This is not as easy but still doable. Say, there is a hologram over a door or a corridor making it look like there is a wall. Per the question, the hologram system can provide false visuals and sound but I doubt it can do those convincing enough for tech. You can use an ultrasonic distance measure device. They don't usually have a very many practical applications but would serve well in closer quarters - is that wall really there? You should get a reliable answer for that. The hologram system might be able to issue false sound waves but it needs very serious computing power to match, calculate, and issue the false reverse sound wave response. So, while the holograms are sophisticated, I don't think they'll be able to fool sound distance measuring. There are other types of distance measurements like lasers. This should be pretty similar to sound imaging but maybe very slightly easier to fool with a visual projection. I'm not an expert, though, it might even be harder to fool. All in all, you can use distance measuring that doesn't rely on purely looking at an image to determine if there is something there or not. A combined technology that uses multiple scanning methods would be preferable but would need some more prep time, as it likely needs to be custom made. However, detecting a false wall (or equivalent - false pile of stones is also an option) is half the battle. The smaller half. It is still a visual obstruction and even if your operatives know exactly what behind it. It might be a squad of enemies or an array of servers. Assumption here - the holograms are not sophisticated enough to show a wall on one side but be clear on the other. That will allow enemies to just wait behind a "one way wall" and then shoot your operatives when they stand before them. But it seems pretty hard to do, so I assume that's not possible - enemies behind a false wall also see a wall but might be ready to open fire immediately when somebody emerges through it. So, in this case recon and diversion tactics can be deployed - a drone can be send over in some cases to check what's behind an illusion, or a flashbang can be rolled through it. Overall, treat it as if it's a curtain and act accordingly - it obscures vision but it's not impossible to overcome. The squad could also scout around to find out what portion of space is unknown. It might be something with the size of a janitor closet or a basketball field. This can guide how to approach them. It's also possible to...ignore the illusion. If there is a false wall hiding a small space, then you can just come back for it later. Drop a camera so mission control can keep an eye on it in case an enemy pops in from there but otherwise just move along. [Answer] The easy way would be to cut the power supply as you go in. Apart from causing nine kinds of useful chaos, this will prevent their hologram machines from working. (From the description, the power requirements would be too much for it to be battery operated because of the wattage of light involved in daylight). [Answer] Existing answers seem to revolve around using IR goggles and other existing technology to circumvent the hologram technology. I'm going to try taking the approach that if the adversary can generate holograms in the visible spectrum they can and do also generate holograms in the IR spectrum. @Willk's answer about using working dogs is a good thought, but depending on the training of the dogs, the conflicting sensory input may render them ineffective, and will most certainly have a harmful effect on your operators, as even more so than the ordinary population they are trained to rely on their eyesight. I will attempt to answer this while limiting the technological scope to the visible spectrum augmented by uninterrupted GPS and LTE-equivelant communication amongst the team. The team will have access to a single high flying surveillance drone, and no more than one quadcopter per team member. I will also add a range constraint on the hologram technology, it cannot project farther than 100 yards beyond the compound's fences. It is also unclear what your objective is. Are you retrieving technology from your adversary or simply attempting to disrupt the adversary's existing operations? Is there a requirement for stealth or secrecy? Given that your plot isn't to simply airstrike the compound, I assume your objective is to retrieve something. And given that the adversary could conceal cameras, and other monitoring devices, that stealth or secrecy is not a mission requirement. Given that there are so many unknowns, and that you have some time, but not a lot of time, you should insert some operators ahead of time to perform surveillance, and perhaps even to "feint" at them, begin an attack to observe their response, depending on mission constraints. A good start to the attack might be good-old-fashioned-chaos. Perhaps a prelude to the attack could be man-portable mortars or rockets. Perhaps this damages some of their projectors. At the very least, it helps your team identify holograms, as undamaged equipment after this is likely to be holographic, with the caveat that your opponent might be capable of projecting damaged equipment. If the terrain allows, designating half or more of your team as marksmen would increase your team's awareness, while minimizing the number of operators in the "dangerzone". Given that induced friendly fire is a big threat, and the team's senses are going to be deminished by the hologram system, I would institute (and drill for a while) some rather rigid rules of engagement for them requiring double checking before actually shooting something. Using the uninterrupted GPS coordinate exchange, a shared map of team locations and other markers could be displayed on wrist mounted "phablets" for increased awareness, perhaps involving an overlayed camera feed from the surveillance drone, quadcopters, or even weapon-mounted. The remaining operators would be minimally armed, limiting their numbers will also minimize the risk of friendly fire incidents. They will be the ones actually infiltrating the compound. Their primary weapon won't be actually shoot their adversary, instead to mark targets on the shared-map for the marksmen to hit. Laser marking could be used, but is also likely to be imitated by the adversary. These operators will also have direct quadcopter control to increase their awareness. The biggest issue for them will be limited support from within buildings, perhaps limiting the usefulness of this plan. The biggest danger here will be gunmen hidden by holographic walls. Possible mitigations involve moving some of the marksmen mid-mission, clearing smaller buildings (or rooms) destructively with grenades, and as others have mentioned by marking rooms with paintballs or ink grenades, however paint splatters may be mimicked by the projections. Your team may be forced to clear a building room by room. In this case they will always want to enter a room simultaneusly from two perpendicular directions. The specifics will have to be tailored to the specifics of the terrain you encounter. [Answer] Going to come at this from the other direction, as the side in charge of the illusions and say that the soldiers have a very poor chance of success. Assumptions: * productive facility, not deliberate deathtrap / vault * illusions can not be distinguished from reality other than through physical interaction * illusions are omnidirectional (though flat, like painting voxels), no 1-way-mirrors * no corresponding hyper-intelligence, omniscience, infinite computing power Unless we are entirely magic-based, the illusion system needs to have some way to see the area it is creating illusions in. Perhaps this is certain areas only (a glimmer of hope!). The bad news is that it probably only takes one area. General tactics: * Blind the attackers with a white or black sphere around their heads + Already seems nearly insurmountable + Everything that follows assumes this somehow doesn't work + Likewise with walls/fog that stay directly in front of them * Illuminate their bodies or have overhead arrows point to them * Use projections as invincible commanders + Standing in the open at the corner and giving their current distance, etc. * Don't give time to calibrate or understand technique - overwhelm decisively once intrusion is understood * Waste ammunition + They have to fire at least one shot at a credible threat (more likely 4 firing x 5 each) + 300 rounds / person \* 8 people is only 2400 (10 rounds of a dozen illusions) + Max values from <https://shootingmystery.com/much-ammo-soldier-carry-average/> * False floors, even slopes or staircases * Fill open spaces with a maze of false cover * Create the illusion of hundreds of defenders opening doors, windows, ceiling tiles, trapdoors standing up, etc. and firing simultaneously along with any number of real defenders I think these tactics would fare very well against the current suggestions: dogs, passwords, teams. Depending on your flavor of illusion (you seem to be leaning towards "indistinguishable from magic") then lidar and infrared may be out as well. Paintballs and drones might be the closest, but obviously don't scale that well in a large and hostile facility. Note that for any one way that the illusion is implemented (if very advanced but not magic) there will be useful ways to disrupt it. If you are going for that "scrappy and clever" feeling for your invaders then just pick an implementation (or 3, since they don't know which it is), and have them try different countermeasures on the fly. ]
[Question] [ I was thinking of a situation, in which a band of hunter gatherers goes into a cave, and while they are in the cave an asteroid crashes into the Earth, causing the rock that the cave is in to be ejected at not only the escape velocity of the Earth, but also the escape velocity of the solar system. During the brief period of time that the rock is still in Earths Atmosphere a smaller rock gets knocked into the entrance of the cave, sealing the atmosphere of the cave off from the outside universe, so that the atmosphere does not escape into space during the time the rock is in space. For many generations the hunter gatherers survive by eating the organisms in the cave, until eventually the rock that the cave is in crashes into another planet that happens to have Earth like conditions, and has life. The rocks that sealed the hunter gathers in the cave for many generations are ejected from the entrance to the cave when the rock crashes into the planet, allowing the hunter gatherers to leave the cave, and colonize the planet. Would this situation be possible? [Answer] > > The rocks that ceiled the hunter gathers in the cave for many generations are ejected from the entrance to the cave when the rock crashes into the planet, allowing the hunter gatherers to leave the cave, and colonize the planet. > > > > > Would this situation be possible? > > > Very likely not at all, for a series of reasons: First: The large chunk of rock with a cave inside will be drifting in space moving outside of the solar system. This means it will be far from one of the two energy sources we have on Earth, namely sun light. The other one, radioactive decay, might be present, but I am afraid that if it intense enough to keep the rock at livable temperature will soak anything inside that rock into a shower of radiation which would quickly sterilize any form of life. Second: Lack of light, gravity, scarcity of water and exposure to space radiation will again sterilize any life form in the rock, except maybe some spores. Third For any realistic ejection velocity, it will take millennia to reach the closest star. And even assuming, ad absurdum, that they manage to survive the whole trip, they have no means of dissipating the enormous kinetic energy that they have. This means that the crash landing they will perform will be very, very crash. So crash that they will reach the planet surface in form of individual atoms after being transformed into plasma by either atmospheric heating or surface impact. The faster you make them escape from Earth to shorten the trip, the faster they are going to hit the ground when they land. [Answer] Unfortunately, such a plan would be doomed from the start. It's not enough to simply reach escape velocity while on Earth's surface, because Earth has an atmosphere that will quickly slow you back down again. Rockets counteract this with continual thrust, but for a system with a single impulse - such as a [space gun](https://space.stackexchange.com/a/41136) or being knocked into space by an impact - it needs to have a velocity so high that even after accounting for atmospheric drag, enough velocity remains to escape. And it needs to gain all of that velocity more or less instantaneously. The upshot of this is that your cave will undergo G-forces many times more ferocious than being shot out of a cannon, forces so strong that they'll pulverize anything living inside it. They'll be dead long before considerations of the cave's heat capacity or structural integrity come into play (it could easily be torn apart - and that's all before it even leaves the atmosphere in the first place). [Answer] ALIEN ABDUCTION (circa 20,000 BCE): The only way this scenario works that I can see is if there is an intervening intelligently designed space traveller involved transporting the people. It could certainly LOOK like this to the people in the cave; if they understood enough of it to make cave drawings, passing on the story to ancestors, then this could be their narrative. The aliens (motives unknown) seal the people into a cave, excavate the entire cave from it's surroundings, and lift it up into their ship, carrying it to an alien world. It's alien tech, so we don't need to worry about the cave collapsing, etc., I'm sure they would compensate. I'm pretty sure it doesn't need to take generations. It could be minutes, hours, etc. but more than weeks and the aliens would need to supply food. The end planet would need to be compatible with earthly biology, but we are already having alien-driven panspermia, so this doesn't need much handwaving. BOOM! Your cave people are on an alien world with them no wiser about why. They can mythologize anything you want. [Answer] You can actually do an experiment to verify what would happen. All you need is a modern artillery piece, say for example the US155mm M109A7 mechanized artillery tube. Then you design a 'special' heavily reinforced hollow artillery round (so it doesn't break up upon firing or impact) that can be unscrewed to allow access to the hollow core. Into this core you place half a dozen live mice. Having done that you then place the round inside the artillery piece and load the round together with maximum number of charge bags. After which you fire the round at a per-determined location consisting of deep, relativity soft soil from which the round can be recovered. You the recover the (hopefully) intact round and conduct an examination of the occupants. Following this inspection you can place the resulting 'mouse pate'(slightly warmed) on a thin bit of toasted crispbread, sprinkled with fresh herbs and parmesan to be consumed at your leisure. [Answer] Lots of great problems with this have been mentioned already, but I'll add a couple more: Rock Porosity Caves generally form in pretty porous rocks (that's how all the water got in to form it in the first place). You can bet that the vacuum of space will suck all the air out pretty fast. Not Enough People and/or Food I'm seeing different estimates but you'd need over 100 people to repopulate humans on another planet. A hunter-gatherer needs around 40 ha to support itself and caves are relatively unproductive areas so multiply it by a factor of I'd say well over 100. But you're also not replenishing from energy sources like the sun, geothermal energy, and chemical energy coming in from the outside. So I wouldn't bet on them living much past however long it would've taken for them to starve to death anyways. [Answer] Nobody has yet mentioned oxygen. In normal air that's 20% oxygen, we humans breath about 11 cubic meters of air a day each. With no sunlight, there will be no photosynthesis to convert CO2 back into O2 (or, of course, to be the bottom layer of the food web). So all the oxygen they breathe will need to be in the cave at the start. Even if you get past all the other very serious issues others have mentioned, this one is going to keep your journey very short. That isn't to say you shouldn't write the story. If you have an interesting situation or thought experiment, readers will often tolerate some seriously implausible events needed to create it. (Eric Flint's 1632 or "Ring of Fire" comes to mind.) But it's better to admit the backstory is implausible than to try to hard to justify it. [Answer] Surprising, haven't seen this mentioned yet: After a few months, much more certainly a few millennia, the entire rock is going to be at a temperature of only a few Kelvin. All other considerations aside, I doubt your cavemen will have much success keeping it any warmer. Even if they could somehow build fires (& not die of carbon monoxide poisoning, or run out of oxygen, or run out of fuel) to make it warm, you're going to have to warm the entire rock lest all the heat be sapped out through the frozen cave walls. At the temperatures the rock will adopt, your very atmosphere will be condensing on the cave walls, and touching it will frost-burn you very rapidly. Keeping the internal cavity at reasonable temperatures means continuously resupplying the heat that the rock will be radiating the whole time. Interesting note (because you should write this story), such radiation would be fairly distinctive & who knows, maybe somebody will spot the weird microwave-emitting asteroid when it gets close enough to a sensor to detect. [Answer] To answer the original question: No, asteroid impacts could not enable human interplanetary travel. The acceleration involved at each end is too great for anything other than bacteria to survive, not to mention the extended journey through the cold and dark of space. Here is a less implausible scenario: Instead of an impact, there is a near miss between two planets. They are briefly close enough that the two atmospheres are connected. In the narrow gap between the two planets the two gravitational fields nearly cancel out. The net gravity is so low that a violent storm picks people up and deposits them on the other planet. To be clear, this scenario is still quite dubious. There are several issues -- the relative velocities, the tidal forces, and figuring out the orbital mechanics of such an interaction. (Perhaps a [third](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem) or fourth planet/moon would be needed to make it work.) But I think this near miss is more plausible than a violent impact. [Answer] If you want to make this work, even though it's very unlikely, here are a couple things you can do: * Make the cavern system out of an extremely dense, non-porous, and contiguous rock * Make it so that when this rock is ejected into space, it is spinning rapidly. This causes internal artificial gravity, although for this to work, the rock needs to have an unnaturally high tensile strength * Make the cavern large enough to support a rather large underground lake, and make sure that lake has plenty of plant and animal life to start off with * If you want to make the humans inside have any idea of what's happening, maybe give them a window in the form of a very large crystal. Perhaps, this crystal is why they were in the cave in the first place (eg religious site), and a couple meters of mostly clear quartz could give them a good view into space and maybe even provide some sunlight * You'll probably need to engineer some sort of plant which performs CO2 --> O2 conversion without sunlight. Maybe have them feed off certain minerals found in the cavern systems * Have your humans start out with an extremely large food supply. Maybe, they've been storing food in this cavern for years or decades for religious reasons or whatever. They need a lot of biomass * Besides plants and animals, use fungus for consumption and possibly light in the form of luminescence * Include some chemicals or minerals which can be used to create heat through an exothermic reaction. The humans can mine this material and use it for light, heat, and cooking instead of fire * Don't make the journey too long. The humans would survive a couple generations optimistically; not nearly enough to make an interstellar journey. Maybe have them crash on another planet or moon in the same solar system. That type of journey could be measured in months, years, or even decades * Landing is difficult. The target planet or moon needs to have a very thick atmosphere and the rock needs to come in at a very shallow angle. Maybe, have it aerocapture and orbit a couple times, each time slowing down more and more to prevent the humans from becoming pasted or cooked. * To survive landing, humans will want to wait until reentry of the rock is over and the rock reaches terminal velocity. Then, ideally, they'll be sucked out of the rock when it breaks up in the atmosphere. After that, they skydive (without parachutes) and hope to survive. If they're able to land in vegetation, it's possible to make it with only a few broken bones. [Answer] As you have already seen, the answer to your question, as originally posed, is a big, fat "no". Do you have the scope for a rather long story or even series or stories? If so, why not combine some of the alternatives suggested with an overarching "discovery" narrative: * The planet is under asteroid bombardment in advance of the big, big comet that's arriving soon. * Benign aliens have spotted the unsophisticated but intelligent hunter-gatherer (HG) life on the planet and don't want to see it die out. * The aliens find that a group of HG's are (not unreasonably) sheltering in a cave and fake a random rock impact to seal it up, then lift the whole cave, intact, from the bedrock (with authentic-feeling shaking and noise) using tractor beams, a transporter, drones, whatever and take it to the ship where it remains sealed, with the HGs being put into slow mode so they think they've been there years. * Cave deposited roughly (but survivably) on a biologically-compatible planet with no existing intelligent life. After this, the population of HGs grows, over the millennia, into the planet-wide dominant species, with the "smashed out of their own world" myth as their dominant religious foundation story, which no-one believes literally any more, but think of as a great metaphor for their elevation from primitive to civilized status. Eventually, what's left of the original cave is found buried in the desert (like all good relics) and one or more of the finders begin to question whether there was any sort of truth behind the original "myth" and start looking for answers. Throw in the aliens still being around to keep an eye on their "project" and you have as long a story as you can (or want to) carry off. I've read (and paid for!) books with more far-fetched plots. [Answer] Although a conventional interstellar travel is unlikely, due the the crushing forces of the impact, there may be a potential to involve wormholes and some strange physics. If the wormhole is the gravitational cause of the asteroid, or it just manages to rapture some poor folk in caves and eject them conveniently on another world there may be something to work with. I'm no expert in wormholes. Sort of like Stargate without the teleological root cause. [Answer] [As shown here](https://youtu.be/16pVrE_H7pk), it won't work all that well. To be launched into space you need a massive impact. An impact smaller than the KT impact that wiped out the dinosaurs would not be sufficient to launch ejecta beyond Earth's orbit. And even the KT impact did not produce all that much ejecta that escaped Earth's gravity. Lunar scientists expect to find traces of the Earth rocks on the Moon blasted from the Earth's surface during the Late Heavy Bombardment period. But the impacts that happened around that time were many orders of magnitude larger than the KT impact. Take e.g. [the Imbrium impact](https://www.brown.edu/news/2016-07-20/imbrium) > > Around 3.8 billion years ago, an asteroid more than 150 miles across, roughly equal to the length of New Jersey, slammed into the Moon and created the Imbrium Basin — the right eye of the fabled Man in the Moon. This new size estimate, published in the journal Nature, suggests an Imbrium impactor that was two times larger in diameter and 10 times more massive than previous estimates. “We show that Imbrium was likely formed by an absolutely enormous object, large enough to be classified as a protoplanet,” said Pete Schultz, professor of earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown University. “ > > > The Earth was around that time also pummeled by objects of this size and even larger, as the Earth is a much larger target than the Moon. It are impacts of this size, about 5000 times more energetic than the KT impact, that launch a large amount of material beyond Earth's orbit. [Answer] You might want to read Off on a Comet by Jules Verne. In this story, a comet impacts the earth, and carries away a small band of voyagers, who later get returned to earth the same way. I think the transfer mechanism is implausible. Apart from that, it makes for a good story. [Answer] Use hand wavy alien technology maybe, don't explain it as such if it doesn't fit the theme of the book. Use weird force fields and energy sources that the hunters gatherers think is magical spirits transporting them to a different realm but eventually you reveal to the readers it's aliens [Answer] Unless you're writing in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy universe and can employ a passing side effect of the Heart of Gold's Infinite Improbability Drive, I would employ an alien intervention instead. Unless your hunter gatherers are Tardigrades, then you should be good. ]
[Question] [ The centaur externally appears very human-like. Their forelegs are fully humanoid, with human feet. They also have human-like hips to support the forelegs. The horse body is similarly sized to the human body, and is connected horizontally so that the lowest part of the chest is contiguous with the region between the forelegs. The horse body appears to connect at the front of the chest, with no shoulders The centaur's dress would need to cover the human chest, hips, and legs, with the legs and hips being covered all around Could such a dress realistically be made and used by these centaurs? [![Diagram](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TUXOh.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TUXOh.png) [Answer] ## A hole and a zipper. It might be a little difficult to put on alone, but it's certainly doable. Better yet, have a person assiting you. Essentially, put a hole in the back of the dress, to fit the horse part. Cut a cut upwards to the hole, and probably strengthen all these seams, since they seem like easy tear points. Then, add a zipper, set of buttons, or similar things, like you would use to close a jacket, on the bottom cut. Lower the dress onto the centaur while the zipper is unzipped, then have someone zip it once it's on. If you have no people available, you could make the zipper rather large, and hookable. Then use something like a marshmallow skewer with a hook instead of a point to pull the zipper up. Maybe add mirrors to said skewer in order to see the zipper. Voila! [Answer] You've gotta check old European fashion. During many periods it was common for the richer folk to use pieces of clothing with very exaggerated sizes or features, such as wigs as tall as a child or collars so wide that a moderate gust could flip you over. In the 1880's very exaggerated shelf bustles were all the rage. This is what I am talking about: ![A shelf bustle, which is a dress with a gigantic, built-in butt prothesis](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kHAe1.jpg) So you see, when it came to ladies, not even Sir Mix-A-Lot had anything to do with an European gentleman's selection. This led to the following drawing circulating around Germany back then: ![A drawing joking that a shelf bustle could help a centaur lady pass as a human](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qSlmB.png) From Fliegende Blätter; Band LXXVIII (1883), p. 147 By the way, I stole both images from [this page about corsettes](https://lilyabsinthe.com/defining-the-late-1880s-look/). Lily Absinthe elaborates much further on that fad. The conclusion here is that no matter how crazy an idea you've had, somebody has already implemented it before. [Answer] Yes, something very similar was in vogue throughout the middle-ages to far into the renaissance, and occasionally thereafter - even still in modern times during parades in some countries or cultural events: the [caparison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caparison) or horse-trapper: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4q59B.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4q59B.jpg) [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caparison#/media/File:Ren%C3%A9_d%27Anjou_Livre_des_tournois_France_Provence_XVe_si%C3%A8cle_Barth%C3%A9lemy_d%27Eyck.jpg) You might want to adjust the pattern a little, but they're basically fit for centaurs to wear as dresses. As a side note: trappers often depicted the rider's coats-of-arms or emblems. In your case, as the rider and horse are one, the centaur might want to show off their own personal emblem as a way to let their identity be known. [Answer] Of course I don't see any difficulty with this. [![Horse in a suit](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YitUZ.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YitUZ.jpg) See [Horse gets tailored suit](https://www.sadanduseless.com/horse-suit-funny/) Maybe they could hire human tailors to have the work more easily done? But the suit itself is clearly possible. In this case the upper part of the legs are left bare to the view. If modesty in your world suggests otherwise a gown could be added around the top part. To wear it would best to have some educated yahoos who can sew on them the dresses. Just like it was done in the 18th century for ladies (and some dandies) [Answer] No, Centaurs wear hats In Greece, a dress would be far too warm for a horse, so the Greek Centaur never wore dresses. However, the beauty ideal among Centaurs did appreciate some decoration, that's the reason why some Centaurs wore a hat. Never heard of any dresses.. [Answer] A wedding train type dress may work. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Slxnn.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Slxnn.jpg) Credits: <https://sites.google.com/site/prettywomensdreams/wedding/6-types-of-wedding-dress-tail> This type of dress should be easy for a centaur to put on, the long train will flow over her back and down her legs. Hopefully they will look graceful in such a dress although there is a risk it will look like a table cloth draped over a table. [Answer] Yes This is nothing more than a complete skirt with a bodice attached at the front of the skirt and zippered or buttoned down the back. The piece, when worn, would cover everything you want, but not the horse portion of the Centaur. BTW, if what you're thinking is, "you know, that's really nothing more than today's backless dress...," you're on the right track. Your real problem is, "can a centaur wear a skirt?" The answer in this case is "no." The skirt, by itself with no other support, would have nothing to hold onto as it "waist" of the skirt could be no higher than the "chest" of the horse. It would be like people wearing skirts (or pants) no higher than their crotches. I guess if you tie the belt tight enough, but if you think that's practical, I want' you to consider the meaning of the word "mince" when used to describe walking. Which means you have a general conclusion that is, conveniently, genderless What this means is that a Centaur really can't wear anything... not a pair of shorts, not a pair of pants, not a skirt, not a dress... nothing... unless it's attached to the "top part" (bodice) of the clothing. Centaurs can't wear pants (or skirts, etc.) without something to hold them up. And that something really has only one practical expression: Suspenders. Whether an attached bodice or suspenders worn beneath a shirt, it makes no difference. [Answer] They can wear but not at their own Wearing a dress then zipping and/or buttoning it needs reach of hands and fingers. Centaurs have hands but not long enough to reach all parts of their body so they may not wear anything at their own. They will need assistance for wearing, taking off, changing, trying a dress. It will be better to leave them as they are. Just put a dress on certain occasions for decorative purposes only. [Answer] This begs the question: don't they have hair? Surely the bottom part will have hair, just like a horse does. So you'd only need to dress the top part, with a nifty line in riding jackets , longer at the back. Do your centaur ladies have breasts, or is that taken care of by the horse part? You'd think so, because the reproductive organs are equine too.\* But if they do, they'll need support while galloping. Thoughts while in the shower: If the bottom part is hairy, maybe they have the same colour range as horses. Their head hair would match the tail. Brown horses would have brown skin, etc. And do they have spotted centaurs? Would the human part be spotted too? And why not striped centaurs on a zebra base? \*Hmm, would the reproductive parts be equine? AFAIK the images of centaurs we have from antiquity do not show male centaurs - ah - exhibiting - human genitals. But this is the author's own world (and centaurs never existed anyway) so the author can decide and develop that detail. ]
[Question] [ You are the admiral of a fleet of warships in orbit around Saturn (EDIT: the individual ships can be anywhere in the Saturnian system, including into Titan's orbit), tasked with performing a precision strike on an aerial target in Titan's atmosphere (for more context, check [Orbital Bombardment of Airships](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/202317/orbital-bombardment-of-airships)). For the sake of an interesting story, I don't want the fleet to take the obvious action, using the laser arrays present on most of its ships to take out the target. What I need is a plausible and satisfying explanation for why you don't use your lasers. Your answer should not be: * That the lasers are broken or inadequate (they're not). * Handwavium or technobabble. I need a hard, logical reason why lasers are tactically the wrong choice because of some scientific or logical reason that makes sense under our current understanding of the universe. * Evaluation of an alternate option from lasers. I already have that (see the referenced question). What I need is why not lasers, not why another option might be better. You may, if necessary, add minor amounts of background information to the situation to contextualize your answer. If you have any questions, just ask. [Answer] The lasers aren't designed to be used against targets in an atmosphere If the wavelength happens to be one that Titan's nitrogen atmosphere isn't very transparent to, your lasers are going to lose energy heating up all the air in the way instead of your target (if your laser is strong enough to just punch through, scattering can result in significant collateral damage). Titan can also have other obstacles to transmission in its methane haze and clouds. If your force if pressed for time, waiting for the weather to change to give you a clear shot may not be a usable option. This would mostly apply to higher-frequency sources, but a weapon optimized for space-to-space combat could plausibly be using them for their higher energy density. Changing a laser's frequency usually requires some extra equipment, which could be unavailable for whatever reason. (side note: this could be an intentional choice to protect places on Earth from rogue elements or stray shots) [Answer] # Wild Weasels Lasers can only move in a straight line. That means any automated defenses of the enemy will immediately know exactly where to find your ships. As a matter of training, your forces may have been taught to avoid using lasers unless strictly necessary in order to avoid giving away their exact location. Even in a situation where a laser might make sense, Standard Operating Procedure prevails and the crew acts as they've been taught. In the real world, the United States Air Force has used special attack aircraft to locate Surface to Air Missile sites by their radar signature. The so-called "Wild Weasels" then attack the missile site. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Weasel) has a good description: > > In brief, the task of a Wild Weasel aircraft is to bait enemy > anti-aircraft defenses into targeting it with their radars, whereupon > the radar waves are traced back to their source, allowing the Weasel > or its teammates to precisely target it for destruction. A simple > analogy is playing the game of "flashlight tag" in the dark; a > flashlight is usually the only reliable means of identifying someone > in order to "tag" (destroy) them, but the light immediately renders > the bearer able to be identified and attacked as well. The result is a > hectic game of cat-and-mouse in which the radar "flashlights" are > rapidly cycled on and off in an attempt to identify and kill the > target before the target is able to home in on the emitted radar > "light" and destroy the site. > > > If combat lasers became common, a similar tactic might develop where defenses are built that automatically return fire to any laser attack. [Answer] ## The thick atmosphere provides both concealment and cover The report "Navy Lasers, Railgun, and Gun-Launched Guided Projectile: Background and Issues for Congress" by the Congressional Research Service tells us that > > lasers might not work well, or at all, in rain or fog > > > This is a problem, because Titan is covered by a [600km thick atmosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Titan#Vertical_structure), consisting of a dense haze in the upper layers, and over 200km of even thicker orange smog in the lower layers; Also, it's the only other place in the solar system where it can rain. From the orbit, the entire moon looks like a hazy brown-orange sphere: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/p5VuN.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/p5VuN.jpg) (Image made by Cassini space probe, joint NASA/ESA mission) On the surface, it looks like Silent Hill in sepia: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/h7uIa.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/h7uIa.jpg) (Image made by Huygens, joint ESA/NASA mission) It took decades of orbiting the moon to obtain even a [low resolution map](https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/seeing-titan-with-infrared-eyes) of the moon's surface. If your targets are actively hiding, or even just [drifting in the strong winds](https://sci.esa.int/web/education/-/45751-the-huygens-probe-lands-on-titan), they might be very difficult to detect. The [absorption spectrum](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Noemi-Pinilla-Alonso/publication/283117397/figure/fig2/AS:391757213782017@1470413606229/Saturn-s-and-Titan-s-atmospheric-absorption-spectra-from-Cassini-VIMS-Note-the.png) shows that the atmosphere happens to absorb the ~3μm light of your [IR-laser cannons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SEQ-3_Laser_Weapon_System) very well, so that most of the energy will simply dissipate in the air. Translated into [military-babble](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_(military)), it means that Titan's atmosphere provides both * concealment (because your adversary is difficult to detect in the thick clouds), and * cover from your laser-weapons (because the atmosphere is impenetrable for lasers), therefore lasers are of limited use in this situation. [Answer] ## It's a weapons test. I have a new, experimental weapon and want to find out how it fares against aerial targets in a real-life combat situation. This battle is rather low-stakes and easy to win, so it is the perfect opportunity for a field-test. ## It's practice. I have a squadron of green atmospheric fighter pilots. I don't know yet which of them have the guts for real combat and which of them will pee their pants when someone actually fires back at them. I would like to find out before I send them into a battle that actually matters. This is the perfect opportunity to let them collect some real combat experience. So I send them to take out the target using short-range strafing runs. Should they screw it up, I can still fire the lasers and do their job for them. ## I want to humiliate my enemies. I am [intentionally](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CherryTapping) using inefficient weapons against them just to show them that I can beat them even if I handicap myself. This should both demoralize the enemy and bolster the morale of my own troops. ## It's a bet. Admiral Jackass wagered a bottle of 20 year old Olympus Mons Brandy that I can't take out that target without lasers. I am going to prove him wrong. [Answer] ### Stealth concerns! Lasers have a unique signature that identifies the ship and reveals your location. If you attack the planet using your lasers, then there will be the occasional reflected and refracted photons that can be viewed by anyone in the solar system with line of sight. The attack will be captured on dozens of satellites and security cameras and anything else with a camera happening to look in the direction of the target. Those refracted photons can be analysed - the frequency distribution of those photons are a product of tiny imperfections within the laser itself or power generator. If every gun had a muzzle flash that was a unique colour, and any high fidelity security camera could distinguish that colour from all others, and the flash was so bright half the solar system could see both the impact and you, youd keep it in reserve. [Answer] ## Lasers are expensive You could take out the targets with lasers, but there’s a cheaper option. After all, you’re in a war. One laser used now is going to cost a lot of energy, and if there’s a cheaper option, you want to do it, cause you’re faction is running low on energy, so you shouldn’t waste it. Alternatively, if your faction isn’t running low on energy, the admiral might just hate being wasteful ## Lasers are limited In the comments of the linked question, you mention [reinforcements](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/202317/orbital-bombardment-of-airships#comment628283_202342). Use your lasers now, and you might not have them when the enemy fleet comes rolling in, and that’s going to put you in a bad spot for the coming battle. Some ideas to limit lasers (as helpfully pointed out by @Hobbamok in the comments) is that they could run off a coolant, which can only be replenished at a home base, or they might require an exotic type of energy which the ships reactors cannot replenish. ## Too many casualties Lasers disperse, and maybe these lasers would damage the enemy ships so much everybody on board dies, and in the linked question, you stated you want to avoid too many casualties. (This one might be a bit sketchy science wise as I’m not sure how much lasers actually disperse) ## The admiral forgot lasers existed This one requires a fairly incompetent admiral (perhaps a political appointee?), who also doesn’t like getting corrected by the crew. The admiral then forgets lasers exist and thinks of something else to do (which might be a bit Wierd to write with an incompetent admiral) [Answer] # The target is underground (Edit: I missed the part where they're firing on airships. Oops. Perhaps the ideas can be adapted.) Lasers are neat and all, but they can only "drill" so deep before... * the walls of the hole collapse * the laser overheats * the laser runs out of power * collateral damage * they fire back Take your pick. A few need further explanation. ## Collateral damage Maybe the target is under a civilian area. Firing risks heat from the laser and vaporizing material causing collateral damage on the surface. Or maybe there's vital underground civilian infrastructure in the way. ## They fire back *It's incredibly difficult to find and target an object the size of a spaceship at 1.2 million km, especially when staring into the "glare" of Saturn. Space is big. Space is really, really, really, really big. Compared to space ships are very small. You didn't say how big your spaceships are, but let's make them a pretty big 1 km. [A 1 km wide spaceship around Saturn from Titan has an angular diameter of 1 microradian](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=angular+diameter+of+1km+diameter+at+1.2+million+km+distance). This is like trying to find [a very small flea (1mm) from 1 km away](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=angular+diameter+of+1+mm+diameter+at+1+km+distance) while looking into the Sun. By comparison the International Space Station is [about 100 m wide and at 400 km away appears to be 250 times larger](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=angular+diameter+of+100m+diameter+at+a+distance+of+400+km) with lots of big, shiny surfaces to reflect light and doesn't have a bright gas giant behind it. Unless they're shining a high power laser at you, then its very easy. Titan is three light-seconds from Saturn, it will take three seconds for the laser to reach Titan, and another three seconds before their return fire reaches you. So long as you keep your laser pulses short and random and maneuver defensively you have six seconds to get out of the way of [laser counter-fire down your laser's bearing](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/202397/760). But a precision continuous drilling laser might have to be on for more than six seconds, and might require precise station-keeping. This allows the enemy to fire back down your laser's bearing, and (despite Star Trek tropes) a planet can generate a lot more power than a spaceship. [Answer] The target is on the opposite side of Titan* Lasers are a perfectly wonderful weapon but they do not work very well when a planet is in the way. Indirect fire offers numerous tactical advantages, not the least of which is the ability to fire on a target that cannot see you and may not be aware of your precise location, or even that you are present at all. In reference to the linked scenario, in which you wish to force surrender with minimal casualties, demonstrating force when the enemy cannot see you could be sufficient to force a surrender even without casualties or even damage - all you have to do is demonstrate that you're capable of delivering deadly force to their location without exposing yourself to counterattack, and you've got them. [Answer] Is what you're attacking shiny? Lasers will be reflected and not damage the craft (to the significant amount required for a kill shot). You could say it was hardened for such an attack and therefore ballistics or missiles are the only alternative. [Answer] I'm going to borrow an idea out of the Dune universe: laser + shield = adverse reaction in the form of big BIG boom Adverse reactions If you have "lasers" there's a strong possibility of "energy shields". If we are using high tech to create lasers? Then high tech also has defenses. Maybe even multiple types of defenses - against energy (lasers), high energy (plasma), physical (bullets), explosive (nuclear), etc. Well lasers of a certain type + shields of a certain type have a high chance (or guaranteed chance) of causing a high energy explosion - an explosion large enough to destroy the target and the surrounding areas - including your ships. The right combination of lasers + certain types of defenses will lead to such negative reactions at the physical/molecular level that the resulting explosion will destroy and cause so much collateral damage as to be Very Bad. The last thing The Commander wants to do is kill innocents and cause an intergalactic incident. Plausibility The "handwavy"ness of this shouldn't be much more than any other "high tech" hand waving. Laser guns exist? So do shields... so must the interactions between various forms of weapons & shields. So must the chance of Big Bad Uncontrollable Boom. Are there times where you'd want to make the BBUB? Sure... but not this commander and not this mission. Reference: <https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Shield> [Answer] The target is too far away to use a laser Your ship is in orbit around Enceladus, Saturn's second moon. It aims its lasers at the airship on Titan. The laser shoots across the million kilometers (3.3 light seconds) of empty space between the two moons and hits the top of the atmosphere in an area a kilometer wide. Only a fraction of laser hits the airship, the rest misses and is absorbed by the atmosphere. It is not the precision strike that you promised High Command. You ask your engineers and scientists if they can do better. No, they say. Not without making bigger lasers, bigger than the 10cm beam they make now, or going to a smaller wavelength, as well as improving the precision manufacturing of huge ship-mounted space lasers. As it is, the beam divergence is only a little above the theoretical minimum. This is why lasers like this are designed for point defense and perhaps close-range (less than 1000 kilometers, where the beam is only a meter wide) combat. They wisely stop just short of saying "I told you so". [Answer] You can't obtain sufficient precision because of atmosphere [refraction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refraction) The path taken by light is only real straight line in a uniform environment (e.g. space, air with uniform pressure/temperature, etc.), as demonstrated when you look at an object that's in a swimming pool, or (more closely related to your problem) by [mirages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage). Similarly, the laser beams will be deviated from course when traversing the different layers of Titan's atmosphere and any other perturbations (clouds, etc.). Your ships, being designed for interstellar use, do not have the tools to take that into account while aiming, and as such just can not strike with sufficient precision. [Answer] Politics The use of laser weapons is a contentious issue in politics. You may be able and willing to use them, but you may debatably be violating some peace treaties. Either way, it's going to be a whole international incident if you fire that thing. Better to avoid if at all possible. [Answer] You can't, without adding some external factor. As you said, lasers are adequate. I'm assuming that by adequete you mean they have the proper frequency to deal the required damage despite Titan's atmosphere density and absorption. The reasons could have little to do with the weapon used and more to do with the mission. You DON'T want to slag the entire habitat due to political repercussions, or because you want to be absolutely two hundred percent sure that someone is killed, which would warrant the insertion of a special team onboard for assassination. Or maybe the settlers of Titan have some utterly massive ground to space coilgun hidden under the ice, with little risk of actually hitting but extreme consequences if they do so. You may then want to park your fleet far enough out of their effective range that laser can't focus accurately anymore, and may want to rely on kinetics travelling more slowly to target, but having longer range (and may even use some laser powered rocket engine to accelerate faster, since these lasers are freed from the direct fire role) It would help a lot if you explained how your writing evolved to end up in this specific situation, yet do not want to bring it to its logical conclusion. If you work under the hard sci-fi logic of bringing your basic postulate to its logical conclusion, you need to rework the postulate, or you can soften your sci-fi and handwave space clouds or hyperspatial interference. [Answer] Tactics Unless your laser can dump all its energy in a small pulse, you will likely need to hold the beam on target. Even if the laser is in non visible spectrum, there is a good chance the planet has equipment to detect multiple spectrums. Which means that the defenders now have the most accurate description of the attacker's position they could hope for, right where the beam starts. Projectiles might be low tech, but by the time they arrive the attacker will have moved. Missiles can change trajectory to further add complexity to tracing. [Answer] One thing to remember is that warships specialize in function and work together. If the only thing a fleet can do is blow up other space ships, then it's only useful when fighting other ships. Seems cool, but imagine the D-Day invasions if the only thing the allies had available were battleships - there wouldn't have been an invasion. Below I've listed a couple reasons why lasers might not be optimal for this situation, but you might want to ask yourself if there really isn't a good reason why none of the fleet in this scenario is equipped to launch scout vehicles and trans-atmospheric missiles. You want precision? Get eyes on target and guide your shot in. After all, what's the point of parking a fleet over a target if the only two options are to either annihilate it or do nothing? There's no point in spending all the time, money, and effort involved with building a battleship if there aren't other ships for it to protect. Okay, fun reasons why just shooting a laser at an airship in Titan's atmosphere might not work: A. The balloons have a fairly reflective coating. A laser could burn through them, but it would require a lot of time focused on an exact spot, which with the distances involved is kind of difficult. B. The airships have confetti cannons. Not even kidding. They have decided to go with some of the most vulnerable possible vehicles available, they're going to plan ahead. Lasers don't punch holes, they ablate material which takes time. If you simply monitor for someone shooting you with one, then you should have time (especially with a protective coating on the targeted surface) to launch counter-measures. Launch a bit of chaff in the path of the beam, and the beam will scatter too much to do anything. Edit: spelling [Answer] As other have said, not only do lasers scatter in atmosphere (so reducing power or increasing collateral damage), they can also be deflected by changes in heat (think mirages and how they bend light). The fast moving nature of the targets is not so much of an issue (space fights can be held with fast speeds), its the targets ability to change direction that is a factor. [Answer] To make the lasers powerful enough to be useful weapons they have to big. Not bigger than your ships but the kinda of size where you have to point the ship rather than the laser. As there so big and your ships are comparably slow at turning, then trying to track small fast moving object in Titans atmosphere is hard. Your lasers where designed for strikes against big slow moving capital ships not small fast objects. [Answer] Laser beams have a tendency to wander a bit. Continuous adjustments can easily compensate for the drift, but not until after the lasers and associated equipment have warmed up. Ever tried to spear a fish in a pond? The constantly changing refractivity of the atmosphere around the target, due to changing winds and condensates, means the lasers rarely hit the target initially, and tend to drift off target quickly. Add that your enemy has rapid counter-strike capabilities, that you must completely eliminate on the first strike, or reserve your laser capacity for incoming projectiles during the battle. You have a more stealthy weapon, that can eliminate the target before a counter-strike can be launched. Lasers in reserve, in case of total or partial failure. [Answer] Heat dissipation Lasers are used as a defensive measure against incoming missiles. It is well known that it is difficult to get rid of heat in a vacuum. Therefore the time required to get rid of the heat between shots would make them vulnerable. [Answer] The enemy has anti-laser cover: Let’s say that your laser works by firing a concentrated stream of radiation at a target that causes it to rapidly heat up and take damage. The first step to reducing laser damage is having a high albedo, which can be done with a shiny coat that’s white or pale. Next, there’s using materials with a high specific heat capacity, which means that it takes longer to heat it up, and a high thermal conductivity, which will dissipate the heat, which will mean that it will take even longer for the laser to deal significant damage. Also, a small and mobile target would be hard to hit, and you’d need your laser to be focused on a certain point on the target, which is especially hard if they’re far away and constantly moving about. And we don’t need any made-up materials for that. Diamond, while brittle, has the highest thermal conductivity of any known material, with values as high as 2100 W/mK, and hydrogen gas has the highest known specific heat capacity of any substance, at 14304 J/(kgK). Tungsten has an really high melting point of 3695 K, so if you have a small, mobile bunker with an outer shell of diamond painted white, with an inner shell of tungsten, and between them, a layer of hydrogen gas, unless the laser is really powerful, it will take a very long time to burn a hole in your bunker. And by then, it’ll be far easier and less time-consuming to use explosives to shatter the bunker. [Answer] Any high-energy weapon lights them up for the entire system to watch and post or aim at, thanks to waste heat. Lasers are notoriously power-hungry. Every power generator has to dump waste heat, and in space the only way to do so is radiation with the help of through Avatar-like "red fin" radiators or fancy Mass Effect-like droplet coolers. The power demands of lasers capable of dealing reasonable damage right through the atmosphere (scattering and opaquity are a laser's hardest counters) take that to obscene. This means that while ships launching missiles or firing chemical guns can do away with small and nearly-invisible (compared to the overall multispectral signature of an orbital bomber) heat radiators, a ship firing a bombardment-capable laser will immediately have to make it's radiators become yellow-hot or melt itself on the spot. This has the obvious military and media repercussions. First, a firing lasership shines enough to be aimed at even with a cellphone's camera, let alone military-grade guidance systems. If your Titaneans have (or have had) reasonable access to orbit, they've already spammed Titan orbit with dirt cheap mine fields made out of dormant missiles, ready to activate and strike anything that is hot enough to be considered an enemy lasership. Second, and that works even if the Titaneans have no mass access to orbit, they've already made friends with factions elsewhere in the system. Laserships on full power are target-painted for free by their own radiators for half the system to shoot at their leisure; even if there are no friendly guns/launchers in range, they are bright enough for thousands of eyes, from local space tourists to space telescopes of Earth or Mars, to be captured on video destroying civilians. Anyone half-competent in journalism can whip up a media disaster for the bombarding party if they manage to catch the bombers on tape. Kinetic weapons have a much lower media profile, because space is big and missiles/cannon shells are small. This will allow the bombing party to at least remotely plausibly deny involvement and say that they were on a routine patrol, and airships going down below is a coincidental malfunction. Or photoshop the presence of a rogue terrorist warship and say that it was terrorists who shot the airships, and the orbital force was an attempt to intercept and destroy the terrorists. [Answer] There has already been an answer about Titan's atmosphere interfering. I'm going to take that a bit farther: How accurately you can focus a beam is a function of the frequency of the photons (A simple illustration of this: Note how low resolution radio telescope images are despite radio telescopes being far bigger than optical telescopes) and the size of the object doing the focusing. Since the purpose of your laser is to deliver destructive energy on target you are going to build your laser to use as high a frequency as you can efficiently use as this will deliver more concentrated energy to the target. Lasers in the UVC spectrum already exist, I don't know if we can go farther and who knows how far they've gone by the time of your story. UVC basically doesn't make it through even Earth's atmosphere and Titan has [b]far[/b] more atmosphere than we do. Thus, unless your ships specifically have lasers meant for engaging ground targets your fleet probably can't even light a candle on the surface of Titan--and even ground attack lasers meant for other worlds are likely stopped by the haze in Titan's atmosphere. ]
[Question] [ I want a group of freelancers on a spaceship to stop a star from functioning. No government funding and they have to get creative. What would be the cheapest way for them to achieve this? I know we are talking about a STAR and I could just throw a black hole or another star nearby or whatever, but I want something clever. A plausible futuristic tech that can get the job done (maybe draining, flinging a meteor with a shitload of iron into the heart of it) with a bit of engineering ingenuity. It doesn't have to be drastic; it can even take a couple of years. They also have to do it discreetly, (no violent explosions). I'm all ears! [Answer] Stars are ridiculously large, on a human scale. Heck, if every nation on Earth banded together today to try to stop the sun from working we probably couldn't do it. This comes from what stars are: a great big pile of hydrogen and helium, so much that the force of gravity starts overcoming the electrostatic repulsion between the atoms and they start to fuse. Fusion is such a fundamental process that nothing short of turning the whole star to iron or disintegrating it and scattering it across the galaxy will stop it. If you have a star-sized pile of light elements, there will be fusion. I don't think any of the things you proposed would work. Bringing another star or black hole nearby is not discrete, would destroy the Earth, and is essentially piling more mass into the star. Might succeed in messing it up, but noone would be around to care. Plus if you can move around stars and black holes you could just move the star somewhere else. Draining would be... difficult. Sure, if you took away enough of the star's mass it would stop the fusion, but where are you putting that mass? And how are you moving it? As for throwing a meteor made of iron into the star, well, nothing would change. The sun outweighs the largest asteroids by a dozen orders of magnitude. They could fall into the sun and it mostly wouldn't notice. Even if it were made entirely out of iron, there's already several planets' worth of iron in the sun, and it doesn't really care. Stars are ridiculously beyond human control, at this point. Heck, we can't even control a planet. So the solution might have to be from a different angle. While we can't stop a star from working, you might be able to trick people into thinking it, which is a much lower-budget (and more feasible) task. If you want to prevent solar energy from reaching a given planet, you can fill its orbit with junk to block the light. This already sort-of happens---the year without a summer is a parallel example. If you put enough stuff into orbit, you would also trigger [Kessler Syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome), so it would be hard to fight back against. TLDR: It's not going to be possible to put out a star. But you can fake it on a lower budget. [Answer] # Strangelets Your tags are `science-fiction` but not `science-based` or `reality-check` or `hard-science`, so let's get speculative! [Strange matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_matter) is matter with equal proportion of strange quarks to other quarks. Its most notable characteristic (at the subatomic level) is that unlike nuclear matter, it is comprised of a soup of quarks, rather than more discrete subatomic particles. This gives it no effective electrostatic charge, so it can get very dense because gravitational attraction overrides the (nonexistent) electrostatic repulsion. Now, why does this matter to your would-be sun-snuffers? Because there is a theory (with no solid proof one way or another) that nuclear matter - the matter that makes up the nucleus of ordinary matter - is metastable with strange matter, and that contact with strange matter could catalyze a reaction transforming regular matter into strange matter, with the concurrent destructive effects to... everything that's used to being made of normal matter. This is unproven (and in fact, unlikely, because we've seen no evidence of the stuff existing), but we're being speculative and presumably your universe has FTL transport so we're already bending the rules of physics. So, your freelancers, using the Witherspoon Device (her great-great-great-grandaughter, thank you for asking), create a strangelet, held in a gravimetric field. They then propel this at the star in a specialized torpedo casing that contains a power source sufficient to bring the strangelet into contact with the chromosphere. (How? Who knows?) Because the strangelet is being helped into contact with the sun's matter, rather than being blown away by the solar wind and radiative pressure, it actually starts the conversion of part of the chromosphere into strange matter, which starts to collapse. This process will take a while, but will eventually kill the star. Possible downside (don't know if this matters to your freelancers), as the core of the star rapidly gets denser, you will probably trigger a type-B supernova, as the gravitational attraction causes an early core collapse. Almost all of this is certainly nonsense, but it's more plausible than hauling a black hole around or siphoning off half a stellar mass of... mass, and flinging it somewhere else. [Answer] The Mass Problem The Sun is 99% of the Matter in the Solar System. This should be true for most Solar Systems. An exception would be very small Stars but even then, they are big. This means that there is physically not enough Matter in the rest of your Solar System to do anything except make the star burn a tiny bit hotter. More Problems As a matter of fact, dumping stuff into the Star will only make it hotter and burn more violent. El solution In order to stop the Fusion inside the Core, you need to make the Star lighter. Because Gravity is the cause behind the Fusion in the first place. Thus if you take away the Mass, the Fusion process stops at some point. How you would do that in non Astronomical Timelines is beyond me. Even if you could somehow remove one Earth worth of Mass each day, it would stil ltake over 900 Years. But sure, if time is non of your concern, building a Strcutre that can extract 1 Earth worht of Mass a day and launch it into an Orbit will get the Job done. In 900 Years. [Answer] ## Plausible-sounding Handwavium: I'm not sure if there IS a good science-based answer to this, so here's as close as I can get. In the novel The Mote is God's Eye, aliens are trapped on their home world, even though there's a wormhole to another star. The wormhole opens INSIDE the other star, and the alien's shields grow the more energy they're exposed to. Their ships arrive at the star, the shields grow exponentially until they overload, and BAM. Human shields can't absorb energy, so they fly to the wormhole with a shield strong enough to keep out the star's energy. No bam. I don't know what kind of handwavium tech is available in your world, but here's my suggestion. A shield that powers itself by absorbing energy exists. It doesn't have to be the normal thing (maybe it burns itself out in seconds and isn't useful for real-world applications, or they have a broken one that works this way). Second, whatever FTL you have needs more power to go further, and to make the FTL field bigger. They have access to a large derelict ship with a jump drive, and install a self-charging shield into it. The whole thing is rigged to feed the power from the shield into the jump drive and expand the field size to a truly vast size. There can be dramatic short-cuts (like a 'bad' jump shifts things into parallel/alternate universes, or disperses mass across the galaxy - whatever) but the goal here is to shift enough mass of the star elsewhere so it is either gone or goes out. No one uses this for any practical reason. Trying to power a jump this way will (at best) teleport you halfway across the universe to a random location. Only for your band of star-saboteurs, the more random the better. [Answer] There are various ways to do that depending on the technology level. 1. Spaceships use Alcubierre Drive: Your freelancers modify the space-time contracting tech used in the Drives to fold the space around the star or black hole. Why this hasn't been tried before: Programming the Drives to fold such a huge region is ridiculously complicated and beyond the capabilities of super-quantum computers of that period. But your genius freelancers have found out a way. 2. Spaceships use Wormhole Drives: Your freelancers create numerous wormholes inside the star to drain away it's elemental fuel. Why this hasn't been tried before: Calculations to position the wormholes inside stars are ridiculously complex. And it possible to create only one wormhole at a time for a very small duration due to energy and technological limitations. But your freelancers found a way by somehow using the energy of the sun itself to keep the holes open. 3. Normal reaction drive with a Highly Advanced Portable Particle Collider on board(HAPPC): ~~A) Your freelancers modify the HAPPC and put it in the orbit of the star. When the HAPPC is behind the star so that Earth cannot see it, it spits out anti-matter, which slowly eats up the star. It does this by using solar energy to create matter and anti-matter through pair production. The matter created while creating antimatter would be used to power the HAPPC by nuclear fusion.~~ Why this hasn't been tried before: Because only your team was able the create a portable particle super collider. Note: I really liked part A of HAPPC but the physics is a bit shaky here. B) Your freelancers use the HAPPC to create exotic element and compounds using elementary particles other than up, down and electrons. These exotic compounds somehow eats away the star. Why this hasn't been tried before: Because only your team was able the create a portable particle super collider and were smart enough to be able to create stable exotic elements and compounds. [Answer] As we do not have the technology of a class 3 civilization, it would not be necessarily productive for us to speculate on the comparative energy efficiencies of how to carry this out. However a class 3 civilization no longer cares about energy expenditures as they have access to extremely high power sources, so I would only consider time efficiency. I will list some high-level options, and you can decide what sort of technology or real physical processes (such as removal of mass by a nearby singularity) may be used to carry them out. I would choose the last option listed in the explanation below: a device that changes fundamental physical constants in a localized region of spacetime, as this would stop fusion instantly, but only as long as the effects of the device persist (unless the device changes the constants permanently, in which case you had better put some warning buoys in place!). I have a background in physics and can say with certainty that only a [class 3 civilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) could accomplish this. This would be done by modulating [a star's classification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification) (and thereby what, and whether it can, fuse via any of the known processes of [stellar nucleosynthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nucleosynthesis)) by adjusting its mass and its elemental makeup. Here is how you might go about doing so: * If you want to stop fusion by adding mass, then add a lot of mass, consisting of an element which a star of the resulting classification cannot fuse, to the star. This would trigger a nova, which may need to be contained to avoid undesired consequences. * If you wish to stop fusion by removing mass, then you have two options that I can see. 1) Remove enough fusable mass of the particular element(s) that a star of that classification can fuse. 2) Remove dark matter only in order to reduce gravity. Both of these options may trigger a nova by changing the classification of the star unless you also take care to remove enough mass so that the star reverts to being a gas giant as it was before it developed enough mass for its gravity to apply enough pressure at the core to overcome nuclear forces, which is the condition that is required to trigger stellar nucleosynthesis. * If you wish to neither add nor remove mass, then you could hypothetically create a localized area of spacetime, which envelops only the star, in which one or more of the fundamental physical constants of the universe are different, with the aim of stopping fusion, such as by turning the star into a neutron star. NIST has [a complete list of fundamental physical constants](https://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Category?view=gif&Universal.x=75&Universal.y=13). I would advise that the author not speculate at what value the fundamental constant(s) should be changed unless they have access to someone with a strong mathematical background in nuclear physics. However, perhaps the constant(s) that could plausibly be modified are the Newtonian gravitational constant G (which would change the amount of gravity that mass exerts thereby increasing the threshold for fusion to start as the atoms at the stellar core are under less pressure), or Plank's constant h (which changes the strength of the nuclear forces that must be overcome to begin fusion). You could even change the value of pi to get the result, but I wouldn't even begin to speculate on the other consequences within that localized envelop. Pi is a mathematical constant but it has been speculated in some [multiverse theories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse#Level_II:_Universes_with_different_physical_constants) that all constants may vary between universes. A sufficiently advanced class 3 civilization could possibly have access to such a device, if such a device was even possible. [Answer] There's is only a single semi-plausible way to do this, but it requires a handy stellar sized black hole near by, plus a planet sized object with a ridiculously efficient drive attached, so that you are able to move this planet around. Here's how to do it: 1. Move the planet next to the black hole to entice it to move into the direction you want. You will go into an offset orbit in front of the black hole to accelerate into that direction, firing your engine all the time taking care that its exhaust plume does not hit the black hole. 2. Using the planet as a drive to move the black hole, put the black hole on a direct collision course with the sun. 3. Once you enter the sun's gravity well, you need to flip around to the rear of the black hole, accelerating it away from the sun. You need to reduce its speed at least beneath its escape velocity from the sun, binding it gravitationally to the sun. 4. Keep decelerating the black hole for as long as you dare. 5. Fire your engines to get out of the solar system, fast. What will happen next is this: 1. The black hole has a rather tiny diameter of around 30km, and it will hit the sun with a speed slightly below its escape velocity. As it enters the sun there will be a flash of gamma rays. After that, nothing happens until the black hole emerges on the other side, producing a second gamma ray flash. 2. Since the black hole is now bound to the sun gravitationally, it will rise to quite a significant height (several astronomical units, probably) before it starts falling back down, repeating the above. 3. Since the black hole scoops up a tiny fraction of the sun's mass on each pass through its core, it slowly increases in size and looses velocity. The reduced velocity reduces the height to which the black hole rises in each cycle and increases the frequency of the cycle. 4. Since there is now a second stellar sized body in the solar system, the orbits of all the planet will become unstable, and the planets will be flung out of the system over the course of a few orbits. This will be the effect that ends all life on earth. 5. The black hole produces gigantic amounts of heat in the sun's material on each pass through it. In the long run, this increases the core temperature and causes it to expand. This will take a long time to propagate towards the sun's surface, but when it does, the sun will get much hotter and increase in size. 6. As the core's density drops, the sun's fusion stops. However, the sun + black hole system will now be producing much more heat than the sun ever did. The sun keeps getting brighter, hotter, and bigger. 7. The immense heat increases the solar wind to insane levels. This will cause the sun to eventually loose more matter to the solar wind than it looses to the black hole. 8. Still a long time later, all the sun's matter is either consumed by the black hole, or blown away from it. The black hole will remain, having only ingested a small part of the sun's matter. This whole drama would unfold over the course of many years and centuries, so I guess, it's worthless for your story. Nevertheless, it's the only fully hard scifi method of stopping a star's fusion that I could think of, so I guess, it's both a correct and useful answer to your question. [Answer] If there are freelancers, and they want to stop a particular star, then they have access to certain resources that already violate a bit of the science we know of in the universe. They probably at-least have access to faster-than-light drives, and some form of auxiliary shielding. Luckily, that's almost all they need to give it a good attempt. ## The Plan The freelancers get a few spare ships, and refit them together. Importantly, they use two FTL drives, massive capacitors, and the strongest per-surface-area shielding ever made. This requires stripping everything else from the ships, including the power supply, so they can minimize the surface area needed for shielding. With everything in place, they charge up the capacitors and set the first FTL to send it directly into the center of the target star. At the instant it exits, it unloads the stored energy in the capacitors through the shields, pushing as much of the star away as possible. It also needs to immediately engage the second FTL drive, taking the star with it. Now, with how FTL drives work, the freelancers aren't sure of this plan's effectiveness. Theoretically, the math works out to give the FTL long enough to start the jump, destroying almost every other component on board. However, FTL drives are notoriously inaccurate and unreliable, and almost never work on the first attempt. It might explain why no one has heard of a plan like this having ever worked. [Answer] Realistically, there are only two ways to put out a star, neither are remotely within our capability: 1. Take it apart. You can carefully put it back together afterwards but beware that the result is a white dwarf with a huge amount of hydrogen--if a fusion burn ever starts it will result in a cataclysmic explosion--the normal temperature regulation does not work in degenerate matter. Note that the energy requirements will take a K2 civilization far, far longer than you allotted. 2. Take away it's energy. We don't even have any idea of how to go about this, and note now we have the reverse problem--getting rid of energy far beyond what a K2 civilization works with. Once again, you end up with a degenerate body full of hydrogen. [Answer] They have FTL, so they can bend gravity and time. They can use either one: * Gravitationally "levitate" the inner mantle. This has two effects: It reduces the pressure on the core so that fusion stops; and it keeps the star from collapsing (which it would normally do once the radiation pressure is gone). Problem: The core resembles us a little too much — now the pressure is gone it really wants to relax and push its boundaries, and it needs to if we want to stop fusion. Your rascals will need to find some relief measures, perhaps by siphoning off a substantial share of it "elsewhere" through a convenient wormhole. There is one disadvantage: That fusion has stopped in the core will take some time until it becomes noticeable on the surface — [estimates](https://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/a11354.html) for the order of magnitude for the time range from 103 to 106 years. * It is perhaps more elegant to use time, not gravitation, because they can slow down cause and effect at the same time, and the effect would be immediate. They simply slow time down for the entire star, reducing the rate of fusion and lowering the energy output both in terms of intensity and wavelength. [Answer] The way it was done in one of the [Revelation Space books](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelation_Space_universe) is: > > Highly intelligent self-replicating machines "contaminated" a Jupiter-like gas giant in the system, and over a few years they replicated at incredibly fast rate, and used the planet mass to bootstrap a heavy high tech industry, which itself used the whole planet mass to build a giant handwavium star killing machine, which tore open a hole (gravitational? magnetic? I don't remember) in the outer layers of the star, leaking highly pressurized core matter in a solar system-sized death plasma jet, that itself was aimed at the planets and used to sterilize all life in the system. > > If you maintain the weapon powered long enough (decades? centuries?) and enough matter escapes, the star will lose its ability to fusion. > > > Sure the whole process goes largely unexplained and relies on fictional physics, but at least the scales involved are more scientifically plausible than "tossing a drop of red matter into the sun". [Answer] As far as I know, a star generally 'die' when it runs out of fuel and the core collapses, turning it into a supernova and later into a neutron star and/or black hole. A core collapse generally means gravity shifting inwards (super nova/neutron star) or outwards (slow cooling off and eventual black hole). Depending on your technology level (does gravity changing technologies work that can cause an imbalance in the core? wormholes that can siphon off the fuel?) there may be things that can be upscaled to work with stars. But even then, this will take many, many years/millennia/even longer to actually happen. But perhaps it doesn't need to die completely? Just a "minor" change could make the system unviable for habitation in the long term - large physical bodies causing solar eruptions and thus radiation; gas giants starting to interact with each other which might end with them turning into a sun of their own etc. Perhaps just the threat of it turning supernova/neutron star/black hole/new star in the next thousand/million years is enough to cause people to abandon the system, as they know the process will basically make the system unviable for habitation due to extreme radiation waves. I would look into some kind of butterfly effect; some kind of 'near-miss' scenario that could be altered. For example, a small collision with an asteroid changes it path, causing it to crash into two others in the asteroid belt, which collide with four more, etc. Your star system will in a few years be travelling near this huge band of asteroids orbiting another system, but instead of passing near it, they are suddenly in the path of the shower produced by this collision, which will pelt the system, including its star, showering the system with asteroid impacts and radiation from solar flares, and possibly toppling the precarious balance of its almost-unstable star. Of course, this would need a massive cartography exploration of the asteroids; your freelancers could be going there undercover as an expedition to evaluate the rocks for rare commodities unavailable in the system, do the math required to put the rocks on the 'right' path and make that happen, then come back to warn the population, possibly turning themselves into heroes. [Answer] Create a small device that will be in a close orbit to the star. This device will be powered by sunlight. It captures stellar wind particles leaving the star and converts them to matter. This matter is used to build another device just like itself. It also converts some of the stellar wind into a large block of lithium. Since the device makes copies of itself, the number of devices increase exponentially. When each new device is created, it is placed in the same orbit as it's parent. Over time, the star loses mass and the ring of devices gains mass. This causes more hydrogen and stellar wind to escape at a continuously faster rate. Eventually, the mass of the entire star is converted into devices and blocks of lithium that are all circling the same center of gravity that the original star had. The process runs out of solar energy when the star shrinks to the size of Jupiter. The inhabitants of the planet are horrified as the star slowly turns dark. [Answer] Spin the star up until it breaks apart. First add a device to the nearest planet to the star that is designed to make the planet rotate (I assume spinning up a planet is slightly easier to achieve than directly trying to spin up the star). As the planet will no longer be tidally locked to the star, it will induce tides inside the star (and probably the planet, so this planet may turn into lump of molten metal but as long as you can keep it confined and spinning all is good). You will also need to alter the planets orbit to bring it closer to the star, so maybe add some shields to the planet as well for good measure. As the tidal forces increase the star will start spinning, get it spinning faster enough and it can reach a critical rotation rate where the outer layers are ejected (the surface has a velocity greater than a the keplerain orbital velocity). As the star loses material eventually you will reach a point where nuclear fusion no longer occurs and thus the star is no longer burning. [Answer] upsie, I missed that bit - They also have to do it discreetly, (no violent explosions). yeah, probably have to delete this answer .... > > it can even take a couple of years. > > > okay, now u made everything hard for everyone, and there are some interesting answers if we stay in sci-fy, but to add to the pool what won't work first of all, short on what won't work - adding matter on top of a star to change the ratio of elements to extinguish reaction won't work on timeframes of 100'000's of years. The reason for that is the core of a star, as matter does not move(mix) there that freely because of the density of it, and time mentioned is the time needed for energy to leave the core, so I guess it even worse for the matter to go in and redistribute. handwavium makes everything possible so keeping that in mind it can be a plot by itself. Star dissassembler "Supernovae phuff 9000" works in a similar way as to blow something to extinguish a fire. There is such a thing as [Muon-catalyzed fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion) it makes fusion go faster mixing in particles which are similar to electrons by charge but more massive and when they orbit hydrogen it makes the effective size of such atom significantly smaller, thus improving reaction by kinda "reducing" repulsion force. At least two pieces of handwavium needed - produce enough of muons and the second one to deliver them where they need to be, to the core. The first one is lesser - energy produced by the star may suffice and as catalyst proportions, one does not necessarily need that many of them. The second one probably as hard as mixing matter and complexity reduced just by 2-3-5 orders of magnitude because particles are smaller and fewer in numbers. Getting to the core at concentrations 1 ppm or 1 ppb or 1 ppt or even in smaller cooncentratios they affect core bringing it to supernovae conditions, but u control the force or strength of its phuff by how much muons added in there. Type Ia supernova produces about 1–2×1044 J in its blast, and for a star like sun u need something like 1/1000 of it, something on a scale of 2×1041 J or less as it about total binding energy of the star, but u need the stuff to stay in the system(so less energy) and just spit in chunks size of Jupiter, again less energy required overall. A valid hole in the plot to be aware of is the question - if they have Muon-catalyzed fusion capabilities and are significantly more technologically advanced than the technology of today why not dismantle star directly. it is not clear cut and there can be many answers to it - why not, but it is indeed possible to be direct and dismantle a star, by as an example elevating the problem of delivering muons to the core directly and apply a pealing layer by layer approach in accordance of how deep in one can deliver those muons. or by throwing a few other legit(kinda) technologies to accompany the process and which can be stated conducted and managed by a small crew of people and not being them k1,k2,k3 civilizations by themselves. explanations are rather long and not clear but as it is related to those methods there are 2 relevant old answers of mine [1](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/47982/20315), [2](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/45273/20315) - so as u may look for other answers over there for inspirations and generally on wb as star engenering isn't a fresh topic here, mean a/q's do happen on that subject. ]
[Question] [ Set in the not so distant future, space travel becomes commonplace but is limited within the heliosphere. I'm thinking since it is fuel efficient and more economical to use gravity assist to slow down the speed of the spaceship would reverse thrusters become obsolete? I think maybe adding rocket boosters at the front of the spaceship is dangerous especially for nuclear explosion type of propulsion rocket and it is costly to add lots of electromagnetic rings all over the body of the spaceship just to direct the compressed plasma and feed it to the reactors to achieve fusion for thrust. We need to cool and barricade the thrusters and the crew which is expected to add even more mass, so is the reverse thrusters obsolete? [Answer] Nope, we don't even use them today. Reverse thrusters are completely unrequired. Just flip the ship and use the normal thrusters. All the ship needs is: * A means to rotate the ship. * Normal main engines. Once rotated so that the main engines are pointing in the way the ship is traveling, just ignite those engines. Take a look at a SpaceX booster, the ones they land back on earth. What we might want reverse thrusters for is docking. Actually a full RCS system with thrusters aimed left, right, up, down, forward, and back that allows the ship to rotate and translate is really handy. These thrusters are not large engines but are very small. The point is to provide a small nudge and wait, rather than putting the pedal to the metal. Which makes them absolutely impractical for accelerating/decelerating from planetary/inter-planetary transit speeds. If you want to watch a fairly accurate visualisation with a somewhat futuristic ship take a look at The Expanse. They have large ships with a few configurations. [Answer] What do you mean by obsolete? They never were a thing to begin with. AFAIK, nobody even tried to add a propulsion system to the front of a space vehicle. Sci-fi (or rather space fantasy, as a commenter aptly noted) routinely takes energy for granted, but in reality putting stuff into orbit costs a packet. An X-wing starfighter apparently carries enough fuel to effortlessly fly away from a planet, but us poor Earthlings actually need 600 to 800 tons of rocket (Proton / Atlas V / Ariane 5) to painstakingly put 10 tons into a 36000 km geostationary orbit. Using the most powerful rocket available, we barely managed to launch New Horizons and its 30 kg of useful payload toward the outer rim of our solar system, at a snail's pace (9 years to reach Pluto). (As another commenter aptly pointed out, the probe complete with topped up fuel and engines weighed a whooping 478 kg, but the Atlas V 551 launcher - the most powerful version available to date - weighed about 570 tons, i.e. the actual probe was less than 0.1% of the total mass, and the useful payload roughly 1/20,000th of it. Scaled to an average 75 kg individual, that would not even represent the weight of a quarter.) So the last thing you want on a spaceship is dead weight, and an extra main engine surely falls into that category. As for gravity assist, it's not nearly enough to slow down a ship to a landing. Besides, following the necessary trajectories usually costs a lot of time. What you could possibly use is an atmosphere. With enough air brakes or lifting surfaces you could basically end your trip like a plane. When no atmosphere is available, you still could use the ground to brake, but that would involve a huge pile of airbags and give your passengers a very rough ride :D If you want a smooth landing, you'll have to use pretty powerful thrusters at some point, and carry an amount of fuel equivalent to what you need to take off from the planet. Just to put that in a response: you might want to play around with Kerbal Space Program. You'll soon realize the power of gravity :) [Answer] In Star Trek and pretty much every other Sci Fi show you never see them turning the ship around and firing the engines in order to slow down. They have stupid things like inertial dampers and reverse impulse thrusters to slow the ship down. In reality, pretty much the only way to slow down in space is to turn around 180 degrees and apply thrust. [Answer] Well... yes and no. Mostly no. If you are thinking spaceship as in Star Destroyer (and definitely if you are thinking rocket ship), then no. Reverse thrusters are a horrible idea. Although it would definitely be possible, having a second main engine would have these effects: * Extra weight. Think about it: not only do you have one massive drive engine, you now have a second one. This extra weight would FUBAR your ships' maneuvering, as their momentum would be drastically increased. Think about it like this: Which would you rather be driving on a slick road, a sports car or an overloaded 18 wheeler? This extra weight causes an Achilles and the Tortoise - style situation, with the increased weight requiring more engines which means more weight which means more engines which means more weight which means more engines which means... (*And so on ad nauseam**) Huge fuel costs. While having a reverse gear would allow you to decrease your lateral velocity more quickly, the extra weight means that you would need more fuel. To continue the sports car vs. big truck analogy, Which would you rather drive: a car with 20 mpg, or an 18 wheeler which gets 1 mpg. * A minimal increase in maneuverability. While having a reverse-thrust engine would be nice, *the advantage over just flipping the ship around is minimal.* * Decreased cargo carrying capacity. In exchange for this minimal increase in maneuverability, you are giving up a lot of cargo space in order to make room for the engines. Since a spaceship's prime purpose is usually to move cargo from point A to point B, this alone would be sufficient to keep reverse thrust-capable spaceships off the market. --- That being said, while all of these are valid points, There is one type of spaceship for which this works: [Bussard Ramjets.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet) With a Bussard ramjet, reverse thrust is (almost) as simple as reversing the polarity on your magnetic field generator and then running stored hydrogen through it until you get to cruising speed. Since ramjets produce gamma radiation this would be impractical for manuevering close to planets, being mostly reserved for when you want to "get the hell out of Dodge." [Answer] Only one sci-fi universe I've seen has had main engines in multiple directions... the "Nightsdawn" series from Peter F Hamilton. The hyperspace rules made for spherical or nearly-spherical ships. Warships needed to dodge, that is, suddenly accelerate in various directions. Thus, each cubic face on the sphere had a full main engine, and a variety of direct and tangential thrusters as well. Going into hyperspace chopped off anything extending outside the sphere, so spaceships were generally urchin shapes that could retract all their spines. The design has the drawback of enormous waste of space, but also redundancy of engines, fuel tanks, etc. There's no "front" of the ship. There are no specifically weak sides. Tumbling the ship to radiate away laser energy is no problem. There's no dedication of the ship to cinematic aerodynamics (this is outer space, after all, no need for swept wings). In a realistic setting, you have one or a small set of engines, and use tangential thrusters to spin the ship around in the span of dozens of seconds or minutes. "The Expanse" series shows thrusters spinning a ship around in a small number of seconds, and that's really fast and uses a lot of propellant. [Answer] ## It Depends™ For most cases, no, reverse thrust is not necessary. But there are two cases where it would be beneficial despite the additional cost of mass: ## Large military ship In a space battle, your survivability is directly tied to the ability of your opponent to predict in which area of space you will be by the time their slugs, lasers, or rockets will cross the distances between you two. In ordinary circumstances, a spaceship can always flip and burn, yes. But in combat? You will need to be as quick and as unpredictable as you can. How fast can your ship turn around? Chances are, not fast enough. Having retro thrusters will allow you to abruptly change your trajectory, without telegraphing it to your opponent beforehand, and without throwing off the aim of your own turrets. ## Very large or very fragile civilian ship. To turn, you need to spend fuel or energy. If your ship is too massive, it might be not economical enough to sloooowly turn it around for a retro burn, spending propellant to overcome its inertia, and wasting days not being under a thrust to deliver the cargo in the shortest possible timeframe. Just adding two additional channels to expel your reaction mass might in the end turn out to be more economical and practical than the costs of powerful enough RCS engines and all the additional infrastructure they would require combined with all the time wasted on turning around. Another consideration is if your ship is just simply too fragile and hyperoptimized to turn around. Something like ISS Venture Star from Avatar: it's very long and very thin. Inertial stresses from RCS thrusts might snap it in half or damage vital parts of it, so it launches from its home system on a light sail powered by lasers, and on arrival, it slows down without turning around via its antimatter engines - both cases create tensile stress around an only single axis of the ship that it's optimized to handle extremely well, since its basically almost just nuclear engines and a crew section tied together by a rope. [Answer] Yes it is necessary to have reverse thrusters because spinning in space is a terrible idea- something they strenuously avoid right now. Spinning causes so much difficulties with control of a spacecraft- spinning out of control is a real danger. You can't just spin 180 degrees-chances are a slight miscalculation will cause tumbling. Reverse thrusters and other directional thrusters would be tiny little rockets- mainly for fine control of the spacecraft. ]
[Question] [ Premise: It's the modern day, and humans have various magical abilities through a runic magic system. One of these abilities, which I'm currently trying to visualize the implications of, is called Hammergate (short for "[Hammerspace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammerspace) Gate"). It essentially grants the bearer access to their own 7 foot wide, 7 foot tall, and 3 foot deep pocket dimension that they can open a portal to at will, though only once every 10 minutes (exact cooldown time subject to change). The portal, which is as tall and wide as the pocket dimension itself, stays open for as long as they're within 3 feet of the portal, and anything they put inside there will stay there, in that pocket dimension, until taken out at a later time. Additionally, and crucially to this question, whenever the portal isn't open, time doesn't pass inside that pocket dimension. If you drop a ball inside of it and then quickly close it before it hits the ground, the ball will resume falling to the floor as soon as the portal is re-opened at a later time. One of the things I realized this allows for is essentially infinite shelf life. You can store something in there indefinitely, and it will never get stale, rot, melt, spoil, or change state in any way whatsoever until you open it up again. And this gave me an idea for a way I could show this impacting the world of my story. If, hypothetically, there were a food ingredient that would be absolutely delicious, but isn't served in any real restaurant because it's near physically impossible to get the ingredients to the customer before they go bad or noticeably reduce in quality in some other way, then suddenly this pocket dimension storage power would make that possible, at least as a luxury even if the power isn't prevalent enough to make it easily available. But the issue is that I don't know if any such foodstuff exists. *Is there a food ingredient that would* be delicious, but goes bad too quickly to be served at a restaurant? Something that time-freezing storage would suddenly make a viable cooking ingredient? [Answer] ## There is a huge number of delicious fruits that are rarely eaten outside the regions they grow because they either don't transport well or go bad way too fast or both. Examples Cherimoya : a fruit with a taste that is hard to describe. Citrusy strawberry vanilla pudding does not do it justice. Also called the ice cream fruit for how well it is served chilled, described by a botanist as "the masterpiece of nature" It also goes bad within a few day of picking, bruises from mild handling, and goes bad even if frozen. Restaurants would love cherimoya. Cut it in half, chill it, serve with a spoon. Bam, you've got your most popular dessert with less prep time than a bowl of soup. Mangosteen: described as the "the queens fruit" with a mild delicious flavor. It can only ripen on the tree, and goes bad quickly after picking. Worse, it spoils with no sign of spoilage until you bite into it. Jabuticaba: is a sweet fruit that grows directly on the trunk of the trees. Sweet and tangy. In the places it grows it has sales comparable to grapes in the rest of the world, fitting because it tastes like grape candy. But it also starts to ferment within 3-5 days of harvest, so it is not sold outside the areas it grows except in liquor. [Answer] The technology / magic you're describing may well make some foods possible in a restaurant context, but as I see it what you've really created is a form of 'hot freezer', or in other words a system of taking a perfectly prepared hot meal on a plate and storing it AS a hot meal almost indefinitely. Traditionally most hot buffets use some form of [Bain Marie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bain-marie) setup to keep the food warm, but that also eventually dries or over-cooks the food. This is why most restaurants cook fresh and to order. This of course takes a lot of staff in a kitchen, all working at unsociable hours, all working under pressure because table 8 is miffed at how long their fillet mignon is taking to come out. Restaurants pride themselves on providing a freshly hot cooked dish, not something that has been sitting in a warmer for hours. So to me the obvious application of this technology is to allow restaurant quality meals to be prepared, plated and stored beforehand. Imagine (if you will) that your chef and his sous chefs all come in and work 9 to 5; they prepare a given set of meals against the menu and store them in your deep pocket dimension. Then all the waiter has to do when the clientele arrive is take the order and fetch it out of the deep pocket, freshly cooked. If you have enough of these deep pocket dimensions, you can store many of each meal in advance and your chef and his team work the equivalent of an office job for the most part. You can have a smaller team working over a longer hours than just the meal trade hours, and you can probably get away with a smaller kitchen. You can even buy perishable ingredients on special at the markets and keep them fresh until you need them. Ultimately, the power of this technology is not so much a meal that was impractical before, but more that you can now serve meals up almost instantly in most cases and your chef and his team don't have to be there when people are eating; they can work normal hours and just keep the meals topped up as needed. You also don't end up with freezer burn on those seasonal cuts of meat and the like that you store for use later in the year. It really is just a perfect form of freezer because it stops entropy, rather than retarding it through the reduction of temperature. [Answer] This isn't 100% what you want, but Seafood Seafood is often best fresh and I've heard that the fishy smell you often get is due to the Fish slowly rotting. Since you have a magic time stopping fridge, you could literally throw live fish into there and then eat it at a later date as fresh as possible. Stuff like Oysters or Tuna would be very valuable because you could serve it inland and achieve the same freshness as if it was just caught. To get an idea of how valuable this could be, there are restaurants that will get a Helicopter to fly oysters in from the seaside to ensure the food is as fresh as possible. As a little extra, you would also be able to store Pickled or Fermented things like Wine (not sure if Fermented is the best term) which require many years to make. While some of these foods can be stored indefinitely, Many have a "Best" date where after that the quality of the product will degrade. [Answer] Truffles.** These things are a nightmare ingredient. They're a rare type of delicious fungus (supposedly - I've never had any and you'll see why shortly), and only a handful of types are actually edible. They're hard to harvest, as they are very picky about where they grow and required trained pigs / dogs to find and dig up. And here's the nightmare part - they lose flavor like it's a radioactive half-life once dug up. Half the flavor is dead within four days, the rest within the week. Any gourmet restaurant will only serve day-old truffles at most. Preferably these are served within the hour - high-end restaurants have been known to contract truffle farmers to deliver freshly-dug truffles to the restaurant, whereupon they make a limited number of dishes with said truffles and once they run out, they run out. Also, they only grow within a a 3-5 month period, depending on the truffle, (and not the same period mind you) so these dishes can only be served at specific points during the years. Like I said, nightmare ingredient. Unsurprisingly, these things run about the same cost as saffron, the world's most expensive spice. But thanks to your little time-freezer, these things suddenly become much better. Now you can have minute-old truffles months out of season! And, for your impossible dish, you can now have some all-of-a-kind truffle dish. [Answer] * perfectly aged wine. Store in wine cellar until the optimal year, then transfer to stasis. A prestige food worth the cost of handling. * fresh sweet corn, field to plate in under 5 minutes. (Lots of produce fits this use, sweet corn is just one example.) Run a timer on the stasis box and downgrade the use of the product after too much hang time with the door open. * farm animal semen. No, not directly food, but one of the bigger price items in modern farming. Your prize bull's production never goes bad in storage. * all kinds of produce currently bred for shipping durability rather than flavor. Probably not worth it in 7 foot storage increments for most things, but luxury items. * ultra-seasonal foods. Fresh wine from shortly after harvest. ([Federweisser, a delicacy mostly known in German-speaking countries.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federweisser "Federweisser, a delicacy in some countries.)") I've had it and am not convinced, but apparently it drives culinary tourism in some places.) Flower garnishes. Regional delicacies. * I'm skeptical about hot cooked foods, but prepped ingredients would be a huge way to ensure freshness while smoothing out the labor curve. [Answer] ## Normal Fruits Shelf life and transportation damages are serious concerns for normal everyday fruits - strawberries, cantaloupes, bananas, you name it. As a result, farmers and food scientists attempt to create varieties of these fruits that stay fresh longer and are resistant to bruising. With your magic pocket closet, these fruits never need to be jostled in a truck, and they can be eaten within a few minutes of being picked. Now, growers are able to concentrate a taste. They will selectively breed their crop to focus almost exclusively on taste. (ease of growth and harvest will play in too, but for the high end market they will be willing to put in the extra effort.) So come up with some new names for the exquisite varieties of strawberry, and blueberry, and melon that people will create, and go do town. [Answer] Baked Alaska. Basically, ice cream wrapped in pastry and meringue, run into the oven just long enough to brown the meringue. If you don't eat it in a few minutes, the outside melts the inside. There's a version that's served flambe. Imagine you're having a dinner party, you open up your hammergate and pull out a dessert that's already on fire. [Answer] Cooked Food. The chef prepares a perfect filet mignon with pan fried baby vegetables and shoves it in storage. He then does a pan seared salmon and stores it. Ditto for all the deserts. You walk into the restaurant and order. The waiter walks out the back, grabs it from storage and hands you a perfectly cooked, piping hot freshly made meal. The difference is the chef works 9 to 5 in China and made the meal three weeks ago. You can order a fresh New York pizza from New York or any of the finest foods from anywhere in the world. [Answer] ## Don't think of this technology as changing ingredient availability. Think of it as changing agriculture. There are many ingredients now that would qualify, as evidenced by the answers so far. Plant and animal foods that deteriorate quickly upon harvesting. Plus [luxury goods](http://mentalfloss.com/article/71055/10-worlds-most-expensive-ingredients) that are hard to source. And a large part of the advantage of this technology is seasonality. Most climates can grow fresh sweet corn and great heirloom tomatoes, but they're only perfectly ripe for a couple of months, tops. I can grow (and have grown) amazing tomatoes in my backyard but, even in my Mediterranean climate with early planting and an extended fall growing season, at least half the year I have to go without. Tomatoes make a good example because they're an ingredient people insist on year-round no matter what and they're used in huge quantities, at least in the United States. It's not just that most Americans don't know what a real tomato tastes like (most restaurants serve the tasteless version even in the height of summer) but the demand led to [actual modern-day slavery in the US](https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/world/ciw-fair-food-program-freedom-project/index.html), in an area that produced "Ninety-percent of all winter tomatoes consumed in the US." ([another ref](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/06/slavery-in-the-tomato-fields/240140/)) Eliminate the dual issues of seasonality and transport and now any farmer in a semi-suitable growing zone can offer tomatoes year-round. They'd still mostly probably be the less exciting varieties, as burger places and other restaurants will still value uniform size, shape, and color, and they'd still need them to be determinate varieties (that ripen all at once) to make best use of the storage locker. Then there are ingredients that grow much better (and tastier) in particular parts of the world. Sometimes very hard to reach places. Now those places can specialize. Foods like [chicle and agave](https://www.theworlds50best.com/blog/Culinary-Traveller/beyond-tacos-eight-ingredients-you-didnt-know-came-from-mexico.html) aren't really grown wildly but foods like wild salmon and other wild fish have massive growing operations extending their natural range with fish farms). Storage lockers won't change the demand, but they can extend the reach of lesser used fish (like bluefish, which only lives in the Atlantic and does not transport well). Monoculture is already huge but it would become even bigger ([this is not a good thing](https://blogs.umass.edu/natsci397a-eross/monocultures-in-america-a-system-that-needs-more-diversity/)). Part of the reason for it is that time is normal every time you open the storage locker. An hour here and there can add up. And, sadly, fish farms will likely become even bigger, as their transport ranges can expand. ## The biggest change though will be in storage as a commodity. 147 cubic feet (5.4 cubic yards, 4.2 cubic meters) is not a lot of space (for reference, the bed of a full size standard pickup...loaded level full...[will hold 2.5 cubic yards](https://www.soilbuildingsystems.com/tools/pickuptruckcapacities)). Oh it's fine for personal use, but most people in the world will need to make a living from it. We'd see a fair rise in entrepreneurship (small farmers, even backyard farmers, selling out-of-season produce, chefs selling pre-made meals, and so on) but mostly this is something large companies will exploit. Harvesters will be a new job category. People who are paid to travel to fields (or fishing boats or slaughterhouses, etc) to load up their lockers. Then paid to unload them in specific places. This will minimize the time the load has to age (or change temperature). These smaller loads could service one popular McDonalds or a block's worth of restaurants. Use of lockers wouldn't eliminate the fuel waste of shipping refrigerated product (milk on its way to a processing facility, for example, goes in tractor trailers with [7,000 to 8,000-gallon tanks](https://www.etwhauling.com/transporting-milk-truck-types-and-sizes-2/) (that's 34.7 to 39.7 cubic yards and would take 8 harvesters at full capacity) and the larger loads are more efficient if fuel costs stay the same. But it would reduce it. Shipping packaged milk, for example, makes more sense using harvesters going to individual stores and opening their lockers inside the refrigerators. [Answer] Fancy You could exaggerate the spoiling time of almost anything you have to gather. You can even make something up that spoils within seconds. Most people wouldn't know this fruit because it won't be used in the kitchen and the price would be enormously (so perfect for luxury restaurants) because you can only get a few of them every ten minutes per human. Realistically Even vegetables from your garden taste quite differently to vegetables you get at the supermarket because of the long transportation and the used preservatives (preservatives also cost money). [Answer] I hear that the most delicious treat in a world with Hammerspace Gates is the pupea of the eetemupicus moth. The moth lives on a remote island chain in the middle of the ocean. The live on the eastern slopes of the mountains that form the chain. Efforts to raise them elsewhere have failed. The adventurers that have traveled to the island and tasted them, say the pupea are great alone or as an ingredient in any dish that calls for meat or vegetables. The problem is that there is only a 3-5 minute window where the pupea is absolutely perfect. Any time outside this window and the pupea ranges from disgusting to downright toxic. Reservations on the ship that takes tourists there is booked solid 6 years in advance, so plan ahead. ]
[Question] [ One of the borders of my map is a forest that was burned so badly and for such a great distance that it is currently impassable for humans. There is a once-great city on the edge of the burned forest that was damaged and is being rebuilt. The city is home to both humans and centaurs who haven't interacted greatly in the past, but are on good enough terms that they are working together to rebuild the city and restore the forest. The Centaurs want it cleaned and restored, because it is where they lived. The Humans want it restored, because it was the major source of lumber for their nation. It is a pre-gunpowder era with cannons and flint just being developed/ coming into use. Humans are not populous enough to destroy the forest through logging and so the logging causes no strife with the Centaurs. The Centaurs are living with the Humans because they can no longer live in the forest and have also begun to work with the humans outside the city to protect their nation. What is beyond the forest is unknown because humans have never successfully traversed it before the burning and the centaurs never had a reason to leave it before. What I need is an event that would burn the forest so thoroughly that it would force the Centaurs out, make it impassable and spark the cooperation between the Centaurs and humans. I thought of potentially a meteor or some other form of heavenly fire, but something like a lightning strike seems like a little bit of a cop out. [Answer] I would suggest that perhaps the forest is impassable because it is still on fire. At some point in history this forest was more of a wetland, over the years a thick layer of [peat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peat) formed. The forest grew above this layer, and this peat layer stayed undisturbed for many years. Now some great forest fire rolled through destroying the forest and in the process ignited the underground peat layer. Burning peat creates clouds of toxic smoke, and leave the ground unstable causing mini sinkholes, making the forest extremely dangerous to cross. Peat can burn for many years, and putting out peat fires is very difficult, thus you could have your forest remain impassable for an extended period of time. [Answer] The problem with this scenario is that burning the forest actually makes it a lot easier to pass through. It clears out the underbrush and small stuff that normally slows down travel. One option that might work though is if the terrain in question was a maze of rocks, holes, and small canyons. The larger canyons had wooden bridges constructed to cross them, the smaller ones had fallen trees covered in vines that made them passable. The fire swept through long enough and hard enough to destroy all the bridges, both natural and artificial. Crossing the land is now incredibly difficult because not only have all the bridges been destroyed, but it takes a lot of hunting around to find good enough quality wood to build new ones. You need to find particularly large trees with the trunk still standing, and it will be at least twenty years until the forest regenerates to the points where the trees are useful for this. [Answer] The woodland on the hill behind my house (Forestry Commission, managed forest, spruce and fir) suffered greatly in the big storm of 2005. I heard of an anemometer further north that recorded 146mph ... then blew away. About half the trees, in great swaths, in the more exposed places, blew over, with a domino effect whereby one tree going increased the pressure on its neighbours. You'll cross the first fallen trunk - there's nowhere to go but the next, higher, and the next after that, until soon you're 30 feet in the air with no (forward) way down. Treetrunks criss-crossing, almost woven into impenetrable 30 foot fences. And the next stand is almost untouched, but the stand after that is flattened again. Get down safely and you're back where you started. The forest's well-nigh impassable. But could fire do that? It could perhaps weaken the trees. Or, if hot enough, (encouraged by a good wind) it could build a firestorm as happened during the bombing of cities in WW2, generating high windspeeds to do the real damage. I don't want to link to descriptions of these firestorms, they are quite harrowing reading. [Answer] Nearby active volcano? Either employ actual lava burning a swathe through the forest and leaving essentially a wall of rock treacherous terrain with the ground cracking underfoot into huge volcanic caverns or magma tubes. Or have the volcano semi-active, poisoning water with sulphur compounds, lethal out-gassing, heat causing evaporation or even burning the trees from the roots up. Could even make the ground in some areas too hot to walk on for months or even years. [Answer] There's probably only a single scenario I can think of that would make a forest impassable from any forest fire, regardless of the catalyst. There's a real-life phenomena that occurs when a forest fire reaches a certain size and temperature it requires a massive amount of oxygen to keep feeding it. What happens is that the amount of oxygen being gathered to feed the fire will actually uproot the trees due to extreme winds and leave them on their sides. Like a pile of matches or toothpicks. Similar to what you would see if a bomb went off. I can't remember what term is used to describe it. That timber laying on the ground is similar to dead fall and is extremely difficult or impossible to traverse without great effort. The trees when thrown to the ground in this manner usually don't burn entirely and will mostly loose some of their exposed branches instead. [Answer] Instead of a big meteor which would possible cause a [Extinction Event](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#Impact_events), small meteors which would barely reach the surface could still develop enough destruction and would give an awesome light show of which storys can tell for decades. Meteors can bring in lots of toxic materials. If the world passes through a stream of meteorites which carry lots of these materials (Sulfur, Arsenic ect.), they would be brought into the atmosphere and/or ground, causing acidic rain and similar events. Nice sideeffect is that this is not immediatly lethal, so some of the centaurs could escape. One could even imagine radioactive materials, though they would probably very longliving, otherwise they wouldn't have reached your world in the first place. Have it rain once or twice to bring the material underground and you have a toxic wasteland. Depending on your intentions, this is extremly difficult to remove. If the ground is simply widespread acidic, humans and centaurs can bring out akalic materials to counter the effect. The cost-to-use-ratio would still be horrible, but if humans and centaurs are really determined... Radioactive materials are another case though. While I'm no nuclear scientist, the actinoide group doesn't look too bad. They have a long enough half-life to reasonably reach your planet, but seem still active enough to pose a threat. The disadvantage is that you can do absolutly nothing against it. Just in case you care: The small meteorites could be the remains of a (shattered) planet (for example after the impact of a moonsized planetoid), sorted out by several orbits around your local sun. Or only small meteorites managed to escape. [Answer] Burnt is burnt, the cause does not matter. And after a wildfire, a forest would be in fact way easier to pass through (undergrowth and many tree trunks would have just dissapeared). The only way into your scenario would be logistics... lets say that, pre-wildfire, travellers could through the forest because they could get water from drinking the juice of the fruits of a tree common to the forest. Better yet, make the fruit (or some other) provide not only food but also liquids (water). Make it that inside the forest there are no other sources of water (streams, wells). If the affected area is big enough, it will be almost(\) impossible to cross the burnt area because of a lack of water (they cannot carry enough water with them to do the travel). (\) You would have to find a way to explain why they cannot use a pack animal or a cart to try to carry more water with them. [Answer] Perhaps the once mighty trees and their deep, living roots pierced down through the soil, forming a prison for some kind of evil. It is this same evil force the somehow compelled whatever evil faction you may have (or haven't) to initially set the forest ablaze. With the majority of the trees dead, the evil is no longer contained, thus dooming any would be travelers to a horrible end. This would certainly spark cooperation as the evil could threaten the humans anyway, and the centaurs are benefiting by getting their home back if the humans are successful. [Answer] The basic fact is that a forest fire would leave a forest more passable, not less.Additionally, after a forest fire in the ancient world, you would not have to work to restore the forest. Typically forests experienced small forest fires that destroyed dead leaves, underbrush, fallen timber, etc, and left the mature trees standing. These fires were quite common occurrences, both naturally and deliberately man made. Originally at least in the US forestry services decided all forest fires were bad and tried to put them all out -this leads to a huge pile up of flammable debris that eventually, when a fire gets out of control, burns so high and hot that even mature trees that would normally be safe in a smaller forest fire get destroyed. But this would not have occurred in an ancient pre-industrial society. Nowadays forest fires are fought primarily to protect expensive homes nearby and not because it is needed for the health of the forest. Small forest fires are a normal, natural, healthy, and even necessary part of a forest lifecycle. Lately the importance of forest fires to maintaining forest health is starting to become more realized and we are backing away from our stance of stopping all fires. If you do want something that would make the area impassable and potentially burn all the trees, look at some sort of volanic event. The lava would burn even mature trees, and the resulting rock, depending on type, could easily be completely impassable to land travel. Look at something like A'a lava as opposed to Pahoehoe lava. There wouldn't be much hope of 'restoring' the land, however, though you could work to build a road through it or something (perhaps to reach some remaining unburned forest on the farther side of the lava flow? [Answer] If the ancient forest had been large enough, and had enough wood of the right type (hardwood broadleaf), it could have burned down, leaving behind massive piles of ash. If the climate was also very wet or marshy, the water could become so alkaline from the ash ([essentially becoming a form of lye](http://www.lifeunplugged.net/everythingelse/make-lye-from-wood-ash.aspx)) it could then cause severe or even lethal chemical burns. Who knew wood ash could be so dangerous? As for getting humans and centaurs to work together, if the humans built a very large city near by and burned lots of oil and coal, they could create acid rain storms (sulfuric acid) that could neutralize the alkaline marsh and allow the land to start to heal. Unfortunately this would only be a temporary solution since eventually the pH would balance out and further acid over-correct leading to an acid forest. And humans are not usually interested in changing their lifestyle once it has been established. [Answer] Considering that a fire would generally make it easier to pass, could I suggest a large coal fire? Consider the [Centralia mine fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire): > > The Centralia mine fire is a coal seam fire that has been burning underneath the borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania, United States since at least May 27, 1962. The cause of the fire is suspected to be from a trash burning that hit a coal strip in a cave. > > > The fire burns in underground coal mines at depths of up to 300 feet over an eight-mile stretch of 3,700 acres. As of 2014, the fire continues to burn. At its current rate, it could burn for over 250 more years. > > > The blaze has resulted in most of the town being abandoned. Population dwindled from 2,761 in 1980 to only 7 in 2013, and most of the buildings have been leveled. > > > If the fire were close enough to the surface that many holes and cracks would see fire and dangerous smoke coming out of them. This could create a near-endless fire for hundreds of years that would make it extremely dangerous to pass over the terrain. Additionally, toxins in the smoke would make the air very dangerous to breathe. Other potential issues: * Someone or a group falling into a hole covered by debris/ash * Brittle ground giving way under a vehicle pulled by horses, dropping everyone involved into the fire * [Acid rain](http://butane.chem.uiuc.edu/pshapley/Enlist/Labs/AcidRain2/index.html)! * Strong winds blowing toxic smoke towards the village in question [Answer] As others have mentioned, there are some problems here A forest is generally difficult to pass through. A burnt forest is easy to pass through. Forests are capable of coming back on their own with no input from humans. As a possible solution to both of these: There are many plants/trees where seeds lie dormant until after a fire, and then when everything else has been cleared out, they grow up in the free space. You could easily create some sort of plant where the seeds sprout after fires, that grows very rapidly, will choke out trees and other plants, can quickly form an impassable barrier, possesses spikes with some variety of chemical irritant/poison on them, and that is very hard to kill. Basically, Lantana. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantana> Caused by fire? Check. Impassible? Check. Nature cannot rebuild on its own? Check. Humans/Centaurs can step in to help the forest return? Check. Maybe also make it relatively fireproof so that humans can't even use it as kindling. [Answer] A great deal of the forest was consisting of not only easily flammable material, but the plants also contained a great deal of oily substances that made the fire work like the whole forest was covered in napalm. It burned for so long and so hot that no seeds survived and no water/humidity was left. Due to its sheer size, the remnants of it are not only currently transforming the land into an ash desert, they also contain lots of toxic materials (heavy metals, asbest like crystals etc.) that after a day or two walking through it you get severe and almost uncurable lung problems. It may not be impassable, but no sane person would even try it... [Answer] The reckless and ignorant use of gunpowder shortly after its discovery started a fire that destroyed the forest. With no trees to block their view, the humans are now able to see a city in the distance that was previously unknown to them. Unfortunately, the forest was a natural barrier to strong winds or an underground miasma that now makes the area impassable until the forest is restored. I hope you don't mind the incentive substitution, but it was difficult to get past the conflict of interest between the humans needing lumber and that lumber coming from the forest the centaurs call home. [Answer] Forget the fire. As many have said this leaves the area better to penetrate/cross. The answer of a lava flow might initially seem sane - cutting the trees off at the base - but lava contains so much heat that burning the entire trees is inevitable. It looks like you cannot make a believable scenario with fire. What makes a forest impenetrable? * A tangle of trunks and branches, and/or: * A biological/chemical hazard (that could include predators) Brian Drummond's answer of a big storm is a good example of the first. Another cause that meets both bullet points: > > In general plants (trees) live in symbiosis with bacteria and fungae in the soil. > > One fungus has mutated to a form where it kills the tree roots - that could be any kind of biological/chemical mechanism that blocks transport of nutrients or water. > > > This fungus is also poisonous to humans. > > If it is not poisonous to centaurs, and you assume another powerful capability unique to humans (climbing trees?), you would have a powerful reason for both species to work together. > > > BTW Given my initial sentence, I suggest you remove the word 'burned' from your question title if the only thing you need is an impenetrable forest. [Answer] The ancient trees are left standing, burnt right through, but still standing. As people/centaurs step on and break the small roots which anchor these trees in place, they have a tendency to fall over, making travel through the forest incredibly dangerous. Along with this, these centaurs are unable to find food or clean water in this forest (hey, it's gone!). This forces the centaurs into the closest or best known non-burnt place: Where the humans are. Finally, after a catastrophe, people have a tendency to help out those in need. (Although this often wears off quickly). A little more polishing could be done... but it's a start. [Answer] Thanks to Builder\_K for the inspiration. Ancient trees reproduce every few of centuries assisted by fire. Roots and bark burns off, seeds are dispersed. Trunks are protected by a fluid/fire resistant layer. When the trunks begin to decompose in the years following it covers the ground with a medium that is not conducive to other species that eventually activates the seeds. This ecology would leave the forest littered with tree trunks, fallen and half fallen for many years following the fire. Sorry if this is a different direction from what OP is looking for but that is one way to make an impassable burned forest. If you don't want the whole forest completely impassible you could incorporate elvation changes which would alter the dominant ecology, which would create different zones within the burn. [Answer] The forest was very large; it would have taken you perhaps months or years to cross it. You could not carry enough food and water to last you so long, so if you ever wanted to cross it you would need to hunt and gather along the way. Now that the forest is all burnt, there is nothing to hunt or gather, so you cannot cross it. [Answer] # Subterranean coal seam fire [Subterranean coal seam fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire) that fills the area with carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. # Active volcano [Unpredictable streams of molten rock](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddzU-rkzKF0), sudden [explosions of boiling hot water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geyser), invisible [noxious and/or toxic fumes and gas clouds](https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/gas.html) is no fun. # Natural nuclear reactors No, I am not kidding, [there is / was such a thing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor). ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/118279/edit). Closed 5 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/118279/edit) So, I’ve been writing a sci-fi novel that takes place a few centuries in the future. In the novels lore, it says that there was plenty of life throughout the galaxy, but humans were just contacted infrequently. Every other pre type-1 species in the galaxy (or most) had encountered alien life. Alien life was seen as true fact, and not conspiracies. But I’m still having problems with this. How could humans become more isolated than most other species plausibly, and without to much handwaving? * FTL Travel has been in use by many species for 700,000 years, so ancient humans were in that timeframe [Answer] Okay so this is the best image I can find of where we actually are in the galaxy: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9yT1C.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9yT1C.jpg) If most of the life in our galaxy evolved in the core and spread to the two "main" arms of the spiral (the Scutum-Centaurus and the Perseus) then there wouldn't be a lot of point looking at the relatively few stars of the Orion Spur where we have evolved. In fact to a species-centric way of thinking there's no reason to think that life, let alone civilisation, could evolve in such an impoverished setting with neighbouring stars so few and far away. [Answer] The sun and the surrounding stars were explored before the raise of earth's civilization, during some [ice age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age) or during the aftermath of the [Toba catastrophe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory), when a bottleneck in human population made us hard to find. (Update 1: by 70,000 years ago, humans already wore clothes, and had tools and fire, and possibly a language, all of which could likely grab scientist attention, that's why I find the hard to find part important.) They found lots of ice and some life, took some samples for scientific purposes and left. Besides, the sun's neighborhood happens to be of very little interest, with few habitable planets, not worth colonizing or harvesting/exploiting due to the long distance from the relevant civilizations. You can easily have hundreds of civilizations in the Milky Way and leave some 300 light years around us devoid of advanced life forms. This isolation would help you partly with the explanation of [Fermi's paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox) (from the Earth's POV) and could also be the excuse that made our neighborhood an easy target for interstellar treaties of natural reservation, pretty much like the [Antarctic Treaty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System): Once you go galactic, you have to start caring for natural star and planet conservation too. Update 2: You said without too much handwaving. Someone could argue this still needs some: 700,000 years is a lot of time for people from elsewhere in the galaxy to become curious. Scientists will from time to time become interested in this little-explored corner. An argument could be made (if you need such a level of detail) that 1) political affairs have not been always too favorable to scientists, 2) there has been lots of other interesting places to explore when possible, 3) chance has made almost every visit to Earth concur with the harshest conditions of the Current Ice Age (see figure below) and/or the Toba catastrophe, 4) you say humans were contacted infrequently, maybe there were a few episodes in these 700,000 years, but only by people who chose to actively keep the existence of humans secret or at a very low profile. 1. In 700,000 years you could see the raise and fall of civilization after civilization, with periods when the Galaxy strives alternating with intermediate periods of war, local humanitarian crises (even the death of a star!) or reasons to make societies less interested in science, like some form of spiritual blossom. 2. Even in relatively normal circumstances, scientists and funding are scarce—this can possibly be true also in a scenario with swarms of robots, advanced IA and stuff—and need priorities. Intelligent beings from hundreds of civilizations from tens of thousands of stars still have [hundreds of billions](https://www.space.com/25959-how-many-stars-are-in-the-milky-way.html) of stars/planetary systems to explore. Unless your lore includes a technological singularity ([which is optional, and somewhat boring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity#Criticisms)) the targets of the most thorough exploration will either be chosen from the closest first, or in the best case at random (if travel had absolutely no costs, which I personally think is unrealistic). FTL travel does not need to be cheap. 3. We are currently undergoing an ice age, but inside that ice age, we are in a warm sub-period. There is plenty of times during the last 400,000 years that temperatures have been 7 degrees Celsius less than today, arguably meaning less interesting climates. Most of the time it has been 4 degrees below present temperatures (see figure.) Although during this time the Earth was never completely covered by ice, a big enough ice cap could make an occasional observer with knowledge of lots of habitable worlds go "meh! Been there done that." [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/autjp.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/autjp.png) Timeline of temperature during the Current/Quaternary Ice Age. Source: NOAA/Wikipedia 4. You can still allow for some visitors intending to protect Earth's civilization from alien influence. They can study it, know about the existence of men, but keeping it for themselves while making it low profile for others as uninteresting, or highlighting other qualitites/other nearby places (like the curious case of Janus and Epimetheus, the two satellites of Saturn that [periodically exchange orbits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimetheus_(moon)#Orbit). [Answer] I'm going to give you the Star Trek inspired explanation as an actual answer, perhaps you find value in it: One ancient alien race seeded all the other races in the galaxy because they encountered no intelligent life anywhere and felt quite lonely. They since disappeared for whatever reason. Of course they didn't spread their seed equally over the galaxy but well, within their sphere of influence. This happened to be the opposite site of the galaxy from Earth, at least far away enough. Since then, many intelligent species emerged there over the eons. However, in the unseeded part of the galaxy, on Earth, intelligent life evolved by chance, just as it did with the ancient seeding race all those millions or even billions of years ago. So Earth is new intelligent life, randomly evolved, while the rest of the intelligent life in the galaxy is there by design. You can also explain more things like that. For example, the other species realized what the ancient aliens did and didn't look elsewhere in the galaxy because they knew that there was nothing seeded in our part of the galaxy. Or they just encountered no life for longe distance and never bothered to search further. Btw, you don't need one precursor species that seeded all, you could also do a chain reaction kind of thing. Newly evolved species seeded more species. As has been pointed out via comment by Pinion Minion: This seeding I'm talking about is one specific example for uplifting. This would also work in other variants, you could have one ancient alien race uplift other creatures with other methods. The advantage of the seeding idea is that your species don't have to be aware of it and the seeder race could be long gone, it would also explain technological differences and so on, but many variations of the idea are thinkable. [Answer] This is going to be a bit of a grim answer, but a common justification for this in sci-fi is that humans are either the most violent species in the galaxy, or the only violent species in the galaxy. We are generally not a peaceful species. We kill each other for money, or sport, or even just for being different. We have been this way for thousands of years, probably ever since we evolved, and our methods of killing have only gotten smarter and more brutal over time. We discover new technologies and our first thought is invariably how we can turn them into weapons ([even here on WorldBuilding](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/weapons)). If aliens could watch our TV broadcasts, they'd see hundreds of depictions of them as evil invaders, hell-bent on destroying or subverting our civilisation. They'd see hundreds of glorifying depictions of heroic, muscle-bound warriors, slaughtering their enemies by the dozen. They'd see how we use "alien lizardmen" as some kind of scare-mongering conspiracy to disparage those we hate. It's easy to assume that all aliens are as prone to violence as us, but it's also just as easy to assume that none of them are. It's entirely plausible that Earth is the galactic equivalent of that one neighbourhood that everyone knows not to go near, because if you do, you'll end up getting robbed or stabbed. Or both. [Answer] ## Make the aliens' thinking biased. So there are lots of alien life in the universe. They must be sharing something, be it cultural, biological, or even religious, that humans do not have. Imagine if all of your alien species, from all their differents systems, always had two brains. From their point of view, anything with one brain (or less) isn't even considered as sentient. They may aknowledge our very existence, but tagged us as "Primitive - do not bother worry about it". Then we develop interstellar travel and all of their minds are blowing since for them, it would be like ants having learnt to build spaceships. Another way to put it would be how they consider a planet suitable for life: "Wow, a planet with a gravity of 9,807 m/s²? Nothing can live there! No need to lose a probe for that!". Atmosphere, temperature, gravity... anything that rings your bell for your story. ## And what if humans had contact in the past? The alien scientist who came here before may have filled reports, maybe some of them have considered us sentients enough to be a part of their... intergalactic Federation, or anything equivalent. But these reports were dismissed. Either forgotten in the mass of administrative documents, or set aside by some neglectful alien scientist, or worse, because "Humans are not relevant". "One brain, really? Psssh!" ## Humans are f\\\\\\ terrifying! Your question reminds me of a short story I read months ago, about an abducted human who is lost in the administrative process of an intergalactic civilisation - unfortunately I can't remember the name of it. At one point, the station is attacked by an arachnid-like creature that can dismember any alien there. But the human isn't even bothered and shred the arachnid to pieces like a doll. And the others aliens are now scared that humans as a species are introduced into their universe. The story has more than that, but for your story it could be enough: * Humans produce a combat drug when in stress, * Humans eat organs of other species to gain strenght, * It is said among the wise ones that if a human bites you, you can turn into a human yourself when the moon is full, etc. So maybe the aliens are aware of humans. They just don't want them to run everywhere like kids with scissors. [Answer] For one reason or another, Earth and its star have been marked as "explored and nothing is there". Since there are 100 billion more interesting, more well known places, for hundreds of thousands of years nobody has bothered to check on Earth again. --- Remember the Nordic colonies in North America, such as [New Sweden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Sweden) or [Vinland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinland)? Have you ever tried sailing for the mythical islands of [Antillia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antillia) or [Thule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule) yourself? When's the last time you heard of anyone searching for the legendary cities of [El Dorado](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Dorado) or [Iram of the Pillars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iram_of_the_Pillars)? Perhaps contact was briefly made with humans, but knowledge of humanity was buried under some greatly more important galactic event. Perhaps a couple exploration teams perished after searching a few stars, but their search was marked 'complete' in databases passed on throughout the ages. Perhaps fantastical tales have been told of lost planets like Earth for generations, but nobody takes such tales seriously enough to think Earth might actually have life. Regardless of why, after a hundred billion stars were explored, one was bound to slip through the cracks. Earth is just a tiny island in a vast sea, and everyone thinks somebody else already landed on it. [Answer] > > Do we really want to make contact with meat? > > > According to a 1990 Omni article, Aliens don't attempt to make contact with humans because ["They're made out of meat"](http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html). The short story is a great read. Similarly, due to our location, the galactic version of Google Maps routes everything around us. The lack of traffic also causes limited (or no) review on the galactic version of "Yelp!". (We also have a [Bermuda Triangle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Triangle) reputation thanks to Area 51, etc). The extinction of Dinosaurs has also caused the galactic version of "Field & Stream" to cease the series "Big Game on Planet Earth". The galatic version of Wikipedia might have a decent write up. But, the more popular cousin, ["The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy), only has the simplistic entry of "harmless" or "mostly harmless" (depending on updated revision). If there was a [Prime Directive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive), that galactic government would probably have a "no contact" ban on us until we get pulled over by the FTL Highway Patrol for not obeying local traffic laws. Finally, according to [Ancient Aliens](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1643266/), we are a genetic experiment. Most likely, we are an experiment that went wrong and was sanitized with a [world wide flood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth). The area is still considered to be contaminated. The cops will bust us hard for claiming we are from a contaminated region of space. As far as aliens detecting our radio signals from [SETI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_extraterrestrial_intelligence), those are ignored. Citizens of the galaxy don't use light based communications to send an email to their grandmother on [Omicron-Persi-8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_planetary_systems_in_fiction#Omicron_Persei_(Al_Atik)) [Answer] Lets go [Uplift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_Universe) for a moment. Every sentient race in the known Five Galaxies was raised (uplifted) to sentience by another race. The most prestigious and well respected intelligences in the Five Galaxies can trace their lineage back to the Progenetors (and of course, the fewest generations between your race and the Progenetors, the better). This process has been going on for two billion years. A species raised to intelligence by its parent species serves a period of servitude, usually a few hundred thousand years, not that long, really. Then Earth and Humans come along, having uplifted themselves. And not only that, they've already uplifted chimps and dolphins! Why do they get the status that comes with being an patron race without serving a period as an client race first!? The scandal! Of course, how did Earth go without notice? Everyone wants to know... Well, as every species in the Five Galaxies knows, inhabiting a planet and harvesting its resources and building cities there causes ecological harm to the planet, reducing its biodiversity. But in order to continue the chain of Uplift and having new and wonderous species to find, raise, Uplift and nurture...planets have to go fallow for a while, let the planet recover. Destroy all the buildings, toss it all in the ocean trenches for recycling...Come back in a few hundred million years and open it up for settlement again. And it's a crime of the highest order to cause a species to go extinct intentionally. Surely you've heard about the Bururalli. They were given their first planet, which they proceeded to exterminate every last higher lifeform on the surface and went feral. Their parent species, the Nahalli, were made clients again for having failed to teach their client species properly. How did Earth go without notice? Well, it was fallow. There was not supposed to be any contact to avoid violating the intergalactic rules regarding a planet's fallow status! [Answer] There's a lot of great answers here, but I'd like to offer one which is so subtle it might not even be interesting: random chance. Consider the case where contact with aliens is not something that is organized in some galactic consul which makes sure all planets are accessed equally. Make it be more random. Perhaps planets get visited when it was convenient, such as when a shipping run brings you close by. > > There's a fascinating story about such statistics. A teacher was teaching about > statistical distributions. He gave the students a homework > assignment: flip a coin 500 times, and record `H` or `T` for each one. > The next day, he gathered the assignments in class, and to everyone's > surprise, he graded them immediately. He started announcing whether > each student cheated (by writing random letters without flipping the > coin) or did the exercise properly, within a few seconds of looking at > the paper. When he was done, he had divided the classes papers into > two neat piles. He then asked them if anyone felt they had been > graded improperly. Nobody raised their hands. He then asked if > anyone knew how he did it. > > > When nobody raised their hands again, he explained his technique. He > simply looked for 7 `H` in a row or 7 `T` in a row. If that was > there, he assumed the student did it properly. If there were not, he > assumed that the student cheated. We, as people, tend to assume > highly unlikely events actually occur less often than they should. > Sever heads or tails in a row should occur once every 128 draws, so > between the two, you should expect it to occur in 500 draws at least > once in the majority of cases. However, seven in a row feels "too > lucky" to the human mind. We think it starts to look suspicious. > Thus, none of the students who cheated let such long strings appear in their paper. They injected a `H` or a `T` to break up the streak, to make it look more random. > > > We could simply be nothing more than the statistically unlucky draw. We could be the one civilization that just didn't happen to get visited all that much. Such an answer is amusing to me because that story of the teacher could appear in the novel itself, teaching people something about statistics. It also means that, when we do finally have contact (and I presume we do), the greater galactic civilization is going to have reason to treat us as an oddity. We're the statistical oddity that just got left out, and is now running to catch up. It all depends on what story you want to write, but I find the story of humans trying to catch up to fluke accidents says a great deal about the human condition. [Answer] The aliens are water creatures, they looked for intelligent life forms in the depth of the oceans. Clearly they didn't find many humans, there. Not alive, at least. They sometimes found rests of ships, which they took as remnants of a lost civilization. [Answer] 700,000 years is not very long. It may very well be that other life forms just hasn't gotten around visiting Earth yet. And for that, there can be many reasons. For instance, other lifeforms just may not have that much interest in visiting other worlds. They may not go exploring for the sake of exploring -- perhaps they only venture out to other worlds when they need to. Or they have have the interest, but find it way too expensive. Or they find Earth just too far away (if you go many times the speed of light, in space, things are just very, very far away). On the other hand, while on a galactic scale, 700,000 years isn't that long, it is long for humans. If aliens had visited Earth 20,000 years ago, how would we know? Even if they had had contact with humans; writing wasn't invented, and it may easily have gotten lost in oral tradition (after all, who would believe the person who says (s)he's visited by green men coming from a flying saucer, specially before saucers were invented?). [Answer] Multiple causes TIME: Specifically the time where we as humans could be contacted and could record such contact. The universe is a very big place and civilizations rise and fall. In Billions of years of the existence of the universe, we have only been able to even reliably record history for about 2,000 years. Any race to contact us would have to be capable of contacting us during this windown, which compared to the age of the universe is a very tiny one. Some alien civilizations visited when the earth was still a molten ball, not even begun to cool, They come back a billion years later, then find nothing worth noting. But now their civilization is beginning to ebb, either through disease or playing with forces they did not fully understand, they go extinct. INTEREST Some alien races are just not interested in exploring as humanity is, and are content to look no further than their own immediate interests. Perhaps they also think that they are alone, or are so advanced that all other species are of no concern. To them it would be like us trying to communicate with bacteria. Nobody would bother which brings me to: INABILITY The life could be so alien to us that we may not even be able to perceive them. They may exist only partially in our universe, or be energy based. Their methods of communication are not only incomprehensible, but unperceivable to us. BAD PAST EXPERIENCES WITH OTHER RACES Perhaps they had been in a long, drawn out war with a brutal race. This alien species, while having won the war and exterminated their enemy did at great cost. They do not want to go through anything like that again, so they have become xenophobic and cloak their existence from the rest of the universe. BAD PAST EXPERIENCES WITH US It could be that initial scouts were sent to earth and were brutally murdered or just didn't like what they saw. They have quarantined this planet as dangerous and stand just outside our detection, waiting to act if we get too far out of line. [Answer] The planet was found by an alien civilization, however this civilization does not have radio signals invented, leaving their only method of communication as direct physical transfers. However this civilization's technology, for one reason or another, does not have the capacity to enter an atmosphere this rough. (Maybe they're a civilization that has always existed on a planet without an atmosphere, or a very weak one) So in short, they know it's there, but they can't talk to it. [Answer] ## TLDR: They don't want to influence our evolution What does two civilization that encounter themselves do? they interact. By trading technologies or doing war, by studying the opposite culture... We would make a huge technology leap, our culture would change a lot, in short, our society would evovle and enter a new era. Even if they didn't offer us technologies, we would know space travel and alien are a thing. However, if aliens have some advantages to contact us (yeah, more people will by our insert random alien thing to sell), they also have an advantage to not contact us: see how a society evolve without any help. Yep, we are more or less an anthropological experiment. We where not put on earth by alien on purpose, but they deliberately avoid any contact to analyse how fast we evolve, and if we will be able to contact them by ourself. [Answer] This answer depends on what aliens you use, but they could use a finicky classification system when it comes to intelligent life. For example, if the dominant species are eusocial (have multiple sexes) or reproduce asexually, maybe they simply wouldn't consider humans anymore sapient than we consider tool-using birds sapient. Its very arrogant, but it would mean they have no reason to socialize with us as long as we stay on Earth. Alternatively, you could so say that Earth and the local group has already be claimed by a very territorial alien species. This species wouldn't be interested in interfering with humans either because Earth doesn't have any resources you couldn't get elsewhere for cheaper. Maybe they don't want any interaction with Earthlings because they are worried it would forces changes in their culture, so they ignore the human problem until humans leave Earth themselves. In the meantime, the territorial species discourages all the other aliens from going to Earth. Maybe once humans make first contact, the whole galaxy gets pissed at the humans "landlords" for never doing anything. Could make for a fun backstory, I don't know. [Answer] We are in the waiting line to be contacted, you could always assume the galaxy is extremely populated, but only one or two species have got so far as to be able to travel faster than light. The ships are rare and there are millions of planets calling out for a visit and each one needs scanning and observing and processing before being allowed into the club. we are just waiting for our turn without even knowing [Answer] Simple: Humans are just a backwards species that is far more violent and short-sighted than their alien brothers. A culture that puts people in giant stadiums and makes them fight to the death? Too violent, let's wait a bit before contact... A culture of xenophobia that murders entire groups of people and calls it their "final solution"? Too dangerous. A culture that treats their entire planet as a waste disposal plant? I guess the humans really don't improve. Let's see what the future holds! ![calvin and hobbes](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7u0bq.jpg) [Answer] Man (AKA Homo Sapiens) is the most violent animal on this planet. I suspect that the dark side of the moon has a large warning sign (or transmission device) to warn intelligent species that there is nothing of value on the adjacent planet. Perhaps a few thousand years in the future, assuming mankind has not eliminated itself and that the radioactive debris reaches acceptable levels, something might get curious as to what was here. In fact, I am quite surprised that I am alive today as I never expected to live past middle age due to what would have been called World War III. I worked in industry in some interesting places, including within the program office for the development of the Poseidon submarine launched ballistic missile. I reported directly to the Chief of Weapon Systems Effectiveness. It is fortunate that Russia was sufficiently intelligent to recognize that World War III would not be of benefit. I do not have that degree of confidence when I look at some countries that currently exist in the Middle East and Asia. [Answer] [Only about 0.0000000000000000000042 percent of the universe contains any matter](https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/question221.htm). We are only a very, very small fraction of that and on top of that, we are also in a fairly sparse region albeit the Milky Way and Andromeda are beacons seen many light years away. So, it is as it happens that we were just not stumbled upon. Our inhabited planet was not marked on any galactic maps. We are lonely of visitors. [Answer] ## Faster-than-light doesn't work here For some reason, the usual faster-than-light travel devices don't work in (and some light-years around) our solar system. Due to this, none of the spacefaring species discover us here. In [Beyond the Impossible](http://beyondtheimpossible.org/), this is caused by a device from some ancient civilization (older than the current rulers of the Galaxy) hidden on Earth, but it could also be some natural anomaly. [Answer] They did They did. Millennias ago an ancient species, the First, discovered the solar system and built bases on Earth, Mars and Phaeton. Proof Some architectural wonders like the pyramids of Giza or Machu Picchu are remnants of their presence. Look it up, there are many sceptics around the current explanations of the construction and use of these ancient sites. I can recommend YouTube channel [Bright Insight](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsIlJ9eYylZQcyfMOPNUz9w), whose host questions a lot but does not throw in wild theories like others do. Should provide a lot of inspiration that fits nicely into our storyline. Why the bases on other planets? Earth itself proved to be inhospitable to the species itself because of temperature, atmosphere or seasonal climate changes - make something up, I'm not going into the Firsts' physiology and biology - so they settled on Mars to provide food and shelter for the scientists and collected minerals and metals from the resource rich Phaeton. The Homo Sapiens project Discovering various primitive Homo species they started genetic alterations of the most promising species trying to create a simple, yet effective race to act as soldiers, which resulted in the creation of Homo Sapiens. There were many issues of the soldiers' obstinacy, denying orders, going rampant killing other soldiers, birth issues (humans are pretty much the only species with such a high stillbirth rate and danger of the mother dying in the process) and various other health problems. An explanation to our hostility. Galactic war The Homo Sapiens project has still been in the process when another rivalling species, the Second, declared war on the First and in the process drove the solar system into a battlefield, destroying Phaeton altogether ripping it apart into small chunks forming the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, stripping Mars of its atmosphere casting it into the lifeless planet it is today and causing destruction to the bases on Earth. Forgotten history Few humans were able to evade the destruction and remained undetected by the galactic fleets that were busy fighting each other and over millenias the history of the First cast them into gods, changing the actual events into our current religions. The biblical myth of the great flood - one of the Seconds' superweapons - still lives on today (other religions have told this story before in different ways, like the ancient Sumerian belief) that was part of the devastating destruction. Neither the First nor the Second ever returned, with the destruction of Mars and Phaeton driving the Solar System due to its distance and empty neighbourhood into irrelevance and the Homo Sapiens project being cancelled due to the high amount of investment with highly problematic and seemingly unsolvable physical and mental issues. There was no reason to return. ]
[Question] [ A centaur has a body best described as half-human, half-horse, so for convenience we use a horse as an anatomical reference throughout instead. Suppose we are concerned with a medieval setting, and due to space constraints all houses have at least two stories, floors or levels, etc., it is going to be a challenge for a horse to use a staircase since they can't climb down a flight of steps without tripping and falling due to their anatomy. What innovation can assist them to ascend or descend between different floors without much difficulty by themselves? The 'medieval setting' is around late [14th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_century) AD. [Answer] > > it is going to be a challenge for a horse to use a staircase since they can't climb down a flight of steps without tripping and fell due to their anatomy. > > > [![A horse going up and down a short flight of stairs](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MAsaq.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MAsaq.jpg) (copyright status unclear, thanks pinterest) There's plenty more stuff to be found with a search for "horse stairs", so I won't regurgitate it all here. Here's a page to get you started though: [Can Horses Climb Stairs?](https://equinehelper.com/can-horses-climb-stairs/) which comes with this image of a nice flight of steps, where each individual step is clearly long enough to fit the animal on: [![A horse on a long flight of stone steps in a coastal village on a steep slope.](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cptNI.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cptNI.png) The challenge with horses is apparently all in the training. Centaurs, being somewhat more intelligent, will have few issues. --- Having thought about this a bit more, I wonder if you're asking the wrong sort of thing... > > Suppose we are concerned with a medieval setting, and due to space constraints all houses have at least 2 stories, floors or levels etc, > > > These are human constraints. Centaurs ain't human, and regardless of whether their diet is horse-like or human-like, they're going to need a lot more food than a human and they're going to generate a lot more waste. Their big bodies are going to be awkward in confined spaces, and they're going to need larger living spaces than humans. They probably won't want to live in more urbanized areas... even if they wanted to, it will be more inconvenient and more expensive, and their neighbours might not be entirely welcoming. Seems more like you'd find them out in the country. They might visit towns for business purposes (eg. to make use of the markets) but I don't see them living there, and outside of the towns it'll be much easier for them to obtain larger, single-storey accommodation. [Answer] Believe it or not, in mediaeval times people did this: rode up and down stairs on their horses. In some European castles you see very wide stairs with low risers, specially made so the owner could ride his horse up and down. You don't see them everywhere. It would be difficult to install in an old castle, because it needs more room, but if you are building a new one anyway, and anticipate a lot of quadruped traffic, why not? Edit: added the links various kind persons provided. Prague castle <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Hall> Copenhagen <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rundetaarn> Berlin <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pferdetreppe> [Answer] While a centaur's body looks a lot like a horse, it isn't of course exactly a horse. That long-legged grazer body form is not inherently bad at climbing. Look at goats. I mean, literally look at these pictures of goats. They are arguably better climbers than we primate-descended humans. Here they are getting at the good leaves in a tree: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yhvwK.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yhvwK.png) Here they are cleaning plant matter off the side of a dam. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/75NVy.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/75NVy.png) Just chillin at the crib. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DHt9b.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DHt9b.png) [Answer] ## Handrails So plenty of answers about how your centaurs do not have to be clumsy on stairs, but [given the design of your centaurs, this is just not the case](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/222594/wheres-the-centaur-of-mass/222616#222616). This does not mean centaurs can't use stairs though. As it turns out, animals with hands like centaurs can benefit greatly by having something to hold onto. Losing your balance always starts off as a minor lean that quickly escalates to a major lean, followed by falling over. But, when you have a hand-rail that you hold onto while you go down, it is easy to prevent a fall before the minor lean escalates into something worse. [Answer] A ribbed ramp instead of stairs. The biggest problem is that the horse cant see what its feet are doing easily and the move to avoid the step they are on with their hindlegs is difficult as well, but not impossible. Replacing the steps of a stair with a ribbed ramp lets the horse get a grip on the ground by angling the hoves backwards and forwards for stability and because the ribs are low the horse can easily overstep the ribs. [Answer] Use a ramp. As a real-life example, I present La Giralda, a 100m tall, 12th-century bell tower in Seville, Spain that has no stairs, but instead a series of ramps leading to the top. The tower was specifically designed to allow it to be climbed frequently on horseback, which is why it uses ramps and not stairs. The ramps have a lower angle than a typical staircase and will take up more room, but eliminate the possibility of tripping over steps. [Answer] A centaur should be able to use stairs built for humans provided that they can fit within the space available on the staircase. Quadrupeds are capable of locating an obstacle with their forelegs, and stepping over that obstacle with their hind legs without having to look. This can be demonstrated with any quadruped that you have handy, such as a dog or a cat, but horses and centaurs should be no different. So, if a centaur takes a staircase slowly, finding the steps with a fore-hoof, they will be able to locate the stairs with their hind hooves. It's not as if they have to keep a constant watch on their feet, is it? With familiarity, they would be able to traverse a staircase faster. Of course, given a choice, centaurs may well choose to build ramps rather than stairs. Why step over obstacles when you don't have to? [Answer] In some medieval villages, having the barn under the living area was fairly common, so you don't have to make up a reason for 2 storey buildings. A very low slope stairway could work, but my impression of medieval peasant architecture is that it wasn't exactly up to modern safety codes. The barn to living area transit would likely have been very steep. I've encountered a modern equivalent in India. Smaller houses can have stairways that are more like modestly tilted ladders than staircases. Assuming the stairway is within the centaurs ability to climb up, the centaur can do the same thing a human does descending a ladder - face the stairs/rungs and back down. Using a rearview mirror and saying "BEEP BEEP BEEP" while doing this is a good safety practice, but is not legally required. üòú [Answer] In older two story barns, it is a popular design to have the second story reachable by an earth ramp or embankment. This permits one to use their work horses to pull heavy items to the second floor directly, instead of pulling them into the ground floor and then having them lifted to the second story. Bank Barns are [barns specifically designed for ground entry into the second floor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_barn). I can imagine a city where one street is a "low" street, entering into the ground floor, while the next street is a "high" street, entering into the second floor, and the entire city's interconnecting streets go up and down as necessary. [![An example of a bank barn](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pR38s.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pR38s.jpg) This might also impact the society in interesting ways, as people that are further in one direction (the undulating cross-intersecting streets) would be less desirable to visit, while those along a relatively flat street would be "closer" in effort, even if not in distance. Likewise it would make lower floors darker and generally less desirable (even today with electric lighting, natural light is valued) and the "low" streets might even be home to the poorer classes, unless it is important to have the entire building inhabited by one family. [Answer] A centaur is different from a horse. * Speech: He can talk. * Intelligence: His intelligence level is close to humans (or at least more than horses). * Learning: He can be taught and he can learn. So if there are stairs wide enough and less pitch, he can be taught how to climb. To come down, he can use his intelligence to de-climb backwards. [![silhouette of a centaur with forelimbs on the first step of some stairs](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L5rUH.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L5rUH.jpg) [Answer] There are a number of real-world examples of [staircases built for horses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestrian_staircase). They're similar to a human staircase, but have a lower rise height and a tread depth large enough to accommodate a large animal. Even though they're possible to build, your centaur world won't have them. They're far too dangerous. Humans injure themselves on stairs all the time, everything from major falls to misjudging the last step and landing hard on your heel. It hurts, but it's rarely a serious injury. A centaur's foot is not built like a human's foot, however. Equine feet have a very different structure. The sort of slips, trips, and falls that humans regularly have on stairs could cause serious foot or leg injury to a centaur, and foot injuries can be life-threatening ([lameness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lameness_(equine)), [laminitis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminitis), etc). The potential for fatal injury on stairs is far too great for them to be used as a common household mechanism. You'll most likely have certain special cases where stairs are necessary, but these will be fairly rare. Centaur architecture would be designed very differently than human architecture. [Answer] Pull Rope Elevator. There are lots of great answers about how to make stairs and centaurs work together. However, if you're anticipating frequent centaur traffic and don't have room for an appropriately shallow angled staircase, you can go for a platform that is raised and lowered by pulling a rope attached to a pulley system instead; it only has to be big enough (and obviously strong enough) for the centaur to stand in, and it could be designed so that they could operate the pulley system themselves. Added bonus: it's way easier for hauling loads of heavy goods up floors as well. [Answer] Consider a more familiar animal with a similar long quadrupedal body that has to navigate stairs constantly. A dog! A dog can run (not just "climb"!!) down even steep stairs confidently and with ease, never mind its head down. Why do you think a centaur wouldn't be able to navigate them with total ease, and with no special measures needed at all? Your main issue will be narrow turns,because their spine isn't so flexible to curl laterally (eg turn left/right) - our spine is vertical, a dogs spine is flexible and short, a horse spine isn't really designed to curl in a tight circle. That's more about tight corners than stairs, in a way. But climbing up and down stairs itself? Easy for them! If you need more reason, consider this: Horses run and gallop across really rough terrain without needing to see where their rear hooves land, to make good safe contact. Human sprinters and joggers don't need to see where their feet land either. We feel the ground as they touch, and we mentally map the land as we get there,in preparation,to know how out feet will contact it even without seeing them do so. Centaurs don't need to see the steps to be completely at ease treading on them. Balance and centre of gravity will matter. On steep stairs downwards, a centaur might have to lean back. But that'll be a habit, they won't think twice about it. After all, we lean into ladders or lean back when walking down a steep embankment, too. As long as they can physically fit and turn as needed, they won't have any issues at all, period. [Answer] ## No spiral staircases Spiral staircases, and firefighter's poles were [developed not to prevent horses from going up stairs, but prevent them getting stuck](https://priceonomics.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-firemans-pole/). > > Often, when the firemen cooked meals on the second floor, curious horses would ascend the stairs into the living quarters; as horses typically don't descend stairs, they would then be stuck there. > > To solve this issue, firehouses began installing narrow spiral staircases that the animals couldn‚Äôt access. > > > This leads me on to this: ## Minimum turning spaces, and risers This [PDF (download link)](https://www.bhs.org.uk/%7E/media/documents/access/access-leaflets/bridges-1019.ashx?la=en) from the [British Horse Society](https://www.bhs.org.uk/advice-and-information/free-leaflets-and-advice) about horses crossing bridges is particularly insightful > > Consideration should be given to the widths needed to safely pass other > users and if a horse should need to be turned while on the steps. Turning is likely to require a 3m x 3m area for safety. The ideal is therefore 2m wide with frequent passing or turning places but much will depend on the site, its level or use and locality. > > > It also goes into detail about maximum, minimum riser height: > > Riser height optimum 150mm at sites well used by all abilities. If insufficient space is available to gain required height then alternate risers may be increased as follows: > > ‚Ä¢ Maximum 200mm for maximum of three consecutive risers > > ‚Ä¢ Maximum 300mm for maximum of two consecutive risers > > ‚Ä¢ Maximum height 450mm at remote sites and only with a 2m tread below the 450mm riser > > > This is all for mounted horses, and mostly outdoors. The most salient point is the turning space. What happens when your centaur wants to turn around part way up the stairs? Riser height is likely less of an issue, but still worth considering. The document also mentions that at 45 degree angle slopes, horses tend to angle themselves sideways for stability. A sufficiently steep set of steps (ones ignoring the above advice) might cause a traffic jam as the centaurs try to balance by turning sideways or at least stall fighting those instincts. ## Front Heavy Another thing to consider is that a centaur is much more front heavy than a regular horse: [![outline diagram of a horse and centaur with exactly overlapping lower/back half and distinct horse neck and head from human torso](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7ODlym.png)](https://reliciron.tumblr.com/post/613627326017716224/so-this-was-a-centaur-proportion-map-i-made-like-a) That is, when going down an incline or set of steps, the center of gravity will shift towards the front of the centaur, potentially putting it off balance. --- In summary, the steps might need to be much longer than they would otherwise (2m or just over 6ft), but the rise wouldn't need to be too drastically different (150mm is ~1 ft), but that's the minimum for horses. Centaurs may be able to handle shorter steps, less long steps. The maximum incline/decline should also be considered as mentioned above, to prevent traffic jams on less than ideal staircases. [Answer] What's wrong with using ELEVATORS? The ancient Romans had them. Supposedly stole the designs from the even more ancient Babylonians. The Colosseum in 100 BC had 24 elevators! As the centaurs have all the manual dexterity of humans, they can build anything that humans could. Here's the lion elevator of the Colosseum, restored to its original splendor. <https://www.elevatorscenestudio.com/blog/2018/12/31/killer-beast-elevator-returns-to-colosseum-after-1500-years> [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/B6t6e.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/B6t6e.jpg) ]
[Question] [ One of the species in my world is very asexual. In this species, males and females are rarely if ever attracted to other individuals. It is something that developed through the past few decades and there doesn't seem to be any way to correct this problem. It seems like the individuals of this species are interested into glory, honor, and virtues, but have no interest in sexual socialization. Polls suggest that a good chunk of the species might even be disgusted by the naked body of their same species, they reproduce with the lights turned off and as quick as possible to get it over with, and even that type of activity is declining. The females of this species consider 99% of the males to be unattractive and 80% to be horrendously ugly, whilst males have no sexual interest in females at all. The government doesn't want to face extinction, so what can they do to fix the problem other than enslaving a breeding caste? More details about the creature: * Mammals * Sexually dimorphic * 14 months of pregnancy [Answer] There is no need to fear extinction. This is a self-correcting problem. This is what the evolution is all about. Those who have genes which make them less likely to procreate are less likely to do so. The genes will gradually disappear from the gene pool. Those who have genes which make it more likely to procreate, for what ever reason, well, they are more likely to procreate. Next generation will have more of these genes, and procreate more. > > The females of this species consider 99% of the males to be unattractive and 80% to be horrendously ugly, whilst males have no sexual interest in females at all. > > > So, that 1% of attractive males will be pursued by the females, and next generation is going to have 50% attractive males. The whole thing is an extinction problem only if there is competition from a competing species, who will increase in number at the expense of this species with the reproductive issues. This is how extinctions normally happen in nature outside mass extinction events: some other species is just better at reproducing, for whatever reason, so generation by generation conquers more living space / resources. But if this is the sole technological species on the planet, no other species can compete with them (unless it's a horror setting of some kind with an unnatural/alien enemy). --- For a cultural species, it's more of an economic problem, as there are many old people who'd like to retire, but can't because there aren't enough young people to do productive work. This also is not an extinction problem, and also is ultimately self-correcting: older people keep working to avoid poverty/starvation, or there is a rebellion of the working class against those who aren't working but expect to live in luxury if there is too great an imbalance. --- As to what can be done with the immediate problem: Well, first step is to find out what the problem actually is. Until the actual problem can be fought, there are a few remedies: * direct economical incentives to produce offspring * prestige for having a lot of offspring * society providing for offspring (free health care, education etc) * active removal of any taboos or other cultural limitations related to reproduction, such as expecting a stable monogamous relationship [Answer] If they find repulsive the act of the intercourse but not the pregnancy, they can massively use in vitro fecundation or artificial insemination, which doesn't need the physical act of mating to produce a viable embryo. Both males and female would be required to provide the gametes without any interaction with the other sex and, for the females, to host the embryo until delivery. They can make it a civic duty for each citizen to give at least 2 children to the country when coming of age, not differently from what was or is enforced with mandatory military service in some countries. [Answer] ## Connect political power to having a family In our world politicians need to have a family with a few kids to get anywhere. Have the government connect positions of any real power with having a family. Likewise, any businesses that work with the government will get preference if they have a family. This can be seen as a way to show off your honour and tradition, in that you can prepare a group of people to carry on the family business. # Have lots of support for childcare and pregnancy Giving birth already takes a while. Make sure that childcare is well funded and that help for giving birth is common. Make sure that females who give birth get advantages in their career from doing so. You don't want them to put off giving birth to extend their careers. Make it so that women who have more children can get more power. [Answer] Two options come to mind. 1. You may be overthinking this. Most of us do things we don't like to. It sounds like having sex is a chore that needs to be done a few times every 14 months at most for members of this species in their reproducing years. Over the course of their lives it's presumably much less. People in our world get prostate exams and mammograms which are also unpleasant in an invasive way. Basic bodily functions can also be gross. Point being, people deal. Your species would probably have a lot of jokes surrounding sex. Humor seems to pop up as a defense mechanism around grossness and discomfort. You could make this topic a cultural center-piece with even more of this species' crude humor involving sex than ours does. 2. Your species is into honor, valor, and so forth. There's not much more important to the betterment of a species than reproduction. Maybe having children is a status symbol -- the more you have, the more you've proven your devotion to family, country, and so forth. Maybe parties are thrown for every pregnancy and children who reproduce get larger shares of the inheritance (maybe they are portioned out by the fraction of the grandchildren produced). There could be financial incentives or even certain job postings only available based on parenthood or number of children. There are a few ways you could do this, but just tie child-bearing to what these things do care about. And, of course, there's no reason you couldn't do both of these things. They'd likely evolve side by side. You should also know that reproduction used to have major importance among aristocrats in Europe and likely elsewhere. There are certainly many historical examples of people for whom sex was either unwanted (perhaps they were asexual or homosexual), painful (perhaps for medical reasons), and so on. Some of them pulled through because political and financial arrangements depended on it. So, sex motivated by a sense of duty, financial benefits (another families wealth), office (you could marry into power over estates/provinces/etc.) are not at all outlandish. [Answer] For most of history, having children was essential. Agrarian peoples needed hands to work the fields, monarchs needed heirs to take their throne, craftsmen needed people to pass on their trade, etc. Obviously, none of these needs require having children, but it is very convenient for a number of reasons. Rather than having to bring someone into your work and having to pay them, a farmer doesn't have to pay the children. In the case of those in political power, a child can be much more easily influenced and trusted than an outsider. All of this was furthered by distrust of people who are not friends or kin. So in past centuries, outright refusing to have children in many cases was not a very good plan. I focus on the aspect of having children here, rather than intimacy or love, because those ideas were not really important to many people prior to the last few centuries. Obviously, people did find love with each other, they weren't heartless or anything, but most people were marrying for matters of necessity. The enjoyment of sexual relations also were secondary in many cases to having children, and in many cultures, certain things weren't even recognized regarding sex (such as female orgasms). So for a whole society to so aggressively turn against any kind of relationship... that's a bit questionable. I can see strong taboos against romantic love in a certain culture, but such a hard stance against something so useful as having children would be rather odd. Even today, where some may characterize this as happening, where a number of young people in the developed world are deciding to not have children, this is hardly out of an outright refusal to do so a lot of the time. Many prioritize work. Others would like to have children, but can't find the right person, others feel anxious about raising children in current economic conditions or with threats like climate change hanging over their heads. All a number of reasons why people are choosing not to have children - and then you have people who get married and have children just because it's what they were raised to believe they should do, and have no really interest in it. Then there are people who are similar, not knowing any other direction, but finding a desire to be married with children. Further, you have people who are very strong in support of having children from religious beliefs. All in one world - and even, as I said, the developed world, a large cross section of different people. Only at the far fringes do you have people who are staunch anti-natalists or are quiverfulls trying to have as many children as possible. In real life, there is no group who is a hive mind. There are certain inclinations, but everyone will be different, and even if they have the same views, they will have different reasons for believing in them. This is my long winded way of saying that you should perhaps acknowledge that, unless you are going for a quite alien group of people, there will be diverse groups within it. You will have people who find intimacy and relationships disgusting, but need offspring for aforementioned roles, as workers, as people to train in your trade. You will have people that do find love - maybe not romantic, sexual love, but a sense of belonging with others. Civilization is built off of people working together. If people hate being around each other, I have a very hard time understanding how civilization would exist in the first place. So, to your final question, what can the government do about this? The frustrating answer - not much. In real life, many governments, notably Japan and Germany as two examples, are watching their populations age with no replacement occuring. They are trying things like monetary incentive to get people to have children, but this doesn't seem to have much results. Japan is trying to replace a lot of jobs in the country with robots, and that is a temporary solution. Other countries with these problems, to sustain their population, are turning to immigration which has a lot of conflict surrounding it. This is one reason why the US doesn't need to worry about declining birth rates for a while, as the growing immigration from Latin America is keeping things stable. But eventually, something has to give. Immigrants will become the majority, or the population will decrease significantly, causing the nation's power to wane. But as mentioned above, there are so many different types of people - and there will always be people who want to have children for one reason or another. So in the refusal of some in your world to have children, those who do will be the ones who steer the ship. Their view of the world will be what shapes broader society, as they raise children with their beliefs. I'd imagine your society would reach a point where people decide to have children merely out of survival reasons. The country is collapsing and there's a massive labor shortage, and having children, especially very bright, skilled children, may be seen as a badge of honor - others might be awed that you suffered the horror of having a relationship so that you could have a child. I doubt governments would be able to have much influence with this, other than fueling a fire that was already going. This of course assumes that your country is somewhat democratic. If you're a totalitarian regime, you just tell people that they can't have food unless they have kids. This of course would lead to many awful, awful acts, people having children and then abandoning them so they can have certain benefits without the responsibility. So... yeah. I apologize for such a long response. Population and its changes can get really complicated, especially in such an odd situation as the one you described. I recommend studying population growth and decline, looking at the reasons why changes happen, etc. Japan and Germany are good ones to look at, China is a peculiar look into what happens when harsh population control is enforced and all the problems it can cause a country. I hope that my scatter brained thoughts have provided some insight, or at least direction for where to look for additional information. [Answer] It is a great opportunity for the species to get rid of males! Males are a relic from the days when groups of mammals required males to defend against other groups of mammals that were going to use their males to take resources. Your scenario is an opportunity to rid the culture of this burdensome heritage. The females in this society are not interested in males. They might be interested in babies. A male sexual partner is not needed to raise a baby and is no longer needed to produce a baby. Females interested in babies can be artificially inseminated from large stores of banked sperm. They can raise their babies in a "family" group of their choosing - partners of any gender, family members or whatever works for the individuals involved. Sperm can be selected to make females only so the unnecessary males are not produced. Within a couple of generations the superfluous males will be gone and it will be a society of all females with all the benefits that confers. If the sperm supplies run low some males can be raised. Should there be a technological collapse, artificial insemination can be carried out with stone age technology. I am suspicious though that a technological collapse would have the species revert to ancestral patterns - the acuity of the described problem smells like there is either a technological or cultural reason, both of which would be swept away in the collapse. [Answer] The species is built around a religious order of monks/nuns/priests. The most hard-working and pious individuals are permitted to enter this order and may then become celibate. Those who fail to meet the criteria are ordered by the priests to do whatever is necessary to have children; otherwise, they will surely not make it into heaven when they die. Bonus question: How did this species not go extinct before their civilisation developed to this point? Things used to be very different. They had a somewhat symbiotic relationship with a horrible mind-influencing parasite that gave them an uncontrollable desire to breed (because that helped the parasite to breed too). As a result, the species evolved a very low libido, to help them resist the parasite's influence. Fairly recently, they developed a way to kill the parasite, which had the side-effect of threatening their own continued existence. [Answer] ## Real Life Example I wanted to add that this happens in real life. The Tarahumara people are an indigenous people that live in Mexico and they are known for their running abilities. The men are incredibly shy and bashful when it comes to sex, and so sex usually happens in ritualized drunken orgies. Described in the book, [Born to Run](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0307279189). Also, > > Gatherings for celebrations, races, and religious ceremonies often > take place with tesgüinadas, a Tarahumara-style beer festival... > Tesgüinadas are an important aspect of Tarahumara culture as it is > often the only time when men have intercourse with their wives. They > act as a social lubricant, as Tarahumara are very shy and private." > ([wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rar%C3%A1muri#Tesg%C3%BCino,_a_fermented_drink,_and_associated_Tesg%C3%BCinadas_festivals)) > > > [Answer] ## Money That's it. Pay people a basic stipend for each child (for some maximum number of children). How you fund and structure this stipend is totally up to you, but the easiest will be through taxes and a decreasing recurring stipend that expires at some age. (This will create problems that can be a plot point as well.) As a side note, there will never be a 100% population that deplores disgusting sex. There will always be some weirdos who like it. Your stipend will have to account for them as well, possibly as an antagonistic plot point, even. [Answer] I don't know how such a situation might have arisen, but evolution will solve the problem... with perhaps a little help. > > In this species, males and females are rarely if ever attracted to other individuals. > > > This may seem to mean that people aren't interested in sex, and it does mean that for most people that is true. However, it also means that some people are interested in sex. As long as some people are interested in sex, all is not lost. All the government need do is identify these sex-liking individuals and bring them together and provide them with incentives to indulge in sex and to reproduce. With enough incentive, the government reproduction program may well recruit those for whom sex is merely 'a bit yucky' as well as those who like sex, and that's fine... anything is an improvement over total disgust. As these people reproduce, they will tend to produce offspring who are not totally repulsed by sex, and by breeding these new sex-positive people with one-another, over generations, the people will come to like sex and won't need to be subsidized to reproduce. It doesn't even matter what the cause of the negativity toward sex may be... the people can evolve a counter to it. There is practically no easier condition to evolve out of a population: those with the undesirable condition literally won't want to reproduce naturally anyway. Additionally, if there are females who find sex repulsive, but aren't averse to bearing children, they could be implanted with the in-vitro offspring of sex-positive individuals to boost the birth rate. [Answer] Frame Challenge: It is unlikely that such a species would ever have developed to the point of intelligence, where non-sexual procreation becomes an option via technical means, or ritual/tradition/alcohol can create a temporary environment or social pressure. IMHO there are only three ways to solve this: 1. asexual reproduction - you don't have males and females at all, your creatures reproduce asexual. See <https://www.biologyonline.com/dictionary/asexual-reproduction> for details 2. spores - or something similar. Basically, sperm is deposited into eggs without sexual intercourse, the way flowers or trees do it, or entirely outside the body, like fish. 3. heat / rut - your males and females are not interested in each other for sex for 99% of the time. Humans are actually the exception in nature when it comes to always being interested and ready for sex. Many animals are "in heat" for a short time in intervals, and not much interested in sex the rest of the time. [Answer] The "[turkey baster](https://www.uranj.com/blog/the-myth-of-the-turkey-baster-what-you-need-to-know-about-iui)" method The male, in prvate, deposits their seed into a "needleless syringe" and then comes out and gives it to the female. The female then, in private, deposits the seed inside of themselves. This method avoids all physical contact between the male and female. If you don't even want to see your partner one could set up anonymous ways do it. * Let people donate at their local pharmacy. The pharmacy screens the sample for disease, and then the pharmacy sells the samples. * Anonymous sample swapping parties. * Neighborhood take a sample leave a sample drop boxes. [Answer] ### Don't assume some people won't want to do it Whilst the overwhelming majority may not want to have sex or have children, a few will. One lesson to learn from sex and kink is that almost whatever you can imagine, a percentage will find it arousing, even if the majority don't. For a really obvious example, as a straight guy I don't find big hairy men attractive - but within the gay community "bears" are totally a thing. And queer history demonstrates very well that those minority percentages do tend to find each other, especially in big cities where a small percentage of a large population still amounts to a lot of people. ### And learn from species with alpha males/females Many, many species live in a social structure where only one male or female produces offspring. All the other members of the group collaborate to raise those offspring, but do not themselves have offspring. The social group are all related, giving an evolutionary reason to raise another person's offspring. In existing species it's the most dominant animals who get to breed - but there's no reason that the same social structure couldn't work for a species where only a small minority want to breed. So follow the meerkat model. The extended family group provide for the mother when she's pregnant or nursing (which will be most of the time), and raise the children collectively. Other women in the group may spontaneously lactate as they look after children, so the mother isn't even tied to that. In a modem society (or at least a society with the concept of money and taxes) the government/monarch will presumably also pay a salary to pregnant mothers, and possibly a "sweetener" to men who get them pregnant. With no problems of childcare or income, and with good healthcare and diet (both of which are largely a factor of income), a woman who likes having children has no reason not to. 20 children? More? The only limit is the time between menarche and menopause. [Answer] ## Asexuality is a Solution, not a Problem. While some people will be fearful of population decline, most people will find this far to inconvenient to accept. Laws that force asexuals to have babies are like laws that make Republicans reduce thier carbon footprint. The sheer inconvenience of having to do what they do not want to do will be enough to push them to full heartedly accept any theory, no matter how poorly supported, that says everything will be fine. And since asexuals have such a majority influence, these are the theories that will dominate your society. So what would this dominate theory look like? As the leading theory goes, the current state of your society is an [epigenetic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics) behavior designed to prevent extinction, not cause it. Many social animals have different behavioral norms based on thier population density and available resources. Rather than just reproducing until they become so numerous they consume all of thier resources and cause a mass extinction event, they reproduce until they reach a certain population density, at which point thier level of sexual attraction declines to flatten the curve. The thing about this species is that they are capable of very rapid population growth. Their ancestors filled more or less the same niche as mice where heavy predation meant that a mother would need to have 30-40 babies in her life time to keep from dyeing out, but when this species became smart, they rapidly killed off thier predators using traps and weapons, but thier reproductive systems stayed the same. Throughout the history of this species, cases have come up over and over where thier rapid reproduction and lack of local predictors have caused fatal population booms, so only the ancestors who had a mechanism for self limiting reproduction survived. Now historically, this asexual behavior has only seen maybe 10-50% of the population affected, but modern technology has wiped out diseases, starvation, predation, infertility, and pretty much every other malady that affects thier population. So thier thier population has continued to swell and thier epigenetic asexuality is becoming more and more prominent due to massive overpopulation issues... and this is okay. This is exactly what thier evolutionary history has been preparing them for. Thanks to thier extraordinary population densities, thier next generation will shrink, but as it does, thier species will naturally return to a more sexual state. This pattern will simply see-saw until their technology stagnates for long enough for thier asexuality levels to settle into a new natural equilibrium. [Answer] Your species uses a more basic, animalistic way of reproducing - a rutting season. During the season, biology via hormones takes over and everyone who is affected partakes in reproductive free for all, if uncontrolled. Star Trek had a similar concept for Vulcans called [Pon Farr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pon_farr), > > An extreme physical and psychological imbalance every seven years requires a mating ritual or death can ensue. > > > ]
[Question] [ I am currently planning to create a world for a Pathfinder adventure where my players will be characters playing a VR game with sentient AI that thinks their world is real. I want to ask: what kind of prevention could I put in place in order to prevent players or NPC PCs (basically NPCs who are aware they are in a VR world) from telling the NPC's that this world isn't real? Currently I am thinking of saying that those who attempt to do that are banned and the NPCs react similarly to Westworld characters when they are confronted by reality, but that feels like it would break immersion for any of my players that attempted to talk to NPCs about reality. [Answer] So, you want your NPC's (or at least some of them) to be fully fledged thinking individuals. But you want them to not decide they're in a simulation no matter how much the players try to convince them. One option is to make them think like normal humans. Then add some elements to their world. Add an evil empire to their history with a central belief that involves the world being a simulation. Make them really despicable, nazi-level villians who pretty much all the NPC's hate pretty much automatically. Make it so that in the worlds history the way the evil empire justified it's atrocities all revolved around this idea that the world wasn't real and was a simulation to the point that anyone talking about things that sound like arguments that the world is simulated sound very similar to famous speeches from VR-world-history-hitler. Make their mythology involve keywords that match the sorts of things people would say while trying to convince someone they're in a simulation. [![Fantasy Hitler](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ClGc1.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ClGc1.jpg) [![Lizard hitler riding a dinosaur](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TjckO.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TjckO.jpg) Then add in some non-sentient bots who's job is to act as the random street-corner whackos. They occasionally wander the city streets ingame spouting clearly insane stuff mixed in with claims that the world isn't real and "we're all the dreams of lumps of metal" "the Administrators (Illuminati substitute) control everything!" [![Doomsayers](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MLGcF.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MLGcF.jpg) So that almost any right-thinking sane NPC within the game world considers it pretty much a point of honor and morality to outright reject the concept of simulation. So a player makes some NPC friends ingame and while sitting round in a tavern decides to try to convince their NPC mates that the world is a lie.... so they start to talk about simulations and computers... and all the NPC's within earshot start to get disgusted looks on their faces because to them it's roughly equivalent to starting to spout nazi propaganda mixed with Illuminati/chem-trail/truther maddness. The inkeeper insists they shut up or leave and their NPC former friends mostly start avoiding them. Bonus points if a player tries to elaborate "look, I know you think there was a big genocide by the evil empire but it never actually happened! it was all a myth to stop you believing in simulation" Through all this the NPC's maintain free will. It's not perfect, some NPC's might get convinced... but the beauty is that they'll just be seen as evil crackpots too. [Answer] I haven't seen Westworld, so can't comment on how they handle things unfortunately, but could you not take inspiration from our own simulation world? How would most people handle it if someone revealed to them claimed that THIS world is a simulation, that everything is controlled by an omnipotent AI and we're all just an elaborate collection of properties and business rules? Or, how would people react if someone claimed that the Earth was not the center of the universe, and that we were merely a large rock circling a giant blazingly hot ball of AI only knows what? Crazy talk, right? Pretty sure those people would be laughed at and put in padded rooms where they can no longer be a danger to themselves or others. [Answer] The operating system of the VR should be able to parse what people are saying. If it catches a player attempting to tell an NPC that the world is not real, the OS can apply immediate punishment. This could be in the form of electrical shock, migraines, muting, physical trauma etc. As an alternative or in addition to that, the NPC's might just be genuinely unable to parse the message. A conversation could go like: > > -This world isn't real. We are in the Matrix. It is a computer simulation and most people are really sentient AI's. > > > -Why are you reciting the lyrics of What Does The Fox Say? > > > If you want to make it really frustrating, you may also have savepoints. Attempting an explanation causes the game to reload from the last savepoint. I suggest watching The Good Place for an even more cruel example - explain it and the world reloads from scratch. [Answer] Your PCs will be considered to be religious evangelists. > > John 2:15-17 King James Version (KJV) > > > 15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If > any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. > > > 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust > of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of > the world. > > > Lots of religions promise a real world or a better world to their followers. The world we live in is dirty and corrupt or in some other way an imitation or sham or fake, but the real world is the Kingdom of Heaven, or Nirvana, or what have you. In your VR world there could exist evangelical religion which holds this as a tenet. When people start talking this way they are received by believers as fellow believers. If someone talks to this way to a nonbeliever they will considered to be evangelizing for this religion and will be received with impatience, or patience, or hostility, or interest according to the character approached. [Answer] I would model this after the actual real world and just use plain old stubborn ignorance. Player: "This isn't actually the real world" NPC: "Ha ha, of course it is stupid." Player: "No really, I am actually just playing a game right now. You only exist in the game." NPC: "I really don't respect conspiracy theory nuts" and then the NPCs start treating them different because they are a cooky conspiracy theory nut. [Answer] Do nothing. Think about it, if someone walked up to you and said hey were living in a simulation, what would your reaction be. You would think they were joking or that they were a bit `<woo woo>` crazy. > > PC: Hey we are all inside a VR environment right now. > > > . > > NPC: Prove it. Say your telling the truth and all of this is in my head, if I shoot you it wont matter... > > > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWfh0OuTKKE> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVhKNaJyzzg> Total Recall reference, lol > > PC: really, I'm telling you its a simulation > > > . > > NPC: ok prove it to me > > > . > > PC: sure I will pause the simulation > > > `<pauses>` waits a minute `<unpauses>` > > NPC: ok are you going to pause it or what? I don't have all day. > > > "Dang, the NPC was paused while the simulation was paused", thought the PC A better question is how would you prove it to a NPC that the world was a simulation, when they are "embedded in it" [Answer] I know an answer was already accepted, but here I go anyway: Regular updates! Every night, or whenever, there's an update that wipes the memories of the virtual people of any hint that their world isn't real. That's it. Simplicity at its finest. Big brother polices the thing with a fine tooth comb and allows for no funny business. [Answer] A different take on the problem: # The NPCs know They just don't care. If I told you that you lived in the universe, you would agree. If I asked you if you wanted to be trapped in a simulation, you would probably say no. Similarly to these NPCs if you told them they were in a simulation, they would agree. If you asked them to trap them in a different world, they would say no. They would feel as if the simulation is where they are free in, and the "real" world is where they would be trapped, and would need to escape back to the simulation. If your world allows, as far as these NPCs are concerned, YOU are the NPC who escaped the universe into the real simulation. [Answer] Your virtual universe is about a game played in-universe. So when NPCs or PCs talk about "this not being the real world" it is naturally interpreted in a way that the game world they are playing in the VR world is not the real world. [Answer] They treat players like mythological figures There exist a race of beings that possess otherworldly knowledge. They are not merely 'above' NPCs, however. They have access to a plane of information that drives them subtly insane. Repeated use of it makes them stop perceiving the real world as real. Perhaps they can return after death, and such. Intermix the players with other 'mythological' figures, whose powers work in a slightly different way, like berserkers who derive great strength from the plane of strength, but this also drives them insane, but in a way that robs them of coherence. As long as the players are a feature, rather than unwelcome outsiders, the NPCs won't get existential crises, and can perceive the humans as eccentric (or dangerous) allies. [Answer] Make them incapable of comprehending it. If you can make NPC's with that level of intelligence, you can certainly do this. Have some coding that makes them incapable of comprehending the fact that they aren't real. Also so that they won't ask awkward questions about why the players treat them like trash and can't go full terminator on us. ]
[Question] [ Inspired by this [question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/70226/why-would-many-future-interstellar-spaceship-designs-come-with-a-self-destruct-b), and [this article](http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Self_destruct_system), activating self-destruct mechanism disengage coolant system for the ship's main reactor, which then increases the core temperature and triggers explosion. However, I find it strange for such sequence to trigger an accurate 10 seconds countdown, especially because destabilizing core does not mean it will explode exactly 10 seconds after the sequence is initiated. It can be on the 8th second, or 12th second. So, is it plausible to have a fixed (for example, 10 s) countdown for self-destruct mechanism like this? If not, why bother displaying/announcing the countdown (so people will panic)? Note: For this question, I rule out the possibility of forced destruction, like igniting the core when the countdown reaches zero. You can pick the technology for the core, but it certainly will explode when the sequence is activated. [Answer] # Yes, it is entirely plausible. But the question is not. The concept of [scuttling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling) is not exactly new, the most (in)famous example being [Cortés](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hern%C3%A1n_Cort%C3%A9s). Scuttling is a function that is sometimes worked into the design and the operating procedures of a ship. Heck, we even have a scuttling function on spaceships today. For example: * [SpaceX F9R test ends when rocket tips over and scuttling charges destruct the rocket](https://www.space.com/26921-spacex-reusable-rocket-explodes-over-texas-video.html). * [Alternate, close-up view (16 seconds into the video)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ#t=16s). Designing the scuttling procedure and mechanism is an engineering task. And no engineer worth their degree would ever design a scuttling procedure that happens willy-nilly by being the subject to random factors. Yet for some mysterious and to me entirely unknown reason, the question and the majority of answers assumes that a future space ship with a scuttling-function would somehow be similar to a contemporary ground based nuclear power reactor without such a function. I have to say: this is a most unfounded and entirely unnecessary — not to mention unrealistic — assumption. Scuttling would — by necessity — be: 1. Controlled, that is to say it happens only if the ship's command structure says it will happen. 2. Deterministic; it happens only when and how the ship's command structure says it will happen, not sooner, nor later, not more violent, not any less. These are the principles the architects and engineers of the ship will work with. They will not deliver something that happens at random since there is no reason for it, and it would be really poor engineering. And if the normal physical processes of the ship cannot ensure that the ship will destruct at the right time, then they will build in extra mechanisms that help the process along. So if the customer would say: > > I rule out the possibility of forced destruction > > > ...then I — as an engineer(\) — would cross my arms, look them straight in the eyes, and say: No... I will not* design your scuttling function with such a silly and contrived design restraint. Either you let me do my job properly or go find yourself another engineer. Good luck with that... So to summarize: the assumptions of the question — that scuttling would be left to random uncontrollable processes — are by any and all engineering principles faulty. Scuttling will be made controlled and deterministic, and the necessary steps to make it happen will be taken. Anything else would simply be incompetent engineering, and no one will want to go into space on a ship made by incompetent engineers. Nor would anyone allow management to interfere with the construction of the ship in such a way. ....because [we know what happens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4JOjcDFtBE#t=95) when [management adds silly requirements to a ship project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)#Maiden_voyage). (\) Yes, I am an engineer by degree and trade [Answer] With the sorts of self-destruct mechanisms we see portrayed cinematically, there are two different sorts of countdown: time to override the self-destruct command, and time to reach a safe distance to escape the effects of the self-destruct system. In the first case, the mechanism triggers at the end of the countdown; if you override the self-destruct command in that time, nothing happens. That can, of course, be timed very precisely. The time to reach a safe distance may be less definite. Obviously, if you've got no way to override the self-destruct command, and there's an explosion instantly when the mechanism triggers, then there's no distinction between the two types of countdown, and it can be very precise. [Answer] Disabling the cooling should not trigger a meltdown or explosion on any kind of reactor. No engineer would design a reactor that catastrophically fails in 10 seconds if the coolant is cut off. So you have a typical 1 GW fission reactor, that means you generate 10 GJ in 10 seconds worth of electricity and perhaps another 20 GJ in heat, so convert it all to heat and the have 30 GJ -- The energy content of almost 5 barrels of oil. No sane design would permit such a small amount of energy to destroy a reactor. Whether fusion or fission, 1 GW reactors will have a lot of material and 5 barrels of oil worth of energy could certainly heat things up, but they won't be a self-destruct. [Answer] So, you need to self destruct your ship at a certain time. But you don't want to rig it with explosives and you don't have an anti-matter reactor, so you can't just turn off containment and have it go BOOM. You need to design a way for your regular ship's system to serve double duty as a reliably timed self destruct. One option is for your reactor to have no upper bounds as to how much energy it can generate/fuel it can use. You set your self destruct timer and when it reaches zero the computer sets your rector from 100% power output to 100,000% in a nanosecond. It uses a decade worth of fuel instantly and none of the safeties come even close* to being able to manage the power. KA-BOOM. That's your best bet. But what happens if your technology doesn't allow you to dump arbitrary amounts of fuel into your reactor at a moment's notice? Maybe flooding the reaction chamber with that much fuel that quickly 'stalls' out your engine? Then we need to examine what a (conventional) bomb is. It is a very strong container. When the bomb's trigger goes off, the powder burns up quickly creating a bunch of heat and pressure. Eventually this pressure becomes too great for the container and it ruptures, releasing all of the stored energy in a big boom. If the container is too strong it won't rupture, and no boom. If it is too weak it will rupture too early with no pressure inside, no boom. If you build the pressure slowly then the container will rupture when it just barely has too much pressure, that pressure will be released then there won't be enough pressure left over to make the big boom. It is a balancing act. And as we went over, you are limited by the fact that your engine design can only build pressure slowly. So if you can only build up heat and pressure slowly, how do you get an explosion? I'd suggest that you do it backwards. Instead of creating a strong container then building explosive levels of heat and pressure within it, create massive amounts of heat and pressure, then 'shove' it into a container with the self-destruct. Imagine instead of turning off the cooling systems, then self destruct timer turns the cooling to max. Slowly you ramp up the reactor. After 5 minutes the reactor is in dire straits, and the cooling systems can barely keep up. Then, when the timer hits zero, All the cooling is shut off. Not just shut off, thrown into reverse, maybe. Perhaps there are explosive bolts in the cooling system that will allow it to instantly seal every system the removes heat and pressure from the reactor. This won't allow perfect nano-second timing the way shutting off anti-matter containment would, but it would probably get fairly close. [Answer] It is not plausible for a self-destruct to have a count-down by purely mechanical or chemical means, especially one that could be *stopped* at the last second. *HOWEVER,* it makes a great deal of sense to have a settable countdown for a triggered self destruct system; knowing when it will happen gives people time to prepare or escape. There are circumstances in war where intentionally giving your life or using your ship as a bomb is the strategic best option: Say to kill an opponent that otherwise is about to gain enough power to win the war, or to deny an opponent intelligence about your ship that can be used against all your other ships, or deny your opponent the chance of flying your ship as a false flag: For example, making it even more explosive and flying it directly into your headquarters. In my career I have worked on military equipment that had built in self-destruct mechanisms, to prevent discovery and/or capture of the technology or secrets. [Answer] I doubt you could have complete accuracy of detonation time but a minimum time to detonation should entirely possible with a well established reactor design. Most self-destructs also require a dump of raw fuel into an overheated system so reasonable accuracy should be achievable in such a system. [Answer] The count down is to give cinematic tension. That's all. I can see that if the self destruct was not instant (like bombs planted throughout the ship) that the power plant destabilization might, on it's own, trigger warnings. Also, if it is an instant destruction device, you may wish to give your crew time to evacuate. Otherwise, it is like putting an LED timer on a bomb. Who, other than an infantile, grandstanding moron with masochistic tendencies, would let people know how long they have to defuse a bomb? If I ever had a character put a visible timer on a bomb, I'd have the bomb go off when there was still 12 minutes and 34 seconds left on the timer. [Answer] I'm looking at this part of the question : "activating self-destruct mechanism disengage coolant system* for the ship's main reactor, which then increases the core temperature and triggers explosion [by destabilising core]"* is it plausible? The kind of reactor (or other power source) isn't specified. Although fusion is suggested, it might not be fusion. Fission seems less likely. The question is generally whether ceasing cooling would ever plausibly provide a self destruct function. I suspect the answer is "no": ## Engineering and power production principles An explosion requires uncontrolled rapid "runaway" activity. That's a "fail = unsafe" principle. Fission and raw flame can be unsafe on failure of a protective system, but generally no power source aims to be. This isn't a feature you could add to create a self destruct. It's an inherent property of an engineering/power generation method. Fission is inherently capable of runaway. Fusion (as far as we know) inherently is not - at least not on less than star-size reactors, where gravity and opacity can create runaway. Other invented systems are however you wish them. But the coolant system can only change a runaway-capable system from running as inhibited to uninhibited modes; it can't create a runaway capable system if none exists. ## Containment issues Another problem is that most explosions need time to build up, however short. Even current nuclear weapons with an explosive effect (rather than just dirty material dispersion) need a very tightly fitted and insanely precise engineered thick steel case, just to prevent the components simply melting or flying apart in the first fraction of a second. Think of a gun barrel or bullet case, used to contain the propellant as it turns to gas - same idea. A power creating reactor doesn't typically have the kind of case needed and it probably wouldn't be compatible if desired. (Because even a small space would probably be enough to adversely affect the runaway force and make maintenance impractical, although this is obviously a bit speculative and could be handwaved away). ## Power production vs. power storage To explode, you usually need to release some kind of stored energy, and this stored energy must be capable of being released very fast. If the power system doesn't contain a store of power, or at least the ability to produce power fast enough, this makes it a bit less plausible. But if it can produce power quickly, then this still doesn't imply a store that can be released all at once. A bullet, rocket, or fission reactor contains stored energy that is designed or inherently capable of rapid release, but not all systems have this. Without much detail, this would probably be an issue to consider as well, in assessing plausibility. ## Failsafe designing On principle, engineers tend to develop power systems that, on failure of control, are inherently safe not unsafe. You wouldn't want to fly a bomb. So your car systems have several hundred detectors (including code checks) that watch for risky engine status indicators and restrict rpm if so. (What if a switch stuck, or a detector was faulty?) Ditto all other power systems. Even your toaster's power circuit has a fuse somewhere. But in addition they design for safety even if active systems fail. If your car battery fails and the electronics lose power, you dont want the engine to be left in a full-power state mechanically with no way to turn it off because of electronic control issues. Coolant is a subsystem. You probably won't get engineers designing it to fail, because its so critical that the cooling system can never by accident (or due to some unlikely combination of faults), fail. Designing a bypassable safety system of this kind, with probable catastrophic effects, would be a bit like designing a lift ('elevator' in the US) for an office block where people work daily, and building in all safety features - plus an anti-terrorism feature that could raise it to the top floor at high speed and withdraw all safety controls (over cable drum rotation, lift car safety etc) and drop it at maximum speed to impact at the ground floor, just in case of a terrorist attack where the terrorists are in the lift. In other words, however desireable a defence it might be, you just wouldn't design a safety critical system and a path that completely undermined it. You'd do it some different way. ## Possible alternative solutions If the ship had some system that accumulated immense power, that power could be released in a specific manner. That's not a coolant failure but it would meet the needs of the question. For example, suppose the ship has weapons, and these weapons were reliant on huge power delivery accumulated over a few seconds and released in a brief but immensely powerful burst. Then the power accumulators could be used as a source of self destruct, by providing a path that would release that power against the ship itself. You'd have to think around the issues of containment (how do you stop the power transmission system just melting instead?) and impact (how would this lead to destruction rather than damage?) Alternatively if the ship contained something that already had explosive effect, it would only be necessary to initiate whatever explodes it. Again that's not a coolant failure. For example if it carried some kind of torpedo weapons, or mining explosives, or a store of chemical fuel needed by some kind of pods which are too small for a reactor, or was powered by immensely dense matter in some kind of futuristic force-field, then you'd just have to set off the explosives, provide a (fail-safe!) detonator for the fuel store, or release the force-field. But as stated, and looking at cooling systems only - no. [Answer] There are generally two types of countdowns: One is a timer counting down to a trigger action. This is the kind that can usually be aborted before it reaches zero, although there may be reasons to make the destruct irrevocable. When the timer reaches zero, detonation is essentially immediate. The other type of countdown is a prediction. It is an estimated time at which the power source will go critical, containment will collapse, or whatever makes the thing go boom. Where this comes up, the surrounding science and technology always seems to be good enough to make such predictions down to the second. [Answer] Yes. Given standardized parts, ship designs, mechanisms, flow rates, temperature tolerances, and so on, predicting the reaction and the time it takes to kick off should be possible. In the case of military ships it would likely be tested for consistency. ]
[Question] [ Maleficient is an evil witch on a quest for true immortality. Until she accomplishes her goal, she uses a midpoint form of magic called reincarnation in order to buy her more time and keep her alive. Reincarnation magic allows an individual to reincarnate themselves after death in the body of another human. Maleficient has a number of host bodies scattered throughout the world and trapped in a deep sleep to take control of in case she is killed by her enemies or dies of old age. Her most recent claim, a young girl named Snow White, is the next host that she will possess. This spell takes a number of steps. After a person dies, their soul jumps into a magical item called a soul stone, which keeps the soul in storage and prevents it from crossing over to the next world. The soul is then transported and absorbed into the host body, giving the person possession over it. Reincarnation requires the victim to be living, so these hosts are placed in a coma-like sleep and kept in magical stasis to prevent them from aging. They are stored in this way until needed for further use. The result is that the body now contains two souls within it that continue to remain separate, with the original soul remaining trapped and the dominant soul of the witch retaining control. The witch now has access to the person's memories, knowledge and spells to use. They can also access the person's mana for an extra boost in spellcasting if needed. Powerful witches are likely to use this method to cheat death whenever possible, and limits need to be places on this form of magic to prevent constant overuse. In essence, individuals both weak and strong should only reincarnate themselves into others of their caliber. A witch might be powerful, but would have a hard time with this spell because there are few people walking around with that kind of power level. Alternatively, an average person would have an easier time because of a larger pool of individuals. However, this isn't a power grab. Even if they managed to take down a powerful opponent, transporting their own soul into them wouldn't be an option. How can I accomplish this goal with these rules? [Answer] The magic ability depends on the body capabilities Just as are able to lift more weight by training, magic strength also needs to be cultivated. As such, after moving to a new body, the witch may have the knowledge of very advanced spells, but would actually be unable to perform them, as their new body will be unable to channel such level of magic. The witch will need to train within her new body in order to slowly gain up a decent ability at witchcraft. While her previous experience will help somewhat, and we should assume that she will have chosen a body with some innate ability at magic, it will have no magic at all, so the host abilities will be completely atrophied, and getting up to high magic levels will take many years (a normal apprentice will slowly grow uup his magic capabilities in their normal learning, but here it's like having the brain of a scientific inside the body of a baby). (By the way, after being in magical comma for years, the host will also be physically atrophied, although that's easier to overcome) Note that regarding your third paragraph, I don't think the witch should have access to both that person's memories, knowledge, spells and mana and her own ones. If the memories are stored in the body, the witch would lose her own memories when moving to a new one. If they are instead linked to the soul, she would keep them, but would have no access to the host ones. In order to have it somewhat balanced and interesting, I would recommend letting the witch keep her memories (memories from Snow White before she was trapped -10 years ago- wouldn't be too useful anyway) but have the available mana restricted by the host body. [Answer] Remember analogue audio tapes? Copying them was a lossy process: If copied too often, you'd accumulate noise until the content is no longer enjoyable. Make soul transfer a lossy process, too. Applied once, there's almost no change in the soul, but with each transfer, damage to the soul accumulates, until at some point it is too weak to take over the new body. It is still there, but the actual owner of the body is now in control, and can in turn make use of the witch's memories and powers. [Answer] 1. Don't make the base witch inherently dominant. It should be a tough struggle of wills to take control of the new host. Of course, a skilled witch will be very skilled at soul combat, and have spells to pacify the other soul, but make it a struggle. The base soul is more suited for their body, so if they are trained in soul defense they may be the one who controls the body. 2. Make the souls an attractive target for any witch who wants power. The soul of a powerful witch, free of her body, could be a powerful ingredient in many spells, warding schemes, and potions that other witches could want. If you do die and anyone finds out, many witches will attempt to ambush and steal your soul. There's a strong incentive for whoever is managing the soul to sell it to any of many willing buyers. 3. Make soul transportation difficult. Losing your body and mastering the soul of another should be exhausting. During this time the witch is vulnerable to others stealing her secrets with mind magic, or being attacked. [Answer] ## Loss of spell What powers the spell is the spell itself: It unravels all memory of itself and how to get that knowledge, and uses that energy as a kickstarter. A clever witch will have given herself clues, left parts of it scattered around where only she can find or understand it, but finding the spell again will take time. Writing it down where everyone can find it, will be too dangerous, since she is not able to defend herself once in the stone, so it must be hidden cleverly. Most people only manage it once. They die, having spent their priceless, second life frantically searching without success. [Answer] I can think of a few ways. First, soul stones could be hard to make and degrade with each transfer to a new host body. The chances of it failing to retain the soul during the transfer go up each time it’s done. Thus, the witch risks crossing over to the afterlife more. And making a new soul stone can’t be done without potentially breaking the artificial attachment to the new host body. Second, with each transfer, the pool of compatible hosts decreases. You absorb traits from each host body, which means the list of traits you have to match gets longer. That increases the difficulty finding potential hosts. Third, potential insanity. Your soul might have an allergic reaction to the host body, causing you to gradually lose your mind. [Answer] ## Biological compatibility As with organ transplants, the soul must be transplanted to a compatible body, in sufficiently good health that the shock won't kill them; else the transplantation process will fail. I would suspect that there wouldn't be too many people meeting the criteria, which is generally the case when looking for donors. Secondly, the soulstone is a physical item, which needs time to be formed within the original body of the witch or within the host's body, so the witch can't just body hop whenever. Add on that the soulstone is a one shot: once the witch dies, the soulstone has to be physically transferred to the new host, where it will break down and transfer the soul into the host's body. Afterwards, the witch will have to generate a new soulstone for the next transfer, which would take a couple of years to do. [Answer] I think that having the host bodies retain a portion or remnants of its previous 'soul', that fuses with your own when you resurrect in said body is an interesting option. When you resurrect, this fragments are fused with your own soul, maybe giving it a good side like random useful memories or skills, but mostly making you... less like you were, maybe haunted by thoughts that are not your own, resentment, and ill feelings toward yourself for 'stealing' that body [Answer] Resurrection Sickness. Once the Host Body has been taken over, the Supplanter needs time to 'settle in'. During this period, their Magical prowess is severely stunted (for the first few days, they can't cast any spells!), gradually regaining their abilities as the body adapts to their soul. As the Host Body cannot have many protective enchantments in place beforehand - both to avoid disrupting the Stasis Seal, and also so that you don't accidentally protect them from Possession - it will take time before the Witch is warded and prepared to reveal their survival. Even worse, they are unable to create a new Soul Stone during this period - so if they are killed again, they're dead for good! This is a "life-boat", or "emergency bug-out" spell - not something to use every time a tasty looking new body comes along. Powerful spellcasters tend to prepare traps that will destroy their body (explosively, or with other AoE effects) once their soul is no longer in residence - not only does this prevent their killers from locating the Soul Stone, it also makes them a very bad choice of Host for their rivals. Instead, they find naïve youngsters with prestigious natural talent, nurture them in a way which prevents them from becoming a genuine threat (or protecting themselves) and then put them into Stasis once they're "ripe". This also gives them a strategy for when "old age" is catching up with them: ingratiate themselves as a kindly crone to a nearby monarch with a young and magically talented daughter. Teach the daughter 'useless' magic such as "empathy" or "animal communication" to boost her reserves, and beauty magic to sculpt her form. Then, reveal your evilness in an over-the-top manner, kidnap the princess to a nearby evil castle, copy her memories, and wait for a hero to be called. The hero slays the Witch, and starts working through traps to rescue the princess. Meanwhile, a loyal minion (patiently waiting outside the blast radius) grabs the Soul Stone, hightails it through a secret passage, performs the possession ritual, and then feeds the Witch an "enchanted sleep" potion. The hero then rescues the "princess", who seems shaken and slightly changed by her harrowing ordeal, while no sign of the Witch can be found... [Answer] Witch can't take over a more powerful witch because the more powerful witch wins, and the invading soul is killed and/or absorbed. Thus the more powerful witch absorbs the inferior witch so the witch has to select an equal or lesser body. If a witch takes a lower body it diminishes her own magic levels. You then scale these by percentage to weakly or strongly enforce these rules. Therefore a witch selects a someone within say 1% of there abilities. [Answer] You can introduce witch hunters to hunt witches as they have methods to detect witches in her dormant state or you could also make soul becomes weaker every time reincarnation magic used till it threatened to disappear. You can also introduce supernatural forces like Grim reapers to kill witches if they cheat death too much. [Answer] The spell itself is powered by another witch, not the one being reincarnated. (After all, the one to be reincarnated is trapped in the crystal.) This makes the reincarnation candidate vulnerable. 1. If I'm the #2 witch after the now-deceased #1, there are a couple of factors that would influence me. First, a powerful soul trapped in a crystal might be useful for creating powerful magical items. (For me, of course.) Second, if I'm #2 but I can become #1 by an unfortunate and unforseen accident happening during the reincarnation, where exactly is my motivation to succeed? I would of course selflessly take up the burden of continuing the master's studies... 2. The one performing the ceremony might honestly fail. They are the apprentice (or competitor), after all. A second line of options would revolve around the actual takeover of the host. 1. The host's soul may in fact overpower the reincarnated one -- it is their body after all and you can have a strong inner will without being magically powerful. So the reincarnation candidate has to deal with the distinct possibility that they will will be the victim rather than the victor. A lifetime of magical training, handed over to some peasant who happened to be strong on the inside. (This raises the additional plot point that it may not be easy to tell if the ceremony worked one way or the other. The victorious host would have access to the witch's memories, remember.) 2. The witch doesn't subdue the host once for all time. Rather, they must dominate and work through the host. If the struggle is too severe, the host could be mentally damaged so badly that the witch is trapped within a barely-functional host. Sort of like a sharp mind trapped in a disease-ravaged body. Not to mention that the constant fighting and need to domineer makes the reincarnation less desirable than it might otherwise be. Only the supremely (over) confident would attempt it. (And this is a key point: if you do the ceremony, it works, you take over the body with no risk or pain and the previous owner is at your beck and call, it's hard to see how it wouldn't be enormously popular. There has to be a downside for the witch and I like the idea that they continue to exist and gain power, but it's not a pleasant existence.) [Answer] Your hypothetical witch can do it whenever she wants, and with guaranteed success, but it causes psychological problems. You see, as part of the transfer process, the host's brain is completely wiped. While this removes any possibility of the host revolting, it also wipes the ambulatory parts of the brain. This has the side effect that, when your hypothetical witch first takes over the body, she can't move or take care of herself; somebody else has to do these things for her. This is a major shock to her mind, causing instability. To compound this, every time the witch looks in the mirror she will see someone else's face; a face which she last saw in incredible pain. The combined shocks would really mess with the witch's mind, often making her become a schizophrenic. For further reading on this subject, I suggest that you read Robert A. Heinlein's book [I Will Fear No Evil.](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0441359175) It pretty much covers your question. [Answer] Why invent anything different that plain old high mana/ingridients cost? The spell is so complex, that it requires a lot of magical energy stored up. Collecting it in such amount is difficult and takes years by performing (insert a list of non-trivial time and effort consuming tasks). Unless witch fails to complete this preparation in time for next cast it is game over for her. And if there are people working on killing her, "in time" might come quite quick and unexpected. [Answer] I doubt that anything that is not "Worse than death" would make such a character think twice before doing it. In fact such a character would probably have a combination of ego and determination that would over-ride any potential side effects. I think you would have to make it circumstantial. In such a sway, that an ingredient to perform the spell is so rare and difficult to attain that only one is ever in existence at any time, and your villain has access to the thing that makes it. That creates a very finite cap to who and how many. Resurrection and Reincarnation magic is a big, probably the most powerful, type of magic. It allows for the worst consequence normally associated with life... Death... to be diminished as a result. I'm, kind of, of the opinion that when a bad guy who uses such magic finally is "hoisted by their own petard" their ultimate death should be as awful as dying as many times as they effectively lived. The circumstances of which should make for a fun brainstorming session for any writer/DM. If, however, you want the spell to be accessible to everyone, but on a limited basis, it's not a problem to just apply an arbitrary number. Example in modern fiction: Doctor Who is one of the most popular sci fi shows ever made. When the Doctor "dies" he regenerates into a new form. (Or in certain situations uses the regeneration power to heal himself in the same form) Time Lords are limited to 13 incarnations (12 regenerations) under normal circumstances, and within the bounds of the show only two of the most powerful; The Master (Three times) and The Doctor, ever overcame this issue. The Master stole the power of The Keeper of Traken and used it to steal the body of a man called Tremas, (note the anagram...) to beat the limit, then survived a Dalek execution before possessing Eric Roberts and was subsequently "resurrected" by The Timelords after he died facing off against the 8th Doctor. He was willing to go to any length to continue his existence. While the Doctor was granted a new set of regenerations despite being ready to accept his fate, essentially so that he could keep up his good work... Yet no one has ever asked the question, "So... why do they only get 12 regenerations and not 120???" and they don't need to. That part of the story is unimportant next to what that limit means to the various characters. [Answer] Reincarnation spell does need an enormous amount of mana, which is waaaay over any human capabilities to generate "at once", even for a powerful witch as Maleficient. The spell involves two aspects: 1. raw mana needed to perform the transfer and sustain the witch's soul during the process and the time it is trapped in the soulstone; 2. protect the soul from "Beings of Incommensurate Terror, Cosmic Hallucinations and Eaters of Souls", let's call them big baddies for short! Big baddies feed on evil souls. Should Maleficient die and try to reincarnate without proper protection, they will sense that an evil soul with enormous power is lingering around instead of passing to the next world. Big baddies will crave that evil powered soul and, if given the possibility, they will eat it. Sorry, dear Maleficient, no arguing with big baddies! To prevent this, the soul must be concealed by a magical "shield" that must retain its effectiveness during the whole process, from the death of the witch until her soul completes the possession of the new body. The shield is like a supernatural cloaking device. It makes the big baddies completely unaware of the witch's soul. The mana for the reincarnation spell must be available instantly upon death, so it must be preemptively stored in the soulstone, which acts also as a mana tank for the spell and its cloaking shield. All the mana required to fuel the shield must be collected and stored by the witch during a looong period of time because (a) the quantity is very big, (b) she needs mana for her everyday evil acts, so she can't spend too much mana on building up the mana reserve in the soulstone. Moreover she could not let her minions funnel mana into the soulstone by other means. The mana must come from the witch herself, because it must be "tuned" to her very soul. So the process of preparing the soulstone and filling it up with mana is tedious and requires daily effort by the witch. If she wants to fill it more quickly, she must avoid using mana for everyday magic. So, dear Maleficient, do you want a quicker refill today? Then no transforming farmers into pigs nor mesmerizing young princes till tomorrow, sorry! The more mana stored in the soulstone, the longer the soul can safely be stored in it. So the witch must plan carefully how much her soulstone must be filled with mana to give her a reasonable amount of time to complete the process. Moreover, dear Maleficient, the process takes more and more time as you fill-up the soulstone, because it becomes more dangerous if done incorrectly or hastily. You wouldn't want to overload a soulstone filled with $10 MGf$ of mana, would you?!? BTW $Gf$ stands for Gandalf, the SI unit for measuring mana, so that's 10 megaGandalf. And, yes, we build worlds, so we measure things using SI, not that imperial rubbish (we abolished the old Merlin unit loooong ago!). And since there is no escape from the big baddies except for passing to the next world... you better put enough bee... (\*cough\) ... mana in your ke...(\cough\)... soulstone. So, dear Maleficient, your calculations show that you need $1.21 GGf$ of mana? You better store 4 because, you know, dumb minions, unwelcome heroes, unexpected divine intervention, sloppy soulstone schematics, and ... Murphy! [Answer] Here's my few ways of limiting the process. 1. Soulstones are unique.* The soulstone you make on your original body is the only one you will ever be able to use. If you try to make one while posessing someone else, you will be making a soulstone for their soul, not yours. If you make multiple soulstones on your original body, you'll be stuck bouncing between them until there's only one left, as aside from the transfer process, the stones take priority for where your soul goes. 2. Soulstones degrade with use. Transferring a soul out of a soulstone degrades the stone. Eventually you'll have a resurrection where the stone shatters during transfer. Coupled with uniqueness, this means that if you wake up after resurrection and find your soulstone shattered, you know you won't be getting another one. 3. Multiple spells on an object can interfere with each other. This prevents you from just using a repair spell on a degraded soulstone. It'll interfere with the soulstone magic and stop it from working as one, which with the uniqueness problem, would render you unable to get another resurrection as surely as if the stone had shattered. Won't stop non-magical repair with clarketech, though that might be far-enough off into the future that it won't matter for your story. 4. Materials to make a soulstone are rare. If the stone itself is manufactured, as opposed to using magic on an existing gemstone (which is probably rare, anyway), then the materials needed to manufacture the base stone might just be rare and expensive, so not that many people end up making them simply due to lack of funds. That's just sticking to the soulstone itself. Posessing another person could bring its own set of challenges, as could potential sabotage from rivals. [Answer] # It's a trap! Battling another witch, magic vs magic, is a highly risky prospect for either side. Sneakily locating a witch's sleeping host and poisoning/trapping the body to imprison her, however, is much less risky. And there's a variety here: the soul of the witch may simply be disposed of, or it may be trapped and tapped for power or secrets. There's even rumors the particularly evil witches managed to make slaves of others by implementing conditioned triggers in their rivals using this method. This means that a witch must be very careful to remain undetected when preparing a host, must regularly check the integrity of her hosts without divulging their locations, and there is still, at the end, a risk of being outright killed or entrapped when attempting to take possession of the host body. This means that: * Dying is costly: a new host has to be prepared, presumably in a new location if the soul's travel can be tracked. * Dying is risky. And thus, despite being able to trump death, witches may be leery to overuse their safety net. [Answer] ## Increasing Pain Any possession gives low-key pain constantly while possessing it. This increases with every subsequent jump, so people with this form of immortality pay a hefty price if forced to switch, and therefore will attempt to find a better method of immortality. This helps you keep this as "midpoint immortality". Of course, strong-willed individuals can keep doing this for X jumps without real adverse effects, but it stops somewhere for everyone. ## If you possess someone stronger... Then the victim might take over from you, and you risk your continued existence by this method. Therefore, this is a stupid thing to do. You might be able to keep it up for a while, but not for long. They are, after all, stronger than you. ## If you possess someone weaker... Then your new power becomes the average of your own and that of the body, perhaps slightly higher to enable you to gain power by possessing someone close enough like you mentioned. [Answer] Kind of sounds like Orochimaru's jutsu from Naruto. In this series, the overtaking of the new host body had a 2 year timer before it could be performed again. No explanation given, just convenient to the plot. The "soul stone" logistics also seem a bit difficult to handle in real life. Taking it from a corpse in the battlefield and then transporting it to the new host? It requires a very loyal servant (or someone really invested in the witch's resurrection) to do it. Plus, if the witch was killed in battle, what are the odds that her enemy would not simply destroy/hide this soul stone? What defines this power level matching? Is it physical? Will power? Magic wisdom? What if the hero gives the soul to a frog host (Goku-Gyniu style). Backlashes such as these add risk to using such spell. What if the soul stone is never taken to the new host? Does the trapped soul becomes imprisoned without being able to move on to the afterlife? Seems pretty scary on its own. As a bonus, you could claim this period in the soul stone to be a hell-like experience, an immensely painful experience that would drive any living being to suicide. This would mean that only a being of incredible will-power and ambition would attempt this trick more than once. [Answer] The first thing that comes to mind is that playing with the soul can attract the attention of powerful entities -- Gods, Demons, Truth -- and they will certainly have reactions to what the witch is trying. They are messing with the Celestial Bureaucracy and that could have Consequences. Meddling with the Soul is going to cost you, and potentially more than just an arm and a sibling. This danger alone might deter the less ambitious. But reading it through, the whole process itself is laden with pratfalls and traps that have to be navigated through for a successful reincarnation. The trick is to look at what you have and go "Where can this go wrong, O Great Murphy?" The other big question is how common is this spell? If this ritual is widely disseminated, then the pratfalls are likely known and you will likely see more care taken. Otherwise, experience may be the teacher, the cruel grinning teacher. ## Hapless Victim Compatibility Her most recent claim, a young girl named Snow White, is the next host that she will possess. First, there is the victim. The witch requires not only a physically able and compatible body to take over (mentioned already), but a magically compatible one as well. Has Ms. White been checked over to ensure this level of compatibility? The premise behind this is that a good number of shows, games, and stories portray magic has having some manner of alignment between people, and it is those alignments that need to be taken into account when transferring to that body. It is certainly possibly to groom an aspiring body to have something acceptably close to your alignment, but depending on the witch's alignment (and spell preferences), this might be a tricky endeavour. Snow White cursing the animals while she sings along with them might be noticed. This magical compatibility can extend to other magical parameters as well. However other parameters are easy enough to groom for with enough effort and/or time so those tend to be secondary for all but the most immediate emergency reincarnations. Note to aspiring ritualists: Find the sane ones to take over. Distorted mages are dangerous -- even barely trained ones. No matter how tempting the target, Do Not Engage. Preparation Next, I would assume that the victim would need to be prepared in some way. Perhaps this does not need to be an elaborate or expensive preparation, but it is an extra step. While not vital to the process, this step allows the whole process to run smoother and permit a higher chance of success (or lower chance of side effects) than not doing it. Jealous witches may guard this secret step knowing that this is their secret to success, limiting its propagation out into the general magic knowledge. The limitation here can be that once a body is prepared for the transference ritual, the process has started and a different body can't be chosen until the process is complete or aborted. The pause between this step and the next one can be indefinite, but it needs to continue. ## The Ritual After a person dies, their soul jumps into a magical item called a soul stone, which keeps the soul in storage and prevents it from crossing over to the next world. The Stone for the Soul First, the stone. The obvious limitation is that the soul stone needs to be of impeccable quality. The more flawless the stone, the more flawless the soul storage is. Here is where the lossy storage starts to really happen -- only a perfect gem can house a soul without consequence, and if the gem is rendered unusable for a second ritual then sourcing the gem is a definite limiting factor. The more one looks for that flawless gem, the more questions might be raised. The witch's vanity may also be a limiting factor. Either through bad information, deliberate sabotage by another witch, or simply their own vanity, they have decided that a diamond is their soul stone. It may very well be that an amethyst, quartz, or other lower value and/or more common gem would not only be easier to source for the needed quality, but actually be more compatible with the witch. This leads to the first point regarding quality of the storage medium. A third limit might be the preparation of the stone itself. Arcane rituals might need to simmer for weeks, months, or even years before the stone is properly ready to house a soul. Said rituals might not need a lot of personal time, but they do still need to happen. The Soul in the Stone The first obvious limit is that the caster needs to die. But what is the stone's effective range? If a witch's soul stone is safely ensconced in their laboratory and they are killed kilometers away trying to deal with the pesky interlopers, will the stone still trap her soul? The next question is how dead is dead? While the question might seem redundant, is a vegetative +coma enough to trigger the transfer? Is being mostly dead but not quite dead enough dead to be considered dead? I could see the same enchanted coma that works to preserve the victims actually preventing the ritual from happening if used on the witch. Third, how close does the stone need to be to transfer into the new host and how long does one have to do the actual transfer of souls? ## The Results The soul is then transported and absorbed into the host body, giving the person possession over it The result is that the body now contains two souls within it that continue to remain separate, with the original soul remaining trapped and the dominant soul of the witch retaining control. Possession is Nine-Tenths of the Spell The Possession part is the biggest pratfall -- You are an invader and your prospective host wants you out. The combat might be brief, it might be protracted, but it happens and is the heart of the ritual. This is the crucial winner-take-all part of the spell and why you are here. The witch has the advantage in preparation but the victim has home-field advantage. The winner gets the body and the loser gets locked away until the chance to strike again occurs. Obviously the witch will metaphorically stack the deck in her favour for this part, but natural talent in this area can't be underestimated. This might not even be a conscious act by the victim -- See the immune system for why we don't just allow any old foreign thing into our bodies. The Perils of Winning So now you have a new (hopefully) younger body, and another lifetime to plan. Well there was one little problem that you only realized as you started exploding. You, the soul of the witch, might be able to channel vast amounts of arcane awesomeness but the young person you just bodyjacked can't. You who are so used to channeling so much power will literally overload your new body's capacity and cause a catastrophic physical failure due to this. To put it simply, your mind and soul might know how to channel a metric Gandalf-ton of power, but the body you are not in certainly can't handle it and has never been trained to do it since that training would make your victim a threat. Likewise the opposite might hold -- you can't channel that much, and now the body your in draws in and handles several times what you are capable of wielding safely. All the magic that the body has to go somewhere but you can't actually handle the task of using it. This is almost certainly going to ... interesting. Other magical side effects are likely possible leading to a trope of the newly reincarnated sequestering themselves in their layer for a time to acclimatize themselves to their new body. Ultimately this is derived from finding a magically compatible host, mentioned above. ## Rereincarnation So you want to reincarnate again ... great! One problem ... two souls in one body. While in theory, one soul is dominant while the other submissive, but how true is that really? Can a second soul gem only grab the witch's soul? Again, this is where your equal strength qualifier comes in -- Souls holding equal power are actually better able to hold their individuality. This might seem counterintuitive at first glance but consider that if one is vastly more powerful than the other, the powerful ego will either crush the lesser one leaving soul rubble to clean up and maybe attract bad attention, or draw the lesser ego/soul into itself thus muddying the original soul and causing complications further down the line. ## Conclusion The victim and the gem itself appear to be your two biggest pinch points for a successful reincarnation. Unless everything has to be absolutely perfect for the spell to work at all, then I would think that it becomes a case of weighing the options and trying it when they are ready. Also don't worry if they didn't do a perfect job, failure is always an option. In this case, it can lead to interesting consequences if that is a direction you want to go. Final Note: It would be ill advised to kidnap Ms. White for this kind of thing as her great-grandmother Betty is older, wiser, better with animals and has spent years being old and powerful without reincarnating. [Answer] Multiple Personality Disorder If the witch may be able to successfully transfer into the host, their soul may not be able to take control of the host's body indefinitely, and for some certain moments of time the host's soul may become the dominant one, the one actively controlling the body. This leads to a power struggle outwardly manifested as multiple personality disorder, where both souls alternate control of the body for periods of time. The swapping points may be triggered by a full moon, or just by psychological events like feeling certain emotions or having great mental stress, such as attempting to cast a spell. In that case, the witch's soul loses power and the host's soul takes over. [Answer] When you bind your soul to a host a bit of the binding remains stuck in the host forever, the next time you bind it will be a bit harder. You must continue to improve your power or eventually you will reach the point that your power isn't enough to bind your soul to the new host. ]
[Question] [ Description of pixies * As heavy as a standard golf ball. * As big as official ping pong ball. * Humanoid but have a pair of wings for flight. * Prefer to live in forested areas. * Eats fruits and insects. * Average IQ of 100. * Very social. * Invisible to us, we only see them on photos. * Flight ceiling height of 100m AMSL. * Same sleep/wake cycle as human. * Loathe violence but will self-sacrifice to protect other. * Capable of lifting 0.2kg of weight up to 2m above ground for 30mins. * Embrace nature but begin to develop tool lately due to our influence. * Immune to poison and every pathogens. So deforestation is pushing the pixies on the brink of extinction, trees are being cut down for its material and also to lay new roads or build big houses. Obviously the wildlife cannot stop our advances into their territory let alone the fragile pixies, I am wondering if the pixies study our technology and up to classical physics then what kind of deadly weapons can they use to actually score a decisive victory against humanity? Their main goal is to protect their habitat for as long as possible no need to wipe us out! Right now big corporations have been denying their existence and they would relocate the animals to another reserved area under the protection of the local government so they say. [Answer] ### Don't bother killing humans, kill their stuff! When you kill a human they go *crazy. Humans with weapons and blue flashing lights appear with big scary dogs that can smell pixies and chomp them down, and when human forensics dudes figure out the killer is small and invisible they go around with cameras and slaughter pixies. It just doesn't work out when pixies fight directly with humans, or snipe at humans. The pixies don't want to kill humans really - they just want the forest to stay there: Pixies can sneak into idle vehicles unnoticed, get into the engine bay, and cut / drill tiny holes in important looking parts causing leaks. They can put sand into engine oil, water into brake lines, etc. The engines of those logging vehicles, or even just the trucks carrying logs, are quite expensive to replace... and replace.... and replace... * Pixies can sneak into server rooms unnoticed, and they like targeting companies that profit from deforestation. They bring a trusty peice of insulated wire with them, which they sneak into servers through ventilation grates / ducts and randomly connect shiny lines until they release their magic smoke. * Pixies can watch you use your computer and figure out how it works, note your password, and then late at night log in and "fix it". This can range from tweaking a CAD diagram so that the forest is spared, to deleting everything you've ever done, to sending offensive emails in your name and BCCing HR. ### But you want a pixie ranged attack anyway! Poison darts. Or even just liquid poison just thrown or dropped. An invisible pixie can drop a small amount of liquid into a drink or onto a meal. A slingshot with a tiny sphere of poison in gel form should allow a pixie to accurately plop it in a human's uncovered drink from a safe hiding place. [Answer] > > As big as official ping pong ball. > > > > > Invisible to us, we only see them on photos. > > > They don't need to use ranged weapons at all, which is good because air behaves differently at small scales (viscous effects dominate over inertia effects) and the sort of projectile weapon sized for your pixies would have negligible range and probably not enough power to penetrate human skin. Instead, the obvious thing to do is to take a leaf out of the book of every other small animal that occasionally needs to deal with much more dangerous creatures: poison. There's a wide variety of strong toxins to choose from, so I won't bother enumerating any here. Obviously they'd have to use something that was either very safe to handle or that thery were naturally immune to, because if they were vulnerable to the same stuff as humans then they'd inevitably kill themselves by accident with the tiniest little trace, given the body mass differences. Injection is the best route. Stingers harvested from large bees or wasps would be ideal if it were practical to harvest them (are pixies invisible to insects, too?). Stabbing them in by hand would be the most reliable thing to do, but it risks being swatted even if invisible. Instead, gluing tiny little poison-delivering stingers all over human environments seems like the safest approach. Poison isn't the only trick available, which is good as many parts of the world lack convenient strong poisons, or perhaps the only poisons available are too difficult to obtain or too dangerous for pixies. Instead, there's always biological warfare. It should be straightforward for pixies to harvest sources of suitable illness... contaminated water or animal urine and faeces, and sprinkle them surreptitiously into the food and drink of the humans. In my neck of the woods there's ample scope for spreading [giardiasis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardiasis), [cryptosporidiosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptosporidiosis) and [leptospirosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leptospirosis) just to ensure a general background level of discomfort and misery for everyone working in the woods. Harvesting better stuff like [shigella](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigellosis) lets you up your game. [Hantavirus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthohantavirus) is a good one if you're in the right part of the world. High end stuff might involve the likes of [rat lungworm cysts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiostrongylus_cantonensis) which could be farmed once first obtained. Biological warfare is much more effective and safer when done on other species. Take full advantage of that fact! [Answer] > > Invisible to us, we only see them on photos. > > > Very good. So they can fly right up to our eyes with a sharp blade and... well, that flash was the last thing you ever saw. An advantage is that one blinded man needs another one to take care of him and it is much scarier than seeing your comrades falling dead with a dart sticking out of their neck. However, that was not my answer. Since forest workers would soon start wearing helmets, and once everyone has a mobile phone with a camera, it is game over for the pixies. My answer is: > > Very social. > > > ... and small. Brazilian rainforest can easily support many millions of them, even without agriculture (insectoculture?). And they are very social, they are not plagued by internal conflicts, but cooperate. In short, they form a major state-level actor. Their intelligence service is really formidable, with the gift of invisibility. Their agents soon learn human languages (mostly by watching) and the spies are all over strategic places, big corporations, politicians etc. What is a surgical precision assassination from time to time compared with their salvation... And if the government start some unpleasant moves into their territory, they do their best to provoke a war with the neighbouring country as a distraction. Or an armed insurrection lasting some decades. Or even support a local narcobaron (nothing helps better like careful assassination of noisy police officers) to keep the forest intact, while allowing him to plant his favourite, harmless herbs. (parallels with existing places on Earth are purely fictional) [Answer] *The Internet!* Invisible, flying golf balls that can type. Who can out-hack that? But who needs to hack anything? That takes too much study. They find out somebody works one of the bulldozers, and start searching for child porn from his computer. Or they post a couple of one-line death threats to Twitter in his name. Bye-bye. NEXT!!! Best part is, the prosecutors will help them. Once they've sentenced 23 lumberjacks to prison in the country's largest amateur child porn ring, do you think they're going to let somebody investigate a story about how pixies did it? Nope - any evidence that turns up is going straight in the trash! [Answer] Since you specifically asked for deadly ranged weapons, I will say terror attacks using human machines. Terrorism is a horrific but [quite effective tactic](https://www.jstor.org/stable/40961012?seq=1) if you are out-numbered and out-gunned. Even [Lt Cmdr Data](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Ground_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)) agrees. In the case of the pixies, their lack of weaponry isn't an issue of technology - they are smart enough and freaking invisible, so they could easily steal human technological secrets if they wanted to. But they don't, they want to live in the forest and be left alone, far away from the human concrete, steel and fire. So why not kill two birds with one stone? Hijack or otherwise disable the ground machines and flying machines while they're moving, and use them against the humans. No more machine, no more human. Other humans scared, other humans leave the forest alone. What's a more effective ranged weapon than an out-of-control garbage truck? Hell, they could even work out how to remote-control drone missiles if they really wanted. [Answer] Framing challenge: Why ranged weapons? Or weapons at all? Just poison the humans. And not obvious, quick-killing poisons, but the slow ones. Or those that just get diagnosed as an obvious normal illness (heart attack etc) [Answer] ### Miniaturized [slingshots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingshot) Can use stray marbles and small stones to hit at humans and machinery causing more failures, and infighting amongst workforces, as it seemed the friendly Joe was intentionally throwing stones. If used at a short distance, the slings can cause non serious injuries, enough to frighten but not enough to kill. The escalation can be targetting vulnurable body parts in later stage (eyes, ears, groin). ### Hidden Crossbows and hallucinogens Pixies use their invisibility to carry and hide small crossbows in key locations, and trigger them to target humans at random, creating a gureilla attack, which creates mass hysteria and fear. Can use biological hallucinogens to create psychological blocks amongst workforce in tandem with these attacks. ### Brute force harmful biological agents Like mosquitoes with Malaria, or Zika into the forests. This uses biological activity to limit human activity. Similarly, plague outbursts are still common and pixies could unleash some lower mammals to infect humans. Or they could find an altogether novel bat or other mammalian virus that humans are unexposed to by using fresh urine and stool droppings, and cause a pandemic amongst humans. The pixie immunity helps them brute force such an approach easily. [Answer] Your basic problem is body mass. If your pixies only mass as much as a golf ball and are limited to muscle powered weaponry then they can't launch weapons like javelins, sling stones and arrows etc with much more force behind them than their own body weight. The first limiting factor is muscle power. For example the aprox maximum draw weight of a typical long bow is about 70 Kilos, for crossbows its less than 100 kilos. (Yes, there are bigger crossbows but they require gearing mechanisms and anchoring the bow to a platform or the ground while reloading.) So in both of the above cases the arrow only leaves the weapon with energy more or less equivalent to mass of the user and its the same problem with any other muscle powered missile. The second limiting factor is aerodynamic drag, there is a whole series of equations governing the movement of objects through a fluid (for this purpose air is one). Basically your tiny arrows will slow down more quickly/have less range and less penetration than normal sized arrows. Solutions. 1. Don't bother with ranged weapons. Your pixies are invisible to the naked eye. Use this advantage and go with spears and lances. Use velocity and body weight to drive poisoned 'darts' into areas of exposed skin. (Or as others have suggested tip them with diseases or toxic fungal spores etc). I'd suggest making the tips detachable so there is no external evidence of a weapon left behind. 2. Trained attack animals. Your Pixies eat and therefore probably herd/farm insects. Use poisonous wildlife as weapons of war - use pheromones etc to control and lead swarms of insects in attacks.(Go get'em boy!s) 3. Sabotage and fire! - the Pixies invisibility is their greatest asset. Use it to start fires in man made structures and equipment. Slice cabling, slip into any kitchens or dining areas etc & and poison food or drink. Or maybe into dorms if there are any. 4. Intelligence & Physiological warfare Infiltrate meetings and listen to what the humans are planning on a daily basis and use this information to plan attacks that will maximize the damage and the cost of staying. Plus this alerts you to any planned countermeasures. Also consider leaving cryptic messages promising death and destruction to those who desecrate the sacred forests and let the Greenpeace take the wrap! [Answer] Poison immune; small; invisible? I'd go with poison darts, delivered from a blow gun. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowgun> Lightweight ammunition, means you can carry a reasonable number of 'reloads' - although your range on the blowgun might not be very much, that doesn't matter if they can't see you. And you've a range of options for the toxin, in terms of speed of action - slower acting options mean you can 'kill off' an entire battalion before they even realise they're under attack. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium#Biology_and_toxicity> Polonium is famous for recently, being fairly difficult to detect and trace. A nasty painful toxin can work as a really effective area denial/terror weapon. E.g. the 'stinging tree': <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/18/australias-stinging-trees-if-the-snakes-and-spiders-dont-get-you-the-plants-might> Being a nettle-like this tree already has the 'needles' it would need, without even having to 'make' ammunition. [Answer] In one word: viruses. These little demons spread through the humans like covid today. So all the pixies would need to do is create a new virus, maybe a modified covid-19. Then, the pixies watch the virus spread until there's an epidemic and logging is temporarily halted because of the virus and all the cut down trees are replaced with new trees. The pixies would have no fear of the virus backfiring, because they are immune to all pathogens. Oh, and when a cure is found for the virus, the pixies could use hacked computers to post fake photos of "the guardian of the jungle and forests" or something like that on the computer websites. And to make it look like the guardian is real, they'll hijack idle logging vehicles, stop the logging company headquarters by cutting the wires and replacing the wires with fakes, and stuff like that. ]
[Question] [ [![City with little urban sprawl](https://i.stack.imgur.com/amBDa.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/amBDa.jpg) I am making an RPG and am using this image (source: <https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/58916801>) as inspiration for a large city. This city: * Is located in a country roughly the size of Panama * Has some flat land to expand onto near it * Stops abruptly and descends into wilderness * Is entirely covered in skyscrapers up until its end Why would a city be entirely comprised of skyscrapers but stop abruptly without suburbs? I know that the city could not expand into the waterfall, but there appears to be some flat land near it that it can expand to (in the background). That land is not used, not even for agriculture. How could this happen? Are there any real life examples of cities like this? Assuming that the city is inhabited by humans and has the same physics and geology as Earth (ignore the mountains in the background). To confirm: The planet is at a present day tech level. Computers, airplanes, and cell phones are commonplace throughout the world. [Answer] Looking at your picture, the obvious answer is that this is all parkland: the impressive chasm with waterfalls in the middle of the picture is a famous scenic location, and the surrounding area has been reserved for recreation and nature conservation. The urban sprawl, such as there is of it, is on the other side of the city behind the skyscrapers. And possibly surrounding the park on other sides, if the city has expanded there too. Either way, it's not visible in the picture, perhaps deliberately so by careful choice of vantage point. (See also: countless nature photos and videos that look like they've been taken in untouched wilderness, even though there's actually roads and buildings and power lines etc. just outside the frame.) --- But that's kind of a boring answer from a worldbuilding viewpoint. (Although I can certainly see ways to take it and run with it — for example, maybe most of the world is monotonous high-efficiency farmland, with a few of these carefully maintained "natural" parks sitting side by side with densely packed cities whose inhabitants can enjoy them and pretend they're living in harmony with nature.) So let me suggest a few more possibilities. For example, maybe the picture is taken during the dry season, and all that green "grassland" around the chasm is actually part of the channel of a wide river that the city is built next to. When the rainy season comes, it'll all be submerged in the shallow but rapidly flowing river. The patches of woodland dotting the plain are actually low-lying (and possibly somewhat shifting) islands that are hardly safer to build on that the riverbed itself. That kind of geography is actually quite characteristic of the upstream side of very large curtain-type waterfalls (like the [Victoria Falls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Falls) in Africa or the [Iguazu Falls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iguazu_Falls) in South America), as they typically form in places where a major river flows over a flat bed of hard basalt until plunging off the slowly eroding edge into a deep chasm cut into softer rock beneath. Add sufficient seasonal variability in rainfall, and you could easily get a landscape much like depicted in your image (plus or minus the city). (As noted in the comments to [SRM's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/175466), floodplains are often used as farmland, as the flooding tends to spreads sediments that act as natural fertilizer. However, for this to be practical, the land needs to be dry for long enough for crops to grow — if it's underwater for most of the year and only briefly dry, farming becomes a lot harder. Also, even if the land was indeed used for early low-tech farming — which could explain why the city was originally built there — the farms might've moved elsewhere after the invention of artificial irrigation and new farming techniques better suited for places where the water supply can be controlled and where there's less risk of your crops and your boundary markers getting washed away by unseasonal rains.) Again, there could easily be suburbs on the other side of the city, or "behind the camera" on the other side of the river. Or maybe not, depending on the economics of the city, zoning laws and local culture. (Maybe the city actually lives almost entirely off tourism, and those tall buildings are in fact all hotels with a nice view of the waterfalls?) --- Another possibility that occurs to me is that the flat green areas could actually be pastureland. Probably, given that those grassy areas seem to extend quite far down the chasm, for sheep or goats or some other local grazing animals that don't mind a bit of climbing. After all, clearly something is keeping that land from getting covered in trees and bushes, and if it's not seasonal flooding or diligent park staff with lawnmowers, the most likely third option is that it's being grazed. So why would the city be surrounded by a giant pasture, instead of the usual suburbs and farms? Maybe the people who built the city never really developed agriculture (if you hadn't specified that they're human, I'd be tempted to suggest that they might be a species of obligate carnivores), and thus also never acquired a cultural preference for single-family homes with private gardens. Instead, their society is (or at least has traditionally been) divided into a (dwindling) nomadic caste that travels with the herds and has no fixed abode, and a (growing) sedentary caste of crafters and traders and other sorts of cityfolk who live in dense communal settlements and subsist off the food produced by the herdspeople, traded for manufactured goods and services. (Or perhaps they all live in the cities for most of the year and let most of their livestock roam free, only gathering them up once or twice a year for counting and culling, much like arctic [reindeer herders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reindeer_herding) still do in the real world. The herds might be communally owned, perhaps with each town having shared ownership of all of its semi-domesticated livestock, since having too many separate owners in the same area could tend to make separating the herds at counting time too cumbersome.) If you do decide to go this route, it's worth noting that herding animals, while less labor-intensive than agriculture, is also considerably less productive for a given area of land. Traditionally, in the real world, large scale herding has only been common in places where either population density is low — often on the periphery of farmland, which itself surrounds towns — or where the land is for some reason not well suited for any available farming methods. If you want a large city to be supported (almost) entirely by herding, that's going to require a lot of pastureland, and you're not likely to have another similarly sized city anywhere nearby. (Unless maybe there are also coastal towns and cities supported by fishing…) [Answer] # Flood plain The flat land is just enough lower down that when the river flash floods, as it does in just about any rain, that land becomes a raging torrent. This is a pretty common reason for cities to avoid a place of land. [Answer] * Some person/company owns the land and refuses to sell. * The land is designated as a national park. The city grew right to the edge but not one step further. Think Central Park in NY, even if that is no nature preserve. * The surrounding land is actually another country, e.g. Hong Kong before it went back to China. [Answer] Because everything they need is available within those skyscraper. BTW, you call it skyscraper, they prefer the term [arcology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology). > > Arcology, a portmanteau of "architecture" and "ecology",[2] is a field of creating architectural design principles for very densely populated, ecologically low-impact human habitats. > > > The term was coined in 1969 by architect Paolo Soleri, who believed that a completed arcology would provide space for a variety of residential, commercial, and agricultural facilities while minimizing individual human environmental impact. > > > ... > > > An arcology is distinguished from a merely large building in that it is designed to lessen the impact of human habitation on any given ecosystem. It could be self-sustainable, employing all or most of its own available resources for a comfortable life: power; climate control; food production; air and water conservation and purification; sewage treatment; etc. An arcology is designed to make it possible to supply those items for a large population. An arcology would supply and maintain its own municipal or urban infrastructures in order to operate and connect with other urban environments apart from its own. > > > When they finish the propulsion part (a specialized application of their own fusion reactor) and the "Space Research and Colonisation Agency" greenlights it, some of them [take the flight to space and transform themselves in a generation ship](https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/Arcology#Launch_Arco_Trick). Bonus: if the city is around a space elevator, the "launch generation ships into space" can become the main purpose for the city existence and reinforce the idea of "don't rely on anything from environment except the materials you need for building arcologies. You will need to be self-suficient". Such a building may take 2 or more generations from start to finish, so the actual travelers will be completely adjusted to the conditions of the trip. [Answer] Urban sprawl is the result of a tradeoff: people are willing to spend longer travelling and be further (on average) from places they need to visit, in order to have more space to themselves. This is largely a matter of societal preference, coupled with historical precedent (humans were able to spread outwards before they could spread upwards). So, your world just has to be one where people value their time more than they value their space. This does not necessarily need any particular explanation; it's simply a society with different preferences to the one we are familiar with. However, if you do want a specific reason: your society has not developed (or has banned, or chosen not to use...) mechanised transport. If everything you do has to be within easy walking distance, there is a strong incentive to spread upwards. [Answer] Consider the real-world example of Shibam Haḍramawt, also known as "the oldest skyscraper city in the world". [![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YFyUk.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YFyUk.jpg) [![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/l13MH.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/l13MH.jpg) Most of these tower blocks were [built in the 16th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibam_Hadramawt#History) and are 5 to 11 stories tall. The design was [strategic](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/destinations/asia/yemen/shibam-mud-skyscraper-yemen/); the walls protected residents from flooding during the rainy season while maintaining proximity to its primary source of water. Additionally the fortifications repelled nomadic raiding parties, while the buildings offered a high vantage point from which to see them approaching. It's possible that both of these threaten your city, particularly the flooding, given the many rivers close-by. The urban density also shades buildings for most of the day, though this may not apply to your setting depending on the climate. [Answer] You don't need magic. You just need good zoning. The inhabitants prefer a compact city surrounded by wilderness instead of a downtown surrounded by kilometers of suburbs. Therefore, building is only allowed in the city area and building regulations are adjusted there to allow buildings high enough to comfortably host the whole population and the facilities required by their economy without ruining the environment. However, if you don't want high tech food producing, there must be agriculture somewhere. The fields may be on the other side of the city or they could be some light brownish patches in the background of the image. [Answer] An additional idea that could work together with some of the other answers: Transportation in your world is so expensive (oil prices etc) that cities tend to be compact to ensure short commuting distances. This would apply to all cities in your world though, unless you could impose something like an oil embargo on your country. The area is not used for agriculture because arcology is used instead. The advantage of this reasoning is that you don't need a very strong reason to make city expansion impossible but just undesirable, as obstacles like unstable terrain could be removed. Money is a strong force! [Answer] The planet has a problem with werewolves. The city fathers consulted a mathematician who explained because of the isoperimetric inequality a circular wall would have the greatest area for a particular length of wall. Of course all the residents want to live inside the wall where they are protected. [Answer] Perhaps the land is riddled with mines or caves or other subterranean structures that make it highly unstable and likely to collapse. This is known by the authorities and they will not permit any building to take place on it. Another possibility: the land is stable but contaminated with asbestos, radioactive materials, chemicals or high levels of naturally occurring poisonous minerals below the surface and the authorities do not want the soil disturbed. Although the surface looks and feels solid enough to walk on it is actually a very ancient and deep lake. Vegetation has grown across the surface and has formed a dense mat. This mat has become the basis for more vegetation and even small trees in places as old material rots from below it is replaced by new material sinking down from the surface. So the area looks like a park but can't be built on because its not solid enough. [Answer] There was a recent plague which killed 50% of the population. They had expanded somewhat into the countryside, but with the loss of population it's cheaper to just expand into the city. The wilderness has assorted magical creatures and threats in it that make it very expensive and difficult to expand into. Does this happen in real life? Generally not. Rivers that flood make for great farmlands, and natural places have great resources. Greed normally makes people expand. You would need different incentives to make people stay in the city. [Answer] There are pretty good answers so ill try exploring alternatives. Is this a high magic world? There could be a magical bubble around the city that provides some sort of benefit to staying inside of it such as better health, defense, or longevity. Defense can mean both from invaders but also perhaps the world has a relatively strong background radiation or a thin atmospheric layer that doesn't filter solar radiation well. One could travel outside the bubble, even spend months out without much health risk, but living out there would be detrimental to ones health over long periods of time. Is the world technological? constant solar flares disrupt electrical devices and the city bubble(possibly a physical dome, a field generator or strange mineral deposits in the earth in the area) is the only practical protection against the effects. Not enough people are willing to give up electricity/radio/the internet to have any sort of sizable settlement outside the city [Answer] Started with extortive property taxes based on land occupied. As higher and higher buildings become a tradition, owning a high place became a sign of wealth and the social ladder mirrored in the buildings. The growing economy and the demand of high flats just stimulated the developers to build higher and higher. [Answer] Predators roam the land. Hidden predators. INVISIBLE predators! HIDEOUSLY UGLY invisible predators, who only become visible to those they are about to eat, who connect telepathically with their chosen prey and who plant terrifying subliminal messages ("I'M GOING TO EAT YOU!") in their minds! Oh, gods, the horror!!! Is there no hope?!?!? [ONLY LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD CAN SAVE US!!!!!!](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/128350/80s-short-story-about-a-mind-reading-predator-that-nobody-believes-exists) [Answer] [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pd4VB.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pd4VB.jpg) [![Kowloon Walled City](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xdK9O.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xdK9O.jpg) [Kowloon Walled City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City) was a densely-populated, ungoverned enclave in Hong Kong. The exact details on how it acquired this unusual legal status you can find elsewhere - suffice to say, there were different legal regimes on either side of the wall providing a combination of demand and ability to pack more in there. To use a more contemporary example, think of casinos built on tribal land in the United States. Or Vinod Khosla's attempt to make a beach private under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, had it been successful. If you need to explain why they don't simply change the law to let the city grow, you could have the treaty that created the unusual legal status also be the source of the source of the current governments' legitimacy. Or of course have the other side of the wall be another country that isn't happy to cooperate! Of course, given that your image shows someone travelling by horse, and no other transport, perhaps nobody knows how to build skyscrapers but there's enough room nobody wants to build anything more. Maybe the existing city was teleported, fully built, from another planet or dimension. Buildings that straddled the teleporting boundary have long since fallen down, leaving a perfectly spherical chunk of downtown Tokyo from the year 2101. [Answer] You civilization simply has a different philosophical view on land usage and the exploitation of natural resources than civilizations that have been traditionally dominant on real life Earth. "We" embrace the notion that "civilization" and "wilderness" are diametrically opposed, and that everything is one or the other. Your civilization sees humanity and all its works as an integral part of nature, and seeks at all times to live harmoniously with its surroundings. Your civilization puts so much value on the natural splendor of the landscape that very few members of it would even come up with the idea to destroy it to build something, and most would be horrified at the suggestion. People who voice such suggestions might be considered dangerously deranged and incarcerated in mental institutions. It's fairly simple to see how real life people might use religion to justify "our" consumption practices, especially the translations of Genesis that have God give "dominion over the earth" to humanity. So in your world, the dominant religion(s) stress humanity's custodial role, and perhaps encourage humanity to make an Eden of the Earth. Tie the afterlife to the health and well-being of the planet, rather than an escape to a separate "heaven." You might have an ecumenical crisis when people begin to figure out that their sun is eventually going to go out/expand enough to consume the planet, but the ideas and perspectives of the religion will be considered "human nature" by that point, even if the faith itself dies. It's also worth noting that any society that embraces rampant consumption and exploitation will probably have an significant technological advantage over societies that don't. That's pretty much what happened in real life. Many (if not most) of the cultures native to the Americas (and not a few African and Pacific cultures) held a general belief of a kinship with nature. By the early 1500s, no American culture had developed bronze, putting them at least 4,500 years behind "everyone else" in metallurgy (and North America was even farther behind, with no evidence of local smelting until after colonization had started). It will probably take your society much longer to get to a "modern" level, which lets you make your society as ancient as you want. [Answer] To try a different idea: what if this city did not grow "organically"? Perhaps it was built very rapidly, by a small group of people. Perhaps it is not even well populated yet, like China's supposed [ghost cities](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiTDU8MZRYw). So, the government (or even a large corporation) decides it needs a large number of people living in a small area, so it decides to build a city - and it has some way of feeding them that doesn't require cutting down the nearby vegetation and using it for agriculture. One last possibility in this picture is that there is actually a country border on that river, and it would be illegal to settle across it. [Answer] Consider cultural or religious significance preventing it. If building there is culturally taboo it just wont happen. [Answer] The civilization may have an exotic construction method which requires some energy, only available locally, to keep the skyscrapers or even smaller buildings intact. Thus, they can build extensively where the energy source is, but have no technology for building outside that area. ]
[Question] [ I'm creating a space opera in a galaxy filled with various types of human subspecies. Is it plausible to have a country where the monarch retains powers of controlling the defense and foreign policy even if an elected parliament exists? Basically, I want something like France's [semi-presidential system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-presidential_system) but with a monarch instead of an elected president. The UK's ceremonial system doesn't work for me. [Answer] In space opera, why not? A democracy with hereditary monarch having those powers is not really less democratic than a democracy where a small group of political elite holds those powers. It is a matter of perception, which means it is a matter of tradition. In our society, high value is set for the people in power being somehow elected as the election is seen as giving a political mandate to use power for the people and having to face an election is seen as a form of accountability. Note that elections actually suck at both. One election result cannot really cover multitude of decisions taken after the election that the voters could have no knowledge of or give meaningful accountability for the multitude of decisions taken since the last election. We simply accept the accepted and traditional forms of government as proper and legitimate since that is traditional. Lack of better alternatives is also a big factor. If you want to change this so that people accept the king as having mandate to use real and significant executive power you will need to provide similar level of legitimacy of mandate and credible accountability. Mandate is simple enough. If the institution of the king has been given that power, has not lost it, and the current king is the legitimate king, then he has the mandate to use excutive power. The key here is how the monarchy was originally given the popular mandate. In space opera the traditional solution is that the founder of the monarchy was a military leader who saved the nation/united the nation, the danger was not over when the democracy was returned by him and he was the only person who could be trusted to do the job. His heir was also highly capable and so it became accepted that the king handles defense and foreign policy while the things that are less critical but have more of a direct impact on people are handled by the elected politicians. This is not particularly stable solution as politicians have a tendency to feel that they absolutely need more power to do their job. I am guessing this would be best handled by giving the king the mandate and responsibity for keeping the politicians in check. Since the starting point was a military dictatorship this would be something the founder would have wanted and if the people were angry enough at corrupt politicians causing the big problems. So the king would have some oversight powers over the parliament. This would solve the issue with current systems where politicians are barring major bad publicity essentially accountable only to themselves and also make the rules governing themselves. Then you need some form of solid accountability and oversight for the King. The "solid" means that people must be at least as convinced he is subject to democratic process as they are in case of elected officials. Depending on the setting this might not be that high a bar with elected politicians having a really bad reputation or if people are really convinced about elections being absolutely necessary it might be impossible. Typically this oversight would be handled by the parliament thru some sort of independent Royal Accountability Office with lots of arcane rules about transparency and impartiality. This system like any political system works exactly as long as it works after which point it will be replaced by something new. Reasonably there would probably already have been one or two political reforms that fixed issues with oversight, clarified division of power between king and parliament and, after the first truly incompetent king set a formal process for replacing the king. [Answer] It took 2 civil wars, a foreign invasion, and 500 years of semi-competent, completely mad, or alcoholic, monarchs for the British system to transition from absolute power in the monarchy to all the power being held by Parliament. You can pick up the system at any point along that transition from the one to the other and say the monarch has this much power and responsibility without it falling outside historical precedent. [Answer] In Imperial Brazil we had a fourth power, beyond the legislative, the judiciary and the executive, the moderating power, that belonged to the Emperor. The emperor could fire ministers, convoke the assembly, sanction the assembly's decrees and pardon criminals. The idea was that the Emperor, being unelected and dynastic, would be above the petty squabbles and could intervene to limit them when those squabbles would threaten the stability of the empire. It worked well for two emperors, from 1822 to 1889. Also, during the imperial age, Brazil was somewhat democratic - There were elections for the parliament but there was no universal suffrage, had some freedom of press (the first emperor had to abdicate after people linked to him murdered a journalist - that was scandal was the last drop), you could form parties and associations, but there was no freedom of religion. But by modern criteria no country in the 19th century was democratic. It's said that the moderating power of the emperor saved Brazil from fracturing like the Spanish viceroyalties fractured, even during the large scale rebellions like the ones in the Grão-Pará province and Rio Grande do Sul. [In Portugese: "Poder Moderador"](https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poder_moderador) [Answer] # Thailand has a 'strong monarch' democracy....sort of According to Thailand's constitution, the Thai monarch is the head of the armed forces, has the power to grant pardons, and must approve acts of Parliment by [royal assent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_assent). I say sort of because Thailand isn't the most stable 'democracy.' In fact, the [most recently elected Prime Minister](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yingluck_Shinawatra) was removed from office by the constitutional court; her deputy took over only to be removed in a coup three weeks later, whereupon the elected Prime Minister was arrested. Thailand has had [21 coups](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_d%27%C3%A9tat_and_coup_attempts_by_country#Thailand) since 1912, including 5 since 1980, so there is that. [Answer] Short answer: No two sentient beings will ever agree exactly on which regimes are democracies and which are not. Long answer: It is my personal opinion that the very existence of a monarch, in and of itself, makes a country slightly less democratic. "Slightly" because there are a good number of constitutional monarchies where citizens enjoy much more freedom than some "republican democracies" which shall remain nameless. That said, I can imagine some attributions a monarch may or may not have, which don't make a country undemocratic if they have it. Obviously, YMMV. For example: * Veto a few selected kinds of executive of legislative acts, like, say, declarations of war, or changes of the country's flag or anthem. * Call for new parliamentary elections - not at will, but in some few cases like a well-defined gridlock. * Pardon a few selected kind of crimes, like the President of the USA does. I do believe, though, that any monarchy should be free to eventually declare itself a republic. Also: "being a democracy" is not an "is-or-is-not" proposition, any more than "being fat" or "being tall" is. [Answer] Without properly defining a democracy (which is a never-ending debate in the current political world), it's hard to provide an all encompasing answer. However, one approach may be to have the Monarch's power backed up with their life. Give the monarch the power to do great things (perhaps the right to do almost anything). However, it comes with a catch. When the monarch invokes this power, their life is on the line. At some time later (you will have to work out the details of when), the parliament gets to vote whether to continue with the monarch, or take their life for making a poor decision. The idea here is to give them the power to do anything, but to make sure parliment holds the power of consequences over the monarch when they do so. The idea is borrowed from the Octospiders from Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. They had a fascinating system. The parliament controlled everything except for the ability to go to war. Only the Queen could call for war. Their approach was even more brutal than mine. If the Queen called for war, parliment voted on it. If they voted against it, she was put to death for being clearly too violent to rule the Octospiders. If they voted for it, the entire species underwent a genetic-level transformation into a warrior race, and stopped at nothing short of xenocide. At the end of the war, all the warriors were put to death, being good for nothing else. The queen was also put to death, to ensure bloodlust never entered their government. My approach at least gives the parliment the opportunity to decide to reinstate the monarch, but it's roughly the same approach. [Answer] # Look at Europe Almost all the European countries have had elections for senates and/or congresses, or whatever you want to call it, while retaining a powerful monarchy -- that's pretty much what you're asking for. Usually, the monarchy would deal with defenses while the elected officials dealt with everything else, including lawmaking, with plenty of examples where this is not the case. The real crux seems to be who controls the judges -- if the monarch do, the democracy part of the society is pretty moot. Otherwise, the monarch is just the government -- something akin to the cabinet of ministers in a European democracy (+ any head of state, such as a president akin to how the USA is governed). # Look at Scandinavia The Scandinavian kingdoms used to have their kings elected when the old king (was)[1] died, and I seen no reason why a democracy can't have an elected emperor or king in the same way. [1] Incorrect language intentional. [Answer] Give the British Monarchy model a try. You'll like it :-) I live on the leading edge of the empire (first to see the sun) - and disagree with Martin. While the Queen may in theory have little political power, the difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory. The Queen's [tm] power lies in presumed steel fist in many many layers of velvet glove, to the extent that while everyone "knows" that the steel fist is not actually there, in practice it is (even though it's not, even ...) The end result is that the Queen can very easily "lean" on people / organisations / traditions ... and has to (and does) take great care to not to be seen to do any leaning. Reading Winston Churchill's "The Second World War" and other of his writings makes it clear that the then King had substantial influence on Churchill's actions - especially his considered more extreme ones. These mainly related to Churchill's health and safety and likelihood of being alive next week on various occasions, but were not limited to this area. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OqeuI.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OqeuI.jpg) [Answer] Sure you can. Others have given a lot of reasons as for why the monarch can hold power, now let's also ask why we'd want the monarch to remain in power. One of the more interesting views on this is the reknowned libertarian Hans Herman Hoppe, who wrote a book called Democracy: The God that Failed. He basically makes the case that a democratic government has some very shitty incentives that rewards splitting the population into voting block, taking from Paul and giving to Peter (because 51% of the population is Peter and the remaining 49% is Paul), and a lot of other "fun" things. He calls this the uncivilizing effects of democracy. You can argue that Ukraine had a similar problem when "enthusiastic tourists" engaged with the public officials, so to speak, and Crimea left. And I am oversimplifying here, but bear with me. You see, there was a big problem with Ukrainian politics, other than the fact that they were completely dysfunctional in a way otherwise only seen in a banana republic: They were essentially culturally and politically split. Down about the middle. This meant that the democratically elected government spent its time shitting on half of the population, and depending on which side had the most babies 18 years+ ago, the side that got shat on changed. This of course leads to very dysfunctional governance, because neither side will build up stuff, because the other side will just destroy it afterwards. I'm not saying that either side were good or bad here, they were both shit. However, shit is what survived under such systems. When Crimea left, you had a new situation: The Crimeans were culturally Russian-friendly, and when they left Ukraina for the Rodina, the Russian-hostile/Western-friendly party had a permanent majority. Imagine getting 40% of the votes in every election, and the only issue we're voting over are cutting your benefits and raising your taxes... You can't complain because it's democratic. This is the kind of problem (although I'm simplifying massively) that the easterners faced. Hence the revolt, hence the police action (it's not a civil war because then Ukraine can't get loans from the IMF to stay afloat) involving armoured columnns and artillery, and hence the general shit-show. But imagine that there was a King. He had a 2-5% income tax or something as his only source of income. He had about 50% of the power. Now what interests would the King of Ukraine have? He wants to have money right? So he would not do anything that made people earn less money. He would in fact likely stop any shitting on any group as far as he could, because it would be against his interests. He would also oppose with a vigour seldom seen in politics against any robber-politician because while the politician will spend 5-10 years in office to take as many bribes as possible, looting the country and then just leaving, the King will spend his life as King, and he will pass the title on to his son. So he has a very, very real incentive to have political looters like that shot. In such a state the Monarch would in fact be a massively stabilizing force because the elected officials cannot loot without his consent and to him looting does nothing but ruin him. And he wouldn't be alone either. He'd have a family who would definitively want to keep him around and stop him if he did something evil. Therefore you could have had a stable Ukraine because there would have been a King/Tsar that would have had a vested interest in shit not hitting the fan. Ukraine's problems are pretty deep and complex (or rather there are two sides of shitty politicians that have taken their turns looting the country since the nineties, but that's a mean thing to say, but you'll never find Ukrainians really denying it..) and there are no obvious solutions except for federalization with extensive states' rights and forced neutrality. But you'd need something like a King or a Tzar to be able to wield enough powers for that shit to even begin to happen, so... Summa summarum, kings can happen and they can have good stabilizing influence on a polity in such a way that the various groups in the country will trust him more than the democratically elected politicians. [Answer] > > Is it plausible to have a country where the monarch retains powers of controlling the defense and foreign policy even if elected parliament exists? > > > Almost. Having seen what a hash that both universal suffrage republican democracies and absolute dictatorships have made of things, the wise Founder of The New Order -- someone like a General who led the country through a big and destructive war -- sets up a New Way where the King controls defense and foreign policy. He'd have to be limited by Parliment's control of the purse. Suffrage would be earned by demonstrating your worthiness to choose leaders: some sort of service to the State (a la Starship Troopers) plus demonstrated proof of your contribution to society. I doubt that it would work in a multicultural society, though. [Answer] Look at real life European example - Liechtenstein. [From wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein#New_constitution): > > In a national referendum in March 2003, nearly two-thirds of the electorate voted in support of Hans-Adam II's proposed new constitution to replace the 1921 version. The proposed constitution was criticised by many, including the Council of Europe, as expanding the powers of the monarchy (continuing the power to veto any law, and allowing the Prince to dismiss the government or any minister). > > > So, basically you need your polity to enjoy high life standard (at least compared to neighbours), the monarch to be very popular and not stupid (and this is a problem, in a hereditary monarchy you will get a rotten apple from time to time). Though, given the space opera setting, with a bit of genetic engineering, there is no reason for the royal family not to be perfectly healthy, intelligent, charming, hard working and generally beloved by the population. [Answer] If you're looking for a real-life example i'd suggest looking at the first german republic of 1918-1933 and their president. He had very substantial powers to interfere with the entire government in case of an emergency. Through a rather complex system of loopholes and rule-bending the last president, Hindenburg, basically ruled like a monarch, disbanding the government, backing a minority government, revoking basic rights... The position got these powers to protect the country in case of emergency. The founders thought that a strong ruler was needed to ensure quick responses to imminent dangers. You'd just have to make that system hereditary, then you'd already have your limited monarch. [Answer] Maybe I'm wrong but I believe that Naboo (from Star Wars) has a system that might fit what you want to do - as in, you could take inspiration from it. A more direct answer to your question: yes it's perfectly possible. You could even separate the state powers and divide them between the monarchy and the political side where 1 has power over its attributes and can't interfere with the other in which case I'd suggest giving the military to the monarchy, as in, their role in society is to defend the people (like in ancient times mostly). [Answer] There are many countries that are mostly democratic today, and which once were ruled by monarchs with strong powers, even though there has never been a monarch who was really "absolute" and all powerful. Some of of those mostly democratic countries still have monarchs today who have little or no political power. Study the history of those countries to find the changes between largely nondemocratic rule by the monarch and largely democratic rule by representatives elected by (most or all) of the people. In some of those countries the process may have been gradual. In countries where the process was gradual, you might find periods where the monarchs had enough power to satisfy your "real power" requirement and the government was democratic enough to satisfy your "democracy" requirement. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_monarchies>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_monarchies) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_constituent_monarchs>[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_constituent_monarchs) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index>[3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index) [Answer] A few answers start on the right track, mentioning the British system, and then dismiss it or describe it as being unofficial and behind the scenes. That is totally wrong. For the UK, Canada, and most other countries that have the Monarch as their head of state, there is one very real power available. In fact, their Monarch has the ultimate power over the government. The Monarch's responsibility is to ensure that the government is acting constitutionally and in the best interests of the country. At any time, the Monarch can fire the current Prime Minister and either call a general election or ask some other politician to form a government. If such power were abused of course, it wouldn't take long for the next government, with the almost certain support of the electorate, to change the constitution and remove the position of Monarch. But the Monarch is aware of this, so almost only uses this power at the request of the current government. In practice, when the current government decides that it's time to have a new general election, the Prime Minister submits a resignation to the Monarch and requests that the Monarch declare a general election. That doesn't necessarily have to happen though. In Ontario Canada in 1985, instead of wasting time and money on another general election, Queen Elizabeth, through her Governor General, instead decided to ask the leader of the opposition to be Premier. No election necessary. The new PM simply made a deal with the third place party and formed a new government. A more extreme case happened in Australia in 1975. The political situation was so bad that the Queen simply fired the current Prime Minister and appointed a new one, without being asked. This was known as the [Australian Constitutional Crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional_crisis). Don't fool yourself. Just because she doesn't use it very often, don't think that Queen Elizabeth's power isn't real. ]
[Question] [ Most of the time, when movies or video games depict zombies, they are given one crucial weakness; the head. Blow it off, and you stop the zombie. The United States Army is well equipped to fight the foes which it finds itself against. A shot at center mass from 5.56 or 7.62 round will nearly always put a foe out of a fight- provided they are human. However, how do they fare against something which lacks nearly none of our squishy, organ-based weaknesses? In this scenario, zombies are immune (Or at least, heavily resilient) to practically all damage barring the loss of all mobility (Limbs), or complete destruction. Blow ones head off, it will continue to stumble forward to where it last saw you. Cut one in half, it will keep dragging itself forward. Set it on fire, it will continue to run at you, on fire now. Blow a hole the size of a basketball in it... you get the point. Even if you destroy it until its only an arm, that arm will keep crawling at you, until damaged to the point of immobility. How does the US Army, particularly on a small arms basis, defeat these incredibly tough, unstopping zombies? Additional factors regarding the zombies: * They are roughly 2.5x stronger than they would be as a human, their bodies lacking the restrictions which stop the muscles from overworking and damaging themselves * They are capable of moving at a speed equivalent to a jog, which they can keep up indefinitely. * They continually move around, and are attracted to sound, light, and human smell. * If they kill someone, that person is also an infected. If they see a body which died of non-infected causes, they can infect and reanimate it. * Initial infection is in New York (City), with an initial estimate of infected at 1-1.5 million, which will continue to spread. Some of these are underground. * Poison gas is ineffective * Broken bones, a bullet hole in their knee, or limb injuries which would otherwise immobilise a human don't stop them. Utter destruction of the limb, or its removal, are the only certainities. Note: When I say necromorph-like, I mean in the sense they can only be put down by dismemberment and enormous trauma. They aren't capable of forming giant disgusting flesh monsters, nor are they being controlled by some malevolent Lovecraftian entity. [Answer] # Fence them in with razorwire, then burn them It will be fairly quick to fence in New York City and environs with razorwire, which can also be mass-produced quickly in an emergency. Zombies will get stuck in the rolls of wire, and attempts to climb the wire will cut off fingers and toes. I assume the zombies are too mindless to use wirecutters. Soldiers, the National Guard, and volunteers will patrol the fence and throw Molotov cocktails and firebombs at zombies, or burn them with flamethrowers or napalm. The fire will also disinfect the remains. Should some zombies get through the wire, they will also get the fire treatment. The beauty is that fire, unlike explosives, will not destroy the wirefence. Infected areas will need to be firebombed from the air to cleanse them, and helicopters with searchlights and bombs will patrol the fences day and night to supplement the armed people guarding them. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yhaXj.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yhaXj.jpg) [Answer] Despite how tough the zombies are, they still rely on (weak) sensory organs to locate their targets. This implies to me that they would vulnerable to attacks on these sensory organs, and since they are unintelligent, they would be to stupid to defend from them. Simply have the military wear ear and eye protection, and then start dispensing flashbangs like candy and using military laser weapons to blind vast swathes of them at once. Humans (civilians and soldiers alike) can easily protect themselves from attacks like this but the zombies can be blinded and deafened by the hoard. Then, it's just cleanup. Blind and deaf zombies would likely just wander around aimlessly, perhaps seeking by smell if their olfactory senses aren't completely obstructed by rot and general zombie-ness, but it still wouldn't be better than human smell-sense (and only the very rare human is capable of using only their nose to navigate). The military can then proceed with wholesale zombie disassembly. Perhaps using de-mining vehicles or similar army-engineer equipment. [![De-miner](https://i.stack.imgur.com/05u1h.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/05u1h.jpg) [Answer] Lure them into collection areas. Yasser shows you how. He defeats about 1000 zombies and never fires a shot. [![stealth](https://i.stack.imgur.com/N3Mdt.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/N3Mdt.png) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxng8Axnvlg> The game has devices that if I recall correctly are made with car alarms. You throw them. Wherever they land the zombies hear, come, and mill around. Yasser then offs them with molotov cocktails. But you don't want your Yasser getting that close. You want strictly automatic because you know if there are humans involved something will go wrong and the zombies will get them. This is completely automated. Containers of the container ship variety are placed on bridges, occluding them. Directions for bypassing the bridges are printed on the side in many languages; Z don't read. Loud noises emanate from the containers. Zombies that go in wind up falling thru a hole, off the bridge down a chute and into a tanker ship below. No live people are there. Periodically a drone flies out and burns the zombies in the ship to make room. Related: [Zombie killing structure that's easy to construct, durable and low maintenance?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/83546/zombie-killing-structure-thats-easy-to-construct-durable-and-low-maintenance) [Answer] Deploy all armoured and mechanised forces from the US army and marines into New York area as rapidly as possible. This should include tanks armoured personnel carriers and any other hard skinned rugged vehicles that are available and ensure they have plenty of machine guns and ammo. Wherever available attach trailers (anything remotely robust and heavy that can be towed) or even heavy steel I beams welded in front of the tank to help knock over and crush zombies Drive into town making plenty of noise with 3-4 tanks driving down each street run over anything that moves. Fire at anything that is not immediately accessible. Circulate in the city for a hour or two then with draw and send in fresh tanks while the first wave replenish fuel ammunition and trailer. The carnage would be fearsome with tanks motoring down the streets at 30mph. Being attracted to the noise hundreds could be run down down per tank per minute. Big crowds would not be a problem as piles of bodies could be driven over with even more destructive power. Being driven over by a tank should drastically reduce zombie mobility and repeated runs should turn everything to mincemeat. After that a "mopping up" operation with bulldozers etc and flame throwers / lots of petrol. [Answer] # Targeted/Customized Nerve Gas You mention that “poison gas” won’t work, which makes senses, since interfering with human biological processes won’t kill something that doesn’t need to breathe or otherwise function like we’d expect an animal to. So instead of targeting human biology, target the necromorph biology. In order to animate the body, it has to be sending signals somehow (to trigger muscle contraction and extension). That has to happen by explicable and observable chemical pathways. Sarin and other nerve gasses inhibit acetylcholine degradation, causing muscular paralysis in humans. Since necromorphs are immune to that, they must be using a different pathway to control muscles. Find the neurotransmitters that this infection is using and develop an effective and easily dispersed gas to target them. Bonus, since it’s completely different than human biology, it might even be totally safe for humans to breathe, reducing casualties considerably. [Answer] # Not Army: Industry: A bit of a frame shift. Your zombies aren't behaving like an army, or fighting a war. Instead, they are behaving like a force of nature fueled by human population. * Harvesters: Use agricultural machines. A harvesting machine is built to feed in lots of matter, chop it up and blow the bits out or under the machine. With a few modifications, they can be converted into zombie manglers. A Zombie chopped into a hundred pieces might still technically be a threat, but good luck with them getting you. Soon your harvester is like a tank - invulnerable to zombies, chewing them up, running them over, and driving back to a cleaning facility to be disinfected and refueled. Hey, is that an elbow moving? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LkXFc.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LkXFc.png) * Traps: Similar to harvesters but less mobile. A set of chutes offers zombies an easy path towards obvious prey. But a set of chainsaws or rotary saws systematically slices the zombies into thin sections which are then dropped into an industrial meat grinder. A person on a motorcycle drives around, aggro's a bunch of zombies, and leads them to the factory. Or feed lot. Or saw mill. Now what to do with all the zombie paste? * [Biology](https://theconversation.com/life-after-death-how-insects-rise-from-the-dead-and-transform-corpses-into-skeletons-148847): Okay, at some point, these things will start to break down. Whatever is making them go can't completely change chemistry. So start culturing bacteria that break down dead human flesh. EEWW!!! Well, not half as gross as being eaten alive. The zombies must be partially liquid (or they'd stop moving) so they would be susceptible to accelerated rot. I'd suggest crop dusters. Now necrophagous (corpes-eating) flies and beetles are bred and dumped in high density areas and the zombies are being digested, used to breed maggots, and surrounded by blinding, buzzing insects everywhere they go. Once the zombies are infected and the insects are spreading, they will go along with the zombies (the food source) and digest any fresh zombies. If the zombies do nothing, they're bug food. If they swat the things, they're going to be preoccupied with not being eaten. Poetic justice, no? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SUmUV.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SUmUV.png) [Answer] ## Build moats or walls to corral them and then blow them sky high with explosives Assuming laws of mechanics have been partially suspended: Small arms won't do it here. If single limbs and body portions still work, then logically total disintegration is needed. So small arms are out. As the soldiers will probably be outnumbered and don't have unlimited amounts of high explosives, they need concrete walls or deep moats to corral the zombies. Then blow them sky high with explosives. TNT, nitroglycerin, etc, are easy to synthesise with basic ingredients, as are ANFO weapons. Large woodchippers can be used for cleanup work. If a stalemate is reached, soldiers from all over could converge slowly on one city, drawing in millions of zombies, and fly out on planes before the place gets nuked. [Answer] Even though they are immortal and stronger than normal human, they still need to follow the rules of a humanoid body. If you remove all their limbs, the pieces will only be able to crawl/roll. A severed zombie head can still bite if you are in range, but if you destroy the jaw, it can't do anything to you. A zombie finger can't even scratch you properly as it has no leverage. In the anime Full Metal Alchemists, the homunculus are effectively identical to your zombies (sans the ability to infect). Olivier Mira Armstrong's order is to knock out their jaws (with rapiers and muskets). So the US Army should have no problem turning the zombies into tiny meat pieces (machine gun, minigun, explosives) which can no longer move effectively and are thus of little threat. [Answer] > > They are roughly 2.5x stronger than they would be as a human, their > bodies lacking the restrictions which stop the muscles from > overworking and damaging themselves > > > That's a massive disadvantage, and an exploitable one. Force them to overexert themselves and they'll pull muscles, dislocate joints, break bones, etc. The dead don't heal, so this damage is permanent. That means your best weapon against them is time. NYC is a peninsula, so isolating it would be relatively easy. Destroy the bridges and wall it off from the rest of the world. Then, just wait. The zombies will accumulate injuries over time as they try to escape and chase their prey, and many will end up completely immobile and unable to function. You can accelerate the process by air-dropping traps into open areas. You can reduce their effectiveness from a safe distance using directed energy weapons. Such weapons in our world are tuned to avoid doing permanent damage, but you'll be turning them up to 11. An acoustic device like the [LRAD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-range_acoustic_device) can damage or destroy their ability to hear, and an electromagnetic device like the [Active Denial System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System) can blind them by literally boiling the fluid in their eyes. Both can be operated from a helicopter, or from a tower at a safe distance. The occasional zombie might find their way out from time to time, and you'll have patrols trained to stop them before they can advance across the several miles of no-mans-land between the wall and the rest of civilization. Zombies may be fast, but your army's vaquero division can easily catch them either on motorized vehicles or on horseback. Immobilize them from a safe distance with a bolo or lasso, then close in and finish them off. One good way to prevent escapees in the first place is with electric fencing. Standard electric fencing works by inflicting pain and making you not want to touch it. In contrast, your fencing will more or less be connected directly to mains AC power. When a zombie touches the fence, the electricity will force the muscles to spasm and contract. They'll be unable to let go as the energy burns them from the inside out. Hit them with a wooden pole to knock them back off the wall, or wait for their arm muscles to sustain enough damage that their hands become useless. That's a big fence, though, and will require a ton of electricity. Where is all that going to come from? > > They are capable of moving at a speed equivalent to a jog, which > they can keep up indefinitely > > > Zombies + giant hamster wheels = all the electricity you'll ever need [Answer] # Just shoot them. It takes an average [of 250000 rounds](https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/us-forced-to-import-bullets-from-israel-as-troops-use-250000-for-every-rebel-killed-28580666.html) to kill a single Iraqi soldier. A lot of that is suppressing fire or training rounds, but really, we are used to firing a lot of rounds to kill something. It's also not uncommon for people to take a ton of drugs and be able to tank a few bullets. Focused concentrated fire will get them down. Rip their bodies apart with focused fire, and then burn the corpses with flamethrowers. Wear slash proof armor that will resist random arms with no leverage cutting you. # Ask Israel for help with handling underground soldiers. They have extensive experience with an enemy who uses underground tunnels to attack people. Use electronic sensors which detect acoustic and seismic features, UAVs, and flood barriers to keep them from escaping or ambushing you. Digging is a very slow and noisy process because you have to move tons of dirt, so it shouldn't be that hard to detect enemies. # Lure them into ambushes and slice them up with artillery. They're attracted to human sounds and smells and such? Record such sounds, get human cells, and use them to lure out necromorphs to kill them. [Answer] This answer is slightly meta, but please indulge me. Let me take us all back to school and remind everyone of the fundamentals of... # The zombie genre Zombies, particularly the kind you describe, are literary metaphors for utter hopelessness, or perhaps even death itself, and they usually hold the "you can't defeat them" trump card by design. They keep coming back, by some way - even after a nuclear attack, their gasses would get back into the water supply and re-infect survivors. Zombies are typically slow but relentless - giving you lots of time to think of things to try to improve your situation. You may gain ground but only temporarily (e.g. shooting one knocks it over, and give you a moment to run away, but it eventually gets back up). Many things seem effective but ultimately are not. We are intentionally given an illusion of hope. Having said that, zombie fiction explores what we as humans do when faced with an inevitably hopeless situation. It explores facets of the human psyche. Literary works in the genre love to explore all the things we might try: * Making a last stand - with force. Board up the windows, gather food and ammo and give it our best "Alamo" effort. * Run. Perpetual fleeing, finding that next car with a little bit of gas to get to the next town, or an airplane that takes us to an even more remote island. * Seek out loved ones. Making sure we are are in the company of our loved ones when we face our ultimate demise is a human instinct that runs very deep, and spans many cultures. * Get a bigger gun. Calling in the army, dropping the nuke or whatever it is, just means that if we kick and scream hard enough, maybe we can win the unwinnable fight with force. * Carry on / go down with the ship. Some people just go about their typical lives, keep going to work and doing your job - sort of ignoring the problem. Keep playing the music even though the Titanic is sinking sort of thing. Ultimately the zombies will come, but we may just choose to accept our fate and let it come when it comes. * Outsmart it. This is kind of like making a last stand, but with strategy instead of force. We are eternally resourceful, and we attempt to keep our doom at arms length in a variety of innovative ways. We confuse, disguise, defer, delay and Wile E. Coyote our final days away until we slip up. * Fix the problem. We may seek to "cure" the zombies ultimately. To be true to the genre, outcomes are never good, the cure has limited effectiveness in some way. * Give up. The fear of an unfitting demise "not like this" may force us to choose to "go out" on our own terms (e.g. suicide of some sort) + the variant of "Changing teams", becoming a zombie ourselves, is a lot like giving up - but typically this just reinforces that this is a losing move by contrasting zombie life with human life to remind us that we really do lose something precious in defeat. "My mom/wife/teacher is a zombie" is really more of a monster movie trope and explores humanity of being different and it not part of the zombie genre. Ultimately zombies represent our own mortality. We will all eventually die, but what shall we do with our time before our end? *This* is the zombie genre. It explores the human condition by shining bright stage lights onto the gruesome fear of death and its gradual but relentless pursuit of us. We study these stories closely to find our own way of justifying our own mortal existence. . . . So, having said all that, your military *should* be ultimately ineffective against zombies - by design of the genre. You, yourself, did not specify a mechanism by which the zombies could be defeated -- and rightfully so! You are free to explore this dilemma of hopelessness in your own way as so many others have done before you. You're playing the military card, that's fine, all manner of attempts to push back the darkness must be made, including small arms fire. You don't have to be supremely clever to be successful. Whatever you come up with is fine. It's important to ask "what if...", and your answers may very well better our actual society or inspire future zombie stories. But I'll leave it to the other answers here to litter the landscape with more futile attempts to delay inevitable doom dressed in military uniforms. But beware of the meta-opponent you face today: the zombie genre itself. You may get satisfying answers to your question, finding out a really clever military strategy to contend with the zombies, but the genre itself demands that after formulating any strategy to deal with zombies we always return to ask its most powerful question again, "but what if even that didn't work?" If you betray the genre by providing an actual way out of the zombie apocalypse, then you are likely just an action story - not a zombie story. Zombies are not a Kobayashi Maru test for humanity. The point isn't to think outside the box and find a solution. The point is to spend time thinking about how you will play the game when it is certain you are going to lose. As each of us must do by choosing how we will live our mortal lives. [Answer] Flood them Not available everywhere, and depends on how desperate you are. But blow up the nearby dam and watch the tidal wave wash the zombies out to sea. The zombies will need to surive the mass of water hitting them and then the debris that is being carried by the water. Either way they are breaking most bones and likely losing limbs in the process. They'll also get pushed a long way away from where they started. Hopefully out to sea. Of course it only works once in an area, but if you where desperate enough and needed to stop the spread. [Answer] Exploding bullets. While these have been banned by treaties since the 1860s, I suspect that the zombie menace will need larger sized exploding projectiles than the 5.56mm or 7.62mm rounds that militaries typically stock. Except for sniper ammunition, current military bullets are intended to injure (not kill) the target, as a wounded soldier needs the services of other soldiers to haul the wounded away from battle and in the rear areas to treat the wounded. Dead bodies can be left where they fall. Except when they're zombies. Those need extra killing. Cluster munitions. If the zombies travel in herds, or packs, then dropping [cluster munitions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_munition) from drones or aircraft would help reduce their numbers. Land mines. I suspect something similar to the WW2 [S mines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-mine) or more modern [claymore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claymore_mine) mines would be needed to shred zombies crossing into protected areas. Does the response force need flamethrowers to finish off the mangled zombies? Could one drive over the wiggling remains with bulldozers or other tracked bug stompers suffice? Or do we need something like the "scoops" from Soylent Green to scoop up and "process" the zombies? [Answer] I'm thinking of a way even normal citizens could use. Go in a concrete watchtower, (Or anywhere tall, fireproof, and zombieproof, meaning they can't get in) attract the zombies (Via screaming over a megaphone or something) then throw a molotov at them. They will slowly burn out. Rinse and repeat! [Answer] ## They don't. "Deal with zombies" is not a description of what you want the military to do, and is not particularly meaningful. Depending what you actually want and the actual situation, they might do a million different things. Nukes everywhere! Build some walls! Conduct negotiations! The possibilities are endless. Decide what the situation is and what your military is tasked with making the situation. ]
[Question] [ Magic in this world comes from an external Force which is virtually Unlimited. So, Wizards won't get tired from doing spells; they could continue doing spells for weeks if they could stay awake that long. However, magic has its limits: 1. It is limited to the sense range of the wizard casting the spell ( if you can't see it, hear it, or smell it then you can't use magic against it). 2. You have to say the Spell correctly: get the pronunciation wrong and, at best, nothing will happen at all, at worst, you accidentally turn the spell against yourself. 3. To use Magic requires the aid of some magical object in addition to the spell such as a wand or a magic staff. 4. Each spell does one particular thing: the spell to make a tornado, for example, will be different from the spell to make a slight breeze. The spell to turn lead into gold will be different from the spell for turning people into gold; wizards are limited by the amount of spells they can memorize. 5. Wizards can only use a spell on one object, animal or person at a time. If two people attack them, they will have to cast two different spells to defend themselves. 6. Use of magic makes it hard to understand machines. Most Wizards cannot build anything except for the simplest of machines. Neither can they repair machines. However, they can use Magic on machines and use machines themselves as long as their usage is not that complicated (using a gun is pretty simple, but a wizard might have trouble using a computer). Forms of magic: Transformative Magic: transforming people into animals, lead into gold, animals into stone, solids to liquids, liquids to solids, one human into another human and so on. Mind magic: erasing memories, planting false memories, hypnosis, and spells to make you feel specific emotions. Elemental Magic: control the elements wind, Fire, Earth, lightning and Light, water. Telekinetic spells: spells to move things toward or away from you and various angles. Healing spells: spells to heal injuries and illnesses. Curses: curse of death, curse of the plague, curse of pain, curse of Madness. The ability to speak and control magical beasts: There are various magical Beast most are used for transportation as many of them can fly, teleport or both. Also since they all are several times stronger then humans they are also use for their brute strength both as laborers and as War beasts. The ability to produce enchantments: enchantments are written spells on objects that enhance characteristics associated with the purpose of that object. For example, you could enchant a sword to be Supernaturally sharp, able to cut through anything. Or a shield, to be so hard it's practically impenetrable. Note: the enchantment must be related to the purpose of the object. For example, you can put a magical sharpening spell on a sword because swords are made to cut through things, you couldn't put that on the shield; furthermore, putting more than one enchantment on object can result in it forming a will of its own and the ability to work against its creator if it chooses to. The wizard population is very low and it is estimated they could probably only produce an army that is a tenth the size of the modern human Army. Because of this, it is predicted that in the case of armed conflict they would probably resort to some form of guerrilla warfare instead of a straight out fight. In light of this, what strategy could a modern but mundane military implement that would have the greatest long-term success in a guerrilla War against these Wizards? [Answer] The word "bullet" leaps to mind, as does the word "sniper". > > It is limited to the sense range of the wizard casting the spell ( if you can't see it or hear it or smell it then you can't use magic against it). > > > This first limitation suggests a distant sniper ( 2km kills are doable now ) stands a very good chance of not being killed and of killing the target. > > You have to say the Spell correctly get the pronunciation wrong and at best nothing will happen at all, at worst you accidentally turn the spell against yourself. > > > So even if a wizard spots a sniper, he's probably dead as a very dead thing because he's not going to have time to say anything before the 0.50 caliber rips him apart. > > To use Magic requires the aid of some magical object in addition to the spell such as a wand or a magic staff. > > > Do these guys use a shower ? They've got to put the thing down sometime. They're vulnerable. > > Each spell does one particular thing: the spell to make a tornado for example will be different from the spell to make a slight breeze, spell to turn led into gold will be different from the spell for turning people into gold; wizards are limited by the amount of spells they can memorize. > > > OK, you can pick off the less experienced ones easier. They'll make mistakes, they'll panic in combat - everyone does sometime. > > Wizards can only use a spell on one object, animal or person at the time. If two people attack them they will have to cast two different spells to defend themselves. > > > Numbers game : bigger army wins in the end. Game over, wizard. > > Use of magic makes it hard to understand machines, most Wizards cannot build anything except for the simplest of machines. Neither can they repair machines. However they can use Magic on machines and use machines themselves as long as their usage is not that complicated (using a gun is pretty simple but a wizard might have trouble using a computer). > > > If all I need to do is make my machines complicated, these guys are dead. There are people out there who love making complicated devices and some of them like making complicated killing machines. Drones - high altitude, practically invisible, armed with anything up to and including Nukes. I don't see any way a limited number of Wizards can win long term. The numbers would be whittled down and it is, by definition, a group where replacing experts is time consuming and difficult, so even a small number of high level kills will reduce their ability to function and be a serious threat. Low and middle ranking wizards probably wouldn't be any more of a real threat than a determined non-wizard terrorist. And high level ones will try to avoid being detected as they're potentially vulnerable to attacks in numbers and, hey, don't high level leaders usually like to stay safe ? So no more of a real threat that any terrorist group, IMO. [Answer] The soldiers lose. First, because while there are 1/10th the number of wizards, they have mind magic. So they can easily have 100s of people dedicated to the cause of helping the wizard per wizard. Mind magic is easy; they all feel a total and complete selfless love for their wizard. Depending on resources, these servents can be equipped with magical equipment that rivals a modern battle tank, except they can teleport. You'd require a panopitcon beyond anything we have ever imagined to prevent infiltration of transmuted mind controlling and controlled teleporting spies who take control over your country. Lacking the ability to detect magic, any member of the military who is out of contact with the chain of command must be presumed suborned; disrupt communications and they cannot trust anyone who isn't in eye sight. Ambush and turn a squad. Mind control them, transmute your operatives into looking exactly like them, use them to sneak into the base, mass control more of the base, etc. With the ability to teleport, you can bring overwealming magical force to bear on a single location, convert it, and now they are on your side. The only response that stands much of a chance is using overwealming power in response. Create bait bases that the wizards are lured to try to take over, and use nuclear or equivalent weaponry to wipe out both the wizards attacking and the base itself. Even that might not work; the wizards could easily be wearing armor proof against nuclear blasts. So to stand a chance, you have to create constant surveilance of your own people (both military and civilian) to detect being suborned, sterilize areas that are suborned, use overwealming force against the wizard population centers, fight using drones, snipers, missiles and other "long range remote" attack tools, hide the very location of your military bases long enough. Really, you should sue for peace. One miracle worker can match or exceed 10 soldiers in effectiveness. You are outnumbered, outgunned. You are fighting the guerilla war, not them, and they can capture and convert your most dedicated agents with ease. [Answer] Same way the US “won“ the vietnam war, just with the enemy beeing even more powerful and better in hiding. Apart from a lot of air strikes against soft targets there's really no way to win against an enemy that is dispersed through a big terrain. So either you just bombard every city you can find and just ignore the hidden magicians, or you get them to actually defend those cities, then you can find them. but if they don't care and just go into hiding, laying traps and attacking your army from the distance, you don't win. [Answer] Wizards stand no chance against modern troops, since military can use "sorcery" as well in form of grenades, RPGs, drones, night vision goggles etc. All modern military has to do is perform a pincer attack of some sort and group the wizards together and then nuke them or just lure them into a minefield and they won't even understand what is happening as they blow up to smithereens. Not to mention... "if you can't see it or hear it or smell it then you can't use magic against it". Just drop a smoke bomb on the wizard ranks and shoot them down like target dummies. If wizards are way too powerful military can just capture one alive and brainwash him to aid them in battle for the best of both worlds to annihilate the wizard army. Or maybe study the wizard and develop anti-magic bullets that null any magic and pierce through it(f.e. powerful barriers). In addition, military can use big SWAT shields covered in pure silver which is known for being able to reflect magic or something similar. [Answer] The same as they deal with any other guerrillas. For practical theory, read Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. For a more hands-on guide, read the USMC's Small Wars Manual. Or Greene's The Guerrilla — And How To Fight Him. For doctrine on how the US or a US-like force approaches it, skim Army Field Manual FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency Operations. For examples of how to utterly fail at it, read the past decade of headlines, or read up on the French-Algerian war. Guerrillas need, need, need a sympathetic populace. It doesn't have to be a majority, but they do need somewhere to fall back to and draw supplies from (that place might be logical instead of physical: churches/redheads/anime clubs/whatever). However, as long as they have that stronghold, it really isn't possible to destroy the movement (technically it is, in the same way that France technically pacified the Casbah. However, I am not aware of any non-genocidal examples where this was ultimately successful). Mao wrote extensively about this, but I don't recommend reading his work as casual research; it's too dense. So, winning a war against guerrillas is almost entirely a matter of removing their popular support. Raiding/airstriking/assassinating individual guerrillas can help with this (because it's hard to make cogent arguments/carry out threats/govern anime utopia when you're dead), but it also tends to win new converts faster than you can raid them. And it's expensive. Instead you're looking at convincing the populace of a couple points: 1. Your vision is good 2. Your vision is achievable 3. Your vision is sustainable If you can hit those three points, you basically win, and are into mop-up. But there are some complexities. E.g. even if the new democracy works while the US is around, you can't hit point 3 unless the US will always be around (hah) or you can make people believe that the new democracy will work even without US help. Anyway, this topic has killed entire forests of trees, this is a tiny, paraphrased summary. [Answer] I think you have to look at the difference between [guerilla warfare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_warfare), [terrorism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism), and other forms of [rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebellion). This is difficult, not least because various government have redefined terrorism as whatever the other side does. * In a guerilla war, the insurgent force is using violence to reduce the effectiveness and legitimacy of an incumbent government, and to introduce their own government structures (cf Viet Cong, Taliban). * In a terrorist campaign, the insurgent force is using violence to create fear in the target population and to cause political effects from that fear. Of course in practice guerilla groups may employ terrorist tactics, but few terror groups employ guerilla tactics. A guerilla group might shoot the government tax collector from ambush and send their own cadres to collect taxes; a terror group might shoot the government tax collector, but they won't send their own tax collectors. The way to defeat a guerilla group is to uphold the legitimacy of the government, and to point out that they cannot provide government services themselves. Look at the IS in Syria and Iraq. Where they tried to govern, things were pretty dismal. TL;DR: So if the mages really want to wage guerilla warfare, go after their cadres in the villages. They don't have many of them. [Answer] For the technologically primitive wizards, modern military soldiers are sorcerers. They can fly at incredible speeds and heights, summon drones, telecommunicate, see through the clouds and predict movements. > > Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -Arthur C. Clarke > > > The military must use its technological advantage, not only to dominate on the battlefield, but also at a psychological level. They can put up one hell of a show to make the wizards fear their dark "magic", without getting close. Using lights, sounds, smoke, drones and choregraphed movement on the ground will make them fear the supernatural power of the military. Once afraid and disorganized, they'll move and the military will be able to take them out from the skies and from afar. Surely the wizards will call the bluff at some point and counter-attack with the proper spells. But will it be already too late? [Answer] Image the regular troops plan to assault a mage stronghold or base. As you stated, the mages need to see their targets. Therefore camouflage would work to get the soldier get closer to their targets, and some good old flash-bang or smoke grenade would incapacitate them during the close range approach. [Answer] The issue is that you have a force that can do damage that is very much quantifiable. Impressive and terrifying damage to be sure, but quantifiable in Joules. You're talking about that fighting a smaller force of people who can do damage that isn't quantifiable by any means. How many joules of energy does a spontaneous hurricane in the middle of a desert emit? Because magic can do that. So you can't say but we have so much destructive things that go big boom because a wizard will outclass it with unquantifiable destruction. As far as snipers go with the whole "wizards can't hit what they can't see", that goes both ways. A sniper could probably pick off a couple who break off to go take a leak but all that would be required would be for the wizards to take shifts setting up a protective barrier since they don't get exhausted maintaining it. Alternatively a bunch of illusory copies will throw a sniper off. Hell, just change your entire appearance every day, or every hour even. Sniper can't hit what he doesn't know to hit. So that leaves the biggest destructive force known to man: a nuke. Again, magic isn't quantifiable so there's nothing to say that a magic barrier won't protect the wizards, or even contain the blast of the nuke. And if you don't like that argument OP mentioned telekinesis. So in theory they could simply move the falling bomb into the ocean or, I don't know, right on top of the armed forces over there. Bottom line, despite its limitations, magic is still pretty limitless by human destructive power in comparison. With just over 1M Americans in the US Armed Forces you're looking at about 100,000 wizards... gg America. [Answer] The muggles do not stand a chance. Instead of an army of millions of wizards (10% of the population of the muggle army), I will assume an army of 100 wizards and 100 beasts capable of teleporting themselves and the wizard riding them.) I do this to make the question interesting by limiting the wizards somewhat. I will assume that, on day one, the 100 wizards all know who they are, and the muggles know that they are in an unconventional war with 100 wizards. They know what powers the wizards have, at least to the same level of detail as provided by the original post of this question. Mind control and memory alteration are the only spells worth knowing. Don't go for the President of the USA, he will be guarded. That is where the limit of 100 wizards makes this slightly difficult - going for a 'risky shot' will not be an option. Influence unguarded people, low level politicians, police constables, mayors, workers at electricity grid control centres, gas well operators, telecoms operators, accountants, software developers, pilots, bus drivers, mid tier journalists. Ideally, make most of them remember some injustice committed against them by the establishment, being really big fans of the wizards, some particular politician, or potential politician. Implant false memories of how to operate their respective equipment. Implant false memories of a scandal years back where it was revealed the government and the media were caught out colluding to misinform the public. The wizards should be teleporting around the world as they do this, so they cannot be cornered. Society would break down within a matter of weeks. The establishment would only be able to safeguard roughly 1% of the population, on army bases, bunkers and secure locations. From that point on, they have to assume the 99% are traitors. Democracy fails at this point. The wizards' puppets can run as candidates, and the wizards can alter the memory of voters into believing positive things about their candidates and negative things about others. The establishment can't trust any candidates that they have not been watching the whole time. So the establishment does the only thing they can - they suspend elections. They never appear in public, for fear they will be mind controlled. This is not sustainable, democracy will fail. Most likely, a significant portion of voters will believe the government has been turned, at this point. Entire villages/towns could be turned, without the government being able to do anything. The one cop in town is mind controlled first. With public trust for the government low, the wizards have their mind controlled towns refuse to pay taxes. Towns that aren't mind controlled are suspicious of the government may follow suit. Suspicion can be further built up through implanting false memories. Gary goes to the police and says he saw a man that looked like Trevor, doing something that looked like casting a spell on Megan. Was Megan mind controlled? Or has Gary had a false memory implanted? The wizards can flood police stations with such reports. So many false ones that the police have no choice but to ignore all public reports of seeing wizards. So scared mobs of people, will arrive at the conclusion that the police are under the wizards' spell, why else would they be ignoring all these cases? They will turn to mob 'justice', and lynchings will start. Whilst attacking democracy, the puppets would also be committing economic terrorist attacks on an unprecedented scale. The power grid could easily be taken offline, most manufacturing would taken offline with ease. Large transport ships would be grounded or sunk. In this situation, mind control would be more effective than memory magic. A modern military cannot cope with the level of economic sabotage available to the wizards. The intelligence community currently, can mostly keep ahead of terrorist attempts. This is in a situation where, in order to turn someone into a suicide bomber, takes months or years, requires reaching out to them (or them reaching out to you) via public channels. It is also susceptible to double agents. Government reps pretending to be willing to commit an atrocity. The wizards can convert a person in 10 seconds, with 100% reliability and no paper/electronic trail. The wizards can also choose who to convert, rather than having to take whoever is most willing. This allows them to pick people in the best position to do significant economic damage. The intelligence community could not keep up. Eventual victory conditions for the wizards are likely the complete disintegration of society into anarchy, establishment of a community for those with false memories, who believe the previous muggle governments caused the anarchy and the wizards popped up to save them from it. The wizards can continue their Guerrilla tactics in the remaining free cities/socities, building up supporters there and destabilising them, until eventually people accept their wizard overlords, or are memory charmed. [Answer] Ok so, your mages are way too strong, a single one with mind magic could destroy the army so no direct confrontation can exist: * the army's command must remain really remote and secretive to avoid any mage intrusion. * they need to divide the mages as much as possible through misinformation, false flag operations etc. * They need to spread propaganda amongst the population, make them hate the mages so that they turn them in to a milicia, discouraging mages from using their magic and forming groups. * the milicia should never meet any army official in person. * tear gas would be the best weapon(makes you cough uncontrollably), make it as readily available to the population as possible. Make its use a motto just like "stop drop and roll". * they need to have their own defector mages on their side, enchanting sensitive stuff so that it can't be enchanted by others,like documents, weapons etc. [Answer] In the general technique of defending against guerrillas, the normal technique used by the United States since [Shay's Rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays'_Rebellion#Consequences): * Execute one or more the ringleaders. To attack the state is death. * Figure out why these people were willing to die and probably fix it. This has worked well. Our alternate solutions have not, e.g., "find where the September, 2001 terrorists come from (Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan) and attack the geometric mean (Iraq). Against wizards, this is your only major defense. It's too easy for a wizard to cast 'Copy Currency', 'Add Disease', or 'Poison Food'. Everywhere is a site of potential destruction. It makes for a poor story, though. In the specific active defense against wizards, have large no magic zones. If a microphone detects the wizardly tongue, start blasting out fast random syllables to make the wizard screw up. If your goal is increase the number of guerrillas, station lots of extra people in uniforms and have them do nothing. [Answer] Easy: use [Sonic Weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon). So, the mage needs to get pronaunciation right. This is relatively easy if you can focus. Sonic weapon will attack your ears. It hurts. Also, it's proven that your focus is much worse when you are in a loud environment. Sonic waves penetrate the walls, and it's hard to know that they are attacking once they hit(unless you're far away). Another thing is that you can use drones. It's safer than putting there soldiers, who might get mind controlled. The first weeks might be tough, as the army does not know the capacity of the enemy, but they would quickly limit the wizards to small area, then either use methods above, get their wands away and use them as test subjects to learn how to use their magic, or simply use a rocket. It's hard to pronounce anything when rocket's coming right at you. [Answer] I think everyone's missing a big loophole here. If a wizard can enchant things with one effectively unlimited effect, you only need one wizard to destroy the whole world. First of all, they can just get an interconnected full body suit and make it invulnerable to all damage. Then they can enchant a pair of goggles to allow them to see anything they think about, nose plugs for smell, ear plugs for sound, extra inner gloves for touch, etc. Then they can enchant a book to link with their brain allowing them to memorize anything written in it, which would grant them a larger choice of spells. They can then enchant an item that allows them to always say what they are thinking perfectly. I now have a singular wizard that can do anything. [Answer] I get a feeling you're conflating guerrilla warfare with ambush warfare. The former employs the latter, but it's not guerrilla warfare if the opponent isn't occupying the territory (for example, the Finnish Winter war was a conventional war with lots of ambush warfare). Has Modern Nation already overrun Wizard Nation, or are they trying to overrun it but getting disrupted by small wizard squads in the forest who they are now seeking to dislodge? However, an actual guerrilla war is interesting, so I'm going to go ahead and assume that Modern Nation already has overrun Wizard Nation, and what Modern Nation now works to eradicate all wizard resistance. ## Crack down on magic knowledge From the description, it sounds like it will take a long academic education to become a versatile wizard. A guerrilla movement needs to sustain losses, and the primary weapon of the wizards seem to be knowledge. They would need to set up underground academies to train new recruits on the most important spells, focusing on spells which are easy to learn and which can be practised in cramped compartments. Likewise, Modern Nation would do best to remove as many tools as possible from the wizard's arsenal by simply burning the books (or, if they can and are willing to learn magic themselves, steal them). Scour every library, wizard tower and home. Force the wizard guerrilla to devote more and more resources toward reproducing magic knowledge instead of fighting them. Make every killed wizard hurt the resistance twofold for all the knowledge lost with them. If Modern Nation is persistent enough, the wizard guerrilla will be reduced to a group of hedge wizards only knowing spells which are transferable via oral traditions, and too afraid to pool what written knowledge they have in case Modern Nation would hit them with a raid and wipe it all out. Maybe they'd even splinter into a faction preferring to take up modern arms instead, and traditionalists focusing on retaining the magic knowledge. A rift which could persist even after an eventual victory. [Answer] As long as the wizards are smart, there is no good way to beat them. All our tech can be countered by stone skin, or turning yourself into flames, or whatever. There is literally no weapon we have that they cant stop. [Answer] Use artillery, it's super effective. Drones work great too. If these guys are limited to the range of their eyes, they are screwed. Also, being able to engage enemies one at a time is going to cause them lots of trouble. Every time they make contact with infantry, they're going to get smacked by artillery and airstrikes from outside their range of seeing/hearing. Modern weapons approach at greater than the speed of sound from beyond visual range. There will be no warning whatsoever. For example, a drone is practically invisible once it's at altitude. It can see perfectly day or night and it can hit from a great distance without warning. This already works great against actual guerrilla warfare. Which bring me to the next point. As for guerrilla warfare... wizards are going to stick out like sore thumbs. They aren't members of the local population so they can't blend in or hide. They have a flashy and unusual fighting technique that is limited to line of sight. They're basically fancy (yet unsupported) infantry, cut off behind enemy lines. They're going to get wrecked. ]
[Question] [ In my story, I'm trying make an emperor temporarily leave his country to go to an important (far away) place, and spend a year there. My story has magic in it, thus long distance communication will be possible (though no one would be able to contact their emperor after he had left). Moving from place to place quickly, must also not be a problem. The travel speed will almost be equal to our world's flights. Only very few (and really powerful) wizards will have the power and the ability to disappear and appear somewhere else instantly, almost at the speed of light. There won't be any means by which the emperor or the people in the empire will be able to contact him while he is gone. Considering how unstable the monarch system was, and how quickly people try to seize power at the first opportunity they get, what will my emperor have to do to ensure that his power is safely returned to him when he comes back? The emperor was 12 years old and has a completely committed and loyal teacher who was unusually empathetic and idealistic- He was also very intelligent. His teacher was his primary adviser who took care of both him and his country (more like a real father). His father had fought a formidable enemy (as the defending side) and actually won the war. But was later assassinated by the same emperor who tried to conquer his country. The 12 year old boy was the only remaining descendant of the royal family; his siblings were murdered long before he was born, at a very young age. Thus he gained power and ruled with the aid of his teacher. Both the emperor (the 12 year old boy) and the teacher will have to leave the country and go to a far away place where they cannot be contacted. What political situation must exist in the empire, and what steps should the teacher have taken to ensure that the power will be safely returned back to the 12 year old boy once he returns? Is it even possible, considering a real world situation? This is the first time I'm attempting to write a novel, and I seriously want to understand about what ensures the stability of an empire? Is it possible for a king to have his power safely returned to him after a year, assuming he has no trusted subjects left behind? Note 1: The people will be publicly intimated that he will be leaving the country, and will not return for a year. He would make a public announcement that he would leave, but no one will know where he and his teacher were going. Note 2: His teacher was a powerful and an influential wizard. He was more like a father to the boy. The boy was safe as long as he was under his protection. --- The answers to this question might seem a bit depressing, and it might seem odd for someone trying to write a fantasy magical story going into the depths of politics. This is because, my story is going to elaborate war and politics and the pain that comes with it, along with showing how a few determined young children were able to save the lives of innocent citizens. Generally, stories symbolize being a prince or a King or being born as their descendant to be a honor. My story is going to change that view. I'm going to portray the emperor's title, the ministers, the generals and other council members as nothing but ruthless and selfish people acting for the sake of power- thus projecting them as uncool people. It is a big lie that "happily ever after" exists if you are a king, or a prince or a princes (or anyone, as a matter of fact. Someday, everyone must die! But it's worse for the Kings!). In reality, these people's life is not a fantasy, it's a complete tragedy. An ordinary peasant would live a better life (if he knows how to live it). [Answer] # It all comes down to: Cui bono To ensure the kings safe return to power comes down to a simple question: Who benefits from his return to power? - If a group of aristocrats will hold the power while the king is gone, they will want to keep it (everyone in power will fight to keep it). The king will have to arrange affairs so that the most powerful people in the empire benefit from his return more than they would benefit from his death. Ways in which aristocrats and wealthy individuals at court could benefit from his return: * Stability: A single king provides more stability than a bunch of people fighting over the crown. If the common folk is peaceful the nation prospers and the wealthy benefit. If the chance of unrest/civil war in case of the kings death is high, most aristocrats will prefer the return of the king * Influence over the ruler: If the aristocrats in power believe the king can be easily influenced and bought, they will like him on the throne. They can persuade him to make all the hard choices and will have someone to blame on the throne - a nice puppet. If the boy king can convince them, that he will be open to all ideas of the aristocrats and act in their favor after his return, they will want him to return * Access to certain resources: If the king can secure his access to certain resources until his return, he will bring riches with him. The king could bury a ton of gold at a secret location before he leaves. He could secure a deal with an allied nation tied to his person - like mining rights, but only if he returns. He could work with a big bank and put a good amount of wealth of the crown into an account under his name, which will only be available to the crown and aristocrats when he returns. * Religious support: The king could use the locally dominant church in his favor and provide them with benefits in exchange for their blessing. They could preach that he is the only divine ruler and only his return will bring prosperity - and his death will be a sign for evil among the ruling aristocrats. * Promises of marriage: The best way to make allies was to marry. If he can find a big allied country and give them the prospect of marriage to one of their princesses, this could secure a bond beneficial for both countries. These future allies could also send diplomats to his court, who would watch over affairs in his country to secure his safe return and eventual marriage. [Answer] A 12 year old boy may well be a reigning emperor, but he most likely is not a ruling emperor: until he comes of age the country is governed by a Regent or a Council of Regency. As a consequence, nobody is very much concerned with the specific whereabouts of the child. All the Regent or Regents must say is that the child is at an imperial retreat studying to become a better emperor for his subjects. Whether when he comes of age he will also assume imperial power or not, and indeed whether he will actually ever come of age, depends on the story. There are many examples of child monarchs who, tragically, never became adults, or, less tragically, never assumed power. * Luminous examples of child monarchs who made it: + [Henry IV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV,_Holy_Roman_Emperor) became emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1056, at age 3. During his minority the government was assumed by [Archbishop Anno II of Cologne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_II,_Archbishop_of_Cologne). Henry IV was a rather imperious child; he assumed power at age 13 and held it for almost 40 years. (He was an even more imperious adult; it is enough to mention that he holds the uncontested world record of excommunications: he was excommunicated five times by three different Popes.) + [Louis XIV of France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV_of_France) became king in 1643, at age 5. Until he came of age (in 1651, at 13 years of age, as was the custom) the country was governed by his mother, [Queen Anne of Austria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Austria) ("Anne of Austria" was her name; she was Queen of France) as Queen Regent, helped by [Cardinal Mazarin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Mazarin) as chief minister. Momentuous events happened while Louis XIV was a minor; for example, Queen Anne and Mazarin successfully negotiated the Peace of Westphalia. However, the exact specific location of king Louis during this time is known only for certain select moments; he was a child, studying, and he was not expected to participate in events of state. + Queen [Christina of Sweden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina,_Queen_of_Sweden) became queen in 1632, at age 6. During her minority the country was governed by a Council of Regency led by chancellor [Axel Oxenstierna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Oxenstierna). She was declared of age in 1644, at age 18, as was the custom, and assumed power as Queen Regnant. + There is a very long list of [medieval child rulers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Medieval_child_rulers) on Wikipedia. * Dark examples of child monarchs who did not make it: + [Alexander IV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_IV_of_Macedon) of Macedon, son of Alexander the Great; murdered at age 14 when he was about to be declared of age. + [Louis XVIII](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XVII_of_France) of France; died in prison at age 10. + [Edward V](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_V_of_England) of England; murdered at 12 years of age. + Wikipedia has a long and sad list of [rulers deposed as children](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rulers_deposed_as_children) and an even sadder one of [rulers who died as children](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rulers_who_died_as_children). [Answer] Did you ever research what happened when real kings or emperors left their realms for months or years? King Sigurd I Magnusson "The Crusader" of Norway (reigned 1103-1130) went on crusade from 1107 to 1110, which put his half brothers and co kings Olaf Magnusson and Eystein I in charge of the country while he was away. King Richard I the Lionheart was king of England from 1189-1199, but spent little time in England - perhaps only 6 months - during his reign, spending most of his reign in the Duchy of Aquitaine in France where messages to and from England should have usually taken weeks. And Richard also went on the Third Crusade from 1190 to 1194, being imprisoned part of the time. Conrad III, King of the Romans from 1138 to 1152, went on the Second Crusade from 1147-1150, having his ten-year-old son Henry Berenger elected co-King of the Romans to reign in his absence, with Abbot Wibald and Heinrich von Weisenbach as his tutors. Constans II (real name Heraclius Constantine) ruled the eastern Roman Empire from 641-668. He left his oldest son and co-emperor Constantine IV in charge at Constantinople about 660 and traveled to Italy, become the first emperor in 2 centuries to visit Rome. In 668 he was assassinated in Syracuse, allegedly with a bucket. Constantine IV (born c.652) led an expedition to Sicily to cruse the revolt and avenge his father, leaving his younger brothers in charge until he got back. Andronicus IV Palaiologos was born in 1348 and made co-emperor by his father John V in 1352. In 1369 John sailed to Italy, leaving Andronicus in charge at Constantinople and his younger brother Manuel in charge of Thessalonica. John became stuck at Venice, unable to repay his debts to Venice or even buy passage home, and Andronicus rejected all proposed methods to pay for John's release. Manuel sailed to Venice to arrange John's release and John returned to Constantinople in 1371. Andronicus lead an unsuccessful rebellion against John in 1373, and was blinded in one eye. Manuel was promoted to co-emperor. In 1376 Andronicos escaped from prison, and deposed John IV and Manuel II. He made his son John VII co-emperor in 1377. But Andronicos IV and John VI were deposed in 1379 and John V and Manuel II regained power. Andronicus IV's son John VII was born in 1370, made co-emperor in 1377, and deposed in 1379 with his father. John VII might have been blinded or partially blinded in 1373 or 1379. Andronicus IV died in 1385, and John VII seized power in 14 April 1390 but was deposed again in September. John V died in 1391, making Manuel II the senior emperor. Sultan Bayezeid I besieged Constantinople from 1394 to 1402. The King of Hungary organized an anti-Ottoman crusade which was defeated at Nicepolis in 1396. Manuel left John VII in charge at Constantinople in 1399 and traveled to ask for military help at the western courts (including England). Tamerlane defeated the Ottomans at the battle of Ankara in 1402, and John VII was able to negotiate a favorable treaty with the Ottomans. He turned over power to Manuel when Manuel returned to Constantinople and ruled in Thessalonica until he died in 1408. Mansa Musa I of Mali (reigned c. 1312-1337) is said to have been the richest man ever. He made a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324-1325, in a caravan of thousands of persons, and they spent so much gold that the economy in various places was ruined. Musa appointed his son and heir, Mansa Megha Keita, as regent in his absence. And this was of course merely the most spectacular of many long pilgrimages made by Muslim rulers. King Kalakaua of Hawaii, who reigned from 1874-1891, was the first monarch to take a trip around the world, for business and pleasure, in 1881. Peter I the Great of Russia (reigned 1682-1725) made a Grand Embassy to visit European courts in 1697-1698. And those are the first examples of monarchs making long trips abroad that I can think of. [Answer] Despite what we say about lineages and laws and claims to the throne, at the end of the day what separates a crazy hobo claiming to be the king from the actual king is that people for one reason or another respect the actual king's authority. You are the king if people think you are the king. If you can't leave a loyal subject behind to serve as a substitute king, usually called a regent, then my advice would be to not go. Someone has to be running the show back home. But if you must leave, then the best hope is that the people of your Kingdom want you on the throne. This isn't hard to imagine in your kingdom's situation. They were just attacked, and their previous leader killed. This will foster nationalism and sympathy for the dynasty, and a desire to show the enemy that the country, including its royalty, is strong. Particularly the assassination of the previous leader could foster a strong desire to put his son on the throne just so people don't feel like their royal line was broken by outside forces. Don't underestimate spite and group fervor after an attack. Think about the response to the 9/11 attacks. Consider the case of Aragorn in Tolkien's works. He is the heir of the throne of Gondor, but no true heir has held the throne for many generations. He didn't even grow up in Gondor. Yet the people are elated to see him come and take the throne because they feel pride and loyalty for the Numenorian bloodline and the rulers of the previous age. [Answer] > > Is it possible for a king to have his power safely returned to him after a year, assuming he has no trusted subjects left behind? > > > No. Not really. You need a trusted regent to run things or someone will fill the power vacuum. Second option--the emperor doesn't actually have real power for the most part and things are already run by parliament. Any "temporary" system of governance will become permanent UNLESS someone or a group of trusted someones are steering things, and even then... Third option-- whoever takes over botches it, and the kingdom welcomes the boy emperor back with open arms. Or there's a drought, and it starts to rain the minute the emperor returns. Option Four-- give a good reason for him being gone, and hope for his return. You're talking about manipulation of the system in a bad way, but it can also be done for good (or at least the good of your emperor). Perhaps a spy/disinformation system that is interested in keeping the monarchy in power for their own reasons, even if they aren't especially trustworthy...one of those things where either way, these people win--if he doesn't return they continue on as they have been, and if he does, they may have his gratitude. A spy cadre may want the country to hold together, and given his sudden leaving, might do all they can to promote stability--perhaps many of them are merchants, and anything else would be bad for business. All you really have to have is powerful, influential people interested in preserving the status quo, whatever their reasons might be. [Answer] ## Divine Mandate Religion is the perfect reason for people to still follow something/someone they can't directly see or benefit from. I think this really works for all levels of society down to ensure people will accept the king's return. * Nobles: Just ensure that their right to nobility is also tied to the same divine source as the king. Thus, they can't challenge the king's right to rule without at the same time undermining their own legitimacy. * Merchants: Covered pretty well in other answers. This class generally follows the money, and for most industries and people the money lies in stability. Any short term profits from war or betrayal probably aren't worth the risk of death, the wrath of the public, etc. * Commoners: These people are, has also been pointed out, truly the ones who choose the king. As long as they have a true religious belief that heaven/the gods/the Force wants the king to rule,they will support his reign. They also add the threat of religious riots if anyone does try to take power. Real-life examples: Obviously there are no real-life examples of any system that prevented rebellion or usurpers forever. But there are still good sources to look to for the combination of religion and leadership: * [Divine Right of Kings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings) * [Mandate of Heaven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven) * [Son of Heaven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_Japan) [Answer] This is actually a plot point of a good many indian epics. * The Ramayana has a 12 year exile as a request made by the hero's step mother to his father, since she wants to see her son king. This... backfires * The heros of the Mahabharata spend time in exile, including one year incognito as a result of losing a bet. There's also a tradition of kings going incognito to learn what's happening in their land without interference. Here though, I might suggest a few more modern influences * [Vor Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vor_Game) has the emperor of his land find out a dark family secret, run away... and end up imprisoned as a vagrant * While everyone knew where he was, the idea of an emperor in exile, or one in waiting has happened historically - [Napoleon II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_II) spent a good chunk of his life in austria. A popular emperor with powerful enemies might do well incognito So in a practical sense. You really need three elements. * A reason to leave. Maybe the young emperor wants to see the world. Or maybe there was a republican revolution or an invasion. Or its simply tradition. * A reason to return, and a story. Maybe people are looking for him. Maybe the revolution has failed or the invaders are being beaten back. Maybe his country needs a symbol * and some way for folks to know its him. Unless its a fake and... that's a whole nother story. [Answer] This should compliment Cain's answer, there is in fact an example of a society which fits somewhat what you described, and that is Iran. Since the Iranian Revolution (overthrowing the Shah) Iran has become the Islamic Republic of Iran. The leadership of the revolution and of the government are Twelver Shia Muslim. They await the return of the Last Imam, aka Imam Mehdi, who is believed to have entered into occultation somewhere around a thousand years ago (most Imami/Twelver Shia believe he is literally still alive to this day). Note that an Imam is a spiritual leader. Twelver Shia believe there are twelve Divinely appointed Imams descended from the prophet Muhammad, known as "Ahl-ul-Bayt" the family of the prophet. The reasons are myriad and detailed, but I'm going to sketch an outline of some important point in Islamic history which underpin Shia beliefs without going into the nitty gritty details of why they believe everything they do (there are numerous quotes, Hadith, stories, and even Quran passages which they cite). Shia are followers of Imam Ali, who is the nephew and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. All descendents of the Prophet, referred to as Seyed (patrilinial descendents) or Mirza (matrilinial descendents), trace their lineage back to him through his daughter Fatima, whose husband was Ali. Ali was the second person (after the Prophet's first wife Khadija, who he was monogamous with for over 20 years until her death, many people are unaware) to accept Islam and his Prophethood, and was one of his strongest proponents and defenders and his closest confidant (there is a Hadith, a saying of the prophet, "I am the city of knowledge and Ali is its gate"). Ali was the fourth Calipha (ruler) after the death of Muhammad (Shia call the first three, Abu Bakr, Omar, and Othmann, the "usurpers", while Sunnis call all four the "rightly guided", this is a major source of the split between the two branches). Importantly, the Shia believe that the prophet declared that Ali was supposed to be his successor, while Sunnis dispute this, saying he purposely did not choose a successor. "Shi'a" is short for "Shiat Ali", the followers of Ali. Ali and Fatima had two sons, Hassan and his younger brother Hussein. Fatima died shortly after the Prophet passed (there is speculation and division over how she died, Shia believe that it was the result of the actions of the "usurpers", particularly Omar. Before she died she requested that Ali not disclose where she was burried, which is highly unusual, and to this day her resting place is not known). When Ali assumed the mantle of Caliph, a number of terrible situations befell him. One of the Prophet's wives, Aisha, inspired a civil war against him, which he won. Then Muawiya, who was the governor of modern Syria, refused to pledge allegiance and declared himself the Caliph, resulting in another civil war. After a truce was called, Ali was assassinated while he was praying, struck with a poisoned sword. Hassan, the grandson of the prophet and eldest son of Ali, was a scholar, not a warrior, and instead of leading a war against Muawiya to claim the Caliphate, he deferred to Muawiya to avoid the spilling of more Muslim blood, believing it would only cause more strife and bloodshed. Hassan died some years later (Shia believe he was poisoned). After Hassan died there was a call for his younger brother Hussein to claim the Caliphate. Muawiya had passed away and had founded the first Muslim dynasty, installing his son Yazid as the new Caliph. Yazid was known to be a very cruel man, and Hussein led a large number of hundreds to thousands of supporters to Kufa to confront Yazid and claim his right as the prophet's grandson to restore Islam to its roots ("to restore the Ummah of my grandfather"). Yazid meanwhile gathered an army and intimidated the people to drop their support of Hussein. Known for his cruelty, he successfully scared people into submission. Most of Hussein's entourage abandoned him. But he continued with fewer than a hundred men, women, and children at his side. On the plains of Karbala, not far from his destination, he was confronted and encircled by Yazid's army. They prevented him from getting water from the river for many days, but he did not yield (please look up the story of Hussein's half brother Abbas for a very sad story regarding this). Hussein brought his baby son to beg Yazid's men for water, and they shot his son with an arrow After many days, the men in Hussein's camp went out one at a time in single combat against Yazid's men, most of them being killed by arrows. It was a massacre. Yazid had the bodies desecrated, the heads severed and put on spikes. This moment, the battle of Karbala, is the single most important story for Shia and solidifies their faith in the leadership of the family of the prophet (the Ahl-ul-Bayt) as spiritual guides, role models, and saint-like figures. It is their "passion of the Christ" essentially. Hussein's son, Muhammad al-Baqir, became the new Imam. There is debate as to how the lineage of the imams continues after this. Different branches of Shia have a different line of imams, such as the Ismaili or the Zaydi. Twelver or Imami Shiism is by far the largest branch however, and this is the branch followed by the leader of the Iranian Revolution, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, and his successor Ayatollah Khamenei (an Ayatollah is someone who is a scholar of Islam who has devoted their life to studying it at the highest level, somewhat like Archbishops). Their lineage continues with Imam Jaffar Sadiq, who is an important figure in the development of Shia theology, and henceforth through a number of other imams descended from him. The last Imam, the twelfth, starting from Imam Ali, followed by Hassan, Hussein, Muhammad al-Baqir, Jaffar Sadiq, etc. is considered to be the prophesized Imam, also known as "the Imam of our time". Although there is not a lot of hard evidence about his life, the usual story is that he assumed the Imamate as a child, and he was the theological leader of the Shia from a hidden place where his enemies could not find him (Shia have historically been a persecuted minority in many places and under many Caliphates), a period known as the lesser ovcultation. During this time, he "ruled" through four messengers, who were the only ones who knew where he was and who communicated on his behalf to his followers. At the end of this period, he ceased communication, known as the greater occultation. Shia believe he is still alive to this day and will return at the end of time along with Jesus to bring about what amounts to the equivalent of "God's kingdom of Earth" which most Christians I think believe in. Essentially he is supposed to return and bring justice to the earth as its ruler. So yes, there is an example of a ruler who disappeared for a period of time but people still await his return, and in fact the entire nation of Iran (at the least the government) would be ready to turn power over to him as soon as he comes back. So with religion, if people believe he is the Divinely appointed ruler, it is possible. [Answer] It isn't possible to guarantee it, or even make it likely that there won't be problems... 1. Your opening line is > > "His father had fought a formidable enemy (as the defending side) and > actually won the war. But was later assassinated by the same emperor > who tried to conquer his country" > > > This demonstrates that his family/kingdom has enemies, and powerful ones at that. It is very likely that they will attempt to manipulate the kingdom to take power. 2. Religious mandate that some answers state is the solution Realistically though, just doesn't work. An example is William the Conqueror; who was given blessing by the Pope (for money) to rule England, but had to take it by force. These ideas follow that the king is chosen by God, but people can always help God change his mind. 3. You need an interim ruler It is unlikely that an interim ruler would just give up their power. Even most trusted friends and advisers are corrupted by power. 4. There is no record of his ability to rule He's 12 years old, people don't know anything about him, if he can keep his word, or anything else. As such, promises made to nobles aren't going to be worth anything. 5. You are announcing to the public that he is departing This will generate a power vacuum immediately among the nobles. If he were leaving but doing it in secret then only the closest most trusted people would need know about his absence; which would make returning a non-issue. The one thing you have that may sway things is magic; but it's a cop out. I would very much go with the line that he DID have problems (pick a magnitude), but the problems were overcome with the help of loyal subjects. This also will help give the reader an idea of what sort of King the boy plans to be as the very first thing he must do is deal with the non-loyal. [Answer] Have Teacher write a document explaining in detail who is to exert power, and how, while the young king is gone for a five year sabbatical. Make the document deliberately vague in key areas such that each self-interested group involved in power sharing arrangement will interpret it in different ways. Have it such that each group thinks they have a path to complete power if they only follow the document (according to their self-interested interpretation). This way, they are each motivated to follow the rules because each of them thinks that this is a direct path to power that will happen with the voluntary cooperation of the silly others who don't see what they see in the document. If the document has been thought out correctly, they will all still be scheming, maneuvering, and plotting when the king returns four years earlier than they were expecting. [Answer] instead of having one formidable enemy, have multiple and let them fight out who would take over after the young king leaves. when he comes back the enemies are so busy fighting each other that he is able to take over as the general population already lost interest in the war (they may have already lost interest before the young king left) and will follow the rightful king over those who continue fighting. ]
[Question] [ In human cultures around the world, most wars are fought by men. There are many theories as to why this is the case, first and foremost that females are simply less expendable than men when it comes to propagation of the species, and as such we have evolved to keep them out of harm's way when it comes to conflicts. Many fictional settings contain cultures where this norm is reversed. Females form the bulk of the army, going forth and fighting, while males are either relegated to housework, or else absent altogether. The Amazons, for example, were a band of all-female warriors from Greek mythology. In the real world, there exist some types of animals, such as bees, in which female workers form the bulk of what would be considered "warriors". However, while they may be genetically female, worker bees are ultimately drones that are incapable of reproduction. Would it be possible for female warriors to exist that aren't just drones? What biological or behavior changes would cause this sort of reversal? What would cause a culture or race of beings to favor females as their primary warriors? [Answer] Testosterone. Hyenas are real world examples of a species where the female is dominant [and have high levels of testosterone](http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/01/science/hyenas-hormone-flow-puts-females-in-charge.html?pagewanted=all) (among other hormones), and their physiology is different enough from other animals that hyenas' brains seem to process hormones differently – it's not "just" a lot of testosterone, they are physically different. [They live in large family groups with a strict social order.](http://www.animalfactsencyclopedia.com/Hyena-facts.html) Leadership seems to be inherited, with pups of the lead female ranking highly from birth. Clans consist of sisters, aunts, daughters – matriarchies are a sure thing, patriarchies are not so clear. Male lions kill existing cubs (sometimes even their own) to send the females into heat. Hyenas have no such patriarchy problem. Their men stay home to watch the children. [Answer] Scarcity. If your society has almost no men, then you do not want to risk the few (or one) you have. He will be busy. But why would a society have no men? * They died of a disease to which females are more resistant. Maybe a lot of females died too, but almost all the men did. * They were taken by another group or power that only wanted men. The Venusians, it stands to reason. * They were killed. Maybe by some society who thought they would teach these people a lesson. Surprise! The ladies you left behind turned into badasses. * They all got together and did something really stupid. This is the one that is most believable. [Answer] Pregnancy being a 10 month investment on the part of the woman, with the last couple months being almost immobilized, traditionally limits women's ability to become dedicated warriors. And then there is breastfeeding which ranges from 6 months minimum (as recommended by the medical establishment) to up to 4-5 years in hunter-gatherer societies where cow milk isn't available. The huge investment of time and energy a mother puts into her baby is worth it to her because she is guaranteed to have 50% of her genes pass along into her baby. Meanwhile, before the advent of genetic testing, a man had no guarantees the child he was providing for were of his own genes. Simultaneously, a man could impregnate many women, while a woman could bear the child of only one man at a time (barring fraternal twins). These factors make the risk tolerance (such as tendency towards violence) greater for men than for women, in order to achieve the payoff of having a mate or multiple mates who would bear one's own children. Counter these biological underpinnings and you create the conditions where women may gain more by becoming warriors. The foremost invention is the uterine replicator per Bujold's Vorkosigan series - a woman can make a child whenever she wants, at minimal cost to herself! She could even make a child from multiple fathers using genetic technology. With enough resources, she could create as many children from as many fathers as she wanted. With strong, liberated women (literally liberated from the task of childbearing), who achieve equal or greater economic power as men, all it would take is another societal shock to reverse the warrior-gender imbalance. Maybe the population of men is drastically reduced, which creates competition among women for the men. Or maybe men are determined to be not very necessary since with proper handling a single man can produce plenty of sperm to fertilize many eggs. Your world would probably need to be high tech because in low tech settings, sexual dimorphism favors men for wielding muscle-powered weapons. [Answer] The big problem with female warfare (for humans) is a fairly simple logic problem of breeding ability. Yes, there's selective pressures for men being generally stronger, but that's more of a result of the following than anything else; solve this problem, and the selective pressures move the other way. Say you have two tribes, each of 100 people, 50/50 men and women. Tribe 1 has male led warfare. Tribe 2 has female led warfare. The two tribes go to war. It's pretty nasty, and 80% of the warriors on each side die or are permanently incapacitated. Tribe 1: 10 men, 50 women Tribe 2: 50 men, 10 women You can probably see the problem already. The men in Tribe 1 can impregnate all 50 women. The men in Tribe 2 can only impregnate 10 women. Let's say relations between the two tribes cool down for 25 years, and each woman is able to successfully raise two kids to adulthood (on average, 1 boy, 1 girl). Tribe 1: 60 men, 100 women Tribe 2: 60 men, 20 women The war heats back up. Tribe 1 has 60 warriors. Tribe 2 has 20 warriors. Tribe 1 annihilates Tribe 2. Bees can have female soldiers because those females are reproductively expendable: they can't breed at all. Humans do not have that luxury. ## So how do we solve this? I'm not sure you can without significantly changing how humans work. In early societies, it was common for women to have 10-15 pregnancies and raise 5-10 surviving children. Given that a pregnancy takes you out of the action for at least 5 months, then (if the baby survives) you have to worry about feeding the baby for the next 5-12 months, 10 pregnancies is going to eat up the entire period of your life that you would be fit enough for warfare. Some possible ideas: 1. Post-family warfare: your warriors are people who have finished having children. Problem: they are not as fit as younger people. 2. Sterile women. Most of the women in the society are sterile, and more sterile women are born than men. This is your "drone" situation, makes me a little uncomfortable talking about it. 3. Strictly enforced mating-for-life. And I don't mean, "Puritan Christians will shun you and put a badge on your clothes if you're caught cheating." I mean some kind of biological switch whereby, once you're with someone, you are fully repulsed by anyone else. In this scenario, you'd want an equal number of men and women to die in war, since any imbalance would cause a breeding bottleneck. Also, all widows/widowers are drafted into military service. [Answer] ## Different Male/Female Birthrates Biologically speaking, humans have roughly one child per gestation (twins, triples, etc. being relatively rare don't bump the average up by much) and the odds of male:female birth are basically 50:50. If the ratio were skewed such that female babies were much more common than males, then society as a whole would view females as much more expendable for war than we ever have in the past. (i.e. if only 1-in-100 children born were male, then "men and boys first" would make much more sense than "women and children first" in disaster/survival situations.) The societal roles, expectations, values, etc. could all change very little or quite significantly depending on the ratios involved and their causes/prevalence. Most of those changes can be plausibly tweaked for your fictional setting, however. You can assume a matriarchal society could be a perfect war-free utopia, or you could assume that the womenfolk would be the ones to take up arms. --- Depending on the fictional world you want to create, there are a few ways that a female-skewed gender imbalance might occur: 1. Infanticide - This is basically how China's gender gap became so pronounced. If society wants all boys then aborting lots of girls will adjust the ratio directly. The problem here is that back in "warrior" times gender determination occurred after birth, and childbirth itself was a rather dangerous and costly (energy intensive) undertaking. Throwing away half of all living offspring only raises the average societal investment per child. 2. Magical/Herbal Remedy - Pretend that you can take a plant/pill to guarantee female offspring. Unlike the infanticide method above, this method wouldn't put would-be-mothers through an exhausting nine-month coin-flip. Instead, society could push the gender-gap as far as they want or need. If a small nation could somehow guarantee itself relative safety for a generation or so, then heavily skewing the gender towards female would be the fastest way to grow the population. Although men may be physically stronger warriors, if your population can double in less than half the time you should be able to field larger armies and/or bounce back faster from bouts of famine/disease. 3. Genetic Birthrate Factors - Humans don't birth at exactly 50:50 male/female because fetal mortality is slightly worse for girls on average. If fetal mortality weren't slightly different, but drastically different, then birthrate ratios could shape society at large. If a dominant X-chromosomal trait makes viable female embryos very likely to twin, then the female birthrate could increase (provided of course that death-during-childbirth doesn't become significantly more likely when carrying twins) and those offspring would out-breed non-twinning mothers until the trait became widespread in the population. Alternatively, if the only Y-chromosomes in the gene pool are very sickly, and for example cause Y-chromosomal sperm to swim very poorly or have cause male embryos to have very low early viability, then those factors could similarly raise the female birthrate (by lowering the relative male birthrate). --- Ultimately, it would all depend on what you want for your fictional world. Is this some Amazonian island in a male-dominated world, or is female-army the worldwide norm? Is the female birthrate something that society engineers, or something natural? If the Amazonian army wins and starts to take over the world, do they dominate the gene pool or do the Amazonian genes become watered down? [Answer] If warfare emphasised the ability to multitask, that would be a trait that would tend to favour human females than males. This is increasingly the case, with technology multiplying each person's fighting ability at the risk of overloading the war fighter's attention to pay attention to everything happening in the combat zone. Having said that, we're talking about changes to the species, so anything that increased mental acuity and speed, aggression, bravery and ability to sacrifice the self in favour of the greater good in the females would be great. Much of these can be achieved by changes in hormones or development, and group bonding would help with the self-sacrifice. Alternatively, or perhaps in addition, it's possible that there are corresponding changes to the males. If their primary biological role was to provide sperm (as in some fishes), they might be physically small and weak. Or perhaps they take more after seahorses, and possibly incubate the babies or take care of the young. [Answer] Several other answers mention the biology of breeding, so there's you answer - flip the breeding behavior, flip the gender roles. Or at least alter them. It could be that males carry and support the child, or must care for them when young, like [seahorses](http://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/group/seahorses/) where males carry the unborn, or [emperor penguins](http://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/e/emperor-penguin/) where males brood the eggs. Or it could be, as in David Weber's series [March Upcountry](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiRpovOmMHUAhUEOiYKHf6vBNAQFggoMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMarch_Upcountry&usg=AFQjCNHwmXiTrQtYQX-2LmxNVqYVfmy_3A&sig2=Y9dJDsRSIwfC2VCGdglNvQ), that for whatever reason, the one depositing genetic material gives a single large gamete (egg), and the one receiving said material (and incubating the child) has an environment with many competing gametes (sperm) - in which case the "male" vs "female" might be pretty academic. Or in a situation where parenting duties are, by some required necessity, more evenly split, and shuffling pairings very rare (like a monogamous species) there would be no particular pressure to gendered armies, since a child cannot survive without both parents. After all, it's better for a pair to fight and die, and loose their future possible offspring, rather than two of the same gender fight and die and loose the potential of two breeding pairs. In that case, I would expect to see armies evenly split between genders. But culture could fill in the gaps to nudge these equal-opportunity armies into more female ones - maybe something giving a higher fatality to males (so more widows able to fight), or something where specialization leaves the females with more tools suited for a fight (who is in nearby, who has tools, who has other duties) which can snowball through culture to expect fighting to be done by women, instead of men, and thus demand from one and prevent the other till that tendency is treated as fact. [Answer] Size. If females are, on average, larger/stronger than their male counterparts, then it would make sense for them to engage in hunts or battles. One such example is the Tyrannosaurus Rex, where the female is much larger than the male. Another example is the [Anglerfish](http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/anglerfish/), where the males are so much smaller than the females that they instead function like parasites and latch onto females who do the hunting. Finally, female spiders can grow to be much larger than their mates, and will even [eat them after mating](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0623_040623_spiderfacts_2.html) (i.e. after the male has provided the necessary reproductive utility and is now useless). [Answer] First, it is important (but not so easy) to separate true biological factors from society-imposed gender roles. In real history, women were not supposed to serve as soldiers, even if individually they might have had a greater talent for it. So, for argument sake, I assume that in your society all such stereotypes are removed and soldiers are judged entirely on their ability. We can look at this question in two ways - one with having human biology preserved as it is, and one where we are allowed to play with it. 1. No changes in biology. Female soldiers are in big disadvantage. They are smaller and weaker, have less stamina and have extra physiological needs that men don't have. In modern warfare, those disadvantages can be alleviated, but in cold weapons era, women, in general, could not be a match for men. A common trope with female archers is not realistic - you need a very good strength to shot from a longbow. So, even if women can serve in the army, only a few can be better than men. 2. Change in biology. If we allow females to be physically superior to males in at least one aspect, whole picture changes. Strength, speed, endurance - any of these factors can turn females into superior warriors. [Answer] Females are generally smaller than males: less muscular, shorter, lighter frames, often half the weight (if fit). They consume fewer calories. Make the war require small soldiers for tight spaces; due to the equipment, or to reduce the energy of sending them to space and sustaining them there, or having chronically poor supplies of food and thus requiring females on the small end of the spectrum as the only candidates that can really do the job. Under physical or nutritional stress, women will tend to stop menstruating and are not likely to get pregnant in an army full of females; so these are not big concerns (and menstruation is not disability anyway). Their brains and autonomy will remain intact: Think of it as two soldiers for the price of one (if the 'price' is food, shelter, and transport costs). Women can also be highly trained in martial arts (and armed martial arts; involving knives; guns, etc). This will offset most of the muscular advantage of males in battle: A woman can use a knife to fatal effect as well as a man. Plus, the vast majority of modern warfare does not demand any physical wrestling or tests of sheer strength. [Answer] In real history, most armies and war bands were mostly composed of young men mostly in their twenties with some older and younger men. Female warriors and soldiers have been comparatively rare. But even a comparatively minor part of military history would contain many thousands and probably millions of examples. This list may be useful for examples of individual woman warriors and maybe a few all female military units. <http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/women-in-combat>[1](http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/women-in-combat) However, there have been military units composed of females. The Dahomey amazons were apparently an rather elite unit in the mostly male forces of Dahomey. <https://www.google.com/search?q=dahomey+amazons&oq=Dahomy+a&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l5.6207j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8>[2](https://www.google.com/search?q=dahomey%20amazons&oq=Dahomy%20a&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l5.6207j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) And during the desperate last stages of the Paraguayan War of 1864-1870 there were units of boys and units of women. I have heard of units of Russian female warriors in WWII, though that was more modern warfare than fantasy stories depict. Women in Battle by John Laffin (1967) probably contains many stories about individual female warriors. But it might mention other units of female warriors. <https://www.google.com/search?q=John+Laffin+Women+in+battle&oq=John+Laffin+Women+in+battle&aqs=chrome..69i57.8727j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8>[3](https://www.google.com/search?q=John%20Laffin%20Women%20in%20battle&oq=John%20Laffin%20Women%20in%20battle&aqs=chrome..69i57.8727j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) The thought has occurred to me that woman archers should be quite dangerous. I think that anyone shot by a woman or a child isn't going to complain that the arrow didn't hit hard enough. Of course the average man could probably draw a bow more powerfully than the average woman and thus should be able to shoot at a woman at a distance where an average woman could not shoot back at him. But if the available materials for bow making limit the draw strength of bows enough that an average woman can draw and shoot a bow as well as an average man, women can be as good as men as archers. Mounted archers have been an important part of many armies in history. And if your world's horses are very small and light, perhaps average women could ride longer and faster than average men could and thus would be preferred as mounted archers. In more modern and more push button warfare, women should be as effective as men despite differences in average strength. I can imagine that in primitive aerial warfare where airships or airplanes cannot carry heavy loads, female pilots, navigators, and bombardiers may be preferred to males to save weight. Similarly in early and comparatively low tech space warfare females could be preferred in order to reduce crew weight. [Answer] In terms of normal ground combat, human women are going to be inferior to men on average because women tend to be smaller and have less upper body strength. Modern weaponry evens out the advantages somewhat, but when you are marching down the road, that 11kg GPMG isn't going to magically become lighter because a woman is carrying it. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bK0W3.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bK0W3.jpg) *Still* weighs 11kg plus tripod and ammunition.... But women socialize differently than men do, and there is a battlespace where they do have advantages. Looking at how people interact on social media, women can be both better "friends" and far worse "enemies" than the average man. Men generally are solitary, or work effectively in small, task oriented groups (much like the Ancestors would go hunting in small groups for their family, clan or tribe). Women's socialization is different, and there are even entire memes and generalizations like "mean girls" to provide a "rule of thumb" to how women behave. (YMMV). The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has channeled this behaviour by recruiting women to form "Twitter Platoons" which are charged with monitoring the internet and engaging social media platforms to present Israeli messaging to the world, and counter anti Israeli messaging. This can be considered a form of PSYOPS, and evidently they are quite good at it, since there seems no signs of this unit disbanding any time soon. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/R5F9X.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/R5F9X.jpg) Member of the "Twitter Platoon" So for fighting on the cognitive plane. women may be capable of fighting at a much different level than men can. [Answer] ## Cultural beliefs are not necessarily rational Look at the many examples of sincerely held sexist or racist beliefs people have had throughout history. A hundred years ago a typical American (of either sex) would have been doubtful that a woman could drive a motor car. They would also have probably believed that certain races made better soldiers than others (Irish people were thought to be natural warriors and Africans not). All of this was nonsense of course but people were slow to question these received ideas. ## War can be an expression of culture War has not always been seen as competition between two sides to reach maximum military efficiency - this is actually quite a modern idea. In the past warfare has often been defined and limited by cultural norms. For example, the ultimate expression of medieval warfare was the clash of armored knights of horseback. This wasn't necessarily the best way of winning a battle in every given tactical situation, but people of the time were to some extent limited by their conceptions of the "proper" way to fight a battle. So to answer your question: Imagine a warrior culture that celebrates something other than raw size and strength where men would be obviously superior. Imagine their form of war emphasizes cunning, dexterity or discipline (the Romans are a good example here - they believed that the discipline of the legionaries made them better soldiers than enemies like the Celts who they conceded were physically larger). Now let's suppose this society is matriarchal and has disparagingly sexist ideas about their menfolks' martial qualities: "Of course mean can't be soldiers - they are too stupid to understand the tactics. They are only good for working on our farms" "You could never trust a man in battle - they are all cowards who would run away at the first sign of danger" These ideas need not be scientifically true because if people were raised from birth being told these things over and over they would conceivably be as slow to question them as we have been in the past over similarly sexist ideas. Of course, all this begs the question of how that society might have got into that state in the first place as admittedly there aren't many examples of matriarchal societies. [Answer] In order to make a situation in which women are favored over men, you need to implement the physical differences. The biggest difference between men and women is physical size/ strength. This may seem like a disadvantage for women, but it can be an advantage in some places. For example, on a ship crossing an ocean, travelling thousands of miles, storing food and conserving space are imperative. An all-woman crew could require less food, and take up less space, allowing for more sailors. So any situation in which supplies/ space is limited, women may have an advantage logistically. I do not know the era of your world, but another advantage is that women breathe less air. So in a submarine or in space, women could be logistically more efficient. [Answer] Religious/Cultural habits If you don't want to change anything biological, you could go down the road of some sort of religious belief or cultural trend. A religious commandment directly forbidding men from violence or they won't get into the afterlife, this should be enough of a reason to dissuade men from joining the army unless they want to go down the Mulan route. Or, you could by proxy use religion to make men useless in an army. A religion enforced malnutrition or sickness. Perhaps men are outright forbidden to eat certain foods and thereby are all malnourished, or all men ritually eat certain foods which cause illness. This makes men weak, and people are just used to men being weak and sickly as their natural condition. Perhaps only men are allowed to take drugs, which makes them unreliable warriors. Or men habitually take opiates while women take khat or something. The options are endless really. [Answer] # Replace live birth with eggs This one's pretty simple, actually. Much of our presupposed notions of social order come from biology. A big one is that with mammals, the females are often vulnerable for a long time just to create - in the case of human beings - one child. Elephants take much longer than humans to produce children and twins are extremely rare. An egg-laying species would not have this problem. Once the eggs have been laid, the males can watch over them while the women hunt. Culturally, this could evolve into a kind of gender-swapped harem, where males are valued for their abilities to raise a large number of youths. In addition, because the males do not have to gestate for any period of time, they need not worry about muscle strain, therefore freeing them up to perform more labor-intensive tasks required of a domestic setting. This could be very useful for a species engaged in agriculture: the women run the show, while the men work the fields and raise the young. [Answer] I feel like some answers here take a great deal of experience of pregnancy for granted. That is where I would make changes. Shorten the fertile period of a woman's life. Make it age 15 to 25 or so. Human female anatomy is stupidly designed for having babies. It is far too easy to get caught in the birth canal. Look at one of many animations of childbirth. See all those rotations. Each one is necessary to get through the birth canal and is an opportunity for the mom to tear (and be more vulnerable to infection) and for the baby to get caught. Pregnancy and childbirth shouldn't have to be so deadly. Don't just widen the hips because that messes with knees. Smaller babies might help. Eight month pregnancies. Never have women laboring on their backs, more movement, standing, or on all fours. I've researched medieval obstetrical practices (for fun!). Even elite medieval women have evidence of severe bone loss because of pregnancy after pregnancy. They were likely using a wetnurse. Make sure your society has many sources of calcium in the diet. My point is that if pregnancy and childbirth take less out of women they have more time and energy to devote to being a warrior. [Answer] ## X-linked recessive issues So-called ["X-linked recessive disorders"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-linked_recessive_inheritance) are caused by a mutation in a gene on the X chromosome -- as a result, they are much more prevalent in men than women because even if the daughter gets a broken X chromosome from Mom, Dad provides a working one (provided he doesn't have the disorder himself), while the son is stuck with whatever Mom gives him for an X. In particular, a commonplace X-linked recessive mutation that has negative effects on fitness for combat (such as the classic example of haemophilia A and B, or some type of dystrophy or hemolytic disorder), while helping the men survive some other threat in order to reproduce (like how [G6PD deficiency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose-6-phosphate_dehydrogenase_deficiency) protects those with the mutation against malaria), would drive women (who are less likely to be affected) into combat due to many of the men simply being unable to fight well (or even at all). [Answer] My own fictional setting is similar. Women dominate warfare, particularly cavalry - and even where most footsoldiers are men - as is the case in the navy - women are still predominant among the higher ranks. I mostly handwave it, but where I have to explain something, I refer to contraception; it is free or cheap (the seeds of the plant called margan), widely practiced, and makes women able to not only control whether they get pregnant or not, but to decide when and to whom they will get pregnant. The matriarchal system then makes sure that if they say that some man is the father of the child they are expecting, the burden of evidence falls upon the man, not upon the woman. Therefore they don't fear rape - rather the men fear being married against their will - nor singlemothership, for they will be able to force marriage upon practically any man they wish (exception being, of course, already married men and priests, which to them are the same thing, as priests are "married" to the Goddess). As a consequence, higher class men tend to marry very early; pre-natal marriages are even common. There are several contradictions and non-sequiturs in this tale (how does it happen that low fertility doesn't hamper their military strenght, allowing some marginal patriarchal society to overcome them, or how greater physical strength doesn't make male soldiers a natural choice, etc.) But if I was going to explain each peculiarity of that society, it would not be a fictional work, but a sociological tractatus on an inexistent society (I do work upon that eventualy, but it is not the kernel of the storytelling). Evidently, we do not know everything about our own species and civilisations, and they - being stuck at a kind of late feudalism - know even less about their own; so sometimes it is useful to just say that "nobody knows for sure; Arta the Grammarian thinks it is because this and that, but Gisliin the Nitpicker derides her 'incompetence' and says it is obviously the other way round". [Answer] As long as they contribute the egg, they are female. Feminine warriors, however, might be a little hard to cook up if you define femininity in the classical sense. You can assert that they are,on an essential level, feminine by virtue of a particularly recognizable similarity, like a desire to shape their environment rather than adapt to it, which is highly constructive in caregivers and all around considered womanly. It would definitely give them a unique way of fighting. On the physical side, they might be biologically configured to have stronger offspring if exposed to conflict in their lifetimes, leading to a belief that that's what "God intended". Mammals, monotremes specifically, can lay eggs but that might make things a little too different. [Answer] For primitive cultures: To make female armies the norm, you have to find some way to make women more expendable than men. Egg Laying (rm -rf slash) is a start but it doesn't go far enough. 1 male can impregnate a large number of females. The female can only gestate the offspring of 1 male. This can be overcome to some extent by having the females experience triggered ovulation with litters. Cats can have kittens from multiple males in the same litter. This only reduces the discrepancy, not eliminate it. Before modern medicine giving birth was very dangerous. Killing off women through other means was just socially suicidal. For advanced cultures: Overpopulation reduces the issue. A good war killing off the women will do more for long term overpopulation elimination than killing off the men. If overpopulation isn't a problem then female armies will work in the short term but would still have long term consequences. Artificial wombs will eliminate all of the above arguments. Then the only issue will be cultural. [Answer] Women can only be as good as men in the battlefield if that battlefield doesn't demand too much physical activities. Women are weaker and suffer more lesions then men because testosterone. But if your battlefield depends upon knowledge and intelligence, the dimorphism won't matter. It doesn't matter if the crew of a nuclear submarine is male of female: it still sinks other ships and launches nukes. So, you need knowledge warfare, that means modern and near-future warfare, dominated by drones, hacking and machinery that takes years to learn how to operate, like subs. Or magic, if magic is knowledge-based. Won't matter if it is a sorceress or sorcerer, the lightning bolts will fry you dead the same way. ]
[Question] [ Okay, I know this is a crazy question, but go easy on me (I'll restate it below in more precise terms): Why would merpeople (mermen and mermaids) allow someone to ride them? Such a ludicrous question demands some background information, so here goes: 1. The setting is a coastal kingdom (the Mainland) and the islands it holds power over (the Outlands). The sea is very much a part of their lives, and so merpeople by extension are a part of everyone's lives. 2. The humans want to ride merpeople because they swim better than humans (they're faster/more agile), and for much longer than humans. Yes, they could use boats, but riding a merperson is cooler/more fun/less lonely/why not? It could be a status symbol, maybe? 3. The merpeople think it's ridiculous that people want to ride them, but some of them are okay with letting a friend ride them (think a piggyback ride; that's not a big deal now is it?) or getting paid to carry someone. Others are curious as to why humans suddenly want to do this and want to investigate and/or find out, while others are curious and want to try it out just for the sheer novelty. TLDR: Restated, what could possibly explain merperson riding becoming more than a fad, a nation-wide (if not world-wide) phenomenon? (Ex: Pokemon. Having two creatures fight each other has been a mainstay of human entertainment for many years, as evidenced by Roman gladiators, cockfights, and dogfights; but only in Pokemon and its various ripoffs does animal v. animal combat become an absolutely massive, inescapable part of society. That's kind of what I'm planning here if that's possible). [Answer] Maybe mermaids don't allow boats. Boats are dangerous to mermaids who like to spend time near the surface, they disrupt the fish, they block out light, and they are very noisy (especially if your world is advanced enough to have invented engines). The mermaids and the humans have come to an arrangement whereby people don't use boats, or the use of boats is strictly limited in some way (maybe only large transports in specific and narrow routes), but in return, the mermaids agree that they will provide an easily accessible alternative water transport; they agree that at any time, some of their number will be available to help people navigate the water. The mermaids think of this as carrying humans, rather than being ridden. [Answer] Like the Pink Floyd sang > > Money it's a gas > > > Many activities carried out by humans are seen as ridiculous or even worse, yet there is someone who is willing to do them behind compensation. Once your meerpeople realize that riding a human around pays the bills, more will consider doing it as a source of income, maybe in times of hardship. [Answer] Merpeople carry land people across the sea and land people carry merpeople overland. That allows merpeople not just the enjoy the wonders of the land, but also to access lakes in the Mainland that would be hard to reach by them alone - a mermaid is just as agile on land as a seal. Both kind of people carrying the other one are often arranged as gifts to friends, as bargains (I carry you to the lake and next week you will carry me to the island), as teams (getting to the lake in the middle of the island of a larger lake needs teamwork) or just as part of commercial relations, since sea and land usually trade a lot. [Answer] For the same reason richshaw drivers do - tourist money [![richshaw1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hrwCE.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hrwCE.jpg) [![richshaw2](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lcPBE.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lcPBE.jpg) Even when we have easier ways to get around, people still pay others to run/pedal them around a city. Why? They're tourists! You don't need a deep reason for merpeople to give piggyback rides, you just need a human willing to pay for it. You don't even need a convoluted bargaining system, merpeople make money which they can then buy things that are tough to procure in the ocean, but easy to find on land. As mentioned in [NMHD](https://nomoreharvarddebt.com/2011/09/11/back-to-the-drawing-board/), many people see pedicabs/rickshaws as luxury goods. [Answer] As a Job Just like humans will work as rickshaw drivers, mermaids will sometimes find work carrying humans or giving rides. It's relatively little work for them, as they're just swimming and their strong physiques can support the weight of an average human, and the novelty or the convenience is a strong incentive for the humans to pay well. As a Mutually Beneficial Arrangement Humans have access to many resources that the merfolk don't, and vice-versa. The peoples along the coastline have enjoyed a long friendship and alliance, and work together to help each other hunt and gather. The humans may throw fishnets or carry bows or spears, and their vantage point and ability to sit out of the water makes the tools far more effective than if a mermaid tried to use the same. Similarly, humans may have particular skills or abilities that merfolk don't, and so bargains are struck, such as "take me out to your shelter on the reef; I'll repair it and set up a fire while you hunt fish." The human gets more/better fish than they normally would and the mermaid gets a repaired shelter and to enjoy well-cooked fish (fire obviously being hard to come by otherwise). This useful arrangement has spread over the years, and now it's not uncommon to see mermaids far from their natural lands, supporting themselves via mutualism with humans. For the Fun of It Mermaids differ significantly in physiology; what's to say they don't have somewhat different mentality or values as well? Perhaps, like dolphins, mermaids simply love to swim and play, and are often glad to include humans just as human children are glad to have others join into their play. The mermaids don't see it as work necessarily, but just as good fun, and they take delight in the joy and amusement of others, be they human or fellow merfolk. [Answer] Easiest answer slavery. Mermaids sell lesser mermaids (begers, criminals, orphans and other unfortunate soul) to wealthy humans. [Answer] Having some trouble imagining how you ride a mermaid. Do you hang onto their shoulders and sort of hug their back, and try to match their undulation? Because if you ride them like a horse, you're going to get hit in the stomach by a wave of water every time. Maybe you should give them saddle,s with large frontal saddle horns, which split the wave so the mermaid gets less resistance and you get less water? Seems good. As for why... well, you mentioned many of them consider it ridiculous, so that suggests there is some kind of tension, even if superficial. You like have a pro-human faction of mermaids who support the silliness, and an anti-human faction who see it as human mockery of mermaids. The pro human faction likely has more trade and beneficial economic interaction with humans, some might have married humans or became their mistresses or such. Those latter ones may be important, as it could be seen as a bizarre romantic activity. Eventually, when the fad gets going... pro-human mermaids could see racing and showing off with acrobatic tricks, with a cute human in tow, as a sort of status symbol. Think along the lines of throwing in synchronized swimming, minor obstacles, acrobatics, or even theatrics like singing--until it's no longer just a fad, but a whole plethora of Olympic sports. [Answer] ## Teenage Rebellion Originally carrying a human was seen as a semi-taboo, but we all know the younger generation likes to rebel against the stodgy traditional ways, and despite the recrimination, and in some instances punishment, from the elders, "human lifting" became a fad through-out the sea. Those doing the "lifting" became friends with and ended up receiving gifts and trade from their newfound land-friends. By the time they became elders themselves it was mainstream (haha!). Now a days, generations later, some teen Mers will rebel every generation by not lifting humans, but the economic and social opportunity cost make them a radical few instead of it ever taking off in a fad. [Answer] You mention Pokemon, but in Pokemon there is a practical reason why Pokemon taming took off: taming Pokemon gives you a huge advantage. When you live in a world where the native wildlife can control lightning, fire, ice, water, and even the very earth beneath your feet, and they are borderline sapient, taming them becomes a much more profitable activity than humans taming animals IRL. You see this in the show and games when you have water Pokemon ferrying people over water, Pikachu and Voltorb powering power plants, and fire Pokemon being used as blast furnaces (and in a lot of Pokedex entries). This highlights what you need for your merpeople question. There needs to be a practical reason as to why the practice of merpeople riding happened. More specifically, it needs to be a mutually beneficial arrangement. The only exception would be if the humans have enslaved the merpeople, but in that case I doubt they'd be interested in carrying humans if they were freed. Ask yourself: what do humans get out of this? What do mermaids get out of this? You've mentioned the human advantages, but you also point out a boat can do the same thing. Same thing with the merpeople. Mermaids combine the manual dexterity of a human with the propulsion system of a dolphin. What can a human offer them that they don't already have? This is what underlies every symbiotic relationship in nature and the reasonings for every domestication event in human history. If a species can provide nothing for humanity that humanity can't already do for themselves, then there is no reason to tame them except as a luxury pet (and this goes in reverse for merpeople). If there's no practical reason for people to adopt this custom, at best it's merely going to be an underground subculture done for entertainment. To be fair, there is a much more Doylist explanation to why Pokemon taming happened: Satoshi Tajiri wanted to create a world where you tamed monsters to recreate the joys of insect collecting and beetle fighting from his childhood and everything else spun out from there. The Pokemon world has literally no worldbuilding thought put into how it functions (What is the governmental structure of Kanto? What do the Elite Four even do?). Everything in the Pokemon universe is in service to the plot, rather than considering how society would actually function. This shows you could just say "I want to have people riding merfolk in my setting" and let rule of cool carry you, but that may not work. [Answer] Same reasons why humans have carried/transported other humans around (and still do): * Compensation (money). The most obvious reason and very common on Earth. Just think about all the taxi and rickshaw drivers. For this you need something the merepeople want. Maybe forged metal items since it’s hard to forge underwater. * Compulsion (slavery). For this you need to be able to threaten them. Maybe poison their water if they don’t provide 1000 full time merepeople for rides. Or abduct individuals and make sure they can’t escape. * Ceremonial (e.g. carrying a leader around can be a great honor, or just think about funerals). Needs some kind of (shared) culture. Religion could also work. Maybe there is a sect which believes that humans are merepeople which have failed to “ascend” and carrying them around can help them do so. [Answer] Sexual appeal etc. (plus having fun): * Swimming is the best. * Swimming with a cumbersome, ill-fitting weight builds muscle and shows off to prospective mates. * Plus, the dead-weight actually gives you money to drag them through the local waters. * Merpeople will lose their sense of derogation when they see the shapely swimmers and, for some more importantly, their ready cash. * You get to build aesthetically-pleasing body mass, attract your significant other, have fun, and get paid for it. [Answer] To gain our trust before drowning us all and taking over the world. [Answer] When a mermaid and a human love each other very much ... AKA: Maybe it's an expression of love between a human and a mermaid? ]
[Question] [ The setting: * Present day. The country is up to you. Whatever would be easiest. The guy: * Highly skilled. Maybe ex-Marine? Special forces? You can have him be "top of his class" at just about anything, but not a genius or a superhuman. * Has a death wish, but like, for everyone. He knows that he won't come out of this alive, and he doesn't care. He just wants the whole world to burn. Total human extinction if possible. The duplicator: * Shaped like a gateway large enough for a car. * Only works once. Once you hit the button, it stays on, producing the exact same thing over and over, with no option to change what it makes. * To activate, fill up a car with whatever supplies you want duplicated (i.e. a car containing you, your savings in cash, provisions, C4, guns, and ammunition), then hit the button. From that point on, an endless line of cars driven by clones of you drives out of the gateway at a rate of about 5 per minute. * All duplicates are created at once, so the duplicate who drives out 4 hours after you hit the button has been driving for 4 hours (they come out of [parallel universes](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/152275/parallel-universe-portals-an-infinite-hall-of-mirrors); I don't want to get into it). They can refuel and replenish their food supplies in the other universes, so don't worry about that, but their need to sleep might impose time constraints. * Can be placed anywhere (the limiting factor is where to park all the identical cars). Can't be moved after the button's been pressed. The question: * Can this guy and his duplicated army get past a country's defenses and launch their entire nuclear arsenal? The way I see it, he has a well-coordinated, well-equipped, and talented army that can assemble innocuously in a matter of hours or days, so it seems plausible that he could overpower them before reinforcements arrive. Then again, he doesn't have nuclear codes or any clear way to get them. Does he stand a chance? Are nukes even his best option? [Answer] ## Make your own, Sorcerers Apprentice style Pickup truck, guns, ammo, food, radiation suit, 10 7kg Uranium bricks.(Federal government allows you to get 7kg at a time and possess no more than 70 in a calendar year reputable sources may do sales checks and block your shenanigans) Set this up outside a flooded quarry. Set up pumps to drain the quarry. As clones come out with their uranium they pile stack it neatly and take up guard duty. Within a few hours the stack will be big enough that the clones will get radiation poisoning while stacking so shut off the pumps and dump bricks over the side. As the water starts to fill the quarry again the reaction speeds up. Once it really gets going huge radioactive clouds will start circling the planet. It will make Chernobyl look like a wet fart. The only thing that could be done to stop it would be to nuke the pile itself, which would be worse in the short term, but perhaps the surface would be colonizable by mole people in 1000 years instead of 10000. [Answer] Flood a democratic country with nuclear weapons with clones. Make sure each clone gets to be registered as an elector. Candidate the master as president (or prime minister), and have the clones vote for him. Sure victory. Once he is in the war room with access to the nuclear suitcase, let him fire it with no mercy. Wait for retaliation. [Answer] Simply throw the gateway into a river. Let's say there's 2000 cubic meters of water per second flowing out the river. After 12 seconds, there's 4000 cubic meters of flow, after 24 seconds there's 6000 and so on. As the duplicates are all created at once, there won't be any backpressure reducing the flow. After a day, you'll have imported 622 cubic kilometers of water. After a year, 82 million cubic kilometers of water. After 8 years and 5.3 billion cubic kilometers of water, Mount Everest would be under water. Mission accomplished. Edit: Some people in the comments don't understand how I've arrived at these numbers, so here's how it breaks down: * The question, at the time I've answered it, doesn't specify a time or length limit for objects passing through the portal, or that the first duplicate has to finish coming out before the second duplicate starts coming out. * However, it does specify the same thing will be produced over and over, at a rate of about 5 per minute (i.e. 1 every 12 seconds) * Therefore, if you divert a river with flow $n$ cubic meters per second into the portal, at the output, the flow rate after $t$ seconds will be $n\((t/12)+1)$ i.e. a flow of $n$ at zero seconds, $2n$ after 12 seconds when the first clone starts emerging from the portal, $3n$ after 24 seconds when the second clone also starts emerging, and so on. And the cumulative volume after $u$ seconds will be the integral of the flow rate - $$\int\_0^u n\((t/12)+1) dt = n\u^2/24 + n\u$$ Hence, if the flow rate $n=2000$ cubic meters per second, after 8 years $u=252288000$ giving a cumulative volume in cubic meters of $$2000\252288000^2/24 + 2000\252288000 = 5304103416576000000$$ * Divide by $10^9$ to get cubic kilometers, and $10^9$ again to get billions of cubic kilometers, and you arrive at 5.3 billion cubic kilometers. * Granted, 2000 cubic meters of water per second is on the high side - but the Hoover dam's spillway has a capacity of $11,000 m^3/s$ - and thanks to the exponential, even if you had a more modest 150 cubic meters per second you could still have a meter of sea level rise in a year (resulting in massive food shortages and and population displacement) and Everest under water in less than 90 years [Answer] Why go Nuclear? Just go Toxic! Ok, so your bad guy wants to kill the world and nukes could do that sort of thing in a hurry. The problem is that it takes enormous amounts of technology, highly specialized know how to make your own, and nukes are the most jealously guarded items in the world. Toxic stuff, however can be found under your kitchen sink, and acquiring items needed to make some truly nasty stuff could probably done fairly easily in an under the radar manner. So your badguy does some research and finds out how to get the greatest lethality out of the limiting volume by means of poison. He can do all sorts of nasty twists with this. What will not only kill, but go on killing long after word? What kinds of poisons can be aerosolized and spread over an entire city. I remember the movie "The Rock" where a single rocket would have wiped out a significant chunk of San Francisco. You have a lot of options here. Anyway, he kits out with the maximum lethality per volume. Next, he sets up in a place with the shadiest shipping possible. I'm talking someplace with a corrupt government and lots and lots of container ships. Each clone gets here, drives on to a container and gets shipped to a different part of the world. Some will simply take off and travel overland, trying to get as far as they can reasonably without getting searched. At home base, or likely a little way away from the port, because you need to a place for all the clone vehicles, set up a gathering spot for not getting shipped out. Have your clones begin acquiring as many explosive materials as they can. Gasoline, Fertilizer, whatever. The Containers will get to the destinations. Certain clones will drive to the interior parts of whatever country they get to as best they can. On a designated day, possibly a couple of weeks after you push the button, you blow everything. Your poison of choice gets released in ports all over the world. Several nasty spots will erupt inside various countries all over. Have your big detonation spot go up somewhere that it will spread as far as possible over populations centers. Have each guy carry clues that he came from someplace his destination hates most. Israeli flags for Muslim Countries, Pakistani flags for India, and so on. Hopefully, What the poison doesn't kill will trigger the nuclear powers to go after each other. I am mildly horrified that I came up with this. EDIT: As an additional Nasty Twist. If feasible, make the aerosolized part from the big boom carry along some sort of sterilization agent. That way if it doesn't kill someone, it renders them unable to have children. That way you get the big die off, followed by the human population not being able to reproduce reliably enough to keep going. Also, for the guys going inland. Get as close to hospitals as possible. If not hospitals, by first responder stations. Aaaand I'm even more horrified by myself [Answer] step 1: acquire a car load of the most harmful greenhouse gases possible harmful gases could include: - Trichlorofluoromethane not only does this deplete the ozone and trap heat 4,600 times more effectively than carbon dioxide but it also breaks down into chlorine gas and is used as a refrigerant which could make it easier to acquire - Hexalfuoroethane which traps heat 9,200 times more effectively than carbon dioxide and persists 10,000 years - Nitrous oxide, this may be the easiest to acquire step 2: release the duplicated gases into the atmosphere As your replicated car load of compressed greenhouse gases come out of the duplicator release the gases into the atmosphere. These gases will contribute to increasing the average global temperate, increase extreme weather events, melt polar ice caps, raise the sea level, acidify the oceans and cause mass extinctions of oceanic life and ultimately make the Earth uninhabitable until the gases can be broken down. [harmful greenhouse gases reference](https://www.thoughtco.com/worst-greenhouse-gases-606789) [Answer] Potentially yes, but it needs more of the knowledge and less of an army. Nuclear weapons have several layers of protection. It is not enough to capture a nuke to be able to detonate it, and not enough to capture an entire nuclear facility to launch a missile. Intruders need to know exactly how to circumvent all security to succeed with their plan. An army of marines can potentially overrun a major military base, but still not able to launch a single missile. So I think this has to be a specialist who worked with nuclear security rather than plain vanilla marine. He'd better to infiltrate the facility in "Mission Impossible"-style operation rather than try to engage in an all-out war. [Answer] Aren't you overcomplicating things? Anything you add to infinity onto this planet will destroy everything. Add a cubic meter of water infinitely over and over, and all life will drown (slowly) ending up in WaterWorld, the plot and horrible direction of which will drive whatever surviving sentient life to suicide. Or speed it up with a cubic meter of poison. Anyway the logistics are horrible, a car every 12sec 24/7 will cause a gigantic traffic jam a few hundred miles down the road... These duplicates have all had the same instruction (so they cannot take up their correct positions unless there's a recursive algorithm -- say "follow the guy ahead"). If mental state is copied along it's going to fail because they have in their head load of roles for the 'drones' but think they're the master/architect of the plan themselves. EDIT@comments: I'm trying to start with disclosing clearly why I inherently dislike the scenario, as ANYTHING you reproduce infinitely will screw up everything (water or some semi-liquid pollutant is easy as unstoppable in this scenario; let it flow no logistics needed). Then I point out that anything you try in an organized manner is going to require rules (like fish schools or bird flocks, not that hard) that have little or no plan written in them as catastrophic jams will occur; which are things the other answers skip over. So I don't really see the two disparate parts as grounds for downvotes (but hey, I may be biased =D), they're my scepticism on the scenario. The 'just add stuff' approach is somewhat similar to the 'grey goo nanobot apocalypse' (where it's finite but just limited to 'everything now on earth'), or the Borg assimilating all they touch. [Answer] TL;DR You won't even need nukes I'm going to frame this answer based on the characteristics of the portal [described by your linked question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/152275/parallel-universe-portals-an-infinite-hall-of-mirrors), namely: > > A solid material has been discovered that, when shaped into a ring and activated (by lowering its temperature below some critical point, let's say), it forms a parallel universe on the other side. This isn't a gateway into an existing alternate universe, but rather a duplicate of the host universe > > > I'm going to assume some dimensions: the portal a rectangular ring 76 inches wide and 64 inches high on the inside with a thickness of 4 inches added to the outer dimensions, and the vehicle being driven through the portal being 190 inches long, 72 inches wide, and 60 inches high. The actual dimensions are not really important, but this is just a starting point to establish feasibility. You said "car" but I will assume you mean any vehicle roughly the size of a car so I will assume a flat bed vehicle with minimal wall and roof curvature for maximum interior volume. There will be as much lightweight armor inside (so as to not be noticeable) as possible to protect the interior contents from small weapons fire. The vehicles would be painted a boring color so as to not attract attention. It would have tires for off-road travel so it would not need to stay on paved roads. The vehicle will have a modified extra large gas tank for extended range. For convenience, I will call the material "parallelium". The vehicle would be loaded with: * villain in lightweight body armour * large dollar amount of cash and precious metals * inactive parallelium pre-shaped ring of the specified size (outer dimensions of 80 inches by 68 inches. The 68 inch height will be laid across the bed to fit within the 72 inch constraint while the 80 inch width will fit comfortable front to back. * compressed coolant sufficient to active the ring * a full tank of fuel * enough weapons and ammunition for major assualt * remaining space filled with high explosives rigged to explode in one of three ways: + remote wireless trigger + dead man's switch when villain becomes incapacitated + upon any kind of tampering At 5 vehicles per minute this is less than 1mph exit speed which will give each vehicle plenty of time to speed away to another location before the next one full emerges. The initial setup would occur in a large vacant area far enough away from any city so as to not initially attract any attention even when a large number of vehicles have come out of the portal, but also located in a location "centrally" located in the world. In phase one, as each vehicle emerges, it will immediately drive to a designated area based on its order. First priority would be get vehicles to each continent, which most likely would require transport on some kind of ship. If needed, it can be pre-arranged to have some of the components acquired and/or moved ahead of time to make things go more smoothly. For instance, it may be difficult to transport an explosive laden vehicle across the ocean unless one charters or buys an entire cargo vessel and/or greases a few palms. But if the explosives, weapons, etc. are obtained on the same continent and then staged, it will make this part easier. Also, by getting an initial distribution of as many vehicles as possible as far away from each other as possible we avoid potential chain reactions should one vehicle explode ahead of schedule, as well as making it difficult to stop enough vehicles to offset the exponential increase rate. There are around 432,000 vehicles emerging per day. If we waited up to 30 days for duplication centers to be established around the world, that would mean we need room for almost 13,000,000 cars if we are waiting to launch our attack until everything is in place which alone would take at least 50 square miles. This is only 7 miles on a side, and is also the worst case, so plenty of planning would need to be done to determine the exact logistics of where and when to send vehicles. In phase 2 part of which can be concurrent with phase 1, as each vehicle emerges, it will immediately pair with the next or previous vehicle and drive a pre-determined distance away from the portal based on the order it emerges in. When each pair of vehicles reaches their destination, one will immediately unload and set up one of the portals, and unload one of the cooling tanks to ready activating it. The second vehicle would then activate it, duplicating itself and the original contents. This process would create an exponentially increasing number of vehicles, with the number of vehicles doubling every cycle. The length of each cycle would increase linearly as subsequent generations needed to drive further away to an empty area to avoid running out of space too quick, but each established gateway would continue pumping out more vehicles able to either set up new gateways or proceed with other activities. In phase 3, which might ideally start after phase 1 was complete, but which would be concurrent with phase 2, each individual vehicle would enter rampage mode, with the driver seeking to inflict maximum damage. The ultimate end of each vehicle would be the same, a massive explosion capable of at least leveling a large building. Now to run some numbers. Suppose we amass only 100 vehicles in a particular region in phase 1, and in phase 2 have a 5 minute duplication time, which includes driving a least one minute away (one mile at 60mph), setting up the duplicator, and then producing the first duplicate. After 5 minutes we will have 200 vehicles from the first duplication, with an additional 500 vehicles per minute from the first set of duplicators. At the 10 minute mark we will have 2700 vehicles from the initial vehicles and the first duplicators, plus another 400 vehicles from the second duplication, with an additional 1000 vehicles per minute from the second set of duplicators. At the one hour mark we will have over 200,000 vehicles just from the first 12 generations of duplicators, plus millions more from additional duplicates they generated, plus another 1,000,000 vehicles per minute from the current set of 200,000 gateways already established. From this it should be pretty obvious that no army on earth is going to be able to stop this. By completing a distribution in phase 1 so we have duplicators spread across the world before phase 3 starts, this means that one the rampages begin, it is too late for anybody to do anything. Now phase 4 happens when the number of vehicles becomes so numerous that phase 3 becomes difficult. What happens when you have millions of vehicles exploding all over the place, destroying infrastructure, and so forth? More vehicles are getting pumped out, and now they have nothing to do but get as far away from the replication point as possible before exploding. Now being able to drive off-road is more important, because these explosions are now going to start destroying the earth itself. Tens of millions, hundreds of millions of explosions, until the surface of the earth is completely turned into craters as deep as they can go, and it will not stop until every last vehicle is destroyed simply by the fact that there is no place left to go for any vehicle except to explodes at the gateway that it just came out of, which is just outside the blast radius of the next gateway, and the entire surface of the earth is covered with gateways in this fashion. Even being at sea is not a defense, because some of our vehicles can take over every container ship in the world and cruise to every island and set up more duplication centers and wipe them out, keeping as many copies in ships across the world for as long as necessary to make sure the earth is reduced to rubble as much as possible and not a single living thing is left alive. It's even possible that this will destroy not only the universe, but all the parallel universes we just created, because where else will all those infinite vehicles go? [Answer] To trigger a nuclear apocalypse, the guy doesn't need to trigger all the nukes himself. Triggering a few to exploit existing fault lines is enough to watch everyone destroy themselves. For example - India Pakistan, India China, US China, US North Korea, US Russia, Israel Iran (rumored to be working on nukes). At the rate of 5 per minute, duplicator can produce 7200 clones per day. However, things like credit card, identity card etc tie into an external database (of banks, govt), so they won't work. So, your guy needs to go old school, with cash etc :P. Since he can have the right knowledge, he can be someone who already knows how to compromise a nuke carrying submarine with the right number of clones. This is possible if he knows schedule etc of the sub's stops, and knows enough to operate and flee away with it, and launch the nukes. This way, he is armed, and mobile. Once done, all that is needed is to trigger nuclear strikes on individual cities, and watch the world destroy itself. --- Of course, the best place for a duplicator in such a case will be some hidden location within the sub itself. --- However, if you want the guy to physically grab all the nukes and trigger them, that would be a difficult task - there are supposedly 8 nuclear armed countries, with over 16000+ warheads as per wikipedia. even if these are stored 10 per location, you would have 1600 really strongly defended locations, busting which will be an impossible feat given the constraints involved (intelligence, logistics, coordination, etc) [Answer] I don't think you need your own uranium or nuclear device to raise the nuclear global meltdown you want. Probably just by taking down the radars and defenses of some country with your army of clones, you can get its panicky/vengative leader to push the button. I guess this is what you want: * Deploy your duplicator in Pakistan. * Amass your army. Probably nobody will notice you until it's large enough for your purpose. * Kill all radar/AA bases that defend the country from ballistic missiles from India. * Continue to Pakistan's missile bases. * Pakistan leader panicks, thinking India will follow with a nuclear strike. * So Pakistan shoots first, their nuclear bombs to India. * India, of course, retaliates. * All the world sees how nuclear fallout will start soon producing massive exodus from India, West China and the rest of South Asia to East China. * All the world, specially China, sees how the economy of China will crumble. * You planted enough false, plausible proof of involvement of the USA in the attacks to Pakistan... * for China to think that the USA started the conflict to indirectly destroy China. * So China shoots their everything to the USA. * USA retaliates China, and also Russia, because otherwise Russia could survive the USA. * Russia gladly accepts the invitation to the party, and attacks China, USA, and every other country hosting USA forces and NATO members... It still feels a bit tricky to pull all of it off, though. [Answer] Nuclear apocalypse likely isn't your best option, it's hard to pull off. A way more effective method would be to pick a few of the elements mentioned in the [Things I Won't Work With](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2013/05/08/things_i_wont_work_with_dimethylcadmium) series. Acquire a bit of that, drive through and release. After a while the environment will likely automatically ignite the duplicates. (Which also solves the car parking problem) Assuming the duplicator keeps working you'll make everything pretty uninhabitable. [Answer] Alright, here's my own answer. It pulls ideas from MongoTheGeek, dmcontador, and Paul TIKI. Thanks to all of you, this kind of variety of inspirations was exactly what I was hoping for. Step 1: Break my own rules The guy needs to start out with knowledge of how to build an atomic weapon, a dirty bomb at least. He also needs to start out with a small amount (~1g) of weapons-grade Uranium. I didn't say he could have those things, so, yeah, I'm cheating a bit. But I think in the context of what I'm writing, I could have him be a UN nuclear inspector / specialist, which pushes both of these starting conditions into the realm of possibility. Step 2: Duplicate money and Uranium He hides out somewhere in India and turns on the duplicator. After a week of discreetly copying himself, he could have enough resources for a dozen atomic bombs. He packs them up in vans and has clones drive them out to population centers. Step 3: Nuclear war He detonates all the bombs within minutes of each other. The radiation detection systems all over the country confirm nuclear strikes, and India launches a counterattack against Pakistan. Pakistan retaliates. Proportionate response is out the window, since those first dozen strikes, properly positioned, could have killed hundreds of millions of people. Step 4: Fallout It seems reasonable that this would lead to both countries deploying almost their entire nuclear arsenals. India's first attack would likely involve at least 20 missiles, and when Pakistan fired back, they'd see it as an escalation. The resulting cloud of dust would plunge the Earth into a decade-long nuclear winter, and the resulting food shortage would likely result in the loss of 40-90% of all human life. ... guys I had reasons for asking this morbid question I swear [Answer] Start by destroying the financial markets Clone gold and stockpile. Ditto for diamonds, other precious metals and gems. Suddenly dumping thousands of tons on the market all at once causes the markets to collapse. All the world currencies devalue and gold stockpiles are worthless. Lots of people lose their jobs and others lose their pensions. Clone currency and dump it around. It's a perfect copy so nobody can tell a duplicate. Physical money becomes worthless. If the rich and powerful start losing everything, war isn't too far behind. If you repeat the same tactics in foreign countries, war is inevitable. [Answer] # No Over a year, this generates 100,000 people. This will multiply your power by a factor of roughly 100,000x over the course of a year. There are many, many people in the world 100,000x more powerful than a random person (most billionaires, for example), and none of them can reliably kill all human life on Earth. I mean, you could get lucky, but for the most part you'll just cause a fair amount of damage. Unless you gave this person extraordinary abilities (like, the ability to recursively generate portals), this person isn't significantly more "powerful" or "capable" than a random person on the street, as described in the question. [Answer] ## The Pen Is Mightier Than The Bomb Immediate violence is not necessarily the only route we can take. If we fill the car with money and digital devices filled with books on all sorts of subjects or have the person himself learn many subjects in science and biology before duplicating himself, we will be capable of duplicating 'knowledgeable' people. Perhaps this won't make any geniuses, but that concentration of knowledge can be a deadly asset. Within a few days he could potentially set up a laboratory for biological weapons, or to research nuclear weapons. His efforts would be exponentially effective (or ineffective, if he's not well-versed on the subject). He would have infinite test subjects and funds to work with, in developing his weapons. It would only be a matter of time before he made enough weapons to give him results to end the world. Another more humorous approach is to load the car with checques, rather than money. He could read up on books on politics and economics beforehand. Using his massive amount of wealth, and his knowledge of economics/politics he could collapse the economies of multiple countries and cause World Wars. > > As they say, give a man a gun and he can rob a bank, give a man a bank and he can rob the world. > > > [Answer] ## Attack drones carrying nukes and long-range fuel tanks I also don't see any restrictions about "wishing for infinite wishes" i.e. creating more duplicate portals, so I'm going to go with [Von Neumann probe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Von_Neumann_probes) attack drones, carrying nukes and a duplicator portal kit (just to speed things up). Although as it turns out, even if duplicating the portal isn't allowed, I don't think being limited to a single replicator will end up mattering that much. You haven't provided any capacity limitations other than "about 5 per minute" and the requirement that any duplicates have been continuous operating exactly like the original (e.g. battery / food consumption), so the main restrictions for any solution are going to be either speed in replication/distribution, or sufficient firepower to maintain an advancing front at a slower pace. I'm going with some of both, and allowing for decentralized production. I'm going to just stick with back-of-the-envelope estimates on the math, but this actually looks a lot easier than I anticipated. --- ## Delivery System Design - Range and Coordination Let's start with a standard [Reaper drone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper#Design), a existing, real-world, combat-proven design. We'll need to modify it slightly so the wings (and maybe the tail and landing gear) [fold back](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-sweep_wing) to fit through the car-sized entryway, but otherwise this looks like a pretty good starting point: * Max speed 300 mph (480 km/h) * Max payload 3,800 lb (1700 kg) * Flight time 23-42 hours (depending on loadout) * Range 1150 mi (1850 km) * Altitude 50k ft (15 km) These drones will have plenty of speed to clear the production area, especially if you put the original portal in the back of a cargo plane already in the air and let them come blasting through at full speed and out the back of the plane, where they untuck their wings and disperse. This is only a boost to the 1st generation, but it gives you a needed jumpstart before anyone can respond and try to down your tide of doom. If in-flight deployment from a 'fixed' point in the bay of the plane turns out to be forbidden by the OP, it's not a deal-breaker though. 2nd modification is going to be the power/fuel supply - we need to get a clone of the original to the other side of the planet to achieve full annihilation. It either needs an in-flight recharging system, or enough power to go the full distance on it's own. Let's check our initial range for an [example loadout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper#Operation) with 2 external fuel tanks and 'only' 1000 pounds of munitions - 42 hours of operation. At 300 mph, that's a 12,600 mile max range; we'll talk about the operating limitations in a minute, but our drone can already fly that far out of the box. Getting halfway around the globe requires a range of 1/2 the Earth's circumference - 24,900 / 2 = 12,450 miles. Ok, we're already there! But, we need some allowances for replication time, opposing winds, lost units from aerial defense, etc... But we don't have to actually spread our swarm all the way to the [antipode](https://www.antipodesmap.com/) of Ground Zero; we just need to cover the land masses, and honestly after getting a majority of those completely coated with nukes, the fallout and weather are going to take care of the rest in a few months. --- ## Location, location, location Let's start our doomsday plan off the coast of central Africa, say over [São Tomé and Príncipe](https://www.google.com/maps/place/S%C3%A3o+Tom%C3%A9+and+Pr%C3%ADncipe/), because all super-villain plans to destroy the world should start on a volcanic island. We'll save the islands of the Pacific for straggler drones to clean up (or just let them perish from fallout/starvation after a few months). The farthest land radially from there, from eyeballing a globe, is only about 2/3 of the way around (either New Zealand, Japan, or Alaska), so 12,450 \* 2/3 = 8,300 miles. Totally doable for the Mark 0 (and any derivates) on a single tank, so no refueling to deal with! Perfect, because carrying and transferring fuel for future generations was going to be a huge hassle. Okay, so our drones can reach the far ends of every continent - how do we control them? The original range limit of 1150 miles is based on communicating with a single, central control location; but our drones are going to be autonomous. They just need to divide up the work. This isn't terribly complicated - the Mark 0 could have a set of pre-planned routes, and each copy would get assigned one while coming through the portal (with plenty of redundancy for some getting shot down). Or just let them play zone coverage and collaborate with the nearest drones about who's going left or right. They'd need a securely encrypted, on board, distributed communication network to coordinate with, but a wi-fi mesh isn't exactly new technology. --- ## Weapon Choice So, while other villains might introduce a super-plague, or accelerate global warming with a moon laser, our plan is good ol'-fashioned nukes. Rather than try to re-invent the wheel, Mark just needs to steal a single nuke and crack its command codes. And probably replace them with his own well-tested system, since every single copy will have the exact same vulnerabilities. We could go for the biggest one we could find... The Tsar Bomba was ridiculously large at around 50 megatons, but is not a production weapon, so let's try the largest currently in the US arsenal, the [B83](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B83_nuclear_bomb) with a yield of 1.2 megatons. Yield is almost always compared to the Hiroshima yield (1bout 15 kilotons), so around 80 of those. Sadly, this firepower comes with a weight of 2400 lb (1100 kilos), which is double our weight budget after loading up on fuel tanks. On the other other of the spectrum is the [portable hand-held mini nuke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)), which weighed only 51 pounds - our drone could hold 20 of those! Sadly it only had a yield of 20 tons, or .02 kilotons, or 0.0002 megatons... ok, the technology has improved, so a similar size would yield a lot more these days, but that's still far too small for total world destruction on a schedule. Let's find some middle ground - I picked the recently-retired [W87 warhead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W87) at random from a Wikipedia list. A design yield of 300 kilotons, upgrade-able to 475; only 1/3 to 1/4 of the B83's yield, but at a weight somewhere between 440-600 lbs (200-270 kg) we can carry 2 of them. There's probably some similar design with a comparable yield and lower weight, and we could strip off some safety shielding at the last minute to save weight, so we could potentially carry 3 or even 4 with a yield in that range. --- ## Attack Plan basics - no re-replication Ok, we've got autonomous nuke-carry drones streaming out of a portal - where do we send them? Our lair on [São Tomé and Príncipe](https://www.google.com/maps/place/S%C3%A3o+Tom%C3%A9+and+Pr%C3%ADncipe/) has not just the advantage of being centrally located geographically, but is also about as far as possible from most of the [nuclear countries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons). This maximizes how many drones will be in the air before the initial strikes and counter-defense. You'd obviously want a lot of firepower in play before starting, but let's assume you're going to going to start things off in the Middle East because of the history of nuclear tension in the area - might as well try to trigger some [MAD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction) attacks and get some help from the existing nuke arsenals around the world. I'm not sure what air defense most of Africa has, but it's a fair bet that a constant stream of drones would be world news within a few hours. Obviously you'd plan ahead to map out ideal routes, but even with high altitude flight some airports are going to see you and demand to know what's going on over their airspace. No one's going to start shooting immediately, so let's pick Egypt as the first point of attack for our expanding fleet where interception begins. The middle of Egypt is 2400 mi (3880 km) away, or 8 hours of flight time. If we've been pumping out 5 drones per minute the entire time, our fleet consists of (5 \* 60 \* 8) 2400 drones, either spread semi-evenly across all of Africa, or more likely weighted toward the north to deal with the impending resistance from nuclear countries. With 4 nukes each, that's 9600 nukes to start neutralizing defense threats with across the entire continent, plus an additional 2400 kamikaze kinetic drone attacks after bomb/missile deployment that can continue much farther afield to start softening up future targets. Without even looking for maps of international defense installations (I'm sure my search patterns are already raising some flags), I'm going to assume that's enough to do some serious damage and erase response capability over a several hour radius. If our drones have some simple air-to-air measures as well, that's probably enough to put up a pretty impenetrable barrier; even without self-defense, they could just fly to intercept and scatter their payload on a short fuse for a pretty formidable blast wall. So, just keep pumping drones farther and farther afield until we've coated the entire Earth to a sufficient degree. Starting with Africa (aside from a small clear zone around the base) - 20% of Earth's land area, ~12 million square miles, divided among our 9600 nukes, is 1 city-killer every 1250 square miles (or a square ~35 miles per side) in the first wave of attacks. Not exactly carpet-bombing, but given that human population is mostly gathered in cities we wouldn't actually spread the attack evenly across a grid. That's pretty thorough coverage for the first wave. At that point, drones emerging from our base still have 34 hours of flight time, and can still reach the far edges of our target areas. We could let a dozen or so of the first wave head over the Antarctic or South America to deal with the stray islands in the Pacific before later drones could no longer reach. --- ## Attack Plan 2 - infinite wishes Now, we've done this all with a single portal - what about [thinking with portals](https://youtu.be/BePtsISQQpk?t=132)? The basic plan seems pretty formidable already, but what if we could expand production? We don't know anything about the portal itself except that it needs to be fixed to something to start operating, and can't be moved again once it starts operation. I think the intent of that restriction was probably to prevent just moving it all over spraying materiel, so I think replicating the 2nd prototype seems reasonable. It's definitely the first thing any self-respecting mad scientist would try after inventing it. It also blows up expansion, if you'll forgive the term, incredibly fast and leads to overwhelming forces that tend to ruin a story if left unchecked, which is why Von Neumann probes are a) not written about that often, b) are a terrifying idea that are generally expected to result in the destruction of everything they touch if some lunatic ever actually builds one, and c) would have rate/generational limiters built in if there was really a reason to use them. But, we're here to destroy the world, so don't worry about any of that. Let's make it a square metal frame that's relatively thin, so the assembled version can a) be carried and deployed on the back of the drone, b) contain its own unobtainium power supply, and c) be angled to fit diagonally through its clone's opening. Let's also assume it takes a negligible amount of time to set up and switch on, and starts working immediately. Adding a small delay (5-10 minutes) slows things down a bit, but doesn't really affect the math long term. So hey, to keep things simple let's make The Device air-droppable, so the drone can slow down, drop it low and slow over an open field, and then do a barrel roll and dive into it just after it comes to rest and powers on. Obviously you need to spread your base of operations to a) provide redundancy when the counterattacks start, and b) improve your coverage and rate of production. This may be Earth's last day, but you still don't want it to take all day. Let's skip the advanced calculus of exponential growth rates, acceleration/deceleration times, etc, and just look at replication as batches of drones, with a new wave every 30 minutes flight time. That gives you a production ring every 150 miles (240 km). Each portal running at 5 copies/minute will make 5 \* 30 = 150 new copies every generation. Every single drone then continues to disappear into its newly-deployed portal every 30 minutes, until after a set number of generations we decide there's enough to carry out the actual attack and stop making new portals. Turns out, that's probably only 3 generations, after which we can quit worrying about enough drones and start worrying seriously about air traffic control. * Gen 0, t+00:00 - 1 drone; 1 portal * Gen 1, t+00:30 - 150 drones; 150 portals * Gen 2, t+01:00 - 22,500 drones; 22,500 portals * Gen 3, t+01:30 - 3,375,000 drones; 3,375,000 portals (end portal reproduction) * Gen 4, t+02:00 - 506,250,000 drones (every 30 minutes) So only 2 hours in, we're producing 500 million drones, with 4 huge nukes each, every 30 minutes, somewhere within an expanding cloud with a radius of only 600 miles. Or in other words, 2 billion nukes (1 for every 3.85 people on earth), loaded in long-range drones, every 30 minutes. In the 8 hours before first strike in our initial scenario, there will now be something like (500M + 6\2\500M) 6.5 billion drones (26 billion nukes) dimming the sun over the entirety of Africa and much of the south Atlantic. Forget about targeting just the continents at this point. Earth's total surface area is only 196.9M square miles, so we're at 1 nuke for every 0.0076 square miles, or a square ~460 feet (140 m) per side. Better 20 Hiroshima explosions per city block, with uniform coverage worldwide. ...I'm not even sure you need an attack plan at this point, international nuclear defense capabilities just can't deal with those sorts of numbers. Just assign each drone a coordinate, and sit back to watch the show. [Answer] Plan A Fly a very small plane through the "gateway," the plane can be angled slightly to make sure it fits correctly. Approximately every 10 seconds a new plane will materialize from the gateway. Every 10 seconds a 9/11-like terrorist attack happens. Plan B (Unrealistic Version) Attach an exo-suit to a fresh corpse that died from a specifically modified bacteria that is designed to survive long after host-death and slow down host decomposition. The exo-suit has an AI and can connect to others of its type to learn and send commands. This would create a web-like connection between all nearby suits leading back to a computer conveniently placed near the gateway. Duplicate the corpse after activating the exo-suit. Essentially this would create a zombie and after duplicating it, we now have a whole apocalypse. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Want to improve this question? Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/196059/edit). Closed 2 years ago. [Improve this question](/posts/196059/edit) The premise: in a fantasy world I'm making, magic is a force woven into the world itself by the gods of the past. The soul of an individual is the means by which they can manipulate this force through spells and similar functions, and the more strongly one feels at one point in time, the more powerful their works of magic can be. The problem: I'm not sure how to most effectively limit the power emotion has, since I don't want a character to be able to solve everything with one adrenaline rush, dopamine high, etc. Potential solutions I've thought of: One possibility is that most magic users need to be emotionally stable to cast most large works of magic, but I don't want that to be the only thing since there's multiple magic-wielding races and it would feel contrived at least to me to give them all the same limit. Anyone have ideas? [Answer] ## Antipathetic Magic: Opposites Attract: So you want emotions to power magic, but don't want characters able to go all "dark side" and just stay perpetually angry/happy to become gods. Sympathetic Magic is magic powered by things being similar to the desired subject or effect. So suppose your magic works exactly the opposite? The energy furthest from the desired goal powers it's opposite like a battery. So when you are angry, anger fuels helpful healing magic. The Negative charge of anger powers the positive effect of healing. Want to kill someone? Love conquers all - literally. Trying to do some small, highly precise enchantment? Your frustration grows and grows until you manage to focus and WHAM, super-effect. The glory of this is that only the mages able to control their actions best, with the least impulsiveness, will be great mages. The angrier you get at someone, the harder it is to kill them. But a mage who deeply cares about someone will need to pick a fight to muster enough energy to salve their wounds. Before a battle, everyone excitedly cheers, because the wizard has made up with his girlfriend and is filled with goodwill to all - the enemy doesn't stand a chance. If certain races consistently show certain emotions, they are masters of the opposite magic, so there can be racial differences based purely on how a species feels. This does mean that there will be all sorts of opportunities to subtly manipulate the feelings of a Mage to result in desired effects. Think of how Delila manipulated Sampson's feelings. Cripple a mage before battle by torturing his parents - although I'm not sure what the opposite magical effect of despair is. Bribe a boyfriend to manipulate his loves feelings for a magical boost. IT would require some charting of powers and emotions, but hey - that's worldbuilding! [Answer] *Magic drains* the emotion** * You may need to be angry to cast an attack spell. * You may need to feel joy in order to help others with your magic. * You may need to feel a strong bond with somebody to cast a bless them them. However, magic not only draws upon those feelings. It consumes them. * After the anger evaporates, the wizard doesn't feel like attacking even without a spell. * Joy evaporates after using it up to help. * A strong blessing diminishes what the mage feels about another. This can recover in time but it does need time. Somebody who uses a lot of magic may just end up as an emotionally stunted husk of a person. Feeling no joy, no anger, no nothing. Or perhaps worse, only feeling one thing - fear, or hatred. Of course that also just means there is only a single resource the spellcaster can reach to for their spells, so eventually that will all burn up. Magic is a perilous road to take. You need to cultivate an emotion to be able to cast a spell. At the same time, the very act of using magic eats you and leaves less of you as a person. Never mind, that you have less of the resource for that spell. The capacity for emotions can recover but I can see mages may try to speed up the process artificially. Using substances that enhance and elicit given emotions is a dangerous enough thing by itself, so that's a good start for the perils magecraft can do. However, mages casting magic on drugs are likely going to burn out even faster than normal. [Answer] Frame Challenge: You Don't Really Need To You want to prevent people from using emotional highs to consistently beat enemies and complete challenges? Look, as far as I know, you can't. The more intense the emotions you're feeling, the more stressed out you are and the less capable you are of thinking straight. Feel too many strong emotions at once, or just one really strong emotion, and you get overwhelmed and/or confused. Feel strong emotions for long enough, and you'll get drained. Thus, any task that requires complexity or precision will actually be more difficult during an emotional high. Sure, you may be able to blast a door open instead of magically opening the lock, but it'll consume more energy and will likely get you caught by whoever's inside. And if you're in any state of mind that makes one want to blast a door off its hinges, chances you can't think clearly enough to do anything else. Feeling tumultuous or confused? Cool, your magical energies will be disorganized, making your spells much less effective. So instead of flinging cohesive fireballs, you'll instead get fireballs that fall apart when thrown, sloppily streaking through the air and likely dissipating before they even reach the target. (Think of a cloud of ink in the water; cool-looking but not at all focused.) What if you're feeling overwhelmed by the strength of your emotions? Well, sure, you'll have a lot of power running through your system-too much power. You know how Goku yells and glows when ramping up? Same visual, different mechanic. See, in this case, you're magically overloaded, which is painful as all get-out. You're going to scream, and your body is going to be beaten up, drained, and perhaps a little crispy afterwards. Furthermore, feeling strong emotions over and over is taxing; your mages will get drained if they try that foolish strategy (relying on emotional highs to succeed) and thus won't be able to perform as well as they could have if they simply learned how to control their emotions. Anyway, I hope this helps, sorry if it was a little too sarcastic. [Answer] I'd like to add something to all the other great answers: Monotony. Humans get used to pretty much EVERYTHING. You just can't stay angry/happy/sad for a long period of time. Your brain just gets used to the emotions and it takes a stronger burst of emotion to feel again. The worst you'll see in people in reality - unless they lose their sanity - is becoming numb after a while. It's very much the same way as developing a drug resistance. A mage that tries to act on an emotion for a long time will get used to it and it will dull, effectively "draining". This can even have long term effects, so mages will have to meditate to clear their minds and "emotion pathways" (neurons?) for more of the same emotions, and prevent themself from spiraling out of control into perpetual anger or some other emotion. You can imagine entire rituals and "self Pavloving\" dedicated to reaching the right mindset for a magic. \Refers to the act of linking a cue with a mental state, such as was done in the famous experiment widely credited to [Ivan Pavlov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov). I've recently seen a story according to which a certain person's friend made a clicking sound with a pen whenever something made her happy, so any time she were sad she'd click the pen to trick her brain into going happy. [Answer] Emotions might make characters far more powerful, but they also prevent them from controlling themselves. Use this as a plot device. A character who meets their nemesis and becomes really, really angry at them might be able to cast really powerful aggressive magic, but be unable to control it in their rage. They won't just be a threat to their nemesis. Their magic might hit anything and anyone around while their nemesis escapes relatively unharmed. A powerful magic user would not just be someone with very powerful emotions. They would also need to be able to maintain enough self-control to direct it properly. So the naive but well-meaning protagonists at the beginning of their story might cause far more damage than good. They might be gifted with extraordinary magical powers, but they can't control them. A couple unfortunate accidents might then make them afraid of their own feelings. They will try to suppress them, which makes them weak, both physically and psychologically. Until they went through some character development and learned the right balance between accepting their emotions but keeping them controlled, which makes them strong enough to defeat the big bad and conclude their story. Different amount of emotions and self-control can be used to differentiate different races, as can which emotions are how pronounced in their personality. * One race might produce some very powerful magic users, but their lack of self-control makes them very dangerous individuals which are feared and persecuted. * One race might not have that strong emotions, but is very good at controlling them. So they are very skilled at using low-level magic used for everyday tasks, but they can't do really impressive feats. * One very warmongering race might embrace their anger. They might use magic users as suicide bombers, who infiltrate the enemy and then give in to their strong anger, killing themselves and everyone around in an inferno of magic rage. * One peaceful race doesn't have much anger, but a lot of love and compassion, making them powerful healers. [Answer] There are several possibilities, depending on what kind of limits you want: Complexity vs raw power - the most extreme emotional states are not very friendly to careful thought. If using magic effectively often requires a lot of mental discipline and precision, there may be a tradeoff between power and what you can use it for. * Perhaps setting things on fire is simple, but transforming, healing or creating things requires careful thought and precision, so only the most simple destructive magic can be used in extreme emotional states. * Perhaps each person using magic has one or two things they are "instinctively" good at, and only these things can be done without time and careful thought (something similar to this exists for some of the magic-using characters in the Wheel of Time series) Danger of insufficiently controlled power - much like the above, using power incautiously could be very dangerous -- e.g. setting oneself on fire with stray energy, causing explosions, or whatever. Emotions are expended - perhaps it works both ways, and magic actually exhausts the user's emotional capacity -- really powerful works of magic leave the user emotionally flat for a while afterward, so it isn't possible to get arbitrary amounts of power by frequently creating emotionally-charged situations [Answer] Performing magic is not trivial. In order to tap the threads of magical power woven into the fabric of your world the mage must focus on the minute details of the interconnections and pull exactly the right strings. They need perfect focus and lots of patience. That works really badly when they are raving mad or drunk with love. You are best able to understand that fabric and focus on the ancient, intricate rituals which need to be performed just right when you are sober, well slept and not distracted by emotions. Alas, in that state your power to do anything with what you see is at its minimum; you can go through all the motions perfectly, but they are a bloodless charade which doesn't move more than a few specks of dust. Somewhere in the middle of that spectrum is your sweet spot: Enough power to blow life into your spells, and still enough focus and patience to understand what you need to do, and do it right. As an aside, that makes great mages: They are very passionate, but they have learned to ban their emotions into that little cage in the back of their minds where they writhe and scream while through self-discipline and willpower they disconnect from them just to the degree that they need to perform their magic properly. [Answer] If you are going for urban fantasy you can always go with drugs, [beta blockers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_blocker) or some forms of SSRI anti-depressants. Both can make the person on them feel more muted emotions. A character dealing with depression or anxiety disorder might be placed on theses drugs, and it could be important enough for them to have healthy mental health that they could take the dampened magical talent as a acceptable tradeoff to having this condition treated. [Answer] You can just do away with the concept of emotions being this boundless limitless well of energy to draw from. The emotion helps make the spell stronger like an overdrive mode, but that still has its upper limit of usefulness, past which stronger emotions just don't result in stronger spells. [Answer] This exists in real life Hysterical strength is commonly attributed to adrenaline releasing some of the restrictions the body has in place to not tear itself apart. EG. it is 100% possible to bite off your own finger but you will find it hard to do so in practice. While physical strength is a mechanical process, Magic is at its core an emotional process. You have to feel the magic in the air, feel the power flow, and know what heat feels like for a fireball. Extreme emotional distress releases the innate limitations in doing nuanced casting and fine motor control for raw power. Those who used hysterical strength are often hurt after as the effects can bypass safe limitations of their strength. Muscle tearing is a potential side effect. When doing the magical equivalent, some kind of mana burnout or apathy for a time after would be a realistic mechanical effect of overloading via emotion. How does this balance? stable emotional states produce good fine controlled spells. think using a needle of magic. Using higher amount of emotion produces more power, think baseball bat or hammer. Combining states or being good at controlling emotions would allow you to do finer feats, equivalent to swordsmanship, spears, rapiers. Each has its own use and own subculture and isn't weak. A mediocre blow to a sensitive area can be just as damaging. Additionally, overloading leaves you vulnerable after, [Answer] Carry on with adrenaline rushes or dopamine highs… or create a new chemical that works like them, but without solving everything. Haven't we all heard of normally impossible feats fuelled by adrenaline, such as a mother lifting a crashed car off her trapped child? No-one could ordinarily do such a thing and even the luckiest of heroines isn't going to do it again in a hurry. You also say that using emotions and/or bio chemicals to make magic comes with a high price, as for instance shortening the user's life? [Answer] The link can get too strong. Then your wizard is in deep trouble. See, here’s the thing. You are actively drawing a link between your emotions and a desired spell. The more you link your emotions to your magic, the harder it gets to separate the two. If you spend enough time getting angry to cast fireballs, how long before that state of mind becomes a little...automatic? A little...involuntary? It used to be that when you wanted a fireball, you got mad. But now you realize that every time you get mad, you’re summoning fire. That’s inconvenient at best. Consider the seasoned battlemage who wakes up one morning, stubs her pinky toe on a bookcase while on her way to the privy, and involuntarily blows the roof off her own bedroom with a rage-induced fireball. Consider the seasoned healer who is having a romantic dinner with his beloved. It’s going great. In a euphoric bliss, his magic activates and resurrects his dinner. Better hope it only affects the carrots this time. These sorts of things don’t have to happen very often before word gets around. Mages MUST be balanced with their magic. Every single time a mage casts a spell, that mage makes it a little easier to cross up emotion and magic in an unguarded moment later. [Answer] People don't just feel one emotion. Burning hot anger makes fire magic burn hotter. Love and affection lets healing magic close wounds faster. Apathy allows ice magic to chill you to the bone. Being somber seems to allow water magic to flow more easily. If your friend is hurt, you'll get angry, diminishing your ability to heal them. You must learn to control your emotions, or you might burn your friend instead. That being said, feeling just one emotion is very difficult. Humans, the complex things that we are, display a wide array of feelings at any time. Try to be angry without also feeling grief and remorse at the wrongs done, frustration at not being able to stop them, guilt for not wanting to, and/or just plain sadness. It's hard to do a lot with magic unless you can harness that one piece you need, purely. If you want to cap it, then just say that too much of a raw emotion can harm the user. Getting a little upset will raise your body temperature just a little bit, but our bodies are constantly dealing with impossibly small changes in temperature to the point where we hardly notice. Going from 98.6 to 98.7 is not something you feel. If you let yourself be consumed by hatred, pure hatred, then you risk killing yourself from heat stroke. Too apathetic and hypothermia. Too somber and pneumonia. Only the positive feelings, those associated with life (joy) and growth (love/affection) have no cap. ]
[Question] [ I am trying to marry two concepts: * The world is conquered by the traditionally villainous creatures. One country is dominated by vampire nobility, the other is ruled by fiends/devils (dukes of hell), another by an extended family of liches, yet another by Fey lords. * The majority of humanity is part of a church that actively decries these creatures. The priesthood sees undead as abomination, devils are literally the adversary, Fey are pagan relicts. This is a religion that existed for a while in the world, before the conquest by the "baddies". How can I make the latter exist and still somewhat (not necessarily perfectly) function? I don't mean just random priests waging guerilla warfare, but having active knight orders, inquisition, monasteries, cathedrals, regular worship, whole shebang. [Answer] ## The Church Has Real Power (Just not enough to throw off the yoke of the monsters.) Churches are actually holy ground, untouchable by those unholy fiends. Crosses (or whatever symbol), when properly consecrated, hold vampires at bay (etc). The monstrous have been unable to destroy the bastions of the Church. But the power of the Church, while unassailable in its strongholds, is not able to protect everyone, all the time. So an awkward balance has formed between the vampire nobles (for example) and the Church elders. Neither can wipe the others out (though they try to with varying intensity over time), so at times and within bounds, they sort of cooperate, have truces, etc. Because the Holy powers are weakened by the treachery of those wielding them, and strengthened by the adherents' faithfulness, as long as the Church honors truces, the infernal powers (usually) cannot double cross the Church when an agreement has been struck. The infernal powers are always on the watch, though, for a chance to corrupt the Priests or Bishops, and weaken the protections of their goodness. And the Church, likewise, looks for chances to wage open war, if they can do it without losing too many men, or collapsing the agreements which shelter the common people... [Answer] The Church is controlled by the Villainous Powers Why would the Powers allow and even promote such dogma against themselves? Because by doing so they can keep the population docile while capturing any potential threats into an organization they secretly control. Most of the Church is oblivious and earnest, while the upper echelon is corrupt or even occupied by members of the Powers themselves. Vampire Pope! (Needless to say, all the hooey about vampires being afraid of the cross is just that - propaganda spread to convince everyone that a vampire couldn't possibly be in the Church, let alone the Pope!) Anybody who starts to suspect too much just happens to have an unfortunate encounter... Sure, the Church will make a lot of noise and sometimes even actions like inquisitions. But those are outlets more than anything, and never get too close to anything important. Ultimately, by controlling the Church and having them behave the way they do, the Powers ensure that challenges to their power are impotent and the status quo remains very stable. [Answer] Conquest is a tricky thing. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) won the Chinese Civil War in 1947, and lays claim to the island of Taiwan (ROC). The people of Taiwan have had none of that nonsense for the past 70 years. Taiwan is considered a rogue province by the PRC, and the PRC diplomatically retaliates against any country that recognizes ROC sovereignty. Despite this the ROC is by all reasonable measures a sovereign state, with its own internal policies and foreign relations. The geography is helpful to the ROC, as the island of Taiwan is mountainous and the distance from mainland China is enough that the PLAN has a reasonable fear of being intercepted and defeated by the USN. Your church could work the same way. There could be many areas in the world that are comparable to Taiwan, in that they are “officially” conquered but due to local geography and politics (maybe infighting between the monsters?) it is not a reality on the ground so the church uses that as its power base for a more concerted rebellion in the future. It could be a North Vietnam and Viet Cong type scenario. [Answer] ### The Church preaches justice and the rule of Good… …in the afterlife. God is all-powerful! If the mortal plane is ruled by the forces of evil, it’s certainly not because they are stronger than God. It is all part of His ineffable plan - it must be, because (see above) He’s all-powerful. See, suffering is actually [good for you](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa#Criticism). This life is but a [test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Job) to prove your faith. The demons, the vampires - and those who choose to serve them - think they’ve got a sweet deal. How sorry they will be, when the [trumpets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_trumpets) of the Second Coming sound across the land and they are cast unto the abyss, while those who suffered their usurpations with faith and humility are exalted for eternity! The Church’s preaching are excoriating against the demonic elites, but their promise of divine retribution after death keeps their followers (somewhat) content in this life and discourages direct action. This suits the demonic elites just fine, and they, while claiming to disavow and oppose the Church’s teaching, are actually well connected with influential figures at the top of the Church hierarchy to make sure that the self-flagellating, spiritually-focussed orthodoxy remains dominant. [Answer] # Supernatural monsters are bad at population control If left alone to do what they want, supernatural monsters will rapidly consume all their food sources. New vampires will eat humans and turn humans and run out of humans, demons will take everyone's souls, liches will make skeletal hordes, fey will wrap everyone up in deals and leave them to starve to death or become new fey. The church has been destroyed in a lot of places. The result is that those places quickly had the villainous races go extinct. Almost the humans were consumed and soon the remaining monsters fought among themselves for the last few humans. # The church kills 'feral' monsters The official diplomatic line is that the church exterminates anyone who goes too far. Any vampire who decides to mass convert people, any fey who makes deals with every peasant they can fine, any demon who guzzles souls like a drug abuser locked in a room of cocaine. This helps the villainous factions purge rebellious and excess population. Anyone who dissents from the official dogma is kicked out, and is killed by the church. This ensures religious sites have official protection. The leaders of the factions will stop any large scale effort to attack them because they know they need them. # Both sides would like to break the deadlock Both sides would like to purge the other. The religious faction would like to exterminate all the villains, but if they go too far they get slapped down. The monsters would like to purge the religious people, but if they go too far they go extinct. It's a delicate balancing act that could break at any time. [Answer] 1. The population is very religious. Actually exterminating the religion would come close to exterminating the population. Most of the eldritch creatures would rather have a population to work for them, not do the work themselves. Ever seen a Vampire Lord muck the stables? 2. The status of the eldritch creatures is arguable, at least if you squint at it enough. A vampire, or a conscientious noble who works to the wee hours of the morning? A lich king, or a saint blessed with a long life in return for an ascetic life? 3. Senior religious bureaucrats who have been captured by "the system." Pious priests don't get promoted. And by the time an ambitious schemer becomes a bishop or an abbot/abbess, he or she owes too much to other power-grabbers, and made enemies who will topple him or her without a patronage network. [Answer] "This is what Rebellion Looks Like" The Church is opposed to the Evil Powers. However it is tolerated because it is (a) very popular and (b) largely ineffective. The Evil Powers know full well they are outnumbered. If the people of the land united against them they could easily kick out the vampires and liches and devils and faries. One of the only things that might unite the people like that is destroying the Church. If you can't beat em then join em. The Evil powers officially recognize the Church and worm their own agents inside. The Church provides a safe way for any potential rebels to get out their rebellious impulses. They go to church and give long sermons on moral virtue. They decry their evil overlords. They sing booming songs and put their hands in the air like you just don't care. Then afterwards they go home feeling like they have made a difference. After all that exertion they are less likely to take up arms and tear the nearest Human Processing Facility. The Church has several sects which spend their time arguing with each other over interpretations of the sacred text rather than kicking the devils back to where they came from. More effort lost. The Church is an important part of the Evil PR machine. By recognizing the Church, they make themselves seem more balanced and reasonable. You are allowed to decry us and say anything bad you want. Freedom of speech y'all. It is hard for an oppressed people to swallow "No rebellion in thought or deed will be permitted" without realizing they are oppressed. It is easier to swallow "Some types of rebellion are allowed. See the Church. But other kinds have no place in any civilized society." This is the case in the real world. Spreading anti-government sentiment is allowed. Peaceful protests are allowed. You are allowed to stand around in a large group, in a place you would not usually stand. But if you stand around for too long or touch the wrong thing you will be arrested for obstructing traffic or damaging private property. Do it too much and the whole group will be attack and/or locked up. Attacking government buildings with a truck and firebombs? No way. [Answer] ## The Monsters don't care! In fact it amuses them! It may even be why they're here! The monsters delight in mayhem and tormenting the normal God-fearing people. They get their jollies from watching the Church going crazy with their pompous and puritanical condemnation and then running in and spreading chaos - like a cruel child kicking over a well-ordered ant-hill. Thus, they have no interest in destroying the church or even seeing it going into decline. OK, the odd demon gets killed by a pitchfork wielding mob, but that's all part of the fun! [Answer] ## The Forces of Evil have a principle: A victory is only a victory if you beat someone with their own weapons. The weapon of states is violence, so the forces of evil beat them in war. Now all governments are destroyed or subjugated by the forces of evil. The weapon of the economy is money, so the forces of evil beat them in commerce. Now all the companies are either bankrupt or owned by Evil Corp. But what's the weapon of religion? Convincing people that your faith is the true one. So that's how the forces of evil fight organized religions. Not by killing preachers or demolishing places of worship. That would be too easy. Enforcing their religion with violence wouldn't prove the theological superiority of evilness. Only when every mortal turned their back on their former religious leaders and embraced Evil out of their own volition will Evil be able to claim that they truly conquered all the world religions. So the Forces of Evil form their own Church of Evil. Then they compete with the established religions on equal footing: By proselytizing. Will they succeed? That's a story left for you to write. [Answer] ## To show no fear It is better than that peasants think there is nothing they can really do, that the Church's powers can't really save them, than to demonstrate by your actions that you are really afraid of the Church. Nothing creates faith in the Church's power to protect like acting as if the Church can protect them. To what extent this is hubris as opposed to actual psychological effect is up to the world-building. Especially if the underlings are too afraid to tell the monsters the truth. [Answer] Your church could also operate as a network of secret societies, informal groups, etc. Compare * The [Underground Railroad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad) * Various [historical secret societies](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/secret-societies-you-might-not-know-180958294/) * Different historical (and current) religions that have had large memberships despite persecution, e.g. [Judaism and Christianity in the Roman Empire](https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-13-4-b-religious-tolerance-and-persecution-in-the-roman-empire), [The LDS church in the US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Latter_Day_Saint_movement), [forced conversion & assimilation of various conquered peoples](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/native-americans-and-freedom-religion), and limitations on religion in [the Soviet Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union). Many historical examples abound of religions that have survived despite being formally outlawed. From a storytelling perspective, decide how easy it is to recognize the dominant monsters and their agents, and how much emphasis you want to put on the religion being driven "underground". What tone do you want? Is the conflict between religious and secular / monstrous authorities important to your plot? To what extent have the religious groups been co-opted by the nominal conquerors? Is the current situation a temporary or a long-term one? If it's only temporary, how do you want it to change over the course of the story / campaign? [Answer] The Humans Rule in the Daylight The vampires burn in the daylight. The liches become inanimate during the day. The Fey lords are much weaker during the day. The Dukes of Hell are equally powerful during the day and night, but there aren't enough of them to protect and dominate all four evil nations during the day. However, because of a small number of scrying experts among all four evil groups, humans who destroy vampires, liches, and Fey lords during the day can be detected often enough to deter most daylight assassins. The penalty for human daylight attacks is transformation into hideous creatures that live in constant agony that can be temporarily relieved only by killing and eating former fellow humans. The price of this respite from pain is moral guilt too profound for human beings to comprehend. But since the majority of humans follow the Great Religion, the vampires (who need blood), the liches (who need human flesh), the Fey lords (who need human life force) and the dukes of Hell (who seek human souls) can't afford to stamp it out. A few evil mages are trying to solve this problem by searching to a magical spell that creates homunculi to satisfy the evil nations' appetites. If the evil mages succeed, the evil nations will destroy the Great Religion by destroying humanity. Until that day, humans can create as many cells of resistance and as many churches as they like between dawn and dusk. [Answer] Going to start this out by avoiding modern politics for obvious reasons, and stick with ancient politics. The church is just as corrupt as the demons, vampires, and lich's. The higher ranks within the church have an uneasy alliance with the other factions. This alliance allows them to have churches in ... most ... area's. This gives their followers a false hope, and easy control. Anyone swayed or out of alignment with the church can be branded as a heretic and killed or used as a sacrifice to feed any of the other three main factions. They were allowed to build their churches on the sacred grounds of they fey. Pushing them further and further away. The church established holidays on days that were also revered by the fey. All in an attempt to wipe any pagan foothold. This worked well for the vampires, liches, and dukes of hell. Without the old gods and powerful spells to stand in their way, all they had to do was contend with the weakness of the christian followers. Except for the fey, which they all fear, and for good reason. With spells and incantations to destroy phylacteries, walk different planes of existence, and blood that is poison to vampires; it's no wonder they are feared and hated by all. It was the fey after all who exposed the lies and hypocrisy of the church. [Answer] The church is monstrous It has an "inner" and "outer" church. The outer church is a security blanket for the people. It dispenses platitudes and appears to have a degree if influence over the monsters. The inner church is completely corrupt, and in league with the monsters. I'm thinking of several cults I have read about, the pigs in Orwell's "Animal Farm", and in today's world, the Russian Orthodox Church. You can dial this up past 11 and have a "church" that is even more monstrous than the "monsters", who really aren't as evil as the people are led to believe by this church. In fiction, Dan Simmond's "Endymion" comes to mind. ]
[Question] [ Let's say a tech company has figured out a way to travel back in time, but for reasons involving the programming of their machine, they can only go back about a 100 million years into the past, to the late Cretaceous period. Now that the company is here, they might as well try and make use of it by exploiting the natural resources and maybe see how they can get bigger and more powerful. What can they find in terms of natural resources that would give them a huge leap ahead of their competitors? I would guess that there's copious amounts of coal and natural gas in the Cretaceous, all untouched and unused? Anything else other than that? EDIT: Just for clarification, let's go with the branching model of time travel, where going back takes you to an alternate version of our Earth in that time period instead of "our" past, just to avoid any paradoxes and butterfly effects EDIT 2: Forgot to add this that this takes place in the future a few decades from now where we've exhausted most of our natural resources [Answer] # Getting the same thing over and over Since you're in the branching model, you really only need to find something once. For instance, say you find a diamond, or a large gold nugget, or anything else easily picked up and valuable to you. Take it home with you, then go back in time 1 day prior to when you found it the first time, and pick it up again, then rinse and repeat, each time going one day further in the past than you did the time before, now you have that many duplicates of what you want. You don't even need to find something valuable to begin with, you can go back the full 100 million years, put something very valuable in the alternate universe, then go back 99 million years and pick it back up (or a little more if it doesn't last 1 million years), then repeat the process of going back a day earlier and a day earlier until you have as many copies as you like. [Edit] This method assumes that the time machine can travel to the same branched off timeline, which seems reasonable, and OP doesn't address this. *\ "You Get An Iphone! You Get An Iphone! You Get An Iphone! You Get An Iphone!" \* Note: This only works because the OP lets us "avoid" any paradoxes, as an artifact of the time travel model. [Answer] Dumping waste** One of the biggest problems facing modern society is a lack of places to dump waste. This not only applies to traditional waste such as plastics, but also nuclear waste from nuclear power plants and even carbon dioxide from internal combustion engines (which is ‚Äúwaste‚Äù of a sort). If you had a magic time portal to the Cretaceous Period, even if it was to a hole thousands of meters beneath the Earth‚Äôs surface, one of the best things you can use it for is to get rid of all this waste. Plastic gets crushed back into oil due to all the heat and pressure beneath the Earth‚Äôs surface, nuclear waste has millions of years to decay and no longer become radioactive, and most importantly of all you get this all out of modern Earth‚Äôs biosphere. Of course eventually you‚Äôre going to run into problems due to converting all the organic compounds of your home Earth into trash and shipping them into the late Cretaceous, but then you have an entire biosphere‚Äôs worth of organic matter that is easily exploitable. Just mulch the dinosaurs and turn them into plastic Coke bottles. Yes, the whole thing is horribly irresponsible, enables extremely unsustainable modes of life (and is basically no different from modern ‚Äúdump everything into the ocean‚Äù lines of thought), and ends up destroying an entire unique biosphere just to get the plastic to make the latest iPod, but it‚Äôs theoretically feasible. Other commonly used reasons for going into the Cretaceous are difficult to justify. The flora and fauna will be of very little use to the present day beyond biomedical research. Bringing any species back to home Earth to repopulate the ecosystem will likely result in invasive species at best (darn tyrannosaurs, get out of my garbage!) or the introduction will fail due to lack of supporting elements (e.g., gut microbes, pollinators [[which did exist during the Cretaceous]](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191111154150.htm), symbionts, etc.). Farming will be very difficult. It‚Äôs hard to say if modern crops will do well in the Cretaceous, but given the fact that most crop plants are angiosperms and therefore dependent on pollinators is unlikely they will do well. What pollinators do exist would probably not recognize them as viable. At the same time, the only native life that would be able to be easily harvested is meat. Exactly what the plant life looks like is heavily dependent on when you go in the Cretaceous. Early Cretaceous floras were dominated by gymnosperms (i.e., conifers, cycads) and looked very Jurassic, but by the Campanian (84-72 Ma), if not a little earlier, forests were primarily angiosperm dominated and looked essentially modern. However, even by the Campanian most the plants that were present were not those that coevolved with vertebrates to produce easily edible fruits (which may have been driven by things like the evolution of primates much later) and so you wouldn't have fruit-bearing trees or most edible grains. The closest you get in the modern day is the [sago cycad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sago#Nutrition), which is very labor-intensive to process (specifically, removing toxins). So it‚Äôs unlikely that you could farm native plants. By contrast you could harvest meat pretty easily, and the edibility of meat has remained constant across the years. Stripping the seas of fish to feed people back in Home Earth is a possibility (aided by the fact that sea levels were at their highest during this time and much of the ocean area was shallow and good for fish productivity), though at the same time the late Cretaceous is known for [having](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolichorhynchops) [so](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiphactinus) [many](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protosphyraena) [large](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretoxyrhina) [predators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosasaur) [in](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachauchenius) [the](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tusoteuthis) [oceans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinosuchus) it has been referred to as ‚ÄúHell‚Äôs Aquarium‚Äù. Large predators would make fishing difficult. Especially if you have to process the catch on land, which would draw in carnivores for kilometers. Setting up settlements in the Cretaceous would be very cost inefficient beyond a last-ditch Hail Mary effort. You have all the problems outlined above, except now you also have to take care of people on site instead of shipping everything back to home Earth. You have to deal with diseases, parasites, and bacteria you have no immunity to. Cross species diseases might be rare since the largest wildlife are not mammalian, but then again avian-to-human transition is known. It‚Äôs unclear how well you could survive without doing something like New Zealand and destroying the entire native ecosystem and replace it with an artificial Europe-Asia-North America based one. Australia and New Zealand are good examples of what you might encounter, their ecosystems are distinctly Gondwanan, and so when European farmers and ranchers settled there they encountered huge problems due to the lack of ungulates or dung beetles that ate the poop of large placental ungulates. And of course you have to deal with the local wildlife, herbivores that bring all the problems people in Africa have to deal with megafauna (e.g., elephants eating crops), and of course the carnivores, who on the one hand probably wouldn‚Äôt recognize humans and their livestock as prey but on the other hand wouldn‚Äôt be afraid to walk straight into town and start making trouble. As @AlexP mentioned, fossil fuels are going to be very expensive to remove the Cretaceous and bring back to home Earth. Most of the oil reservoirs should be there, the most prominent oil deposits known today are from the Cretaceous but depending on when you go in the Cretaceous the oil has already had millions of years to form. The difference in time between a 66 million year old late Cretaceous ecosystem with Tyrannosaurus and a 125 million year old one with Utahraptor and Iguanodon is the same time gap as between Tyrannosaurus and the present day. The time gap between Tyranosaurus and Styracosaurus is the same kind of time gap between Homo sapiens and Australopithecus. Additionally, very few petroleum workers are going to want to work in an environment that has large theropods prowling around on land and mosasaurs in the water. [Answer] The Time Traveller's Gourmet Club Epicurean experiences unrivalled in our time. You have certainly never tasted fillet of stegosaur, or spicy archaeopteryx wings, or the delicate seafood delights of ammonite or the Jurassic era oysters, nearly a foot across, of what is now the Isle of Skye. Hugh Miller in his 1846 "The Old Red Sandstone" (3rd edition) describes a lobster, four feet long. But he can't tell of the delicate flavour of its tail meat, nor how the fillet of the exoskeletal Diplacanthus firms up in the frying pan, yet flakes so delicately to the fork. All this and more can be yours, for a modest subscription to the Time Travellers Gourmet Club. Events include transport from our exclusive London premises, catering by the best French chefs, and return travel to approximately the month of departure. Cutlery provided - but bring personal protection when dining in Tyrannosaur territory (see appendix). A memorial will be held on Sunday next for poor Harrington-Smythe, whose duelling pistols proved totally inadequate to the task on our recent expedition to Northern Colorado. Wines not included, though our sommelier will be happy to make recommendations from our extensive - and uncommonly well aged - cellars. [Answer] Raptor King When you consider how many idiots own tigers and keep them on their properties, can you imagine the market for Exotic Saurian fauna? I reckon you could charge millions per animal, tens of millions for the bigger tyrannosaurs, just don't bring back a breeding pair. Otherwise what could possibly go wrong? [Answer] Science! Step 1: travel back to the latest (most recent) point you can, and strip-mine all of the resources that you can. Step 2: Use these resources to create Interstellar Space Probes, designed to travel to distant stars, record loads of data, then transmit it back to us, ready to arrive about 6 months after you crack time-travel. Step 3: Travel back as far as you can, then launch the probes. Step 4: Build receiving units in the present, to capture the transmitted photographs of other planets and solar systems (As a bonus, equip the probes with Time Travel devices, so that the data received is "real-time") Step 5: ??? Step 6: Profit! --- Gambling! 1: Agree with an associate to each later bury an incorruptible record of sporting events for the next 20 years in a specific pair of locations, and not to contact each other again until then 2: You dig in one location now, and bury at the other location in the past in 20 years time, and vice versa. Once you go back, this creates a timeline in which the initial digging found the records 3: ??? 4: Profit! --- Religion! 1: Agree with an associate to each later bury an incorruptible record of Catastrophes, Cataclysms and Natural Disasters for the next 20 years in a specific pair of locations, and not to contact each other again until then 2: You dig in one location now, and bury at the other location in the past in 20 years time, and vice versa. Once you go back, this creates a timeline in which the initial digging found the records 3: ??? 4: Prophet! [Answer] Prehistoric safari You could organize guided trips to the prehistoric era. Of course you could do it for benefit of science and general public (think dino zoo). But of course that is not where the money is. The real deal is hunting expeditions! Rich people around the world would not miss an opportunity to have a stuffed T-Rex head above the fireplace. Full disclaimer, the idea about hunting expeditions is from book [Predators by Miroslav ≈Ωamboch](http://www.miroslavzamboch.cz/content/predatori) (in Czech). [Answer] Uranium mining Not much of improvement, but still - say, 0.8% instead of modern 0.7% U-235 will save a lot of enrichment. Going back some more (1-1.5 bn years) will be better, if possible - one could get reactor-grade or even weapon-grade natural uranium. [Answer] You have discovered the ultimate natural resource: land! Always a good investment because "they ain't making it any more" Holiday ranches can be built on tens of thousands of square miles of pristine, untouched land, with no planning regulations or zoning laws. Charge whatever the market for billionaires competing for the top prestige sites. Then move on to millionaires and on down until you're putting up concrete blocks for population overspill storage, prisons, etc. Herds of free-roaming dinosaurs an optional extra. [Answer] ## The only things unique to the time, the organisms. 1. Zoos pay a million dollar per year just to rent a giant panda to have in their zoo and that does not include the actual upkeep costs, but the zoos easily recover that cost from attendance fees. Image how much a living T-rex or Triceratops would be worth, or one of the giant Titanosaurs. What would Seaworld pay for a Mosasaur or a Plesiosaur. Or how about the dinosaurs we have never found fossils for. Heck the London zoo paid millions for robotic dinosaurs, what would they pay for the real thing. If you found a species that was domesticatable for food or house pets you could practically print money. 2. Then you have all the research value, even a dead t-rex would probably be worth millions. Everything that lived would have research value, even just a tissue sample would have value for genetic research, and who knows what kinds of drugs or spices you could find, the whole foundation of modern genetic research (PCR) is founded on bacteria found in Italian hot springs what might be found in the cretaceous. Then there are simple things like calibrating astronomic or climate research. 3. Then there is incidental profits, sauropods steaks, ornithipod leather, manoraptorian "fur". How much will a rich Chinese business man pay for powdered t-rex bone or scale considering what is paid for rhino horns and elephant tusks. 4. Now consider how much a wealthy hunters pay to hunt lions and tigers, how much will they pay to hunt a t-rex or titanosaur. 5. Even the trees you cut down to build a base could be sent back for profit, as rare unique woods. 6. someone else mentioned fishing so I won't steal their thunder, but you also have simple things like shellfish. Humans have done a huge number on shellfish in our time. You used to be able to buy clams the size of dinner plates on the street in NY as street food, now a clam or lobster that size is auctioned off as rare prize. You have a whole new ocean to plunder, plus it is full of shallow seas so it should be even more productive than modern oceans. [Answer] There was a science fiction story from the 1950's set in a resource depleted future Earth with a toxic polluted atmosphere. The scene opens in the hermetically sealed house of an inventor demonstrating a time machine that had been launched back into prehistoric time (a prototype of a machine for extracting mineral resources). The inventor explains to his colleague that despite this remarkable technical achievement, it had turned out that it would never be possible to time-transport anything larger than simple molecules. The colleague sympathises that this must be a great disappointment. The inventor draws his colleagues attention to the breeze coming from the machine. "What?", "That's the sweet air of the Cretataceous." Not the solution they'd been looking for, but the one they needed. Sadly I don't have my books with me anymore and I can't tell you who the author was. [Answer] I find that branching is the less interesting model. You can simply take what you want from where you want. Why bother going to the cretaceous when you could travel to 500 years ago with guns and take all natural resources from that branch, where we have data on where the mines, oil and gas where. If we don't mind destroying these branches we can even sell human hunting. On the other hand, if we go to our own branch, we could artificially create oil deposits. We grow lots of big herbivore dinosaurs in a controled location and then burry them in the proper conditions to ensure a oil deposit in a know position in the future. [Answer] # Serious usage of the fauna I like the answers involving doing safaris and keeping pet dinos as a display of power. But don't forget another thing we do with animals: we put them to do actual work. In the past I have asked a question about [using triceratops to pull carts](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/171959/21222). We could possibly ride some ornithopods such as the iguanodon. And if Google can use goats to mow their lawn, maybe we could use ankylosaurus for that too. Access to dinosaurs also unlocks us the dino husbandry tech tree. We could breed them to be even better at those funcions over time. ]
[Question] [ I'm writing a sci-fi story, and there is a giant autonomous computer planet that constantly gathers resources from around the universe using drones. It stores a super weapon at the core of the planet, inside a black hole that is also used as a main power source for the planet, so as to keep the whole device much more compact and unnoticeable. I wasn't sure how the weapon could be pulled back out, and I was thinking perhaps magnets? I haven't really heard about magnetic fields being affected by gravity, and the magnets power could be supplied by the infinite power that the black hole produces. Could this work in any scenario? [Answer] > > I wasn’t sure how the weapon could be pulled back out, and I was thinking perhaps magnets? > > > Nothing can get out of the event horizon of a black hole, not even light. And light is made of electromagnetic waves. The only thing you can get out of a black hole is Hawking radiation, but that's completely unrelated to what fell into the black hole. [Answer] > > Could this work in any scenario? > > > # Unfortunately not. If you are looking for a scientifically sound explanation, even in purely theoretical terms what you're asking just is not possible. As others have stated, nothing can escape black holes. And even if the black hole were to evaporate via [Hawking radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation), there is no possible way to salvage anything that may have entered the black hole previously. [Answer] [Kugelblitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kugelblitz_(astrophysics)). If your weapon is mass/energy then yep you are in the right territory. If it's matter in a particular configuration (a complex piece that took hundreds of thousands of work-hours to make) you may be out of luck. Black-holes can be used as energy storage, using magnetic fields to spin them up and releasing energy through electromagnetic induction as they spin-down. Trouble is, as far as I know, the polar discharges of such a device - well, no one's figured out how to aim them whilst preventing the discharge from the pole opposite to the target propelling the people who aim the device fast in the opposite direction. Great for Star-ship propulsion, not so good in a fight - unless the strategy is - "Hit and getaway fast" - it could work then. [Answer] First thing to consider is that Black Holes are not holes. Essentially a Black Hole is a star whose gravity is so strong that even light itself cannot escape. Black Holes were first discovered when early astronomers noticed that some stars were orbiting around seemingly nothing - a gap (or hole) in their star-charts (whose background was black) was the focal point for the passage of these stars - and so these focal points were named Black Holes. Since then we have studied these "gaps in the star-charts" and discovered lots about them - however the original name stuck. And this has lead to a lot of confusion - especially in the world of science fiction, where the name is frequently taken literally. So even if you had magic-tech that could escape the event horizon, you couldn't use a Black Hole as a storage mechanism - just in the same way that you couldn't use a star as a storage mechanism. [Answer] # You can use a black hole as a storage device while sticking to hard science But... you won't be getting anything useful out on a short timescale (i.e., in less than the current age of the universe) and you're dealing with a not-universally accepted theory (but also not contradicting any universally accepted theories). Whether those are deal-breakers is up to you. ### Quick Background As others have noted, you can't get anything out of a black hole except Hawking radiation. However, there's some disagreement about the exact nature of Hawking Radiation, for example: does the information contained in the radiation relate to the information that went into the black hole in some--potentially useful--way? Hawking himself originally thought that the information was destroyed, but this doesn't reconcile easily with other commonly accepted theories that information cannot be destroyed. Since there's no real scientific consensus on what happens (Hawking himself flipped sides [in 2004](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorne%E2%80%93Hawking%E2%80%93Preskill_bet)), you can pick the theory that best suits your story. ### Plausible Explanations For "Extracting" stuff stored in a Black Hole [Some (well sourced) methods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox#Postulated_solutions) of reconciling Hawking Radiation with Information Preservation are listed on this wikipedia page. Most relate to getting "information" back, in a sense I don't totally follow. Some of them deal with what's left after Hawking Radiation, when the black hole ceases to be a black hole, and are concerned with actual matter instead of "information." This neatly sidesteps the problem of "You can't get anything out of a black hole" with the explanation "well, but you can wait for the black hole to not be a black hole anymore and see what's left!" ### What Works for Your Story The best theory for your story is probably "Information is stored in a large remnant" (links available through wikipedia page linked above). The last paper supporting this theory was in 2015 so it's not an obsolete theory, and the first (titled "Black Holes and Massive Remnants") states that the size and mass of the remnant depends on its information content (which you can make arbitrarily large by feeding arbitrary amounts of information into the black hole). Thus you can create arbitrarily large and arbitrarily massive remnants. Your giant autonomous computer would have to be far more advanced than us in their understanding of how the input matter/energy correlates to what is left, but it doesn't violate any fundamental laws to say that it can feed things into the black hole in such a way that a superweapon remains once the black hole has evaporated. ### Advantages Until the black hole has evaporated, it would be totally impossible to get any information about what is going on inside, which works perfectly with you desire for compactness and secrecy. ### Disadvantages Hawking Radiation takes a really long time. The larger the black hole, the longer it takes. So the more matter you feed in (and the larger you want your superweapon to be), the longer it takes for it to become usable. From [wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation) on Hawking Radiation: > > For a black hole of one solar mass (M☉ = 1.98892×1030 kg), we get an evaporation time of 2.098×1067 years—much longer than the current age of the universe at (13.799±0.021)×109 years > > > This would be a significant hurdle in any story I can think of, but it's up to you to determine if this is important in your case. [Answer] If by 'inside a black hole' you mean beyond the event horizon of the black hole, there's no way out at that point. The escape velocity of a black hole is greater than the speed of light. Since nothing can go faster than light, it doesn't really matter what you use to push or pull the thing. If you have some sort of FTL drive, sure. You've entered the science fantasy realm, so you shouldn't worry too much about following the laws of physics. Come up with some reasonable limitations to make it feel plausible, toss out some technobabble and move on. If the thing you are trying to smash down is orbiting the black hole outside of the event horizon, you are using a black hole as a glorified trash compactor I guess? This is beyond my physics knowledge, but my engineering sense is that you'd have to come up with a really good excuse to use such a dangerous object to smash stuff down, when other options exist! [Answer] Many other people have pointed out the information paradox of black holes, which, based on our understanding of black holes today says that you could not input information into black holes and obtain meaningful results from any type of output (Hawking radiation) in this case. But, we're talking about a black hole that sits inside a planet, so I would wager that whoever built this probably has a better understanding of black holes than we do. If you want to stay within the realms of our current understanding, I would put forward two possible scenarios (both from 30,000 ft so as not to get bogged down in the muck and mire of all the unknowns surrounding black holes): ### Decoding Hawking Radiation The black hole was created (and permanently exists within) a larger planet aka. a closed system, unlike any black hole we know of. The circumstances surrounding the construction and implementation of this theoretical information-storing black hole are known. It is possible that under these circumstances all variables can be accounted for - all matter and energy that has ever entered the black hole is known - and an algorithm was developed based on this in order to obtain meaningful information. This depends on the nature of your weapon though. If it is a physical device, you won't be able to put it into and out of a black hole like it's a box. If it's some sort of cyber-weapon consisting of data alone, it's doable. ### Black Hole is the Weapon If you don't want to interpret the radiation that is coming from the black hole, perhaps the black hole itself is the weapon. When ready for use, the black hole could be expelled from the planet on a trajectory that sends it to the target destination - wiping out everything along the way - and eventually destroying the planet or solar system it is targeting. In the meantime, the planet is at work gathering resources to construct another black hole. Going to destroy the weapon would be a suicide mission, as disabling the planet would cause it to implode and anything in the vicinity would be destroyed as well. This is also the ultimate dead-hand weapon. Containing a black hole would require substantial energy and matter. Assuming you could contain a continuously growing black hole indefinitely, it would require an indefinite amount of resources - depleting the surrounding space in turn. If the weapon is never used, it sits until the heat-death of the universe or close to it, where it will be used regardless, ensuring that it wipes out [Answer] Absolutely! I mean, don't get me wrong - you won't be able to fight the gravity of the black hole. That's a losing battle. But you can fight the location of it, and by using some lateral thinking, you can 'pull' your secret weapon from out of the black hole. One example: You use the classical 'out of phase with the universe' technobabble to effectively blink it out of existence. It's still there, just not interacting with our universe. Afterwards, you maneuver the black hole to it's location - stopping anyone else from 'rephasing' it. It's not until you move the black hole out of the way that you can safely 'pull' the weapon back into existence. Basically, figure out a way to make the gravity portion of the picture not matter. Make it out-of-phase, put in a subdimensional pocket, de-massify it, whatever avenue appeals to you. Make the location of the black hole the relevant factor, which is something you can change. [Answer] > > (...) inside a black hole (...) > > > Depending on what you mean by inside, this might be possible. If something is inside the event horizon, it's lost forever. Other answers have already elaborated on it. However, if something is outside the event horizon, but inside the [ergosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergosphere), then it is trapped in the black hole until it suffers a momentum change that knocks it out. This is part of the [Penrose process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_process), which can be used to extract energy from black holes as well. The prerequisite is that the black hole must be rotating. Only rotating black holes have ergospheres. They drag spacetime around themselves, causing spacetime to rotate as well. The math behind this is beyond me, but this is not something unheard of in media. This is how... > > ...the protagonists escaped Gargantua... > > > ... In Nolan's Interstellar. As for what could add enough momentum to knock an object out of the ergosphere... A ballistic projectile hitting it from behind (laysman wording for "causing the target to accelerate prograde") will do the trick though, again, I don't have the math to calculate the trajectories nor the energy amounts involved. [Answer] ## Faster-than-light technology 1. Make your black hole as large as possible. The larger the black hole, the weaker the gravitational tidal forces. 2. Discover a way to travel faster-than-light. (We're assuming it's possible here.) 3. Place your weapon inside a vehicle that is capable of withstanding the tidal forces of your black hole, and that is also capable of faster-than-light travel. 4. Place your vehicle in the black hole. While being stored in the black hole, the vehicle will have to be constantly traveling outward at light-speed (or possibly slightly faster than light-speed) to remain stationary and avoid hitting the singularity at the center and (presumably) being destroyed. 5. When you want to retrieve the object, send a simple radio signal to the vehicle. The signal will have no problem entering the black hole. When the vehicle receives the signal, it will flip its FTL drive to maximum speed and travel out through the "event horizon" (which is no longer aptly named since FTL travel is possible). [Answer] ## White Holes White holes are the hypothetical opposite of a black hole. That is, it is impossible to enter one, but things may still exit. As far as I am aware, they have never been explicitly disproven, and there has been at least one ‘potential’ observation. It is also possible that white holes and black holes are connected, in such a way that matter entering a black hole will eventually exit a white hole. Now, with a healthy dose of sci-fi hand waving, this black-white hole pair could be used as a matter transporter, or (if there was some way to determine or control how long an object takes to reappear) be used as a storage device. Of course, due to the size of both these objects, the reappearance point would be some distance away from where you left your items. But if you’re using a black hole as storage in the first place, you probably have a way around this. On the topic of magnetic fields; they would not be able to force an object out of a black hole. And I would assume that the magnetic field would not be able to enter a white hole either. [Answer] Black holes are as impenetrable as they are mysterious. If you try to put something into it, it will be ripped apart and squished. Whatever it was before, it is nothing but subatomic matter and energy now. The protagonist may suspect that the AI has figured out how to hide his doomsday weapon inside the hole, away from prying eyes but the truth is that the the black void is not a veil draped over some gargantuan laser cannon it is the the destroyer. While experimenting with the power storage properties of the black hole, the AI figured out that the immense gravity can be used to slingshot particles with mass to near the speed of light and into far away targets. There would be no reason for anyone to know the difference between a small object flying using black holes for a gravity assist, and a particle coming out of the black hole, especially when anyone capable of revealing that secret is instantly vaporized due to the kinetic impact. [Answer] What if you didn't have to get it out? Presumably, a planet-sized AI which has existed for long enough to design and construct its own super-weapons and super-weapon storage facilities would likely have an extremely comprehensive understanding of physics compared to ourselves. Humans have figured out how to use electricity to store, compress, and reconstitute information on demand. It is plausible to me that an autonomous planetary AI, which grasps the true relationships between matter, energy, spacetime, gravity, etc. could have figured out how leverage these to store, compress, and reconstitute matter on demand. Now it could store the weapon as a compressed (optionally even encrypted!) "matter blueprint", and rebuild it whenever it is needed. When it is no longer needed, just dispose of it in the black hole. Since the black hole is already being used as a power source, this process essentially (almost) pays for itself. [Answer] ## Wormholes Black holes bend "the fabric" of spacetime around them in such a way that the relationship between black holes and (more theoretical) wormholes is unclear. Thinking back to good old Edwin Abbott, the people of "Flatland" (a 2D world) were unaware of the magnitude of their projections in 3rd dimension (and Edwin well-demonstrated that all perceivable objects must have a projection in all higher spatial dimensions). The people of Flatland might thus bear much weight pulling them down in "Spaceland" (the realm of 3D objects). If Flatland were folded around the 3rd dimension like a piece of paper, the people on it wouldn't notice because they live on the paper. But then, if many of them banded together in one spot, their weight might pull them down toward the other part of flatland (across the fold). Naturally, it would take quite a bit of flat-mass to perform that act. Then, extrapolating, if Spaceland were folded around the 4th dimension, a similar thing may happen. We are necessarily unaware of the magnitude of our 4th dimensional component, but it may be small or large. And if we had some 4D gravity pulling us in some 4th-dimensional direction, we wouldn't notice, but black holes could bend 3D spacetime "4-downward" toward the other side of the fold. Now, bends in spacetime might not be all that common, and it might be that your fictional planet exists right at the tip of the fold, so that it has a wormhole with entrance and exit nearby one another. If your autonomous computer is aware of this and maintains the mass of the black hole such that it is just barely too small, so its bend in spacetime doesn't reach the other side of the fold, then all it would have to do is drop some additional mass into the black hole and it would open into a wormhole, exposing the contents of the black hole on the other side. Then, removing anything from those contents would cause it to shrink back into a black hole and close the wormhole. The problem is that the wave function of whatever you put into the black hole will collapse, and it will change its state of matter into whatever fundamental "mass" makes up the core of a black hole. You'd lose the weapon, but you could theoretically extract some of its mass by adding an equivalent mass nearby. You might be better off defining the weapon as one which folds space so that your black hole opens into a wormhole at a predictable location in the 3rd dimension. In this way, you could instantly cause large quantities of mass to appear anywhere you wanted, but it would only work as long as you maintained very specific masses in the black hole, etc.. It would be a complex operation. Hiding the weapon wouldn't be totally necessary, because the weapon would be useless as long as the black hole wasn't tuned for the weapon's current intended use. Whoever wants to fire the weapon must also have possession of the black hole itself. [Answer] What you need to ask yourself is "What are black holes in my universe?". We don't know much about black holes. Even if they exist (the famous 'picture' of a black hole may not be a black hole, but something else). In the electric universe theory black holes do not exist. They forms of high current plasma ejecting positive particles in one direction and negative particles in the other direction. Storing a weapon in hot plasma may not me such a good idea, but maybe you can make a force-field around the weapon. You may use the plasma as energy source to power engines to get the weapon out. [Answer] Signals sent into the black hole can function as a selector for which of its internal energies leave through Hawking radiation. It's just a matter of finding the right signals and sending them at a strength high enough to affect the Hawking radiation measurably. Just throw the OT and a pallet of towels in there. Next you'd want to find a way to optimize your bandwidth. ]
[Question] [ During the early 1800s, various countries are gifted tall and modern ATVs (All-Terrain Vehicles). These ATVs require no fuel and come with manuals. After a few months of trials, many Europeans master the automobile. They decide to use it in warfare. Could the ATV effectively replace the horse in 19th Century Warfare? Specifically when it comes to direct combat? [Answer] # Depends on the type of cavalry By the 19th century, cavalry is far from obsolete; multiple new types are becoming popularized by evolving conditions in warfare. Let's take a survey of the horse and where an ATV would actually help: # Heavy cavalry: no Shock troops whose role was to panic and rout the enemy would benefit greatly from an ATV, which makes a loud noise. However, the ATV lacks two critical advantages of the horse: height and handling. A lancer 6ft up on a charger is a lot more physically intimidating (and safe from attack by bayonet) compared to a waist-level opponent. But more importantly, after the cavalry delivers their charge, they need to reform, turn around, and charge again. A horse, once stopped, can do this on the spot. An ATV would require a 2 point turn or a pivot of the entire formation, which required considerable training to pull off. # Light cavalry: mostly yes The high speed of an ATV makes it very good for one function of light cavalry: pursuing fleeing troops to cut them down. As losses of an army were primarily generated during this phase rather than the combat, this would make ATV light cavalry extremely potent. Their speed also makes them excellent for carrying orders during battle (remember, this is not Total War, a general can't just select a unit and order them where to go) and as screens for an army on the march. However, it would not be very good for the other combat purpose which light cavalry served: skirmishing. The noise of a gasoline engine more than compensates for the lower profile. The best use of ATV cavalry in this case would be to spring an ambush, fire a volley, then get on their ATVs and run away. # Dragoons: no The Napoleonic war is when we see a new type of cavalry emerge. Well, not quite cavalry, but mounted infantry: soldiers who would ride to their spot on the battlefield, then dismount and fight on foot. Needless to say, the value of these ATVs would make intentionally abandoning them a ridiculous prospect, and enemy armies would prioritize overrunning these units to pilfer their priceless ATVs. [Answer] They would not risk these amazing motors. It is 1820. We have been using coal fired steam engines for our motors. They are huge, heavy, dirty and they explode. And now we have a powerful electric motor that needs no fuel? And we are going to put this miracle in the care of a teenager with a sword and let him go charging around getting shot at with cannons? No, no no. These motors are priceless. The teenager can ride a horse. The fuelless motor from that ATV is going to run a shop of machine tools and take the place of a coal fired steam engine. This other motor is going to power the motorboat of the princess, who does not like a sail occluding her view and does not like the smell of smoke. Each of these motors is spoken for either by very rich people who want to show off in their amazing vehicles, or very rich people who will use the motors to become very richer. [Answer] The ATV would certainly replace the horse, but not for cavalry. One thing most people don't realize is just how much effort goes into moving supplies for an army. Prior to the invention of the railroad, anything that moves food, also eats food. An army's operational range caps out at [only a few hundred kilometers from its supply base](https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-i-the-problem/), at which point the roads are clogged with supply wagons mostly engaged in the business of carrying food for their horses. Your ATVs change this balance dramatically. Instead of each freight wagon needing to carry food for a driver and two horses, a single driver on an ATV can pull a string of wagons. This reduces the food requirement of your logistics train by at least a factor of ten, with a corresponding increase in operational range. You might have scouts or messengers on ATVs (the extra speed is a nice boost), but mostly they'll be seen pulling wagons. [Answer] No Your body is an absolutely amazing thing. Without any conscious thought, it will self-correct to maintain balance while walking, skipping, even (and especially) running. Your body has the ability to deftly dodge obstacles large and small. It's ability to reshape itself, thereby shifting around its center of gravity, is one aspect of this these amazing abilities. Your inner ear's operation as a biological gyroscope is very much another aspect of these abilities. Your body also has the ability to side step, to place your feet where they need to be to change your acceleration and direction of travel. They allow you to pivot in the process of shifting your weight and direction or speed of travel. Horses, of course, can do this, too. I recently attended the Montana State O-Mok-See, which is a series of pattern horse races. It's breathtaking what a horse can do at high speed. ATVs are nothing at all like that. Yes, the rider has an itty-bitty bit of ability to shift around the center of gravity, but that's it. ATVs can't pivot like a horse, or shift its weight like a horse, or keep itself upright like a horse. Shooting a gun from atop an animal that can (with training) control itself while the rider lets go of the reins and keep a predictably smooth gait over uneven terrain is easy compared to keeping one hand on the proverbial wheel of an ATV and noticing that its suspension is nothing at all like the gait of a horse. In fact, people who try to use ATVs like horses [are hurt and injured every year](https://www.hiltonsomer.com/atv-accident-statistics/). And horses can go places ATVs can't. So, why do [most modern militaries not ride animals](https://www.businessinsider.com/7-modern-armies-that-still-ride-animals-into-battle-2015-5)? Because animals are expensive. They have costs to feed and keep healthy that mechanization don't. You can empty the gas tank, deflate an ATV's tires, put it on blocks, and throw a tarp over it for years and it'll work just fine. Can't do that with a horse. But it would be worth your time to read through that last link, because there are modern militaries that do ride animals into battle — and they have good reasons for doing it. But it's worth pointing something out Guns. Perhaps the biggest reason horses left the modern military is that guns developed to the point where the horses became irrelevant. Horse vs. machine gun and the machine gun will almost always win. If in your scenario you do NOT have significant guns (early 1800s, probably not) then the horse is still a very valuable asset that an ATV will be hard pressed to replace. But once those guns come into play, horses quickly become a liability save for a handful of special-purpose scenarios. [Answer] I believe [Willk](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/239045/would-atv-cavalry-be-as-effective-as-horse-cavalry/239048#239048) is on the right track, but I think some of the motors would be risked in combat. The engines could be used as auxiliary engine for formerly sailing ships of war, allowing them to maneuver against the wind, or in a calm. The advantages are impossible to overlook, and worth the risk to a few engines. [Answer] There's a lot of good reasoning in the existing 4 other answers, but they all miss something, even if they graze it. Yes, these ATV's are highly valued as motors, but that makes them great for bait in an ambush. At first, I can see many of these machines being used for combat and anything else that can be done with them, foolish or not. I mean, just look at how people use them now. But as they become more rare and as people realize just how many things they can do, and then come up with really valuable ways to use them, they will be used less and less for combat, for the most part. There will still be some Generals that are so vain they "require" the use of the Royal ATV as their steed, or whatever. And there will be people and countries that will go looking to acquire/steal them at any cost, even if it's to hoard them and prevent anyone else from having them. So some of the best armies will have these machines, regardless the risk. And the smart armies will use them to bait enemy into traps. The best way to catch a thief is to catch them in the act and the best way to do that is to make it a controlled environment for the captors. This works on a group as well as an individual. A larger army may not be as easy to get into a trap as a burglar, but that's why you use the size and difficulty of a trap and bait to match the quarry. One ATV might not catch the eye of a General, but it could a Corporal. Five ATVs might engage a Major. More than that, plus you make it hard on the army to catch the ATVs so they stop looking for traps after the first couple miles/kilometers, and you might just bag a Company and some higher ranking officers. Even if those officers aren't in the trap, they could now be fairly insufficiently guarded so they could be rounded up later or a secondary group of soldiers could capture them while the chase is still in progress. Could they still be used on combat? Sure, but that's a high risk and low reward situation that can be altered by simply using more people so it becomes less risk (the to Crown) and higher reward in that you are overrunning the enemy by just pure mass of people, which was the tactic of many armies even after guns were introduced. (Look at WWI, for instance.) There may be limited use with specialty troops that harass any army into engaging before they are ready, or that quickly flank rearward artillery or other long range weapons, but that would be a relatively small group and the reward would have to be extremely high to merit the high risk of losing these valuable machines. Likely, these troops would be using the ATVs that normally tow the larger war machines, like cannon and [Gatling guns](https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/gatling-gun). Could they be used in the supply chain? Sure, but the supply chain itself is a high order target for an army. It has fewer soldiers and can serve to supply an enemy army. Adding high value ATV's as the motive power for these supplies will increase your need to have a large force guarding it to the point where your army might as well just surround the supply chain. Unfortunately, this doesn't really get you very far when your army has to continually to return to base to guard the next shipment of supplies to itself. [Answer] No. A good horse can be controlled with legs alone, leaving two hands to handle weapons. An ATV doesn't have leg controls, nor does it respond to voice. If you want a small mechanized combat vehicle to put in your time machine, look at the jeep+machine gun combination. Assuming you could keep them running, and could provide ammunition, they would be close to unstopable in reasonable terrain. Mind you, the driver would need good situational awareness. Enough cavalry could ring them in with dead horses. [Answer] H.G.Wells considered this in [The Land Ironclads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_Ironclads). This was published in 1903, so he just didn't make it into the 1800's but it is a useful idea of how people might think. This was not just tanks: he had their light cavalry equivalent on motorbikes. I wonder whether the army would have trusted the ranks with complex technology in the early 1800s. They were considered cheap, and expendable. The Navy already had trained men working with a complex machine. There were people who considered sailing was somehow 'pure', but there were others who saw the possibilities of running into the wind with an engine. [Powered ships](https://mashable.com/archive/civil-war-ironclads) were in use in the US in the mid-century. This is not like cavalry, as navies had no real equivalent to that. ]
[Question] [ The year is 2019. Someone has taken the most cutting-edge AI technologies to create a machine. It was tasked with studying the DNA humans, and making them indestructible. A virus was created that would make this so. It gradually infects all humans, over the course of ~20 years. The "change log": bulletproof skin, bones like carbon fiber, brains that can take harder trauma, self annealing immune systems (impossible to get sick, EVER), digestive systems that do not allow for processing of fat beyond a threshold, higher tolerances to heat and cold, improved hearing and eyesight, etc. The only exception to these rules is in the last year of life, in which the heart and lungs slowly lose capacity until they simply stop. In short, healthcare is no longer necessary. At all. 1/5 of the US economy. Up in smoke. How could any (US or otherwise) economy recover from this? [Answer] The economy would boom! Without the need to deal with ordinary malaises all sectors would abruptly be able to reduce spending on day to day healthcare. No more losses to sick days, no more expensive medicine for chronic conditions! No more cancer to take our loved ones too soon! That said there's still always going to be call for doctors, they just get to palm off the simple stuff to nanobots. You're going to get a dip in the transitional period but it's a truism that there's never enough doctors today so the drop probably won't be too high. Certainly there will be shifts. Some sectors of healthcare will shrink, like insurance, but 20 years is a decent chunk of a career; plenty of time to readjust to the exciting new world. Maybe some retire early, proud to see the impossible day they were finally able to say the job was done. But there will always be work to be done. You can't genetically engineer away a car crash, or a table saw. You can't engineer away a terrible industrial accident. Efforts will shift towards emergency care, to saving that many more victims who now get to live because the paramedics don't have to worry about as many of the victims. The new dream in research is now true immortality, to solve that last year of life and turn it into an eternity. Turn the last year into two years. Cure the disease that crops up at 200. Invent a nanobot that saves someone five minutes dead. Ten minutes. A day. Brain backups. Meet your great great great grandkids. Wouldn't you pay for that? The important bit here is that medicine as a discipline doesn't really shrink so much as find loftier mountains to climb. In the past some attrition in the family was ordinary, today we don't accept children dying at all. In the future with all these advances we'll just raise our standards - if you can shrug off a car crash we'll work on how to save you from a run in with an exploding fuel tanker. [Answer] # The Broken Window Fallacy. The economy will BOOM Any turnaround and/or labour that goes to just keeping things and people whole and alive is a burden on the economy. No, the medical industry is not beneficial to the economy. It is a necessary evil and [a net cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost). The assumption that industry used for building and maintenance of basic utilities, infrastructure and services are good for the economy is a fallacy, described and refuted in [The Parable of the Broken Window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window). And yes, I know that some still cling to the idea of Trickle Down Economics... but it simply does not work that way. Perfect health would not only eliminate the need of most hospitals and medical industry and thus eliminate this opportunity cost, but it would also increase the labour force by ridding employers of all short- and long-term sick leave, and early retirement due to health problems. It would also mean that people could work longer before they go into normal retirement. The economy would soar from this, not take a downturn. In the long run, what you have also done is free up scores of highly qualified people that can now turn their attention to pressing issues such as environmental threats, climate change, clean energy production, and the advancement of science and exploration. And when this virus then spreads to the rest of the world, the global economy will boom similarly. # Refuting your original claim If what you claimed was true that the economy and the industry benefited from ill health, then why would government and industry ever allow vitamins and vaccines? You may think nothing special on something as mundane as Vitamin C... but without it, you would be subject to the horrible disease known as [scurvy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy), an illness that — I jest not — makes you start decomposing while still alive. Vaccines, even more so. Why would government and medical industry destroy a market opportunity by simply giving every child a jab and a couple of drops worth no more than a few cents in sales? Answer: because everyone benefits more from people being healthy and in no need of medical care ...oh, and because no-one is the kind of monster that wants to see their fellows in poor health just to make a cheap buck. [Answer] # It'll mostly transition to mental health Not all of medical care is covered by sickness, accident and emergency. There are other sectors still required. The three primary remaining services that come to mind are * Birth control and Maternity care * Mental health Merely preventing disease and injury will not prevent you from needing these services. You've also left * End of life care Though you've shorted the period of time for which it is necessary, it is still necessary. It will also still be possible for people to have accidents requiring medical care. It'll take a little while for people to learn how hard they can push these new upgraded bodies, but push them they will and they will eventually work out how to damage them. After all, what is the adrenaline rush without risk? Ultimately the economy will boom as others have said, healthcare is a lead weight on the economy, sucking up money that could be spent on development rather than just maintenance. [Answer] This isn't so much of a problem as it appears on the surface. In point of fact, this may actually result in economic growth. The first thing that's important to note is that the number of days lost to illness by employers goes down to zero. That means that most business are already more effective because you don't have to worry about sick leave for anything. Even accidents and murders are more or less extinct, so training new staff doesn't carry the risk of loss to injury or death. Loss to competitors is still an issue, but overall your training dollars are worth more productivity than they are in the past because the risk of losing the skills developed actually goes down. Sure, it can be argued that some employers are going to need less staff because they no longer have to over-hire to account for sick leave among their number, but the number of working days available to the employers has just gone up. This means that despite any short term adjustments that some companies will doubtless engage in, the economy is likely to benefit from a more productive workforce in the medium to long term. As for the healthcare industry; sure there are going to be losses here. Nurses in particular are going to be hit hard as their entire career is built around the idea of caring for the sick. That said, their skills are still quite formidable and their concern for others make them ideally suited in some other industries, like occupational therapy and Workplace Health and Safety assessments. Doctors may be better off; some will retrain around psychiatry and psychology (mental health could be a little worse off in this environment due to the strain of not being able to take sick days to get some rest away from the stress of work) and medical receptionists and administrators just take their skills to other industries. The rest of the GPs and the like still have analytical and diagnostic capabilities so they will find themselves able to retrain into other STEM fields which (while inconvenient) isn't fatal to aspirations of a rewarding career. Hospitals can be re-purposed as buildings, and some measure of aged care will still be required as well so at least some of the beds will need to be kept. The OP hasn't discussed the risks associated with childbirth, but there will still be a need for midwives (even if not obstetricians) to assist with this in an ideal environment. So, maternity wards may not shut down either. The medical research world (and for that matter the pharmaceutical industry) still have roles to play insofar as ongoing medical research would now focus on longevity rather than organic maintenance. Pharmaceutical companies are already in the chemical industry in most cases (Ever noticed that the company Bayer makes both aspirin and Baygon, an insect surface spray?) so while they may wind back certain production activities, they just focus more on others. More research on fertilizers to feed the growing population for instance. Even companies that manufacture diagnostic imaging equipment just use their expertise to solve different problems. In the short term, yes there will need to be an adjustment. Some people will struggle as this change represents a massive redistribution of skills and priorities for society as well as business. But in the medium to long term, the skills that are freed up by the lack of medical demand are still useful skills that could be applied to accelerating the resolution of many different intractable problems that mankind still hasn't solved yet. That, and the increased average productivity of workers in general, mean a healthier economy over time. It should be pointed out that this very problem was postulated as a potential outcome of the introduction of computers into the business environment. To be sure, computers DID make some jobs redundant and continue to do so. When was the last time you saw a position vacant for a filing clerk at a registry? That said, in terms of numbers, even more jobs have been created by computers than have been lost and this continues to be the trend. What computers have done is automated the lower skilled jobs and created many more highly skilled roles that need to be filled. The removal of medicine would result in a similar adjustment but with a singular exception; everyone with a job disrupted by this change is already highly skilled and can enter the workforce almost immediately (or with some additional light training) in another field. In that one respect, this would cause less of a disruption to the modern economy as the introduction of computers has. [Answer] Let's take a page out of the history book of the tobacco industry. In many respects cigarette sales were the mainstay of convenience stores. But with public policy moving against the tremendous societal costs of health care from smoking, this industry seemed to go into demise. So convenience stores simply upped the price of pop and candy to compensate. In America, they also looked towards beer sales. They substituted one vice for another. Methinks that the medical-health industry would just find an alternative. I suggest that it would be in recreational drugs. Once you remove the health issues from recreational drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, there is no longer a reason to proscribe them. Instead of spending the money to get better, the money would be spent on ways to get worse. But, alas, there is the rub. Humans don't need a virus mutating and turning our bodies into super-long-lasting health machines. All we need to do, in order to eliminate perhaps 80% of our health problems, is to live a healthy lifestyle. Yet we don't. We continue to abuse our bodies. Simply put, the more health issues we eliminate, the more money we spend on ways to destroy our health. With a super body, we would just engage in and spend money on super destructive activities. [Answer] ## The problem is self-limiting. Mankind will die out. With your bulletproof skin, it is no longer possible to either give natural birth, or give birth via caesarian section. It will also prevent surgery for not-infection-related but nevertheless lethal if untreated disorders. Such as (not a conclusive list) anything that involves e.g. an artery or vein on your intestines, or the complete thing (or testicles if you have them) becoming obstructed, contorted, or twisted. Cholecystolithiasis? Bad luck for you. Child swallowed something that won't come out by itself? Bad luck again. That being said, bulletproof skin does not by any means imply you're invulnerable or immortal. Blunt trauma will kill you just the same via internal bleeding. Except now, there's no way (no easy way, at least) to treat you! Same goes for bones. Bones like carbon fiber take more force to break, but they're not unbreakable. Let's hope they don't severe an artery or a vital organ. Because, you know, there's basically nothing you can do about it. [Answer] ### Over population So it sounds like you're going to stop everyone dying of...well, anything (except at some arbitrary age). That's millions of extra people a year, the population will sky rocket, especially (if we're talking the world) in countries with higher death rates from disease and lack of safety regulations. The doubling rate of populations will increase, the rate at which new homes, more food, water, sanitation (or do you skip that since it can't kill you anyway?), schools, jobs...every country will have an increase in the unemployed before we've even started thinking about the impact on medical workers. A lot of comments here have talked of industries which have become obsolete but in those instances you're talking about the advent of the computer age or the industrial revolution. These create jobs too, computers need people to build them, design them, to write software and fix them when they inevitably break. As far as I can tell your solution requires no up keep, there isn't a new field created for those who have become unemployed to enter. Of course we can argue people will find a way. Perhaps, now they won't die, gun ranges will start paying people to stand down the target end to make things more interesting. Maybe drug imports will hit a new high. Perhaps plastic surgery. The point is, however, that these are existing markets (except the getting shot at one, I think) as contrasted to the computerisation which increased as it took other jobs. [Answer] ## Wrong assumtion Your scenario assumes that by increasing the resistance of the human body "health" would become irrelevant. This is, IMO, wrong, and ignores the following concept. Usually one uses the term health, to indicate how the human body/mind operates. This, however, can be applied to any system that has to operate in certain conditions, biological or artificial. Healthcare will remain, it will just be renamed and perceived differently. All systems need maintenance of some kind. Just because your bones are stronger, it doesn't mean they are eternal. What makes you die of old age is the same thing that makes your car engine fail, your computer fail to boot and the sun's fusion stop in a few billion years. It's called entropy. Everything will deteriorate, suffer wear and decay, entropy cannot be stopped, just slowed down to a certain point. Every modern technology and science regarding human health, is nothing more than a way to slow down entropy. Humans will always try to overcome this (mortality), a carbon fiber bone won't stop them from trying to become even stronger and live longer. "Health" would probably become something else, "Nano-Maintenance" & "Bio-Regeneration". [Answer] I know this has an answer already picked but it is completely wrong. TLDR: The economy would return after about 2 generations, but meanwhile there will be famine and shortages of a lot of things that are needed for life Economic and the Fallacy of the Scrooge McDuck vault: Those of us who work 9-5 have no idea how the rich live their day to day life. The common belief is that if you are rich, you will have a large vault in your house so full of money that you can swim in it. This is not true, most income comes from investments, the little money we workers make is just a drop in the bucket. Think that NFL players are super rich, their income is about 8% of the revenue the NFL makes. Those owners are way more rich then any player, and their income is larger and lasts longer. So if you are doing away with that large a part of the economy, it is basically making that much assets become worthless. Not only will there by massive layoffs, but some of the largest holders of wealth will no longer have any assets, and no longer have any income. To see what happens when the wealth and income is removed to individual rich people, look into what happens to celebrities who run afoul of the IRS. It does not matter how cool their stuff is, it is never enough to cover their expenses. No imagine a whole gang of Bill Gates having their income and assets removed overnight Biology ecosystems and the mistake in Yellow-stone Park Prior to the conservation movement there was an experiment to remove all wolves from Yellowstone Park. This was seen as a positive win-win situation to both people and the cute deer there. However, this resulted in massive die-off of deer and all other connected species simply because there were too many deer. There is no reason to think that this will not affect humans the same way. We a larger population, almost over-night, there will be more people going after the existing resources which are not increasing in your scenario. The unscrupulous will go after the civilized and just take their stuff since while we are young, we can't die. The Black Plague This is my weakest argument since just because an certain outcome is expected from a situation doesn't mean that the opposite situation will give you the opposite outcome. The result of the black plague, where in just a few years 1/4 of the population of Europe died, cause the concentration of wealth to be spread around fewer people. Having more people could mean less wealth. However in the modern world, a larger population means more production and more production means more wealth. I submit that the assumption is that there is a stable economy were each additional person increases demand as well as production. With people newly becoming semi-immortal, but being raised mortal, would no longer produce anything since why would they need to. Those who can, will steal from those that are meek. Those that are meek will just hide. Conclusion You are fundamentally changing the motivations and assumptions of humanity. To keep it simple, every one of the ten commandments sounds good to everyone (except maybe the one about keeping holy the Sabbath) because we could die at any moment. We need to form families so we have some legacy since we could die. We need to strive to give our families (or ourselves) the best standard of living because we can die at any moment. We don't take risks because we can die at any moment. The risks we do take have a bigger payoff because we could die at any moment. [Answer] Boom and re-purposing of medical profession I agree with MichaelK. Economy will boom. For most people, there will be no more medical expense. No insurance premiums (and higher salaries for employed), nor copay/deductibles. No time wasted being sick. 20 year that OP has wisely put in gives economy plenty of time to adapt. The rich will get the new genetic enhancements first, then it will gradually become affordable to middle classes, then government will pay for treating the poor. I agree with others that medical people will find new purpose. Mental/emotional health is a possibility for those who work in it, but it is too far from physical/surgical medicine. Recreational drugs do not sound something that newly unemployed doctors would enjoy doing. Production will be taken over by pharmaceutical industry, but retail sales will be done by bars and liquor stores. Key new application of medical profession will be further enhancement. better versions of the same genetic enhancement that eliminated disease. Further, plenty of application for conventional medical tools like drugs and surgery: changing bone structure, growing muscles, improving lung and heart function, eventually getting into brainpower (since that's what makes most of the money in the first place). [Answer] There will be certainly some health issues hard wired into the humans to keep them in the loop of healthcare. Like we have planned obsolesnce today in some of our hardwares. Because there will be lot of investment done on the sector and we will have a percentage of population yet to be upgraded or a group of humans kept intact as a specimen of the past for if something goes sideways. [Answer] It seems to me that any danger or loss from the disappearance of the medical sector would be more than compensated-for by the increased productivity in literally every sector other than the medical sector. If employees stop taking sick days, for example, then companies have lower personnel expenses, better scheduling, better team cohesion, higher daily productivity, and higher employee morale from the higher daily productivity. More bonuses and lower turnover. And that's just from the improved conditions on the human-resources side of the equation. All private enterprises must sell to stay in business, and consumers buy when they are optimistic about their economic circumstances. People are unwilling to spend money if they feel they must set aside money for sick days, medical costs, or retirement, or unexpected expenses. They are unwilling to spend money if they feel insecure in their jobs. They are willing to spend money if they feel they have job security and are anticipating a payraise or increase in income. Can you imagine how much money people would spend on discretionary items if they believed they were literally immortal? So, in sum, the immortality virus outbreak would be great news, especially, for luxury home developers, luxury car dealers, jewelers, fashion designers, vacation and travel agents, private aircraft and watercraft, fine arts, fine dining, and so on. The increased revenues generated at the higher income brackets, and higher economic growth in general, would provide a massive increase in tax revenues, even if the top rates were not raised (and they probably would be). Combine that with the fact that there would be no government expenses toward disability payments and medical care, for anybody, and much higher labor force participation, then you are left with a massive budget surplus. This imaginably huge, unprecedented budget surplus could easily provide unemployment benefits to the now-unemployed doctors and hospital employees, which could easily equal or exceed their current salaries--and nobody would bat an eye. The powerful medical-sector lobby would demand it from lawmakers, and there would be no effective counter-lobby from anybody else. (The average voter, of course, would want to see their doctors and former caregivers well taken care of. And any politician who said anything vaguely disrespectful about doctors would find his comments used by his opponent's campaign.) Thus, the newly unemployed physicians, nurses and so on would be the new leisure class. The premise of your question seems to be, "what if everybody in the world suddenly, unexpectedly attained a vast, immense sum of material wealth, as well as an unimaginably permanent sense of happiness, security and well-being? --except for a tiny group of people who are universally loved, trusted and respected by everybody else, what would happen to them?" You can't find a downside to utopia. You just can't. [Answer] > > How could any (US or otherwise) economy recover from this? > > > Most of the third World would just carry on, many people are fit and active right up until the end, and healthcare is a joke anyway. People would live longer, population pressures and control of resources would be impacted probably causing strife. In the first World healthcare professionals would hit a slump, but phychiatry would take off. Eventually it would all even out, there would just be less doctors and less people interested in the medical professions. A lot of recreational outfits would boom as the majority of first World people who actually have money to afford them found a new lease on life and the energy to get out of their chairs and push some limits. ]
[Question] [ Most of the Native Americans in our history were killed by smallpox, measles, etcetera, and [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk) makes a good case for why: though the Americas had cities of their own, they lacked many options for domesticable animals, hence they did not come into contact with the beasts continuously in poorly-sanitised places, hence there was little opportunity for animal diseases to jump over to humans, hence the Americans never had their own Bubonic Plague and similar poxes. Let's change some of that. The video leaves some details out and its arguments have been contested, but let's just suppose that for whatever reason (more domesticable animals, denser and less sanitary cities) the Americas are just as disease-ridden as Europe and Asia. It is a second Europe, in essence, but it still developed separately for ten thousand years. Would diseases still have killed 90% of Americans but few Europeans? I am considering the following possible outcomes: * Hardened by their own plagues, the Americans would not lose nearly as many people to European diseases. Europeans would get their own plagues. In effect both sides of the Atlantic would take a hit after first contact, but no cultures are eradicated (except for whatever results from subsequent colonisation, which is out of the scope of this question). * Both continents now have deadly plagues that the other continent is vulnerable to. Each side of the Atlantic loses 75%-90% of its respective population. * For some reason the loss of life is still asymmetrical. What's more likely? The focus is purely on the disease side. I am not interested in how colonisation would go in this scenario ([this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/30616/how-would-the-history-of-american-colonization-by-europeans-differ-if-the-nativ) already pretty much covers that), the long-term consequences of a different powerbase in an urbanised Iroquois Confederacy, etcetera etcetera. The essential question is: does having plagues of your own make you hardened against plagues from a different continent? --- It is safe to say that this has been a very interesting - and extremely confusing - response. I would still be curious if someone could enlighten me (because frankly the answers all seem to be answering a different question than what I was trying to ask) with simple yes/no answers to the following steps in my reasoning. 1. Were or weren't Native Americans killed in greater numbers to Old World diseases, measured as the mortality rate for specific diseases, than the people from the Old World with whom that disease originated? Mortality rate does not include those who were already immune and never contracted the disease during a specific outbreak. 2. If they were, is this difference explained fully and entirely by societal, cultural, environmental differences with the Old World? 3. If not, is there is in fact a 'hereditary resistance' (however you want to call it) component resultant from the disease having been endemic in a population for centuries? Something biological that makes a person from one population more resistant to a disease than someone from another population, even if they never personally contracted the disease? 4. If so, is that component broad, a contributor to the base immune system, or is it just as narrow as regular immune system which will not protect against a virus/bacteria only slightly different from one it has encountered? --- It's probably pointless, but before I get even more people telling me to pick up a biology textbook, I want to try phrasing it one more different way. It's not about whether having had one plague makes you immune to the other plague. That's not the case on several counts; first because I'm talking about resistance in general (difference can be tiny), and second because I'm talking about plagues, plural. Does a population that has had (for centuries) many different plagues fare any better against a new plague than a population that never had any plagues? Analogy: two children, one raised in a sterile bubble and the other grew up playing in a forest. As adults, both get the common cold (new to both since that virus changes every year): does the one who grew up sterile not suffer far more from that disease than the one who was raised in the woods?\* My question is whether there is an analogous mechanism in to human populations. Yes yes in the macro scale, over multiple generations, we're not really talking about the immune system specifically any more, but I had held it self-evident that populations do have some form of hereditary resistance to specific diseases endemic to them, as evidenced by e.g. measles which has a different mortality rate in Eurasians and Native Americans. Turns out there's strong, conflicting opinions about whether this exists or not. But to finish my analogy: if you take two populations, and one has suffered and survived many epidemics because it lived in insanitary cities with livestock, whereas the other has largely lived in less urbanised areas, and even in the greatest cities there were less domesticated animals walking around. Is the first population more resistant (by some amount however small) to a fresh disease than the second population? Back to my scenario: does giving the Native Americans denser cities and more animals give them an edge (however small) in resistance to fresh diseases, after they have been suffering many diseases of their own? Yes or no. That's my question: that is not a theory that I thought up out of thin air and wholeheartedly believe in. \Yes yes I know very well that the sterile child would not develop any immune system in this scenario: it is only an analogy. [Answer] In humans, genetic resistance to disease does exist for specific diseases but not in general* I have not seen any studies identifying human genes that make one more resistant to all disease in general. There are plenty of cases where a specific gene causes resistance or susceptibility to a specific disease. Lets assume that such genes appear due to a mutation in an individual. In that case they spread locally within a population over several generations thereby creating populations of people with resistance to a specific disease. People with genes for Sickle Cell can be resistant to Malaria. <https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/biology/index.html> Genes for Cystic fibrosis appear to cause cholera resistance. <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26527495/> Some people appear to have a genetic resistance to Tuberculosis causing bacteria. <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6170664/> The NIH has a whole list of other genetic traits that cause disease resistance. <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6150079/> Europe wasn't even immune to their own plagues Its my understanding that plagues in Europe routinely wiped out large sections of the European population. So even the Europeans weren't really that immune to even their own plagues. So we wouldn't expect a more densely populated America to be any different. It wasn't until they learned about proper sanitation that things got better. Plagues develop according to the living conditions present in the populations they infect. If both continents contain similar living conditions then we would expect that a plague from one continent might spread well on another. But because the plagues developed in isolation, neither side would have immunity. The likely scenario is that plagues would hit both continents hard. [Answer] > > does having plagues of your own make you hardened against plagues from a different continent? > > > I would answer looking at the fresh case of Covid19. No matter where the virus hit, the local variety of infections doesn't seem to affect how well or bad the population answers. I would expect the same to apply also in this case. [Answer] One word: [syphilis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syphilis). Of which the great virulence among Europeans for the first two or three centuries after it came from the Americas shows that it doesn't matter if they had contagious diseases in general, only that they didn't have that particular disease or that class of diseases. [Answer] ### Yes. Immune systems aren't the only thing that needs practice dealing with outbreaks. How good one countries zoonanautic outbreaks inoculated them for an introduced outbreak from another country will be a bit hit and miss. American Cow pox could protect against european smallpox, but maybe some other disease might not be protected. Who knows exactly how the immune systems play out and what new stuff infects Americans in this world. What will help; * Quarintine procedures in force from last outbreak. * recognising it's a medical issue and not a religious one. * practice at locking down cities. * symptom checking incoming people. * isolating those who display certain symptoms. * Doctors knowing how to treat respiratory problems. * First aid training * Sanitary lessons from the last plaque. A case study for this is Asian countries that were hard hit by SARS doing better than expected with covid. An example is [Vietnam](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-23/how-did-vietnam-get-on-top-of-coronavirus-yet-again/12683008). (That article is to the latest in a series on what Vietnam is doing against covid, I'd recommend reading all the series). Singapore also showed some very early promising results as a result of what they learnt from SARS, however their later figures declined as they lost control of workplace dorm infections. [Answer] ## Yes and No... It is unlikely that the Natives would have a natural herd immunity when dealing with diseases that would have evolved in such isolation, but they would still fare much better. One of the biggest reasons that the Natives lost so many people to European plagues was culture. In Europe where plagues were common, they knew to isolate the sick, burn the bodies, lock down travel etc. Smallpox, for example, was nearly as deadly to Europeans as Americans, but among Indigenous Americans, when a person got sick, it was generally their culture for everyone to come and visit them to take care of them until they got better. If America had had its own history of plagues, then they simply would not have done this as a standard practice; so, even if Europe brought in some really deadly diseases, they would not have been able to spread nearly as much. You might have still seen a big die off, but probably no worse than the black death which killed 1/3 Europeans in the 14th century rather than the 9/10 that they actually experienced. That said, even the figures for the black death were only that high because they did not understand that it passed through fleas; so, many normal precautions like masks and social distancing did not work. In all likelihood, the outcomes would have been much less severe than that since Smallpox spreads more like a normal disease (person to person). As for how well Europe would fair... well as it turns out the natives did give Europe a few pretty nasty diseases in exchange. Both syphilis and tuberculosis most likely originated in the Americas. Either one of these diseases could have ravaged Europe nearly as badly as European diseases did to America, but because the Europeans responded to outbreaks better, they never spread to critical levels. [Answer] I don't think it's because it's from different continents. A completely new plague would affect all in the same way unless there is a situation like cowpox and smallpox, where people who have had one cannot contract the other in a severe form. Measles and suchlike affect populations differently only because of built up resistance. Measles has been around some areas for a long long time. So it was survived by some who had natural resistance. Their descendants inherited some resistance and there were multiple cycles strengthening this until it's not even deemed life threatening except to an unlucky few in some locales. In Polynesia, measles all but depopulated some Islands, the survivors resistance carried on in the people today but it's only a couple of generations. So while I'm half European and can consider measles more inconvenient than a danger with a lot of generations of survivors reinforcing the resistance, 85 kids here died of it during the last outbreak and thousands were seriously ill, it's no coincidence that these were almost all full-blooded natives. [Answer] Let's talk about how a plague can wipe out a civilization. Assume a generic disease hits a generic pre-industrial village. It's not even that bad of a disease; everyone will just be knocked out for a couple weeks. It can still kill everyone in the village. Why? Because everyone gets sick at the same time. In this situation, there's nobody who can help treat the sick, nobody to cook, nobody to gather wood for fires, and nobody to draw water, because everyone is sick. (That last one can be the deadliest if the illness includes diarrhea.) If one person from the village at a time got sick, someone else could care for them, and there would be few or even no deaths. Even if only one person happens to be immune, the death rate drops like a rock. There is no particular reason to say that Europeans have "better" resistance to any diseases, they just had already been exposed enough to European diseases that this particular effect didn't hit them. If Native Americans had livestock kept in the same conditions Europeans had, they would not have been more resistant to European diseases. The only change would be that Europe would probably have caught something nasty from America. With this in mind: 1. Were or weren't Native Americans killed in greater numbers to Old World diseases, measured as the mortality rate for specific diseases, than the people from the Old World with whom that disease originated? Yes, mostly because of this factor. 2. If they were, is this difference explained fully and entirely by societal, cultural, environmental differences with the Old World? No; the difference is because everyone got sick at the same time. 3. If not, is there is in fact a 'hereditary resistance' (however you want to call it) component resultant from the disease having been endemic in a population for centuries? Something biological that makes a person from one population more resistant to a disease than someone from another population, even if they never personally contracted the disease? No. 4. If so, is that component broad, a contributor to the base immune system, or is it just as narrow as regular immune system which will not protect against a virus/bacteria only slightly different from one it has encountered? Not relevant. [Answer] # Yes Yes, they would still be vulnerable. My doctor just admonished me to get this year's flu shot. I've never had one and I've never had the flu. He and I talked about the science literally because too many people think as you do. Immunity from one disease does not make you in any way immune to a disease your body hasn't encountered before. All it does is protect you from becoming ill from that first disease, which is good, because if you catch it your body's immune system becomes compromised, making it easier to catch another disease. That is, in fact, how influenzas tend to kill — by compromising the immune system so that another disease (often bacteriological rather than viral) can set in. In the case of influenza, the most common secondary disease (and the one that almost always kills the patient) is pneumonia. Consequently, where a virus originated is factually irrelevant. Whether or not an individual (an individual, not a geographic location) has been exposed to it is all that matters. When such an individual contracts a disease they've not been exposed to before (any disease, from COVID-19 down to the measles) their body begins developing antibodies. And a race begins. If the body can develop antibodies fast enough, the patient survives and with that new capability becomes fundamentally immune from further infection from that one disease (this isn't 100% true, but statistically it's close enough to 100% that we can leave the details for another day). The reason diseases like mumps, small pox, measles, etc. have been declared eradicated is because humanity developed vaccines to help individuals build antibodies without having to actually become infected by the disease. So long as enough people are immunized (herd immunity), the whole of society is functionally protected. The problem with your scenario is that you believe that immunity from one set of diseases grants immunity to another set and, for some reason, you think that geography is involved. It's not. The reality is that if the Native Americans had immunity to all sorts of diseases but no immunity to measles, then when the Europeans exposed them to measles, they'd contract it. *However* What all that immunity would do is keep the body from catching those diseases, reducing the liklihood of the body contracting the new diseases. A healthy body can fight a new disease better than an unhealthy body (that should be obvious). My belief is that the plagues that swept the Native Americans would have still happened. At best, the number of deaths would have dropped. If 90% can be believed, maybe only 70% would have happened. But they would still happen. --- # Edit There is no such thing as a "base immunity." This means there is no combination of diseases which, once survived, produce any level of immunity against another disease. Even influenzas, which one might think are of a "general class" that could create an immunity that protects against new influenzas, don't enjoy this benefit. Each and every disease is a threat to anyone, anywhere, who hasn't been exposed to it. To reiterate my original answer, the benefit of having been infected by many diseases is that your body will remain healthy, giving it the best chance of survival should it be exposed to a new disease. There are two ways immunity to a specific disease can be inherited. (1) A population is infected. Again and again. People die — a lot of them. The survivors have a natural immunity. To intone the indomitable Morgan Freeman from the movie [War of the Worlds (2005)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2005_film)): > > From the moment the invaders arrived, breathed our air, ate, and drank, they were doomed. They were undone, destroyed, after all of man's weapons and devices had failed, by the tiniest creatures that God in His wisdom had put upon this Earth. By the toll of a billion deaths Man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet's infinite organisms. And that right is ours against all challengers, for neither do men live, or die, in vain. > > > (2) By birth, the antibodies in a survivor mother can be passed to her children. However, this process is imperfect and only temporary because the baby's body has not learned how to build those antibodies. > > For example, if the mother has had chickenpox, she'll have developed immunity against the condition and some of the chickenpox antibodies will be passed to the baby.But if the mother hasn't had chickenpox, the baby won't be protected.Immunity in newborn babies is only temporary and starts to decrease after the first few weeks or months.Breast milk also contains antibodies, which means that babies who are breastfed have passive immunity for longer. ([Source](https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/childrens-health/how-long-do-babies-carry-their-mothers-immunity/)) > > > > > > > > > *Neither solution guarantees protection from that one disease.* They only reduce the likelihood of infection. Regrettably, there are only two ways to actually protect an individual from future infection (no matter who it is and no matter what the disease is): (a) They can become infected by the disease and survive (their body learns to create its own antibodies). (b) They can be artificially inoculated with a vaccine (forcing the body to learn how to create antibodies without threatening, or with less threat, to the body). To reiterate my answer... Yes, they would still be vulnerable [Answer] > > does having plagues of your own make you hardened against plagues from a different continent? > > > # Not all of them. Possibly some (don't count on it). That's a bit like asking whether having risked being maimed by lions offers any protection against being maimed by leopards or crocodiles. Obviously it does not. There is a very tiny possibility that the pathogen from across the sea actually targets some vulnerability that had been independently exploited by a local plague, which wiped out most potential victims. Survivors are now much more resistant to the local plague, and coincidentally immune to the new one. This happened in humans when the Black Death came to Europe in 1348. The mortality was much higher among those Europeans who had a specific chemokine genetic marker; as a consequence, the survivors that got to reproduce more had, more often than not, the mutated form (dubbed CCR5-delta-32). Five centuries later, a zoonotic virus arose from a different continent, Africa, causing AIDS - and [the European mutants turned out to be significantly more resistant](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6227735/). [Answer] This is sort of like asking if a nation that had become resistant/immune to cholera would then be resistant/immune to small pox. There is a fairly low limit to the overall resistance an immune system can create, beyond which it develops countermeasures to specific maladies that it had encountered before. It doesn't matter how strong an immune system your body has due to evolution or exposure when you're dealing with an infection that your body has never seen before. (It is able to fend off generic diseases or other invading foreign entities that are either limited in scale or unaggressive in attacking the host cells, but we aren't talking about those.) The only thing that might have changed with the Native Americans is that they maybe would have had better precautions in place to deal with plague outbreaks, but the contagiousness and severity of the infections themselves would not have been lessened whatsoever. [Answer] If you preserve the asymmetry of travel, with more people travling from Europe to the Americas than the other way, the problem persists. The incubation period for disesases is shorter than the time to cross the Atlantic. Healthy carriers are traveling from Europe to America. Europeans who contract illnesses in the Americas: 1. Die in America, so do not spread the disease to Europe 2. Die on board ship, and are buried at sea, so may or may not spread the disease further 3. Catch the disease on the ship from a dying person and survive to reach Europe I believe that the magnitude of the disease vectors pointing from Europe to America are much greater than in the other direction. The Americas will be disproportionately affected. From <https://thesouthern.com/progress/section3/searching-for-clues-in-the-disappearance-of-the-mississippians/article_d6c13308-f414-11e0-b052-001cc4c03286.html> > > When Father Jacques Marquette led an expedition down the Mississippi > River in 1673, becoming the first European to penetrate into the > Southern Illinois wilderness, his party met with a scene fit for a > ghost story. > > > The group saw massive mounds at intervals within sight of the river > obviously built by inhabitants of the region, and yet there was no > sign of human life. Marquette had floated into what archaeologists now > call the "vacant quarter" of North America. The mound-building > Mississippians of Southern Illinois, southeastern Missouri, Tennessee > and along the Ohio River into Southern Indiana and Kentucky had > suddenly and without warning vanished after 1450. > > > No one knows what wiped out the Mississippian civilization, but disease is a good bet, and it happened before Columbus arrived. North America started off at a great disadvantage. (More recent research suggests climate change causing flooding and other problems: <https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/01/27/new-study-debunks-myth-of-cahokias-native-american-lost-civilization/> ) [Answer] > > Were or weren't Native Americans killed in greater numbers to Old World diseases, measured as the mortality rate for specific diseases, then the people from the Old World with whom that disease originated? Mortality rate does not include those who were already immune and never contracted the disease during a specific outbreak. > > > They were. By a lot. To the point where europeans/Americans (as in citizens of the USA) thought North America was some sort of garden paradise because of all the seemingly-random well husbanded land. It wasn't random, the previous owners just died in huge numbers and abandoned many areas. Syphilis et al that were imported from the Americans to Europe were bad and killed boatloads of people, but nowhere near the average fatality rate the Native Americans suffered. Smallpox, on the other hand, is deadly to adults and more importantly spreads rapidly. Europeans survived because they tend to catch it early AND they have immune people to care for the sick. Meanwhile the native americans in any given village essentially all got sick at once and had nobody healthy to look after the sick. So even IF (as some argue) smallpox wasn't really more deadly to native americans, a case that a european would survive with care would kill a native american, because they had no healthy caregivers. > > If they were, is this difference explained fully and entirely by societal, cultural, geographical differences with the Old World? > > > Almost. Syphilis, being an STD, is harder to transmit that, say, smallpox. It also doesn't kill as fast. Same goes (more or less) for the other New World diseases. If tuberculosis transmitted a bit better, or killed quicker, that might have changed the numbers. The delayed-deadliness of New World diseases could be a factor of less cramped livestock co-habitation, but mutations are also somewhat of a crapshoot. > > If not, is there is in fact a 'hereditary resistance' (however you want to call it) component resultant from the disease having been endemic in a population for centuries? Something genetic that makes a person from one population more resistant to a disease than someone from another population, even if they never personally contracted the disease? > > > Yes, but not quite how you may be imagining. For example, Sickle cell anemia (common in people of african descent), is considered bad for a whole host of reasons such as increased risk of stroke, but also gives a genetic advantage against malaria. It's not so much that your resistance to maleria is passed down via some sort of inherited immunity, but your genetics may dispose you to better resist the effects of certain diseases. Which is why Native Africans do just fine in central africa, but white people died their in droves there from malaria. It wasn't that Africans were born with malaria antibodies or had different/better immune systems, they had a genetic predisposition to make the disease survivable. > > If so, is that component broad, a contributor to the base immune system, or is it just as narrow as regular immune system which will not protect against a virus/bacteria only slightly different from one it has encountered? > > > The contributions which gives "hereditary resistance" to disease are genetic in nature and have little or nothing to do with a given person's immune system. [Answer] To summarise the findings of all the answers, as I understand them: * People of a local population may or may not be more resistant to a disease that's been with them for a number of centuries (the answers disagree). * Any such endemic resistance would be in the form of genetic traits - like Sickle cell anemia in African people that happens to make them more resistant to Malaria - not in the form of a general immune system booster. * Antibodies to one disease may in some cases give immunity to different, related diseases, but that mechanism cannot be relied upon. * A local population is more often resistant to a disease that's endemic to them because a fraction of the population will have had it and be immune to it, thereby preventing that they all get it at once and lose people because they cannot spare the manpower to treat them. * For dealing with a foreign disease, the more important factor is that a Native American population familiar with plagues would be culturally better equipped to deal with the new Old World diseases they would still suffer from; for example, they would know to burn bodies and prevent contact with the ill. Feel free to edit if I have once again misunderstood everything. [Answer] I'm posting this as an answer instead of a comment due to its length, but I want to emphasize the point @user3757614 made above: a major factor in the die-off of Native Americans exposed to European diseases wasn't the disease itself, but lack of care for the sick. There is evidence for this. A similar situation occurred in the late 19th century: isolated communities of indigenous people were exposed to foreign diseases which in many instances effectively wiped out the populations. However, where there was someone to tend to the sick -- often white missionaries -- to tend to their fires, provide food & water, empty their chamber pots -- the local communities suffered much fewer deaths. (I don't remember the study that documented this, but a skilled researcher ought to be able to find the paper the published this finding.) Many times having European cultural practices forced on natives peoples was what killed them, not the diseases. One example of this was the Yaghan of Tierra del Fuego, who were accustomed to wearing few clothes that could be kept dry by the small, carefully controlled fires they had in their canoes. When Western missionaries convinced them to wear "more appropriate" clothing made of thicker material, these could not be kept dry by their fires, which led to the natives dying of pneumonia. (The effects of the Tierra del Fuego Gold Rush in the late 19th century also didn't help them.) ]
[Question] [ So, dragons. Considering the classic wyvern depiction, they are large flying carnivores that breathe fire. Considering not only the fact that flying animals have much higher metabolisms than their ground-based counterparts, but that these dragons breathe fire, they need to eat a lot. Due to the mechanics of flight, and the fact that these dragons are specialized for flying, the most efficient way for them to eat would probably be to swoop on large herds of herbivores... or, if they are fast enough, surround them with a wall of fire, sit outside, and wait for them to burn before waltzing in to eat. For this to work, there can't be very many trees; a large flying animal won't be able to turn quickly, and prey animals can easily hide in the trees, where the dragon cannot reach them from the air. (Considering that the dragons are specialized for flying, they are unlikely to be very fast on the ground, making a ground chase infeasible.) Because of this, the dragons will be incentivized to burn down forests anywhere in their territory, to make room for the grasslands they need to hunt. So, the question... In a world where dragons exist, why would there be forests? what would those forests look like, and what defenses do they have against dragons? [Answer] I propose a [Frame Challenge](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7097/40609) In reality, herd animals are frequently found in meadows and large open areas despite eons of hunting, which, presumably, would lead to the animals that survive being those that were more likely to stick to the trees. The problem is that herd animals need a ton of grazing space ‚Äî which is very difficult to find in forests. Add to this that you have areas like the African Savannah that's chuck full of tasty treats with very few trees about. My challenge: William of Ockham, an English Franciscan friar (1287‚Äì1347), is credited with formulating the Law of Parsimony that we know better today as Occam's Razor, which can be simplistically stated: "All things being equal, the simplest answer is usually correct." The simplest answer is that your dragons would populate in areas with large open spaces where herd animals dwell rather than seek the more fantasy genre driven habitat of forested mountains. This is especially true as dragons, like most herpetological critters, will be fond of warm areas. That means closer-to-the-equator latitudes, lower elevations, and open/rocky areas for habitation. If they must have caves, they'll be volcanic (warmed by the earth, not the sun). Conclusion You don't have a problem because no dragon in its right mind would try to hunt in a forest. Unless they have human or near-human intelligence, the idea that burning down the forest before chasing an animal into the area simply wouldn't happen. The burning part would be as a consequence of chasing something into the forest ‚Äî but that's not going to burn down the world's forests. In fact, once the prey is in the forest, despite having ignited it, the hungry dragon would turn around and chase down something easier to see. They'd favor large open spaces and avoid forests completely. It's how they'd evolve. And this assumes they use fire-breathing as a means of obtaining a meal. Fire is destructive, so unless they live on ash (see the movie "Reign of Fire," which brilliantly used this as a way of justifying why dragons burn everything they see), the use of fire would be defensive, not offensive. Like eagles and other raptors, they'd want large open spaces to swoop in, snag breakfast, and haul it back to the kiddies. Edit @User3445853 brought to my attention [Australia's Firehawk Raptor](https://www.sciencealert.com/birds-intentionally-set-prey-ablaze-rewriting-history-fire-use-firehawk-raptors), a remarkable bird that will pick up burning brands in their claws and beaks to intentionally set fires, forcing their prey to bunch up and run in one direction. This certainly weakens my frame challenge ‚Äî but I'm going to stand by it anyway because I don't think it's without merit. But that was some great insight! [Answer] Grasslands already prevent forests through the tolerance of grass for fire. Grass is not ancient. In many areas, the evolutionary master stroke of grass that klet it take over large parts of the world is that it can tolerate fire by hiding its biomass underground. By tolerating (and encouraging!) fire, grass can outcompete taller plants that would shade it out. Burning the grass keeps out the forest. Forest invades on grasslands where fire is suppressed as we are learning in spades over recent years. Dragons in your scenario perform a role which has been performed by native people in other circumstances. In the American West (and also, I think, Australia) native people realized grassland supported more prey animals and so would burn it to keep it as grasslands. Or (here I anticipate comments!) if those ancients were not so farsighted as their descendants the result of their burns to flush out prey was the same. Here your dragons play this role. Forests grow in lands which cannot support grass - wrong soil, so wet that fire cannot spread, terrain limits fire spread. In a scenario where dragons do what native people did, or lightning did, you will have a balance of grassland and forest similar to what there was before people practiced fire suppression. \\ side note: I am not entirely clear what about the ecosystem allowed the former great forests of N America and Europe to resist the influx of grass. I suspect it is reliable moisture. In the US South, grass does very well but trees will quickly recolonize a meadow and I think the extent of a wildfire was historically limited by high ambient moisture. Probably true for Europe as well. [Answer] Burning down all the forest is a massive investment for uncertain return. If you burn down more than you need, another dragon may move in and exploit your effort to feed itself to your active harm as it's a competitor. And destroying forest is a never-ending battle. You end up with trees that NEED to be burned to sprout. There are grasslands. Hunt there. Minimal investment for maximum calorie intake. Domesticating the herds would probably be a better long-term strategy than burning all the forest, and if you do burn down some, it's probably carefully calculated to provide more pasture. [Answer] Forest fires are a natural part of the cycle in their own right. There's a selection of pyrophilic trees around the world, many requiring fire as part of their reproductive cycle. Though the eucalypts could be considered more pyromaniac than pyrophilic, effectively taking the place of your dragons in deliberately starting fires. A planet that has evolved forest dragons which use fire would have parallel evolution bringing more pyrophiles and fire resistance in both flora and fauna. So remember to place your dragons in a full blown fire ecology, not as lone fire users in the world, or as you suggest, there wouldn't be much but ash to see. The trees become more fire resistant, the smaller plants use fire to distribute their seeds over a wider area. The birds fly ahead of the fire and hunt the insects and mammals that are driven out. The mammals can burrow, climb out of, find water to swim in, or run ahead of the fire. Fire is a fundamental part of your world, for every creature or plant you put in it, you have to consider its response to fire. In short, dragons trying to burn the forests down as an evolved behaviour is a requirement for the forest to regenerate and expand. > > The Hare runs into the fire. > > The fire, it takes her, she is not burned. > > The fire, it loves her, she is not burned. > > The hare runs into the fire. > > The fire, it loves her, she is free... > > -Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight > > > [Answer] They are not smart enough Your dragons are not smart enough to make the (very long term) connection behind burning down a forest and having a better food source. After all it takes months or years before the burned wasteland of a forest turns into a meadow. This is entirely believable since humans are the only animals that can think ahead such a long time. In a comment you mentioned beavers. Google-fu says that Beavers instinctively pile up sticks wherever they hear running water. They do this even if they were raised in captivity and have never seen a dam in their life. Even if the sound of running water is coming from a speaker system and not a river. They pile up sticks because that's what beavers do. They don't make the conscious connection between piling up the sticks and blocking the river because they don't need to. They have a straightforward instinctive prompt that doesn't require a big brain. Big brains cost a lot of energy to maintain. Why bother? You are free to say your dragons have no such prompt. [Answer] 1. Dragons are bound to some specific location. Maybe some kind of volcano where they need to sleep to recharge their fire batteries or whatever. 2. Therefore, Dragons can only go a limited distance from this location, simply because they need to return there every night to not die. 3. Therefore, Dragons have a limited area of action in which they need to find enough animals to eat so they don't starve to death. 4. Therefore, Dragons have to make their area of action as attractive to animals as possible, or else they won't breed enough or just leave. Animals like big patches of grass, but also need some forest in between for some reason like their babies or whatever. 5. Therefore, Dragons can't burn down all forest. qed [Answer] In a world where dragons exist, trees will have evolved to be extremely fire resistant. And, breathing fire must come with a high energy cost and be very tiring, so a dragon is only going to start fires where it has the immediate motivation to do so. (It's also possible that dragons like trees. They provide shade, and good hiding places for their young.) [Answer] I have to agree, if dragons are very intelligent and cooperative, they would burn all the dry forests; it's the strategic thing to do. It won't force the forest animals to live on grassland. That doesn't work for most of them, they'd be extinct within years because they aren't adapted as well as their many, many competitiors. But I'll decrease the number of forest animals and increase the number of grassland animals, after a few generations. So still a win for dragons. So perhaps the reasons that the dragons don'tt do that is that they are not cooperative and/or highly intelligent (some comment mentions that they aren't intelligent enough for herding). If they're intelligent but not cooperative, they might realize this problem, but also realize that they are investing heavily in forest burning, while another dragon is probably going to move in and benefit. If they're cooperative but not intelligent, they simply won't know that it's useful to invest in burning forests to the ground. It'd have to have an immediate benefit, like catching a monkey immediately. But that's probably not as efficient as going somewhere else and catching a zebra. Flying over forests would be inefficient, and burning trees to catch someting would be too. Note that in a world with more fire, many plants would be harder to burn. That's already the case in our world (Google 'fire-resistant plants'), and with more evolutionary pressure, such traits would prevail. So if California or Australia make it seem easy to burn huge areas to the ground - it probably wouldn't be in your world. Depends a bit on climate. [Answer] Burning all the forests is not a trivial task. Otherwise, they would burn down even without any dragons. The forest fires have a lot of mechanisms to self-extinguish and that's why we (in the real world, sans dragons) have forests, despite also having thunderstorms, dew-started fires, human neglect, volcanoes, etc., etc... There are broad-leaved forests that are not trivial to light in the first place. There should be a limit of the firepower a single dragon has. There are also coniferous forests that are somewhat easier to light and burn down, but they are unwelcome to dragons because it is too cold for a dragon to live and way too cold for a dragon to reproduce. This leaves us with dragons living in some "moderate climate belt" and at least partially migrating with the season. There will also be a patchy pattern of forest fires moving with them. p.s. a plot twist may be that more powerful dragons live in the favorable belt and don't migrate and less powerful ones migrate with the seasons, crossing the powerful dragons land twice a year. [Answer] Trees would have evolved alongside fire breathing dragons. Over eons trees could have evolved defenses, such as thicker bark that is flame retardant. Maybe the trees do lose their leaves and a lot of the thinner branches but the tree itself survives and regrows. Note this as well, <https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/fireecology.htm> : > > Researchers began to study the effects of fire in the wilderness in the 1930‚Äôs. They demonstrated that fire was essential to many plant and animal communities. > > > > > Fire dependence refers to plants and animals that are adapted to and rely on the effects of fire to survive. For example, lodgepole pine and giant sequoia trees use fire to help open their ‚Äúserotinous‚Äù or sealed cones, to remove litter and duff from the ground to allow seeds to germinate, and to burn open the canopy, affording seedlings the sunlight they need to grow big and tall. > > > [Answer] Burning "all the forests in the world" would release a huge amount of smoke and water vapour into the atmosphere. This would drastically reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the earth and in turn this would disrupt cold blooded reptilian metabolisms to the point where dragons would find it difficult or even impossible to reproduce. [Answer] There are plenty of places on Earth that are naturally pretty devoid of forest, and have plentiful grassland and large grazing herbivores, (the central Asian steppe, the African savannah, the American west, etc, etc), and dragons are highly mobile creatures, so I don't see why these dragons wouldn't just migrate to where their food is already plentiful rather than seek to alter existing unideal environments. Secondly, I'm not sure hiding in a forest would ever be a viable defence mechanism for, say, a herd of wild cows. Natural forests contain densely packed vegetation and it would be challenging for the cows to physically manoeuvre themselves around all the trees and branches and exposed roots without causing themselves distress and injury. But also, these animals are highly specialised grass grazers, and without grass to graze on in the forest, they're not going to be able to stay in there long before hunger drags them back out into the open grassland. I really don't think it would occur to the dragons at all that there is anything hiding in the forests that it would be worth their effort to eat. [Answer] Other apex predators didn't, why would dragons? Widescale destruction isn't really a great strategy. Predator populations that overhunt often rapidly decline. Even human beings, by far the most destructive single species this planet has ever seen, don't generally resort to broadscale destructive behaviors as a default. Natural selection favors populations that don't have these behaviors, even in the presence of extremely adaptable species that are capable of migrating to arbitrary biomes. See Humans - Humans have not typically had devestating impacts on any ecosystems absent the use of agriculture or industry - in absentia of those behaviors, human populations don't generally overhunt their habitats. Notably, the history here indicates that human beings only start to exterminate animal populations for reasons OTHER than eating them. Another analogous example here is the Orca - Orca are extraordinarily well adapted predators. They are the fastest animal in the ocean, they're incredibly intelligent, they hunt in packs, they have huge ranges, and they live in every ocean on the planet. In other words, they are an intelligent and highly adaptable apex predator. Orca generally do not over hunt regions they inhabit. Their population typically achieves a sort of stasis with regards to their available prey, as do most predator populations on earth. So even the most adaptable, intelligent, and lethal hunters on this planet don't eat so much from one territory that they're forced into suboptimal territories. I see no reason to suspect the ecology of dragons would be any different. [Answer] Forest in your world would develop to be highly resistant to fire, as mentioned in other answers. Moreover, the predominant trees there (or perhaps it's a local plant growing beneath your trees) would release a fragrant smoke which is very unpleasant for dragons. Thus, while they could burn the trees (and should you endanger their offspring a bit, it won't be a protection at all) they will make an effort to not burn any tree (or even leaves) when hunting. If he was desperate, a dragon might do that, after a week of not catching any animal, a disgusting prey would be preferable than none at all, but they would try hard to avoid burning any tree. [Answer] # Poison Fire can produce or release many toxic compounds, depending upon the material burned. Over the eons, the trees of your world evolved to take advantage of that (though, of course, not knowingly or intentionally). A certain type of tree had a random mutation that caused it to given off a poisonous compound when burned. Two normally harmless chemicals combined into something deadly. Not just deadly but unpleasant. When dragons tried to burn those trees, the smoke was very painful to the dragons, and those who breathed to much of it died. Not to mention, even if the dragons persisted in burning them down, it meant grass didn't grow as well and animals the grazed there died. Or maybe the poison didn't kill the herbivores. It just settled into their tissues, killing dragons who ate them. Over time the dragons learned not to burn those trees, which in turn meant they were the ones to grow and spread. Until a point was reached wherein dragons don't burn down forests, because they gain nothing from it. [Answer] Forest will grow in and around wetlands A wetland (saline or fresh water) will be too costly for the dragon too heat up. It will also not burn easy. Forests will thus grow in wetlands. So will no forests grow outside of wetlands? Well, any forest close enough to a wetland will allow the prey to escape to the wetland once the dragons starts burning. Wasted effort for the dragon so the dragon will stop doing it. Why can the dragon not eat the animal once it is in the wetland? Either the wetlands will be covered with very dense wet forest or otherwise only animals that can hide under the water will survive. But wait, so big animals that cannot hide underwater can still be captured in a wetland? Yes if a dragon is suddenly introduced in a ecosystem these bigger animals will indeed go extinct together with a lot of forests (but the forests might regrow once the megafauna is extinct). Something similar happened actually when human arrived on the Eurasian and American continents. [Answer] I would offer that trees don't have an individual survival instinct. They are not flame-resistant or even fire-proof. They are, of course, filled with a species survival instinct. Perhaps over the millennia of dragon-fire, the scorched forests had but one species that kept continuing on and that species (with variations) now dominates the forest biome. These trees explode when burned...explode with a huge cloud of seeds that catch the hot updraft and swirl away in their thousands to float down across wide expanses. Give these trees some fast-growth bamboo-like qualities and the dragons will eventually realize the newly burned open country is a short-term proposition. If the rains and weather are favourable, there could well be a newly sprouted forest even bigger than the previous one! ]
[Question] [ I'm a big fan of zombie fiction, but one aspect that is rarely touched upon is how things look in the first stages of an apocalypse scenario. If you were an average civilian in the mid 90's when the internet and cell phones were far less ubiquitous than they are now, what would be the initial things you would see/read/hear that would indicate that something bad is on the horizon? The zombies in this scenario would be the fast type. A bite will turn you, but it's also the type of infection that turns you the moment you die, bite or not. A headshot is the only way to permanently take them down. Would it be classmates/coworkers talking about seeing a psycho get shot by the police after rabidly biting people in the middle of the street? Would it be a weird number of people at work or school not showing up? Maybe a phone call (landline, of course) from your weird cousin saying that zombies are walking among us? You don't think anything of it until you get more calls from grandparents, then your uncle, then friends saying similar things. Perhaps the CDC is on the TV and imploring people to stay in their houses, wash their hands, and wear masks when leaving the house? Maybe you're driving to the supermarket and see a cop leaving the store with a bunch of water/food and a worried look on his face? [Answer] The police car driving slowly down the street blaring an announcement "Ladies and gentlemen, an emergency curfew is now in effect. Return to your homes immediately. Your lives are in danger. Lock your doors and windows. Do not open your doors to anybody exhibiting unusual behavior. Turn on your radio or TV for more information. All businesses are closed until further notice. All stores are closed until further notice. All members of the National Guard, report to your armory. All members of the Police Auxiliary, report to the precinct. Ladies and gentlemen..." Of course, it's already too late. The few days spent denying the Zombie Plague --and infighting to downplay the severity-- before finally going public have given the Zombies too much time to spread. Going public occurs during that brief interval of time when it's obvious to the Mayor that all hope of containment is lost (and that his or her career is over), but a day or two before the Zombies are numerous enough to be seen on every street. [Answer] We used to read newspapers and watch the news. <https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline> > > 1981 > > > June 5: The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) publishes an article > in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR): Pneumocystis > Pneumonia—Los Angeles. The article describes cases of a rare lung > infection, Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia(PCP), in five young, > previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles... > > > June 5-6: The Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, and the San > Francisco Chronicle report on the MMWR article. Within days, CDC > receives reports from around the nation of similar cases of PCP, KS, > and other opportunistic infections among gay men... > > > The initial signs of a weird disease would come from the CDC and if spectacular enough, could be picked up by the popular press. This was the case for the initial cases of AIDS: reported by the CDC and then picked up by the LA times. --- As regards a bigger deal like a swarm of zombies, we used to listen to the radio and watch TV. If something serious was happening everything would talk about it. When 9/11 happened in 2001 I turned on the radio to listen with breakfast and they were live, reporting on what was happening. After listening for a little while I went to the TV and there was live footage of the burning towers on every channel. I feel like the Dawn of the Dead remake did this very well, starting in a hospital emergency room as the main character is coming off of her shift, and people are talking about something weird happening. [Answer] Shortwave Radio! You know that weird dude that never leaves his house down the street with that gigantic antenna? That guy's more important than you think. Ham radio operators, or amateur shortwave radio operators, are more than just hobbyists who stay up late at night chatting with other ham radio operators around the world. They're also part of an unofficial but better-organized-than-you-think network of emergency communications. > > Amateur Radio operators set up and operate organized communication networks locally for governmental and emergency officials, as well as non-commercial communication for private citizens affected by the disaster. Amateur Radio operators are most likely to be active after disasters that damage regular lines of communications due to power outages and destruction of telephone, cellular and other infrastructure-dependent systems. ... > > > Amateur Radio operators have informal and formal groups to coordinate communication during emergencies. At the local level, hams may participate in local emergency organizations, or organize local "traffic nets" using VHF (very high frequencies) and UHF (ultra high frequencies). At the state level, hams are often involved with state emergency management operations. In addition, hams operate at the national level through the Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES), which is coordinated through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and through the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), which is coordinated through the American Radio Relay League and its field volunteers. Many hams are also involved in Skywarn, operating under the National Weather Service and provide emergency weather information to the NWS for analysis and dissemination to the public. ([Source](http://www.arrl.org/amateur-radio-emergency-communication), [see also](https://www.domesticpreparedness.com/preparedness/ham-radio-in-emergency-operations/)) > > > In the Internet era, it's easy to forget these important volunteer heroes. If a zombie apocalypse were imminent anywhere on the planet, you can bet every ham operator on the planet would know about it within 24-48 hours — and probably a whole lot less. But would they be alone? Heck no! Usenet and BBS services You're in the 90s, and that means you're deep in the world of Dungeons and Dragons, PC gaming, AOL... and both Usenet and BBS. > > Usenet (/ˈjuːznɛt/) is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages (called articles or posts, and collectively termed news) to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to Internet forums that became widely used. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSs, though posts are stored on the server sequentially > > > Email today is not just ubiquitous, it's beginning to actually die out as people live their lives on their phones through social media. But in the early-to-mid 1990s, email was still very much the province of colleges, businesses, and the military. It wasn't that uncommon that people communicated more through Usenet than they did email. Whatever social media may be today, it can give its thanks to Usenet for creating the basic threaded conversation context. But Usenet was a UNIX-oriented system, so you generally found more technically-oriented folks there. Where did the average high school teenager go? Dial-up Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs). > > BBSes once numbered in the tens of thousands in North America. These mostly text-based, hobbyist-run services played a huge part in the online landscape of the 1980s and ‘90s. Anyone with a modem and a home computer could dial-in, often for free, and interact with other callers in their area code. ([Source](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/the-lost-civilization-of-dial-up-bulletin-board-systems/506465/)) > > > Organizations like America Online (AOL) were very much commercialized BBSs. But before they became popular, there were gazillions of grassroots BBSs that shared everything! But it was a somewhat short-lived fad (unlike Usenet, which is still going strong today). > > Then the internet came along in the mid-1990s. Like a comet to the dinosaurs, it upended the natural order of things and wiped BBSes out. My system was one of the casualties, a victim of the desire to devote all my online time to the internet. The same scenario repeated itself on thousands of computers across the country until, one by one, the brightest lights of the BBS world blinked out of existence. (Ibid.) > > > There are still a handful of operating BBSs today, but it's a dying culture. But, believe me, those were the days! And news of a possible zombie apocalypse can probably be found on any of these services right now. But there's one more: the EBS There's something you very, very, very rarely hear about today, the [Emergency Broadcast System](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=186ajj7Vv0w) (EBS). I grew up regularly seeing and hearing tests like the one I just linked to. > > The Emergency Broadcast System (EBS), sometimes called the Emergency Broadcasting System or the Emergency Action Notification System (EANS), was an emergency warning system used in the United States. It replaced the previous CONELRAD system and was used from 1963 to 1997, at which point it was replaced by the Emergency Alert System. ([Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Broadcast_System)) > > > The EBS has been replaced by the Emergency Alert System (EAS) which can (and does) operate through cellphones. The EBS was used more then 20,000 times (though never for anything big like a nuclear... or zombie... attack). The EBS would be the official way of hearing the announcement. [Answer] You may have remembered hearing headlines about COVID in China back in November 2019, and then slowly watched as it spread worldwide. That's what it would be like. Really, COVID was a great thing for zombie apocalypse writers - it provides an easy reference for how something can spread worldwide so quickly. Sure, this might be in the '90s, but there was enough world-spanning media back then that you'd pick up on it at roughly the same rate. [Answer] We also had telephone trees, a way for a group of people to pass a message to mostly everyone. The more frequently used would be a local church's prayer request chain, but any organization could have one for things like cancelling a baseball game. Even when there were power outages, often the phone lines still worked. Truckers did a lot of talking on CB radios and anyone can listen to those on walkie talkies. Also, it was common for people to have police scanners in their homes and leave them running all day and you could get very local information that way. You could also get absurdly bungled information due to catching only the last few words of something. [Answer] In a pre-industrial world, the signs may be: * suddenly not getting any travellers/trading visits to your village from a particular road/direction * rarely, a zombie wanders onto a farm and is killed by the farmer * scouts are sent out to investigate and return saying the next village over is deserted. Some don't return * more roads/directions go silent * more zombies start appearing [Answer] One major mechanism not yet mentioned is [civil defense sirens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_defense_siren) and similar systems — national networks of sirens (or loudspeakers, alarm bells, or similar), set up in as many populated places as possible. Different versions exist in different countries, but surprisingly many countries have some form of them. If they’re often little-known, it’s because they’re generally reserved for the most serious emergencies — direct military attacks, and similarly urgent crises. They’re designed so that when they sound, you know something serious is happening, even if you never knew they existed before. They may broadcast a message, or they may just be a massive siren, telling you that something serious is happening, prompting you to other sources to find out more — turn on the radio or TV, or equivalent. So, as an active alert mechanism, they complement the information-dissemination networks described in other answers. Well-known examples are the air-raid sirens used in the second world war, and the tsunami warning systems set up in many countries since 2001. The one I know best is the Swedish [Hesa Fredrik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_defense_siren#Sweden) — huge sirens/loudspeakers set up on tall buildings in all neighbourhoods/villages around the country, tested on set dates, sounding like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6mFu7GMMwI). Such systems have existed in roughly their current form since the early/mid 20th century. In earlier times, church bells were sometimes used similarly as warning alert signals for their communities, at least in Western Europe; I imagine other parts of the world had analogous traditions. [Answer] Look at Covid-19 There were news articles about it for weeks before it actually "hit" the US. First mostly-ignored report about some flu that sprang up because somebody ate a bat. Then (to people that were paying attention) somewhat ominous silence from Chinese media. Then a lockdown in china as cases started popping up elsewhere overseas. The first wave of lockdowns in my area started in February 2020, but there was increasing concern going back to November. Presumably a zombie virus would be somewhat similar, except that it's so much easier to track zombies (as opposed to a COVID-19 carrier) that the news would be more alarmed/focused early. Because "virus taht makes you eat people" is a lot more interesting than "1919 pandemic mk2." [Answer] Assuming that the press doesn't report it by breaking in to normal programming (presumably because they don't believe that such an event can possibly be occurring, or because the government has throttled the press) information like this would first begin to circulate by long-distance landline call, after which it would explode into wild person-to-person rumor. The reaction to those rumors would vary by person, and could become quite extreme. For a semi-comic rendition of what that might look like, I would recommend the 1988 Anthony Edwards movie [Miracle Mile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Mile_(film)). The movie is about a rumor of imminent nuclear war hitting Los Angeles, but it has a nice take on how hysteria might develop in a pre-internet era. [Answer] In 1991 in the United States we already had sensationalistic local TV news. In many American homes the TV operated constantly whenever anyone was home. The first indication something was wrong would not be a carefully composed communication from the CDC or even the mayor. It would be when your local TV station broke into the regularly scheduled program to bring you a breathless report of murder and mayhem brought to you by a reporter standing with a microphone in front of yellow tape and flanked by police cars and ambulances with flashing lights. There would be another interruption a few minutes later to report a second attack by a deranged person. At this point they probably would not go back to regularly scheduled programming and instead repeat everything and use the phrases "breaking news", "as it happens" and "here for you" a lot while waiting for further developments. People would start calling their friends telling them to turn their TV's on. As attacks spread there would be talk of terrorism. They might assume that these were knife attacks. If word got out that these were bite attacks there would be on-air speculation as to what kind of weird terrorist resorts to biting people. By now news helicopters would be converging on the scene and covering the massive emergency response live from the air. The public would be aware something bad was going on long before the authorities figured out that they were dealing with zombies. At that point they would activate the emergency alert system and might send police cars with loudspeakers to warn people. Later mayors and health officials would make statements, but they would be commenting on a situation about which most people had already known for several hours. ]
[Question] [ ## TL;DR Let's say that computers were invented at a school for the blind in mid-1800s. How would today's technology, based on these non-screen-based computers, be different? ETA: To clarify and hopefully narrow this enough -- I'm assuming that both the newer products will be influenced by functional computers predating movies & television: radio & telegraph/telephone may be more of the communication models.* Also, that just like numpads on phones and computer keyboards are arranged differently due to vestigial bits from their separate origins, and our "Save" icon may confuse those who hadn't grown up with 3.5" floppies (I'm from the 5.25" era myself - Apple //c!), and we still call that thing in a car a "glove compartment" despite not wearing specific driving clothing any more).* So while sighted potential users greatly outnumber the blind ones, they're from a world where computers have always been fully accessible to the blind (so accessibility is not an afterthought), and that has probably driven the development of the CS field for quite a while. ## Background elements Braille had already been invented by the early 19th century, and it was derived from a military application (Night Writing, for Napolean's army) -- much like our computers (stored programs, some of the more theoretical elements were codified during WWII ) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille> Punch Cards for Weaving had been invented in 1803 -- for a while schools for the blind were often trade schools-- the first one (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_National_des_Jeunes_Aveugles> (first school for the blind was also named "National Institute of the working blinds", and was famous for graduating Organists.) So now let's say they got an early Jacquard Loom head type machine (instead of Organs) from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom#Importance_in_computing> > > ... The ability to change the pattern of the loom's weave by simply changing cards was an important conceptual precursor to the development of computer programming and data entry. Charles Babbage knew of Jacquard looms and planned to use cards to store programs in his Analytical Engine. In the late 19th century, Herman Hollerith took the idea of using punched cards to store information a step further when he created a punched card tabulating machine which he used to input data for the 1890 U.S. Census. > > > (Note that this Loom appears to also be a French invention.) Charles Babbage & Analytical Engine - according to Wikipedia (sorry that I keep going back to that source, but I'm assembling fragments of things I thought I knew or picked up (I'm no tech historian), and Wikipedia's the easiest place to assemble the threads.) -- he was self-taught from reading many mathematicians, some of which were French, and was definitely fighting the British Establishment. from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Computing_pioneer> > > While Babbage's machines were mechanical and unwieldy, their basic architecture was similar to a modern computer. The data and program memory were separated, operation was instruction-based, the control unit could make conditional jumps, and the machine had a separate I/O unit > > > ## So a computer doesn't need to be print-derivative We have punched cards (tangible, non-alphabetic) manipulating rules and representations of numbers. As [Ada Lovelace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage#Ada_Lovelace_and_Italian_followers) said: > > "We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves." > > > So what if punched cards went in, braille results came out? Things may have stayed mechanical longer, instead of moving to processors as we know them, but there'd also be almost a century's extra progress. "Screens" may have moved to [Refreshable Braille Displays](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_braille_display) - but would there be "windows" and other simultaneous processing? # The "World Building" or AltHistory part -- Just like the Internet was very US-focused in the beginning, so it has some legacy effects on domain names and rules, perhaps in this world, the computer world (and thus internet?) were dominated by French research, and blind computer scientists. Look at the [Minitel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel) for an example of France being way ahead of the curve! They started as phone-book replacements, but provided message boards and finance stuff. ## why I'm asking I'm documenting navigation of applications designed with minimal concern for accessibility. My particular job seems to be describing how to navigate web applications for screen readers. Screen Readers (which read aloud text to blind/low-vision computer users) address everything in a pretty linear way. (Also, we have to keep all navigation keyboard-focused -- it's more predictable than a mouse.) When windows pop-up, where did the focus go? Do the users know there's a new dialog on screen? Where does the focus go when the error message goes away? (To the last place it was, to the line with the error, or to the top of the page?) It's easy for the sighted to notice a missing field, the blinking cursor, or that something changed on the screen: but if the default were audible and tactile? How would the interfaces change? What different communication elements may be emphasized? Would casual computers (like cell phones) do the same things or different ones? I know answers could go in a steam-punk way, but they doesn't have to, or the proposed tech doesn't need to stay that way. [Answer] I think the biggest difference would be in the development of user interfaces. If computers had been designed primarily by and for blind users, I imagine a much more sophisticated version of the Refreshable Braille Display would be in common use by now. I'm imagining a grid of keys instead of a single row forming a kind of tactile screen. This would allow for parallel processes happening in different zones on the grid, like windows. Users could tap in a particular zone to get an audio readout of that process, to advance the readout, or to drop the cursor and start typing; much like modern haptic screens, different touches could indicate different actions. An audio cue could alert users of a pop-up alert, which would always appear in a designated zone. Afterwards, the user could return their hands to whatever process they wanted. Audio cues could also alert users to things like empty fields; if the grid is labeled like a battleship board, then an alert like "Input required in Zone M6" could be used to direct the user. If blind people continued to be the primary developers of computers past the initial stages, advances in tactile interfaces would probably have replaced the advances in graphics. A tactile screen, like the one described above, would be a mechanical marvel, but wouldn't require much processing power to run; certainly nothing like playing a video. So the push for more and more powerful processors wouldn't have been as great. The tactile screen might be able to produce static images, by pushing pins up to form the outline of a shape, but probably most entertainment on computers would be in audio form. The podcast boom would have come much sooner, probably replacing the YouTube boom. I hope that helps! [Answer] Youngsters. The first computers read and wrote punched cards or punched paper tape; they did not have any kind of user interface where being blind or sighted mattered. It was perceived as major revolution when some smart technician adapted a typewriter to be able to print computer output; electric teletypewriters were then adapted so that operators could type commands into the computer. But teletypewriters are still purely linear devices. Up until the late 1960s or early 1970s most users did not even see the computer or come anywhere near it. One wrote a program on a special form, the nice ladies in the card punch room converted it to punched cards, the cards were given to an operator through a wicket, and a note was made in a register; one day later one queued to receive the cards back, together with whatever output the program had produced, printed on 132-column fan-folded paper. (Ever wondered why terminal emulators have options for 80 or 132 characters per line? That's why. A punch card could hold 80 characters, and was assimilated to one line of input. One line of computer printout had 132 characters. Those numbers were burned in the collective memory of informaticians.) Up to this day operating systems in the Unix lineage are ready to interact with the user via a dumb terminal, with no graphics and no full-screen character cell capabilities. The conclusion is that it doesn't matter where the first computers were made. It doesn't matter whether the inventor and the first users were blind or sighted. The first computer terminals which had the ability to run full-screen cursor-addressable character-cell interfaces (not graphics, just a rectangular array of characters) became available in the mid-1970s; that is, a staggering 25 years after the introduction of the UNIVAC I, the first commercially available programmable computer, and 30 years after the first well-known programmable computer, ENIAC, became operational in production for the U.S. Army. A full human generation separates the first computers from the first user interfaces where being sighted was necessarily an advantage. [Answer] I see no differences in how computer would have developed. The first computers used punched cards to take input and give output (one of the favorite prank among nerds in those days was to swap two random cards in the physical folder containing them, when the owner was not paying attention), and graphics came much later. And the reason is that when you move to mass usage, you have to rely on something fitting the masses. Punch cards aren't. Braille isn't, except for those who have to learn it. But we as species use sight as main mean of communication, so it is inevitable the usage of graphics. [Answer] There's a story from the age of the Altair. The Altair was one of the first computers that a hobbyist could afford. You put it together yourself, and then hopefully it worked. It became an odd solution in search of a problem. Nobody quite knew what to do with it. There were "computing clubs" where people met to try to figure out what it could do. [![Altair 8800](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jXgTJm.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jXgTJm.jpg) In one such meeting, there was one student huddled in the corner rapidly flipping switches. You see, you programmed this by flipping a row of 20 or so switches and read the output on a grid of LEDs. Part way through, somebody accidentally tripped over his power cord, clearing the RAM, forcing him to start over again. When he finally finished, he produced an AM crystal radio, tuned it, and from the speaker erupted a tinny version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The room went quiet. He had varied the size of loops in the program to cause the computer to emit AM modulated noise from the CPU itself. I tell this story because it points out that making sound was possible remarkably early on, and with relatively cheap hardware. Sound is also something that humans are remarkably good at. So I would expect sound to replace a substantial portion of the output. In the early days, you knew what output you wanted. It wasn't like you searched through reams and reams of paper. You didn't have the spare CPU cycles. You made it do exactly what you wanted. Thus, the linear output format of an auditory signal would be very effective. Your blind individuals would certainly be capable of appreciating a tremendous array of musical sounds. That information could be conveyed in bells and whistles much faster than we would generally think. Different chords could be used to pack information with remarkable density. Directional sound could be used to pack it even further. You would certainly still want paper solutions for permanent records, but those are easier to play with. Its the transient signals that are hard, and sound would take care of that very well. [Answer] I think a good technology to consider in comparison is the telegraph. The telegraph also began as a technology processing bits of information that while accessible, in that they used the sound/touch of tapping, was also cumbersome to use in that it required the user to learn a specialized code to both input and interpret. So, you had a specialized profession develop around the telegraph, which gave way when an interface easier for the layman (the telephone) was developed. So, if you have the adoption of punch card computers a good century before Cathode Ray Tubes were sophisticated enough to create purely visual displays, you need to think about how you would stop CRTs from overwhelming punch cards and Refreshable Braille Displays. Keeping telegraphs in mind, one interesting possibility is if your early punch card computers could interface directly with telegraph lines. The French were already pioneers at long distance communication: under Napoleon, signal towers were built connecting Paris to the frontiers of the country. What if a series of punch cards at a central computer in Paris could be sent to a punch card writer in Marseilles almost instantly? You could have a sort of internet under Napoleon III! Ultimately, though, I think tactile interfaces are going to be hard to catch on very widely, even with these boosts. The best bet is to try to stimulate a jump to more audio displays. This is where a lot of technology is trying to move now: a natural language interface, like Siri or Alexa. Maybe if a punch card internet develops, you'd still have specialized data entry types for input, but the displays would instead become temporary phonographs? Honestly, there are a lot of repercussions that could come from this, but good luck exploring! Some other resources to look at are 'Jacquard's Web' by James Essinger, a non-fiction book on the development of the Jacquard loom and some of its significance, and 'The Difference Engine' by William Gibson, which not only launched the steampunk genre but also deals with Babbage-style central computers as the major point of departure for the world. [Answer] I think that computers would develop very different mechanisms to display information. Some form of Braille dot matrix that stimulated 5 or 10 fingers at a time would run out a practicality for many applications. It would work for simple question answer type problems, but data visualization wouldn’t work well. But, humans have sensitive skin on their faces and palms that can feel changes in heat very well, especially in cold environments. I can remember sitting in a cold movie theater next to a woman I liked very much, I could feel her sitting next to me from 12” by her body heat. And we can hear binaurally and can feel sounds on our skin. So I can imagine a very complex presentation system using sound, temperature and infra-sound projected at my face and palms encoding a highly sophisticated set of information dense symbols as a display for a blind race of computer users. It would be massively parallel in its capacity to represent data. And, it would probably limit the number of people that could become programmers or at least interpret the data sets. Since only very perceptive individuals could correctly discriminate the data. But, I think that would weed out the stupid programmers, and I am, in principle, all for that. [Answer] This reminds me of the braille interface that the character "Whistler," played by David Strathairn, used in the movie "Sneakers." Maybe they are real things but it would take a non-blind person to build these things. As an alternate path you can focus on the person. Blind people could become very adept at quickly processing streams of data and making intelligent decisions. They could be sought after as a kind of "organic AI" in faster stock trading reactions in a time where computers of the day cannot be programmed to be so intelligent. Organic AI, what a misnomer. Like the "computers" in Dune but more interesting. [Answer] How about if we throw Braille out of the room for a bit. Instead, think of something that combine the other senses. First thing that comes to mind was the [musical instrument](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin) used to make the music in the movie Forbidden Planet. The idea is to make it more accurate and able to response to hands and fingers movements in 3D. Sound would tell the user where things are and even give a texture to those things. Now, instead of seeing files and directories as flat entities, they can be interpreted as something in space; maybe they will behave like spheres inside spheres. Programming could be getting one blob and dropping in another somewhere in the space. Drag and drop is much more realistic. Adding more feedback would improve the system. For instance, you could have the fingers being tracked (talking here more modern technology) so air or heat could be blown around them to help improve on the boundary and texture experience. I remember watching a show about someone who saw no colour and got a camera implanted on his head in an arm which would describe colours by sound. He then one up we normal beings by expanding the spectrum to outside visible light. [Answer] > > So a computer doesn't need to be print-derivative > > > But it's very inefficient for users if it isn't. According to [this Quora question](https://www.quora.com/How-fast-can-Braille-be-read), Braille reading speeds are around 125 words/minute on average, and may reach as high as 200 words/minute for exceptional Braille readers. For telegraph operators, Morse code was even slower - according to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute#Morse_code), around 20 words/minute for an average operator, with a world record of 75 words/minute. For reading print or screen though, according to [this online test](http://www.readingsoft.com/), 200 words/minute would be average or perhaps on the low side of average, and speed readers can manage up to 1000 words/minute. So taking in information from any other medium will always be slower. There is a strong incentive for the means of communication to be more efficient, and that will always be an obstacle to any other display mechanism. Then we have the technical problems with a Braille reader. However you construct it, a Braille readout device can only display a *very* small number of words at a time. According to [the Braille standard](http://www.brailleauthority.org/sizespacingofbraille/sizespacingofbraille.pdf), each Braille character takes 6.2mm. This makes it equivalent in size to 17.5pt text. This is very much larger than normal printed text, which reduces the information density for any given page or screen. And until extremely recently, Braille readout devices required an array of small solenoids to drive pins forming the letters, which was bulky, unreliable and above all *expensive*. Even with alternative technologies though, it is still impossible to get around the low information density of a Braille readout device. And then we get onto the sheer practicality of the invention taking place amongst people who are not sighted. Whilst non-sighted people could certainly have been responsible for the basic concepts, the practicalities of engineering construction make it impossible that they could have designed and constructed it. There simply is no equivalent of engineering drawings in Braille. So "Let's say that computers were invented at a school for the blind in mid-1800s"? Let's say that they could no more do that than they could grow wings and fly. TL;DR: Basic concept is impossible, any alternative display technology would never be a success. ]
[Question] [ The basic concept of this planet is that, the planet has a tilted axis (you probably guessed that already) which results in the South Pole constantly facing towards the sun. This would result in the planet having a 'bi-polar' like climate, with everything from the North Pole down to the equator being a cold and frozen environment, getting warmer as you go south towards the equator, while everything South of the equator getting even warmer and warmer with the South Pole (if it is a present landmass) being absolutely scorching desert. I'd imagine that the equator, being the halfway mark being hot-land and cold-place being somewhat humid and full of rainforest/jungles and plains. Though that is from my basic understanding of climates and planet related science. Mountains, rivers and so on would also above an influence on the terrain of the world. Wow an important distinction to make is that this planet isn't tidally locked, just it has a very wonky axis. So how plausible is such a thing, a little too outlandish or something entirely possible? [Answer] Utterly impossible. You simply cannot have one pole of a rotating planet always oriented the same way towards the sun, for the simple reason that the pole always points in the same direction in space, but the planet moves around the sun. Keeping one pole always pointed at the sun despite the planet moving from one side to the other over the course of its orbit would require continuously applying gigantic torques--enough to completely reverse the planet's spin twice every orbit--for which no physical mechanism exists, and which would tear the planet apart if you magically willed them into existence. A synchronously rotating (tidally locked) world would give you most of the same effects, but since you explicitly ruled that out... sorry, it just can't happen. [Answer] @Logan R. Kearsley is correct and you should accept his answer (I upvoted it), but for the sake of your continued exploration of your world, remember that Uranus has the axial tilt you're describing, it's simply not polar-locked to the sun. For an introduction to its seasons, [check this out](http://earthsky.org/space/what-are-the-seasons-like-on-uranus). [Answer] It might be possible. But you have to think outside a few boxes. For one thing. What makes a sun your sun? Do you have to orbit it? We already do exactly this with Polaris. We just don't think of Polaris as our sun. Polaris doesn't exactly keep us warm. But why shouldn't it? Because it's fairly long way away. Any way to fix that? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y77hA.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y77hA.jpg) Sure, make it a black hole that spews x-rays along it's axis. The charged particles circling down to their deaths emit radiation in a highly directional way. Quasar's will do the same thing for you. Just well. BIG. Whether these are really different names for the [same thing](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-quasar-and-a-Supermassive-black-hole-apart-from-the-luminosity) is a debate I'd rather not get into. Precession is something to understand whenever you're dealing with an axis. Yes overtime we drift away from directly facing Polaris like a spinning top. But that's a mere wiggle in your temperate zone compared to what happens if your quasar decides to do the same thing and be a [pulsar](http://earthsky.org/space/what-is-a-pulsar). This would mean every so often your sun just turns off. Is this stable? [Not sure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgNYH5L6VGk). Does this even have a Goldilocks zone that can support life? Not sure. But if you just have to be this weird I think this is the most plausible. Pack your sun screen. [Answer] Basically, you are asking about a planet that has, 1) a 90 degree tilt, and 2) a precession period equal to its orbit period (ie, that takes exactly one year to make a full precession). I have asked the general question - concerning just the item 2) above, irrespective of 1), here: [Can there be a planet for which orbit and precession take the same time?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/62238/can-there-be-a-planet-for-which-orbit-and-precession-take-the-same-time). The discussion seems to demonstrate that it is impossible, or unstable, or at least it would demand the planet to be very far away from its sun (which would quite certainly make it too cold for life, or even for there being a significant difference in temperature between the dark and the enlightned poles: both would be very close to 0 Kelvin). Of course, you can always handwave that for narrative purposes. [Answer] Nope, not with single axis rotation anyway. You can have what Uranus does where it rotates pretty much at right angles to the plane of the elliptic (its axis of rotation is tilted 97 degrees from the perpendicular) Summer is 20 years of daylight, winter 20 years of darkness, and spring and autumn are a year each in which the sun rises and falls, on average, every 9 hours. Now of course a world closer to its Primary those years will be days and the hours will be minutes but the effect will be the same. Having said you can't do it, maybe you can; asteroids can "tumble" meaning that they describe transforms on multiple axes, we know of no planet which does this but theoretically it could happen. If such a planet had two axes of transformation one parallel to the elliptical and one perpendicular to it and those rotated at the right rates, the perpendicular transformation being on a 1:1 Spin-Orbit Ratio AKA tidally locked while the parallel one spins as fast or slow as you want, then the planet you describe is possible just improbable and really really weird. The thing is that apart from Coriolis Effect and the fact that the stars will move across the sky where you can see them, in the frozen wastes of the dark side, this planet is in no way shape or form different from a normal tidally locked world that has a 1:1 Spin-Orbit Ratio on one axis like the Moon's orbit of Earth. Edit: Sorry I forgot to note that you can only keep a rotating object in the "tumble" described with a constant input of torque, huge amounts of torque; on the scale of the lifetime energy output of a small yellow star every single orbit. Edit: That's Ordinal Axes, Rotational Axis which would be moving constantly in relation to the planet. [Answer] How about a system like this one: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g813W.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g813W.png) Left red-blue-thing beeing the sun's magnet. Right red-blue-thing beeing the planet's magnet. Grey beeing the planets orbital axis. Black beeing the magnetic field lines. This would imply a torque to the planet. If tuned correctly, this might result in a torque to tilt the planets axis of rotation to just lock the planets poles. I don't know how stable this is. (Should be a fun exercise for a physics undergrad) [Answer] So we've busted the myth that it is possible to have a spinning planet orbit a star within the Goldilocks zone while always pointing one pole toward the star. Now we want to recreate the (planetary) conditions of the myth. The problem seems to be gravity and those pesky orbital mechanics. I really like @CandiedOrange 's idea of using the high energy jet of a black hole/quasar for a distant source of light and heat. Let's tweak it to be a bit more reliable and lot less lethal. Put a nebula right in the path of a Quasar jet, so that a dense region heats up to near fusion temperatures. Now place a rogue planet near (or inside) the nebula so it's north pole points at the hot spot. Probably not in the path of the jet! You can be creative about what the nebula and the fake star look like because of magnetic fields/turbulence or a wobble in the jet. (Would the nebula eventually become a glowing 'smoke ring' accelerating up the jet?) [Answer] A tidally locked planet will have its axis normal to the plane of its orbit. There is likely to be some libration so near the terminator there will be variations in light and dark. I suppose there might be a (geological) period before the lock was complete where the axis of rotation (period of rotation (becoming) identical to period of orbit) was slightly offset from that angle, and libration would be more interesting. [Answer] Setting aside the questions of what tilted axis and tidally locked means, let's assume for a moment, that for whatever reason you have a planet where one of the poles always faces towards the sun. Assuming that your planet is within the 'Goldilocks' zone of a star similar to Sol, your south pole would be not so much a desert as a barren wasteland (even deserts have life, this pole would not). Compare it to the daylight temperatures of Mercury. It is constantly having massive amounts of energy poured into it, across an extremely wide frequency spectrum. Conversely, the energy being received by the dark side of the planet would be so low that it too would be lifeless, as an iceball - we are talking temperatures that would snap freeze anything biological that is exposed to them (the presence of a moon reflecting energy to the dark side will increase temperatures slightly, but not enough to support life). So this leaves us with the equator. Will it be a narrow band of lush jungle? In short, no. The extreme contrast of pressure and temperature colliding around the equator would result in a constant storm of truly epic proportions(well beyond anything ever seen on Earth) - a storm with constant winds fast enough to pick people up and throw them around like dolls. Assuming there is enough water on the planet to provide rain, the raindrops would move so fast they hit like bullets. Short of magic or applied phlebotinum, this planet would be uninhabitable. [Answer] As discussed [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/42381/37082), a sun technically can orbit a planet with a sufficiently small sun or large planet (at that point brown dwarf). By doing so, you can theoretically avoid the issues mentioned in the other answers by having the planet and the sun orbiting a third body. [Answer] Yes, but no. Basically, what you are asking for is a tilted axis planet that acts like a tidally locked world, and this just doesn't work. You can have the exact same on-planet conditions, except the part that always faces the sun would be better called the "east pole" rather than the south pole. If your planet has an axis of 0 degrees (I know this is the exact opposite of what you are wanting) and you have it rotating around its axis so slowly that it completes 1 revolution per orbit, you will have 1 side of the planet in eternal night, and the other side in eternal day, and both the north and south poles will both be in the thin borderlands between the two sides, so in the end you basically have an east pole and west pole in either eternal day or eternal night, but not a southern pole. Alternatively, you can have a tilted axis world like Uranus, if you do this the day and night side will change throughout the year, in the spring and fall you will have have an equivalent day-night cycle on all parts of the world, and in summer one pole will be in eternal day only for it to switch halfway through the year in winter. You can have one or the other, but not both. Now are these likely? Yes, very. Basically, a tidally locked world is probably more likely to exist around a red dwarf star, and it may be able to support an earth-like ecosystem in the borderlands between the day and night sides of the world. A high axis world is going to be very different, they can exist pretty much anywhere and be any size but will likely be naturally uninhabitable, the seasons are just to extreme. For your world, I wouldn't try and do something crazy. There is no particular reason for the planets south pole to always face the star, and to get the effect you want all you need to do is make the world tidally locked. My advice: Remove the high eccintricity and just make the thing tidally locked to a red dwarf star, or any type of star if it doesn't need to be habitable, this would preserve the feel of the world without requiring any gymnastics and doesn't require any significant suspension of disbelief. [Answer] So let's say Earth is grazed by an enormous meteorite in a very particular fashion causing the axis to turn towards the sun. Not sure if this is possible, but I imagine that grazing it exactly on the north pole in the direction of the sun could cause this, while the gyroscopic effect would stabilize axis again. Let's call it "The Axident". For the sake of the thought experiment the meteorite has no additional effects. We now have very intense seasons in between the poles and the tropics: a three month day in summer and a three month night in winter. I don't think the Earth's magnetosphere would be effective at this angle, so solar winds would also scorche the poles. The area around the equator, so between both tropics, would fare better. In Autumn and Spring pretty much nothing would change, Sun wise; similar angle though the sun is in the North in Autumn, same day length, same magnetic field protection. Winds would change, rain season would change. I'm not to sure what the Moon is doing, but probably tides would change too. Not a problem for much of the flora I would think. Now before the Axident the equatorial area didn't really have Summer and Winter. Now it does. Pretty much like it is on the poles right now. Polar nights in Winter and midnight Sun in Summer. Intense stuff and very much a problem for most of the flora and fauna. This event would trigger an extinction event that eclipses the Holocene. Though surely enough plants will survive and adapt for life to continue. Oceanic life shouldn't be affected to much. Many land and lake animals will be in a bad situation. Birds can just fly wherever they like, so they should be good. I think that Humans will also be to handle it best. But it never hurts to have a backup on Mars just to be sure. [Answer] To me it sounds like the author of this question might be interested in a planet which axis is perpendicular to the rotation around the sun, not pointing towards the sun (as requested in the answer). If one rotation period of the planet is equal to the time it needs to circle the star, one side of the planet faces the star all the time and the other side always faces outer space. Of course, the warmest or coldest spots are not the geographic poles of the planet, but rather two opposite points on the equator. Naturally, there is no day/night cycle on such a planet. This is in fact how the moon rotates around our earth. The same side always faces the earth. If you imagine the earth as a light source, this would pretty much roast the one side of the moon and leave the backside dark. But this is not the case because the sun and no the earth is the big light producer in the solar system. I hope this answer helps! [Answer] Logan is incorrect - If the planet it tidally locked it is still possible for it to spin as long as the axis of rotation is pointing towards its star. This means no day/night cycle. You could add a bit of wobble to that and maybe get some day/night cycles near the equator. Problem with this scenario (tidal locking) is that the star will heat the nearest pole enormously, and half the planet will always be in night (super cold). My guess is that the wobble wouldn't be enough to get much variation over the course of a single orbit, but this I'm not sure about. ]
[Question] [ The world is at war with an hostile alien race. This species invaded earth a few decades back, and forced the governments of the planet to unite under a single federation. This world government is similar to the EU and retains some of its democratic institutions, but with more centralized power. This was done to combine resources and to make fighting back more effective. Unfortunately, the war is going badly. People are being slaughtered in the hundreds of millions, genocide on a scale unprecedented in human history. These aliens are committed to exterminating the human race for unclear reasons. Trying to reason with or understand them has failed, and the world government has resigned itself to total war. In these circumstances, the human race has just barely managed to hold on. A secret organization within the government has managed to develop a weapon referred to as a geneseed. It is an advanced form of genetic engineering that turns humans into supersoldiers. People who are implanted with the seed transform into beings similar to the demigods of mythology. They are able to move at incredible speeds, and have the strength to lift dozens of tons. They also gain a host of other abilities, including increased intelligence, heavy resistance to weaponry, and heightened senses. These abilities come with a cost. The geneseed can only be implanted successfully in children between the ages of 10-16, with anyone older dying horribly from the process. These child soldiers grow and mature at a quickened pace, and have little to no memory of their former life. Their emotions are suppressed due to the strain of the change on their bodies. They are then indoctrinated by the government to become the perfect weapons, killing when necessary and obeying orders without question . The government is considering mandating this policy, but want to sell this program to the public without too much resistance. One idea is to treat the parents of said child as saviors, honoring them as heroes doing their duty to save their species. Parades and celebrations are made in their honor to acknowledge their sacrifice. Another is to offer them lifetime privileges, such as tax reduction or free schooling for their other children, to cash grants, to other monetary benefits. Would these steps the world government is taking be enough to sell a modern public to support this policy? [Answer] You already answered your question. "People are being slaughtered in the hundreds of millions, genocide on a scale unprecedented in human history." This means that there are many, many orphans which have no living relatives anymore. So nobody will object because nobody is there who has a vested interest in the child. The good people who could balk are already mostly dead because their compassion either convinces them to fight hopeless fights (they are dead) or their empathy either drive them to suicide or cripples their soul (they are broken). The sole purpose of the sad rest of humanity is the fight for survival and procreation. If people would have a fair chance to repel the attack, they would be thinking about protecting the children, but if the situation is so desperate, they will hope that the new children can change anything, it is the last straw. Essentially it's the choice between being dead (alien are winning) or having a maimed soul (alien are repelled). One point: "They are then indoctrinated by the government to become the perfect weapons". Completely unnessary. Soldiers that can think and decide (especially if they are more intelligent) are much better soldiers than drones. It makes them flexible and adaptable. You do not want obedience, but determination and resolution. And this is quite easy to achieve if you have only the choice between being slaughtered or fighting for your life. You do not need someone giving you orders, you need someone who gives you the best tactical information to achieve the best result. I would go so far that if the situation is really so bad that every fight could be the last, incapable officers will be killed on the spot. There is no room for pride or rank anymore, all heading positions are also hanging on the edge of their seats during a battle. [Answer] Due to population crashes, etc. society rolls back what is considered to be an "adult" to the early teens (12-14) instead of the 18+. Now the former children are adults and can choose for themselves to take the drug/etc. that triggers this change. [Answer] In desperation, humans will cling to any hope. The idea Thorsten S. mentioned about using orphans was spot on. There is no need to pull the children from their families when such an abundant source exists. Many of these older orphans would relish a chance to seek revenge for the deaths of their families. Although, once the new soldiers start winning, I suspect families would seek to participate. I would suggest that either the genetic changes are made somatic cells instead of to the germ-line (or sterilize the children.) Otherwise, the human race will be extinct. To sell it, promote the successes and market the program as the only hope of humanity. Celebrate the children as heroes. Interview them. Mourn when they fall. [Answer] By only reading the title, yes. At the most basic level they can get public support for child soldiers by not telling the public that they're making child soldiers. It's super simple really. They could also do it with loads of propaganda over time. They could also just brainwash the public using media to make them think that it's okay. After reading your question fully, yeah in that scenario people would be volunteering their kids and raising children specifically for geneseed. It's likely that cultures would start considering 13yr old children adults for this sort of thing. Humans like to win their wars. If the species is facing an extinction level war, then we'd do a hell of a lot worse than that to win. In certain regions all the government would have to do is air an ad showing kids killing aliens with geneseed, and then prove that it might not be not complete bullshit. It really wouldn't be that hard. Especially when you consider that your sending younger teenagers to go do this and not young kids. Just model the ads after the ones for the marine core in the US. That should be good enough. Remember that in this scenario the entire planet is losing. The gov. just needs to show that this is a viable path to victory. Bonus answer to a question you didn't ask: I'm not convinced making people into demi-gods will actually win this war. Are aliens invading with spearmen? Do they have the means to travel to earth, but not the means to bombard it from space? Can they seriously get here and force humans to make a global government, but not create an effective chemical weapon to kill the humans? These aliens seem to have a really dumb tech tree. Are the kids in this scenario able to fix the economy so we can get weapons that might let us win? I would like to read this though. It sounds entertaining at the very least. It would make a good one off anime. [Answer] Yes. Because it is about convincion, I assume it is in a democratic frame. First, the World Government should create an ideology for that. Typically, this ideology would say the following points: * "the life of these children and ours are equal" * becoming one of these children is not our decision, instead it is the result of a higher determination. I.e. "it is predestinated in his personality if somebody will be a child soldier, we only acknowledge it" (and give him the required treatment) * talking about their shorter lifespans and their disadvantages should become rude. It should be handled as if we would say to a cancer patient that he will die. There should be also words constructed for these children. These should be always positive words. Their ordinary names ("child soldiers") should be considered rude. After that, it depends only on the time. In around 2-3 generations, it won't be a problem any more if somebody becomes a child soldier. [Answer] Yes, but it will take time. Like any other controversial war policy, the government can and should expect political resistance--to expect that the entire public will simply go along with the plan is naive. To overcome the public resistance and actually create a child soldier army, the most effective solution is propaganda. Assuming that your world government controls the public's sources of information, they should do the following. 1. Suppress opposition: Without a doubt, there will be those who oppose the government's use of child soldiers--pacifists (if there are even any left), child advocacy groups, and those with a strict sense of ethics. Don't let their arguments be heard. The moment the government makes it look like a debate, like the people have a choice, everything breaks down. I don't know exactly how this world government is run, but if it gets to the point that Earth starts turning against itself instead of focusing on fighting the aliens, humanity is doomed and the child soldier project is dead. Brand those who oppose your idea as unreasonable bigots who think that children can't achieve anything. Even if their objections are for completely different reasons, the public doesn't care. The public just wants someone to blame for their recent military defeats, and the opponents of the child soldier idea are the perfect scapegoats. "They're the ones responsible for this, they want Earth to lose this war!" 2. Promote service: Label the children that sign up (or their parents that sign the children up; I don't know how the decision is made in this scenario) as heroes of humanity, to be praised and commemorated. The children that live through their service are given some sort of special status; maybe they are given prestigious jobs with the government, or made first-class citizens, or given one of the other rewards that you already mentioned. By doing this, the government links the feeling of patriotism with the desire to serve. For the children, instead of "I want to join the Army when I grow up" it becomes, "Not only do I want to join the [insert world military force name here], but I can. I can finally realize all my dreams of doing great things." For the parents, instead of "I wish my children would grow up to serve humanity and show how great they are", it becomes, "My children, whom I have spent 10 years raising, now have a chance to prove themselves in the real world. They can finally show the world how (strong/smart/brave/whatever quality parents think their children have) they are. The door to my dream, which is for them to make a difference, is open right in front of me." 3. Normalize child soldiers: Spread the message that children are no different from everyone else. Say that, since Earth is barely holding on, we are all one people, white and black, rich and poor, (insert other divisions), child and adult. When the public realizes just how close Earth is to destruction, and how they need every bit of help they can get, they're a lot more likely to support child soldiers than if you just say "Hey, we're going to train children to go out and fight aliens! How does that sound?" The idea is to imitate the effect of the civil rights movements--everyone is equal, so everyone can take part and should have a part in this war. The more desperate people are, the farther they're willing to go. Make them desperate. Tl;dr: Silence and villainize opposition, glorify service. [Answer] Even a democracy can brainwash huge percentages of their populations to believe almost anything. Just look at "the greatest nation on earth". For an outsider, it is hard to understand why so many citicens of these contries think that was true, when even a brief glimpse at the facts that are readily available to them prove unmistakeably that it's plain fiction in any "sensible" meaning of the word "greatest". Add to that the fact that these people are desperate. Even without the soldiers being turned into demi-gods it has always been reasonably simple for democratic (and other) governments to convince a sufficiently large percentage of the population to send their children to certain death for a common cause. Admittedly, it might be wise not to disclose the full effects of the program in all detail. Leave them the hope that their children would come back as soon as the war is won, minus a few unfortunate casualties, but of course your sons (or your children) will be safe... The combination of endless propaganda and the sheer enormity of the onslaught should really make it easy. You should be aware of, and prepare for, the fact that there will always be a minority who will protest against your ideas. The simplest way to handle them is to discredit them beforehand, for example by publicly describing a few (set-up?) nutcases who state wild theories about the government being a bunch of reptiloids that don't want the children as soldiers, but as food for their hive-queen that resides in a 12-mile-high pink crystal in antarctica, secretly erected by raptor-riding nazis in 1944, with the help of the illuminati and the freemasons, using materials from their secret base on the "dark" side of the moon... you get the idea. After that, link any protest to this bizarre nutcase, and the protesters won't reach a wide public acceptance. [Answer] We already do encourage 'child soldiers' in our democracies: we have army/navy/airforce cadets programs; even Scouts (and Girl Guides) is a preparation for gendered (fighting/camping vs. nursing) military service; and the reason rugby started to be highly prized in schools in England was to help 'masculine-ise' young men - dirty, rough play (moreso than cricket) in all weather conditions, leadership, team work & loyalty, snap decisions & reflexes, physical fitness and bulk, high-contact & injury resilience etc. We just don't tell them the end goal is for them to see military service even though that was explicitly the reason for their creation. Look at the Hitler Youth - the Germans didn't see this organisation as exploiting children to be soldiers, it was basically nazi scouts/cadets but that's exactly what actually happened - they sent some groups of Hitler Youth to actually fight in the war towards the end when they were desperate for troops. Quotes and Sources: > > In 1859 several prominent English public schools including Eton, Harrow, Winchester and Rugby, raised cadet detachments with the idea of supplementing the militia in the likelihood of clashes with the forces of Napoleon III ... > > > * (Bold emphasis is mine) the above text is from "[The Torch and the Sword: A History of the Army Cadet Movement in Australia" found here](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=kzMZAr41dn4C&pg=PA7&lpg=PA7&dq=private%20school%20england%20rugby%20military&source=bl&ots=TwSHRlYbbo&sig=_4W5mq_SQpuIU3GfU4QXjRcuhXs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiVwd_P5IfUAhVJqlQKHSGMCcg4ChDoAQgxMAU#v=onepage&q=private%20school%20england%20rugby%20military&f=false) > > ...[F]or its supporters rugby union had a > higher moral purpose than mere recreation: its goal was to train young men to > be leaders of the Empire, to demonstrate the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race > in peace and in war. In the eyes of many it had long been seen as a more than > adequate form of military training. Without it, mused B. Fletcher Robinson in > 1896, Britain would lose its place as Europe’s leading nation to those countries > that practised conscription. Loretto headmaster H. H. Almond argued that > rugby’s purpose was to produce ‘a race of robust men, with active habits, brisk > circulations, manly sympathies and exuberant spirits’ who were ready to lead and > to follow in defence of the Empire (1) > > > (1) B. Fletcher Robinson, Rugby football (London, 1896), p. 50; H. H. Almond in Reverend Frank Marshall, ed., Football: the rugby union game (London, 1892), p. 55. * (Bold emphasis is mine) the above text is from "[ENGLISH RUGBY UNION AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR" found here](https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/FA925F18A29AB3FC781F1299DC4A829C/S0018246X02002686a.pdf/div-class-title-english-rugby-union-and-the-first-world-war-div.pdf) [Answer] Somewhat side-stepping the question: if science manages to make enough advances to create the geneseed, I would fully expect they will be able to improve on the current in-vitro fertilization and/or cloning technologies. Right now, we're already at a stage where the only thing really needed for a new human child is a womb for roughly 7 months. The "mother" doesn't need to be biologically related, the father doesn't need to serve any purpose beyond providing genetic material. As soon as they're born, they can be kept by the government. No parental strings need to become attached whatsoever. So if science can develop artificial wombs, well then there is no more need for anything resembling parents. And if there's no parents involved, then honestly, you'll have some resistance on principle, but compared to the threat to humanity, it'll be small. You can also counter some of that opposition by harvesting genetic material from everyone. Everyone will have donated something to the cause, everyone will have a child (whom they never met or even knew existed) serve in the war. Let the standard human herd mentality do the rest. The only downside is, if the geneseed is an unexpected discovery, then you need 10 years before you have your first soldier, since you can't start producing children like this in advance. If it's a long-term scientific work, then you can work out a schedule in advance. It'll still take a few years to truly ramp up, though. ]
[Question] [ I'm making a world where small part of population are like Star Wars Force sensitives. They have high status in my world, as the sensitivity gives them certain advantages over ordinary people. A trained sensitive could defeat several Special Forces type of soldiers, though a dozen would probably kill him. Sensitives are over-represented among the top of the society. To be born sensitive grants you a chance to become part of the elite. Having a sensitive among your family, friends & neighbors is an enormous prestige. It's the same as with aristocracy two century ago and movie/sport stars now. A child born of two sensitives has a much larger chance of being a sensitive, than a child of two ordinary citizens, though sensitivity is an exception not a rule. Most children born to sensitive parents are not sensitive themselves, and sometimes a strong sensitive is born to normal parents. Sensitivity is a weakly heritable trait. The country runs an extensive system for finding and identifying sensitive individuals, regardless of their class. Every sensitive must be trained, whether they or their parents like it or not. Those who run away are considered fugitives, those who help them are considered traitors. On one hand an ordinary family could quickly rise in status for having sensitive child or even better several of them, on the other hand once preeminent families wither away for failing to do so. The problem I face is that I want to limit the number of sensitives to a small part of the population, something like 1 in 10,000 would suffice. The question is: How to reconcile small numbers of sensitives with sensitivity being a hereditary trait? The ideas that don't work in my settings are below: 1. High mortality rate, due to wars & infighting. However female sensitives don't usually go to war, unless there is an [emergency](http://www.albawaba.com/loop/ypj-all-female-kurdish-battalion-kicking-and-taking-names-940362). Therefore they could simply repopulate the pool. 2. Caste system where noble bloodlines keep the right genes among themselves. The problem is that sensitivity is a badly needed trait for the society. The country wants to have more sensitives as they are very handy in wars with their neighbors. Being the ruling caste doesn't mean anything if your country is destroyed. The society doesn't care if your father is Michael Phelps or Joe Schmo, you could either swim fast or you don't. If you have potential you must join, it's not a destiny you could choose. 3. Reduced fertility. For women this might work, but the problem are men who could [sire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QThUnPSsqd8) hundreds of children every year. Besides even among sensitive couples the chance to have a sensitive children is low. They might have one or none. This is an important part of my story, with preeminent families falling from grace, when they are unable to produce sensitive offspring. Similar to how a family could be devastated in ancient China when it was unable to have a member that passed imperial exam and become a government official. [Answer] > > Since sensitivity is somewhat heritable, how to prevent it to spread among the general population I want sensitives to be rare something like 1 in 10,000. > > > Being blonde is heritable. You have much more probabilities of being blonde if both your parents are blonde, but there's a small chance a blonde boy or girl is born out of non-blonde parents. You don't have to do anything about it. It's just how genetics works. In fact, you do want it to be spread among the general population, otherwise the probability of a sensitive being born in the general population would be zero. The genes carrying the sensitiveness to the force are "in the wild", but they are recessive, say something like 1 in 10,000 births - but way more probable if both parents have these gene active. Edit: about expanding sensitive population Evolution's ways are twisted and intertwined. In theory, any change that is beneficial for a species should grant a reproductive advantage and so, it's more probable its offspring would survive while other individuals' offspring dies until this beneficial trait becomes commonplace. However, that only works when there's a huge pressure on survivability of said species. For instance, let's look a giraffes. Long, long time ago, giraffes had a neck like horses or zebras. Some of them had a longer neck, some of them had a shorter neck, but it wasn't an advantage per se. Then, some kind of global crisis happened (a glaciation, a change in the rain patterns, whatever...) and then all the food was gone and 99% of giraffes died (short and long neck). There was little to no grass at all, but giraffes can eat leaves, too, so they resorted to them, but very soon all the lower-hanging leaves were gone, too. And then, only then, having a longer neck became an advantage important enough so to 99.9% of short-neck giraffes died while "only" 99.1% of long-neck giraffes died. The survivors were nearly all long-neck giraffes and their offspring were even longer-neck ones. In just a few dozen generations, horse-like giraffes have turned in today's giraffes. Without that kind of pressure, though, evolution is much more subtle or even maybe stalls - we don't know for sure. In our world, being filthy rich is an obvious advantage but rich people don't have more children than poor people (on the contrary, I would say). Unless you design a world where the non-sensitive humans are doomed to go extinct due an external cause, I don't think natural evolution would make this trait universal. Now, if we are talking about selective breeding, that's entirely a different question... [Answer] You can borrow an idea from Flatland, and enforce a reduced fertility as consequence of this force. Force bearing individual will have lower chance of being fertile, this reducing the amount of newborn potentially bearing the same feature. [Answer] There are many ways to do this so the following are broad catagories: 1. Biological Reason for Low Incidence Rate: There is some genetic detail of the force so that can't be easily passed on. Maybe sensitivity is a non-inheritable genetic mutation. Maybe it requires an additional chromosome similar to a favorable down syndrome or Turners. Maybe a mother, especially one who is not force sensitive, will be damaged by a force sensitive fetus resulting in a miscarriage or maternal death. There are many ideas for this, some interesting and some limiting storywise. 2. Lack of Reproduction Among Upper Class: I don't think this takes much explanation as it is a real phenomenon. Rich families often produce fewer children than individuals with less wealth. Explain this in your world, however, you like: they don't want to sacrifice their me time raising them; private schooling (force training) is expensive; too busy working since they have the hard ruling party jobs; their religion dissuades attachment or sex. This won't help a specific noble family, however, unless they wait too long to start trying. 3. Culling: It is dark but good for story. Someone seeks out and kills younglings. Maybe it is a secret organization. Maybe it is public knowledge. Be creative as to why. Maybe they aren't killed but kidnapped...how is that for a story? 4. Other Removal from Gene Pool: Force users are likely to become infertal (or specifically unable to bring force sensitive children to sexual maturity). This would be best if it has nothing to do with the force but is a result of inbreeding to try and produce force sensitive children. 5. Accidental Self Injury: Force users can do amazing things but they don't realize the downside. Some force sensitive children experience SIDS as they use their powers without control on themselves as infants. Older ones playing with their abilities don't know how limited their self control is...until it is too late. Maybe all of them incur some degree of physical damage to their body through the use of their powers and that leads to chronic illness or acute fatal symptoms a fraction of the time. 6. Asymmetric Heritage: This is different from 1 but similar. Midoclorians (I don't care enough to check spelling) are inspired by mitochondria. These are passed on only from mother to child. Maybe only the mother can pass on the force so the father's procreation rate doesn't matter. Not knowing this, the matriarch of the family is the result of adultery/secret adoption and, as they bring in force sensitive male suitors, nothing helps. The remaining force sensitive men obviously can't do anything, as much as they get to try, unless they mate with the force sensitive woman who can't just be paid to act as livestock for breeding. My current favorite is number 5. [Answer] Here are some possibilities. They each work for very specific "worlds": Force use is not genetic. There are "force spirits" that are born into people. The number if force spirits are either fixed or grow at a specific rate. Force use requires more than one gene change to produce results. It takes a specific combination of these genes to produce a force user. Also, if the combinations isn't just right it results in a terminal mutation. That would make force uses appear to be randomly generated because any time you had a population with almost the right set of genes, most of them would miscarry. Most babies that can use the force die from it. Maybe the fetus reads too many minds and dies from shock, maybe it tries TK (as it kicks and moves arms) and causes cellular damage while still in the womb. This would result in only the force users who are too weak to manifest on their own surviving. Personally, I favor the second option. [Answer] You are thinking this about right. 1. Untrained sensitivity - in low parts of the society no one would know you are / can be sensitive. Without training it wouldn't be an advantage, so no evolutionary pressure for this trait. This would mean that this trait may reasonably be expected to spread or not, just like other minor traits, like different eye colors. If it's not helping you to survive or procreate, it's moot, evolutionary. * This opens up a place for dark cults, hidden shrines, rogue teachers and similar plot hooks. * Emergency testing and teaching to get an army, at the cost of social crisis. 2. Untrained who can use it anyway would be danger to himself. So you can push someone, hard. But if you don't know how to stabilize your own body at the same time, you're breaking your spine. You can jump 5 meters high, but you don't know how to land. and so on. If you are dead or severely injured, you don't procreate, and this would make force sensitivity a trait purged out of low class people, it evolution is allowed to work. 3. Taking talented children into higher caste and leaving their families behind. Just like Anakin was taken to life in luxury and his mother left to die as a slave and no one seemed to be disturbed. This would leave no sensitive parents in the social classes you don't want to have many sensitive children. This works well for force users, magic users, psi users, X-Men style mutants in caste society, and so on. [Answer] Magic has its own rules The Force is magic. You're going to be breaking the laws of scientific reality all over the place in order to have the Force at all, so why do you feel the need to tie the inheritance of your magic to genetics? Just have it behave how you want it to behave, it doesn't need explaining and it is highly unlikely that trying to tie it to a genetic cause will make it more satisfying. [Answer] How about noise? If the force is a field that force users are sensitive to, the number of people who are trained to manipulate it will cause a gratuitous amount of noise in 'the force' thus reducing the effectiveness of any one 'force user'. This would mean that it is in the best interest of the top of society, who are force sensitive and politically powerful, to limit the number of other people trained to effectively use the force in order to maximise their own power. This could potentially take the form of an oppressive dictatorship that ruthlessly crushes all other potential force sensitives, ensuring one or two force users remain supreme, or perhaps a quasi-religious military organisation that indoctrinates potential force users into a strict 'use only when necessary' policy. [Answer] Since the "Force" is already a mystic element, you can simply combine a mystic element with the inheritable trait. The Force is a pool of energy. This energy is naturally generated by sentient life though rapidly disperses into the universe at large resulting in this energy being distributed relatively uniformly. The rough likelihood of a latent Force Sensitive person being able to manipulate this energy is proportionally related to the overall sentient population and inversely proportional (with a much stronger weighting) to the total population of active Force Users. This results in a rough ratio of 1 Force User per 10,000 sentient beings. A child of one or more Force Users (should the child be Force Sensitive), has a small (though not insignificant) increase in the likelihood of becoming a full fledged Force User. Children, in general (should they be Force Sensitive) are significantly more likely than an older Force Sensitive to develop into a Force User, should a "slot" become available. It is not unheard of for older people to spontaneously developing into Force Users, but it is rare. Note that should a large number of Force Users be killed, this method of generation will result in a similar number of Force Users swiftly developing, though a majority of them will likely be children and youth. [Answer] # The world is not static. Right "now", there is only 1 in 10000 Force Sensitive (FS), but it wasn't always so. And it will not always stay so. One possibility is that FS is a recent development, and ten thousand years ago there were none. Then somebody got lucky in the genetic/environmental lottery and the first Jedi was. They had more children than average, and those children had more children than average and so on, but it still a rare trait. In the future it will be more common. The other possibility is that they used to be more common, but for some reason most of them died. Maybe they were killed as witches, maybe they lost a civil war. Again, they will be more common in the future... unless there is a new witch hunt. (The above is my unique contribution, below I repeat points made by others to make this a complete answer) # Weak inheritance You said that FS parents had an increased but still low probability of getting FS children. This can be achieved in two ways. The first is making the genetic basis very complex. Maybe you need one of two genes from group A, one of three from group B as well as one particular gene C. All of these genes are somewhat rare. Parents are likely to not carry more genes than needed, and can fail to pass them along in several ways. People having more than the minimum number of genes can be stronger FS, but not dramatically so. The other way is to make the genes only part of the equation. Having the right genes only gives you a chance, in addition you must get some boost from the environment. Maybe during pregnancy, maybe early childhood. E.g. a near death experience can "wake you up". Note that either way, weak inheritance will make evolution move even slower, making my first point more valid. # Who cares anyway. The world is as it is, and the people in the story doesn't know why. The readers doesn't need to know why either. Nor does the writer. [Answer] You might treat sensitivity like a theory concerning autism. Make it require both a genetic disposition coupled with some sort of external stimuli. You can adjust the incidence by making the external stimuli to a greater or lesser degree known and possibly harmful. For Example, once genetic disposition is determined, the mother must take some sort of catalyst that has a 70% chance of being fatal to the child, but only a 10% chance of triggering the change that would cause sensitivity. As an alternate method, make the genetic disposition a typical genetic regressive trait, but levels of sensitivity vary greatly. You might have 1 in 4 with a genetic marker for sensitivity, but only one in a 1000 has a worthwhile level of talent. The ones with a useful level of talent are the ones sought out, and you might have a pseudo underclass of those who didn't quite make the cut. Either way, genetics is complicated enough to support your basis for a sensitive meritocracy. You can look at History, and in spite of the nobilities attempts at breeding, you only ended up with a good king every once in a while. The Empires of Alexander the Great and Genghis Kahn only survived until their deaths and fell apart during the next generation. [Answer] > > Reduced fertility. For woman this might work, but the problem are men who could sire hundreds of children every year. Besides even among sensitive couples the chance to have a sensitive children is low. > > > You could posit that one factor that increases the chances of a Force-sensitive child to be born, rather than a normal one, is Force attunement between the parents. Which is more likely to grow with time and acquaintance. Without that, the genes are there, but the power doesn't awaken sufficiently. After several centuries of experimentation, it has then been found that to maximize the chances of an ESP birth, both parents would need to enter seclusion together for several months before conception and remain there for two or three months after the birth. At the very least they must avoid any intimacy with other ESP-endowed people, and to be more sure (anyone might have a slight attunement to the Force, and slightly decrease your attunement with your partner), with anyone else. When scrupulously following this regime, the chances of a Force birth increase from very little to perhaps one in ten. This has the possibly interesting side effect that people with no attunement whatsoever and as little Force genes as possible would be highly requested for the role of servants, as they would bring the minimal disruption to a secluded household. Another side effect is that a family - unless large enough - would have to choose between delving into high caste politics, and interacting daily with the Court, or have its fertile members secluded to churn out more children, thus losing influence. To cull the noble offspring, consider that a half-Forced boy or girl hasn't all that great a future to look at; so the temptation might exist to try and awaken the Force with some dangerous ordeal, with a ten percent chance of awakening the Force, and a fifty percent chance of ending up dead (I half-remember something of this kind in MZB's Darkover series - some dangerous way of awakening one's laran. I might misremember, though). [Answer] A Caste system, probably religious in origin. Sensitive children are forced into service. Perhaps the only way out is marrying into a noble family. Another way is to make the sensitivity come from a mutation first found among the nobility or even royal bloodlines. They simply kept it among themselves by inbreeding. You could even again use a caste system and reproducing with a lower caste is a sin for the sensitives. You could have some hidden romances throughout the ages that allow you for some very rare sensitives among the lower castes. Still caste breeding can be a very rigid system. It was very effective in India. We can still see the effects of caste divides in DNA [these days](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/the-caste-system-has-left-its-mark-on-indians-genomes/). There was just that little contact between castes. For population reduction I'd go with a wasting disease that specifically targets sensitives or at least affects them much stronger. Perhaps regular people would only be carriers. This again could force a societal divide between the sensitives and the rest. [Answer] Because the gene combination that activates those powers is all recessive. It's why the upper castes inbreed to improve their chances of having force sensitive children-- which in turn leads to all the other problems of inbreeding, resulting in higher mortality and deformity. [Answer] Nothing. Your rules already allow for a limit proportion of force-sensitive population, as long as your numbers are right. Kind of. Proposition 1 : If the number of special children born of each special parent is less than 0.5, then the majority of special children will be born to non-special parents in an equilibrium situation. Proof: Since we have an equilibrium situation, the number of special people $S$ must remain the same from one generation to the next. However, if the number of special children born of each special parent is less than 0.5, then there are less than $0.5S$ special children born of special parents. The rest must thus come from normal parents. Proposition 2: If we let the number of special children born of each special parent be $s\_s<1$, the number of special children born of each normal parent be $s\_n$, and the ratio of special people all people be $S$, then in equilibrium situation, \begin{align} S = s\_s\cdot S + s\_n(1-S) \end{align} This proposition just states that the population of special people is a constant over a generation. In other words, the number of special people is equal to the number of special children born from special parents plus the number of special people born from normal parents. Now, if $S<< 1$, we have roughly \begin{align} S &= s\_s\cdot S + s\_n\\ s\_n &= S - s\_s \cdot S\\ & = S(1-s\_s) \end{align} So, what does this mean? Well, it means if we want the ratio of special people to be $0.0001$, and we want each special parent to have 0.5 special children, then each normal parent must have $0.0001\cdot (1-0.5) = 0.00005$ special children. So, let us set up a scenario where that happens. Example Consider 2 special people who have children. Since they are of the elite class, maybe they will have a lot of children. Let us say, on average, they have 5 children. Our number tells us that 2 special people should have 1 special children. So the chance that a child is special, given that both parents are special is $20\%$. Consider 2 normal people who have children. Perhaps they only have 2 children, since they are not elite. On average, 2 normal people should have $0.0001$ special children. So the chance that a specific child of theirs is special is $0.00005$. Finally, let us consider a special parent with a normal parent. Let us say they have 4 children on average. They should have roughly $0.5$ special children. So each child has a $12.5\%$ chance of being special. This example, of course, might not fit the genetic model. However, you can change these numbers a bit to fit the genetic model, and ensure that each special parent has 0.5 special children on average, and each normal parent has 0.00005 special children on average. [Answer] You ask specifically about genetic inheritance. This means that a lot of the suggestions about alternative explanations are incorrect, especially the handwavium of "it's magic". If it is a simple hereditary trait, then it would end up a lot more common. Thus it is more likely for the Sensitivity to be a genetically complex trait, perhaps even bound to the specific sex chromosomes (making especially men (Y chromosome) or especially women (X chromosome) to be more likely to be Sensitive). Another way to look at it is by making Sensitivity be a sliding scale, like intelligence. To simplify, you could say everyone has 20 genes in their DNA structure that might or might not influence Sensitivity. If the gene has the Sensitive variant, the person becomes more Sensitive. On low levels this translate to good intuition, luck, athletic ability, etc. It all depends on which specific Sensitive genes are active for that person. To be actually Force Sensitive to a level that it can be trained, you would need to have 60% of these Sensitive genes activated. More activation, of course, results in a stronger Gift in the Force. But alas, the problem then comes for the family. Even if both parents have a large amount of active genes, these are recessive and unless both have the same ones, this will not inherit all the time. But their children will still be gifted above average, even if they are not actually Force Sensitives. At the same time, with all these genes flowing through the population, giving ever so slight advantages to people here and there.. it remains active and wanted within the population. Often people with similar genes come together due to similar interests and talents. And chances of their children having enough activation to count as Sensitive increases with each generation as like seeks like, without this becoming an actual certainty. We can then look at simple statistics and chance. If the amount of genes decide the chance of the child being Force Sensitive, then in the limited pool of FS people, it is noticeable not enough to get consistent results. Unless perhaps the exact genes are known and a breeding program is started. In the general population a chance of 0.001% is not much, but if you have a million babies born to people with the latent genes.. then 0.001% is still going to be a fair amount of Sensitive babies (0.001% of 1 million = 10). Finally, besides the presence of genes, there is also the activation of genes. If the genes never activate due to environmental influences, then one can have 100% Sensitive genes, yet not display any of it due to the genes being dormant because the body did not perceive a reason to activate these genes yet. Viruses interact with genetic activation, and could be a cause why the richer families are not specifically more successful in getting Sensitives. [Answer] ## Make Force sensitivity a partially inherited trait, and give complete inheritance of the same genes a downside Over the course of evolution, purely beneficial traits tend to become more common in a population. Rare traits are sometimes controlled by multiple alleles where partial inheritance is beneficial but complete inheritance is detrimental, thereby ensuring that the trait remains rare but does not disappear. Maybe partial inheritance of Force sensitivity genes gives special powers, but complete inheritance of the same genes has a high chance of causing insanity due to too many psychic voices. Perhaps full inheritors tend to die in utero, effectively reducing the fertility rates of inbred families of sensitives. It doesn't have to be strictly single-gene Mendelian inheritance, but rather a higher chance of detrimental traits that increases over multiple generations of sensitive inbreeding. This will ensure that the genes remain "spread out" among the population and you don't wind up with "noble" families that keep all of the special genes for themselves. (Or there might be some families that do, but they will tend to have problems.) [Answer] So you need to be trained as well as having the natural ability. You could make it so people with the ability (without the training) don't even realise they can do it. In fact, special techniques and equipment which are tightly controlled are needed to detect force users. That way, the elite can enforce a whatever number of users they like. [Answer] I would suggest the combination of one and two. As you said in times of great conflict force-sensitive females can also be drafted into the army. Just great series of large conflicts. ( like World War 1 and World War 2 scale). That Force the nations of the world to put every force-sensitive available on the front lines. Combine this with the fact that the force sensitive is ownership of land and wealth and your force-sensitives have an incentive to keep the force sensitive population low. The more force-sensitives there are the more land and Wells needs to be distributed among them the less one has. This is why the nobility what often disinherit all but the first born is if they divided the lines equally then each generation would have less. [Answer] This is inspired by Stig Hemmer's answer: It isn't just genetic Even if the society had technology at our level, they wouldn't necessarily know who would have the force. There are aspects of gene regulation that are influenced by a myriad of environmental factors, and not just the presence of some genes in your DNA. Things like DNA methylation and the necessity of trace elements/vitamins as well as the randomness inherent in the development of everyone's brain means there is a lot of post birth randomness to play with. Think of it like intelligence, it seems to be at least sort of heritable, but the much bigger impacts are environmental. Maybe the force is like being an outstanding genius. We could all learn to use the force a tiny bit, most of us top out at being able to move something that weighs an ounce, but there are a few of us who are profoundly gifted. Those who show the gift (like musical prodigies) are identified easily at a young age a shepherded into training programs to refine and build on their talent. Like music (and the force) it requires a great deal of training to build on the raw talent we identify in the occasional youth to create an adult who has real power. This would create a situation where there would probably be a lot of middlingly powerful people who might be able to pick up the remote, or even a baby, under ideal conditions, but who don't have the focus and talent to use their skill 'in the real world'. [Answer] Not sure how broadly you need to limit the population, but if it's planet-local, you can induce conditions so that they're just not around. Most of them are usually off on missions saving the galaxy, negotiating truces, etc. Just like Star Wars Jedi Knights. Or have sensitivity be determined not by one trait, but by a combination of rare traits. Like black hair and blue eyes. [Answer] Go the Warhammer 40K route, scour the lands for "Psykers", humans with psionic potential and indoctrinate them via rigorous examinations to test their power and abilities, those who pass the stringent trials without death are indoctrinated some more before being put into a task force to find more psykers, while failures are placed on floating despot "black ships" to channel their energy to keep the god-emperor alive. of course this all centers around indoctrination. [Answer] Easy. Cultivate a ~~jedi~~ religious or quasi-religious monastic order that separates the force sensitives from the rest of society and emphasizes the virtues of emotional moderation and asceticism. Your ~~jedi~~ order members will be trained to a high degree of capability and also be discouraged from 'disruptive' emotional distractions like marriages and girlfriends. If you make it an order that is not tied to a particular nation, but a world-wide system that emphasizes being apolitical and subordination to secular governments, it should be able to spread. Contributing a son or daughter to the order conveys an impressive amount of prestige, of course. [Answer] If sensitivity is a single recessive gene, then you have to have it from both parents for it to show. If having a single gene is somewhat selected against, then the occurrences in the general population is low. So this becomes a gene like Tay Sachs disease or Huntington's chorea. This however would make all the offspring of a sensitive be sensitive. Blue eyed parents have blue eyed kids. Brown eyed parents can carry the blue eyed gene masked, or be dual brown eyed. (Eye colour is a bit more complex. There are ways that blue eyed parents can have brown eyed kids, but it is rare.) Suppose that having a doubled sensitive gene makes you sterile. So there will be NO offspring from a sensitive? --- Ok. Let's make it more complicated. Dominance of insensitive is not complete. Children who are genetically Is (Insensitive from one parent, sensitive from another) are trainable, can handle small tasks but are not Jedi material. If not trained, they have oddities -- lucky at dice. Unusually good marksmen, but not really remarkable. Let's make it a bit more complex. Being sensitive to the force is polygenetic. Suppose that it is 4 genes, all recessive, If you have none of the genes you have the sensitivity of a rock. Any one of the genes gives you some slight sensitivity, any 2 gives you four as much, and 3, nine times as much, and all 4 16 times as much. If each of these has an occurrence in the general population of 1 in 100, then you have 1% of the population has a trace, 1 in 10,000 has more than trace, 1 in a million has 3 genes, and is of Radagast the Brown capability (borrowing a metaphor) and all 4 genes is 1 in a hundred million that allows you to use LS monogrammed handkerchiefs. That is still 10 per billion, or aobut 70 on planet earth. Adjust the occurrence of the genes to suit. This sort of thing allows you to create "Witches of Karres" universes where a people has self selected for these genes. If you want to mix it up more, you can have each gene give specific traits/perceptions. (E.g. s1 gives perception of what isn't here. s2 gives you some perception of what isn't yet. s1 and s2 reenforce giving you greater distance/time sensitivity. s3 is the ability to fine tune and descriminate. s4 gives you the feel of the galactic overmind, or gives you the ability to cloak your own footprint on the force. Whatever. Add more genes but make some less probable. Make some lethal when combined. E.g. s5 reenforce with s6 makes you incredibly empathic, but so much so that if someone is killed near you you may die from the empathic shock. Training affects all aspects. [Answer] I think that there is a mistake in thinking that there are genetic or biological factors at all in force sensitiveness. First of all, the force is in all things, even Han Solo has shown remarkable speed and accuracy when shooting from the hip. Huts and Nomoidians are believe to be naturaly resistant to mental tricks, but this could be a product of their culture, which makes them wary of "things that look too god to be true" or "conveniently simple". SO it would be possible for any individual to achieve a level of understanding and limited use of the force simply by training. Skywalker's family is riddled with internal emotional conflict and external galaxy-shaping conflict. That could be very well why they are strong in the force and not their genes. I personally think that the force would regulate itself how many individuals achieve this kind of higher understanding of the force and when a sufficiently number is achieved there simply won't appear any more, no matter the trainings or breeding programmes. ]
[Question] [ I looked around for an answer and was unable to find it here. So can the planet have asymmetrical seasons? I want my imaginary planet to have winter doubled comparing to summer. And which astronomical conditions will provide this? Thanks! [Answer] L Dutch's Answer does a really good job of explaining how Kepler's law of planetary motion works, but it is missing some pretty important details about axial tilt. While the eccentricity of your orbit will make some seasons longer than others it will not affect your whole planet the same because while your Northern Winter may be longer, your Southern hemisphere could have a shortened winter and a longer Summer; so, this fails to get the desired effect on a whole Earth-like planet without messing with some other variables as well. Technically, you could move the orbit enough so that you get the same season on both hemispheres of a tilted world, but this would cause compounding issues that would make one hemisphere uninhabitable. If your planet were to have an Earth-like tilt you'd have to make the orbit especially escentric to create an Earth-like "short summer" across the whole globe which would cause one of your hemispheres to experience twice the seasonal variance that you see on Earth. So, while Earth's Temperate zone typically varies by about 40°C, a similar would with such an orbit would have a variance of 40°C in one hemisphere, and 80°C in the other. While 80°C may not sound like too much variance for life to adapt to, it is certainly very bad for macro-organisms. Your extreme temperature gradients and maximum temperatures reaching 60°C in one hemisphere will not just cause deadly heat, but massive storm systems including but not limited to [hypercanes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercane) with wind speeds exceeding 800 kilometres per hour followed shortly by a long sub-arctic winter. Tardigrades might get along just fine here, but macroscopic organisms generally take issue with silly things like freezing their body fluids, folding their proteins, and being ripped limb from limb. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Imt7b.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Imt7b.png) For a more consistent "long winter" there are a few solutions that may yield the desired result: One solution is to give your planet very little or no axial tilt with an eccentric orbit. This would mean that your planet would not get seasons at all the way the Earth does, but only get seasons based on its physical distance from the sun. Another way to solve your problem could just be to make your planet colder: either by reducing its greenhouse gasses or by moving it closer to the outer limit of the Goldilocks Zone. While this second solution will not actually make the coldest time of year any longer than the warmest time of year, it would give you a longer winter from a biological point of view. On a colder planet, plants and animals may need to be dormant for longer portions of the year waiting between when things are frozen and when they thaw out enough for macroscopic life to thrive effectively giving you a longer winter. This second solution may be a better option if you want your civilization to still be able to rely on solar calendars to measure years since they sun always follows the same track in the sky on an untilted world. [Answer] ## Yes, asymmetrical seasons happen right here on Earth, when humans want them to. The reason we have four seasons of equal length isn't because climate actually behaves that way. It's because humans find it convenient to divide the year up into smaller portions, and having four seasons of equal length is a simple way to do it. In reality, climate changes throughout the year, and just because yesterday was "winter" and today was "spring" doesn't mean that suddenly all the snow is gone and all the flowers are blooming. The European model of spring-summer-[autumn/fall]-winter, each lasting three months, is popular but there are many places where it's not terribly useful, and other models are acknowledged instead. For example, Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have developed [several different ways to describe seasons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australian_seasons), designed for the climates where those peoples live. In these systems, seasonal transitions are typically based not on fixed calendar dates but on specific events in weather and/or local fauna and flora, and there are often more than four seasons. In Darwin, even among people with no Aboriginal/Torres Strait ancestry, the spring-summer-autumn-winter model isn't very helpful, and most people talk instead about the Wet and Dry seasons, sometimes with a third "build-up" season as Dry prepares to change to Wet. In a place where snows last a long time, it's quite plausible that locals would define some kind of "winter" season that lasts much longer than a "summer" season. It's also very plausible that they'll come up with their own system of seasons that doesn't map neatly to the "cold, in-between, hot, in-between" categories that we're used to. (Obviously though, you can't have six-month winter and three-month spring, summer, and autumn, unless your year runs for fifteen months. Or you allow seasons to overlap.) Bottom line: "seasons" are a human fiction designed to split a complex reality into simple categories, and you are quite at liberty to tinker with just how that split is done. [Answer] If your planet has a highly eccentric orbit, the time it will spend far away from the star will be necessarily longer than the time it spends closer to the star. Being further away it will also receive less light from the central star, thus strengthening the winter. As you can see from this illustration of [Kepler's law of planetary motion](https://www.britannica.com/science/Keplers-laws-of-planetary-motion) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q04Ib.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q04Ib.jpg) the distance covered during the orbit in the same amount of time changes with the distance from the star: the closer, the longer. [Answer] It happens right here on Earth. The temperate "four equal seasons" climate is actually an outlier: * The equatorial tropics, particularly in the coastal areas, have a zero-season climate: the weather simply doesn't vary much from day to day. * Deserts frequently have a two-season climate: "Wet" and "Dry", where Wet only lasts a few weeks. * Alpine and sub-polar regions have a different two-season climate: "Winter" and "Growing", where Growing is the few months where snowfall is least common. * Areas with a monsoon climate have three seasons: "Hot", "Dry", "Rainy" or "Hot", "Cold", "Rainy". Rainy is shorter than either of the other two. There are other variations, but these are the most common. [Answer] Sure, if you define a season by what's happening rather than strictly according to arbitrary calendar divisions or astronomical data. Let's define some terms, based on where I live: "Winter" is when there's minimal plant growth, low day temperatures (typically subzero), accumulation and maintenance of snow, and frozen standing water. "Spring" is when temperatures on average go above freezing, causing snowmelt and ice breakup. While frozen precipitation may still happen, it typically doesn't last. "Summer" is temperatures are above zero, there's maximum plant growth and animal activity. "Fall" is lowering temperatures, reduction in plant and animal activity, increased probability of frozen precipitation, and beginning of freezing of standing water. Sound good? Okay then, where I live, at sea level above the Arctic Circle in Canada, "Winter" begins at the start of October and lasts until May (roughly 6-7 months). "Spring" is typically the middle or end of May until June (1-2 months). "Summer" is July and August (2 months). "Fall" begins toward the end of August and September (1-2 months), and then in October, we're back into winter. [Answer] One aspect of planetary motion that is not often thought about, since Earth is unsuaual as we don't really experience it like most orbital bodies do, but which might provide your answer, is gyroscopic precession. Earth's primary orbital motions are to rotate and revolve. As I understand it, this is actually a peculiarity due to our moon having precisely the mass necessary to provide a stabilizing counterbalance, preventing Earth's axes from precessing, or swinging back and forth in a periodic manner as well. Most orbiting celestial bodies don't have this odd circumstance, and all three forms of orbital periodic motion are observed in them, not just the two with which we are most familiar. I've read it theorized that the unusual stability of our axis is what kept our climate stable enough to allow life to evolve, without drastically changing regularly enough to periodically wipe all the critters out. Overlooking this fact, you could probably posit some sort of gyroscopic precession arbitrarily changing the lengths of the seasons for a hypothetical planet to result in whatever asymmetry you'd prefer. [Answer] In addition to all the important planetary climate discussed in other answers, you also may want to add sociological factors. Nobody would bat an eye if I, an American, said that 'summer' runs from Memorial Day (the end-of-May long weekend) to Labor Day (the beginning-of-September long weekend). Similarly, many people define 'winter' as the season of a winter sports league or a winter crop. [Answer] Yes, easily: There are two ways a planet gets seasons: Like earth, because the axis is tilted against the orbit. Summer in the north is winter in the south, etc. All seasons are symmetric, not considering local climate due to the geography (seas, deserts, mountains, etc). Or like mars, which has a significantly more elliptic orbit, and the planet spends more time far away from the sun than close to it, giving a long winter and short summer. (Of course mars' axis is also tilted, giving long and cold winters in the south, and long and temperate summers in the north.) So what you want is an elliptic orbit, and little axis tilt. Of course that gives planet-wide seasons, not alternating between the hemispheres. ]
[Question] [ In my world, there are mages capable of wielding the power of flame. The trouble is, trainee pyromancers tend to burst into flame, whenever they get excited. And later on, truly gifted pyromancers trying to unleash their full power found a, er, embarrassing side effect. You see, gearing up that kind of intense firepower has side effects ranging from searing heat to a full-on explosion of flame centered on the mage, which causes their clothes to burn off. No, you can't just avoid that with training and discipline, because if you're trying to (or are) unleashing your full power, you are in an intense emotional state, most likely in danger, and it's rather hard to focus on not burning your clothes on in that state. Yes, it should come naturally once one's trained, but that's simply not how it works. Think about it; when a powerful charge has built up in an object, or is in or around an object, doesn't it usually crackle with electric energy? Flames and heat are the same way (flames produce immense heat) so when one awakens their inner fire, the resulting heat either turns to clothes to ash or straight-up flash-disintegrates them. Thus, mages need two things: extremely fire-resistant clothing (for training pyromancers that don't quite know how to control) or clothing that straight up won't burn. I don't want to turn to exotic, magical materials because A) magic reacts with magic, much like chemicals react with other chemicals, and that will likely be problematic in and of itself and B) the best option would probably be a solid flame, which would also be problematic (no matter what, flame is not opaque, it's naturally transparent or translucent due to its connection to Light). There's the Pyris enchantment, which infuses something with flame and makes it fireproof, but that only works on certain things, like gel (gel clothing? I don't think so), stone (I doubt stone can be made into clothing), or metal. Technically Pyris works on plants, animal hides, and the like, but the result should be ashes (which I'm pretty sure don't burn but can't be made into clothing). It's also kind of problematic to get, because one has to kill a Torchblow (a [Quad](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/199981/making-a-predator-for-chompers) whose mouth is a biological flamethrower) with an object to give it the Pyris enchantment. There's also dragonscales, but dragons drop those individually after death, they're real expensive (and hard to acquire), and while fire dragon scales are fireproof, I'm not sure comfortable clothing can be made with them (typically dragonscales must be bored or drilled and strung together, or maybe glued, since they can't be held together or fused with magic).....and yes, comfort is important, you want no distractions when you're trying to dominate an enraged fire elemental or take on an ancient lich (which are known for their skillful use of magic, incredible power and vast repertoire). Thus, my question is What Could Be Used To Make Suitable Fire Mage Clothing? Specifications for Best Answer: 1. The best answer will thoroughly analyze all possible materials that can be used to clothe trainees or powerful mages, explain their pros and cons, and determine the best possible option. Due to my fantasy setting, only early Renaissance or below technology is available. 2. The 'miracle material' or 'holy grail' of this question is a material that can be used to make comfortable clothing and cannot be burned up, incinerated, disintegrated....you get the idea. In other words, it'd be the perfect material for [this person](https://gamepress.gg/arknights/operator/skyfire), who is a perfect (albeit extreme) example of my problem. (If you use the link, scroll down to Archive File 1 and you'll see what I mean.) It should (hopefully) not be prohibitively expensive or hard to obtain. [Answer] They build clothes using their own hair. I mean, when they burst into flames, they don't sear themselves bald, right? So, that means that pyromancer hair is at least immune to their own flames. So, a good way to get your pyromancers to stay clothed while battling is to either make clothing out of their own hair, by weaving it into cloth, or by enchanting to work as magical clothing of sorts by enveloping their bodies while they are in the field - the Bayonetta Solution, so to speak. If you are worried about having enough hair, I think it would be trivial for a magical society to develop a magical hair-lengthening potion/rune/enchantment/candy bar when said hair might have useful magical properties - like the above fire-immunity. More so, magical hair products in general would also work as a good explanation of why some people have anime-styled, impractical-sized hair on a world without modern hair care, so you end up killing two birds with a single stone. [Answer] ## Wool Unless your trainees are producing a sustained flame wool clothing will work fine. Wool clothing was the material of choice for firefighters fir decades because it is incredibly difficult to ignite, and more importantly is self extinguishing. it is easier to ignite leather than wool, (200°C and 600°C ignition temperatures respectively). Wool is still the cloth of choice for blacksmiths, firefighters, and welders for the same reason. As a side benefit after you dump a bucket of water on them (probably because their hair is on fire), wool also retains most of its insulation properties while wet. Sources <https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/8263> <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02745218> [Answer] For a really heavy duty mage (where leather does not work anymore). plain old [asbestos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos) is quite sufficient. Naturally occuring, it was known already to ancient Greeks, although industrial use began in 19th century. It is flexible, has natural fibre structure, low thermal conductivity (this makes it much better than e.g. cloth made out of metal wires). It is quite a health hazard, but that would not be known in a low tech society (it began to be taken seriously only in the second half of 20th century). And the occasional lung cancer would be blamed on fire magic or breathing in smoke and flames (this might be even true) or something... [Answer] Frame challenge, just in case you didn't think of it: One option is to let them be naked. Norms concerning nudity have been very variable between cultures and between times. It is common to have nudity be accepted in some circumstances while not in others, and the decency often depend on who the naked person is. Naked in a sauna? While swimming? Ok in many places! Naked in an artsy picture? Also ok. Naked in front of your physician? Ok now but maybe not if you were a woman living in certain time periods. Naked while competing in sports? Ok in ancient Greece but not so much any more. (Pretty people are also allowed more nudity than ugly people, or so it seems in modern media.) Even if people are pretty prude, fire mages could be a special case. "What do you mean they should dress more modestly? Of course they are naked, they're FIRE MAGES! What's next? You want me dressing in full winter garb in the sauna? Should we dress the toddlers running around the village, and just pretend they won't undress and spoil the clothes at the first opportunity? Do you want us to dress our naked horses?" [Answer] ## Asbestos underwear. It's the traditional for online commentary of all sorts. It can be woven from naturally fibrous stone. It's known to alchemists. Best of all -- it won't be known to cause cancer for centuries! ## Chainmail. Finely knit chainmail will preserve modesty and deter muggings. Made of steel, it is reasonably fireproof so long as Rainbird doesn't shoot your dad or something. ## Paint. If you do an image search for body painting, you'll find many artful illustrations. Some may argue that this is not in fact clothing, but SafeSearch settings, whose minds surpass our own as much as ours exceed those of lowly insects, tell us that the mage would not be considered naked. The paint might use fireproof soot and metal oxides and be anchored by your fireproof gel. [Answer] Good old leather will do the trick. It protects from fire and won't catch fire. Moreover it's available for a tech level like the one you have in mind. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RR2Sl.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RR2Sl.jpg) An apron like the one in the picture (which is for a blacksmith) can protect the torso and the upper legs, with appropriate extension can also protect arms, shoulders and head. [Answer] There are numerous mitigation strategies for dealing with heat and flame: * Thermal Radiation * Thermal Insulation * Thermal Absorption * Resistance to Ignition * Ease of Extinguishing * Resistance to Thermal Breakdown Each one of these may be useful for different reasons, however all may be required in some fashion for the highest level fire mages. Thermal Radiation is useful for removing heat from the body. I assume in some way that a fire mage's ability to produce flame in great quantity without killing them involves a natural resistance to both heat and flame, but this may not be sufficient if they are engulfed in flame for an extended period of time or if they are rendered unconscious. Consciousness may be required for their natural resistance to be at full effect for all but the highest level mages. A good strategy for radiation is to NOT insulate the heat against oneself. The other is a heatsink, where one side absorbs it and the other radiates it, causing a cooling effect on the absorption side. Finned metals are particularly good at this, especially aluminum, which is also lightweight. Thermal insulation is useful if you need to be protected against other sources of flame, such as when in battle against other fire mages or fire breathing dragons and wyverns. The downside of course is that you may trap the heat against yourself in the process. Thermal Absorption is typically done with water (does not have to be drinkable), because it easily available and inexpensive, and can be added to fabrics and absorbent materials to allow them to absorb heat. Its phase change at boiling also absorbs large amounts of heat without increasing its temperature. For solids, the only viable option for light armor or clothing would be lithium metal. It is the only one with good properties that is easy to mine and purify. There are other solids but most of them tend to be quite flammable, such as waxes and animal fats, and other metals are substantially more dense. Resistance to Ignition is typically found because of a combination of the above properties, and from resistance to oxidation. Hollow natural fibers such as wool provide good insulation. Boron based products such as borax or ammonium borates can be washed into fabrics or absorbed into wood or leather to prevent ignition. Oxides of elements like aluminum or silicon already contain oxygen and thus tend not to burn easily, and can be added to paints. Rayons embedded with silica may be an option. Ease of extinguishing is determined by how much heat is produced relative to how much heat is required to ignite, or by how much oxygen is required to keep it aflame (more oxygen needed means easier to extinguish). Above a certain threshold this is essentially resistance to ignition. Resistance to Thermal Breakdown requires strong chemical bonds, not typically found until modern times. Natural products these will be mineral based, such as mineral wool or asbestos, which are bulky, uncomfortable, and abrasive. Synthetic fibers such as meta-aramids and polybenzimidazole are modern technologies. A skilled potion master that can catalyze reactions using magic may be able to make crude meta-aramids. One of the main building blocks starts with coal tar, and purified acids. Refining the tar into benzene, double nitrating with acids, then hydrogenating the result gives you meta-phenylenediamine. The reactions involving concentrated nitric acid can be quite energetic, .. those not skilled will probably blow themselves up or be horribly burned. The other building block starts with meta-xylene, salt water, and a strong oxidizer such as chromic acid. The salt water is concentrated and electrified to produce chlorine gas, then the xylene is chlorinated and oxidized separately under special conditions (high temp and light irradiation), and mixed together to produce isophthaloyl chloride. Once again an unskilled potion master will probably kill themselves by inhaling a large quantity of chlorine gas. Solid salt can also be catalyzed with sulfuric acid to produce chlorine gas if there is no way to get electricity. Isolating the meta-xylene from the raw xylene source (coar tar) would be a complex process. Meta-phenylenediamine and isophthaloyl chloride are combined to produce the meta aramid known as Nomex (polymerized m-phenylenediamine isophthalamide), which must then be extruded into fibers. The catalysts for reactions and means of purifying the end result are what makes the process complex, and the means of mass production is not available, but small batches can be made. A very dangerous process with a closely guarded secret of production, only the most skilled of potion masters can produce it, and it comes at a steep price. Once produced, the raw material is shipped to Dwarves to be processed under intense heat to remove impurities and extrude into a monofilament like thick fishing wire. This is then shipped to Elves who continue the extrusion and spin it into a yarn, suitable for incorporation into fabric. A web of trade and alliances could be build around transport of these and other rare materials. The efficiencies of production will effect both the price and production rate of the final fibers, which would typically be combined with wool and silica infused rayon fibers to create extremely comfortable and flame resistant garments. If you only want high level or wealthy mages to be able to afford it, make the production difficult or low volume, or introduce tensions and trade disputes between the races that need to cooperate, as they each possess the rare skills needed for production that are unique to them alone. Attacks on the transports will also drive up prices. For thermal absorption, a shoulder mounted water bladder with wax plugs can be worn. When engulfed in flame or extreme heat, the plugs will rapidly melt and release water over the torso, absorbing into the clothing. To a normal person the boiling water steam would be quite harmful, but to a fire mage the temps are nothing compared to the flame. Only a few seconds of additional protection may be gained, but that might be enough time to gain composure, cast a spell, or come up with some other strategy to cool down. For thermal insulation, a small dual layer shield with different paints can at as an insulator and be ditched if it gets too hot. Titanium (or just wood) on the inside (larnite painted), finned aluminum on the outside (larnite+graphite painted), with an air gap insulating layer and wood standoffs. Even if the aluminum gets to several hundred degrees it will still be fairly cool on the inside, especially if you add some wool felt. If the aluminum gets REALLY hot it will melt, and the phase change will absorb some of the heat. The fins allow it to rapidly cool if you are able to fight back or seek alternative shelter, keeping the shield intact and functional. The light metals make the shield easy to carry and maneuver while still being strong enough to stop lower velocity projectiles, but will take severe damage from a strike by a heavy weapon like an axe. [Answer] Lateral thinking: There is no real nead for "special" clothing beside normal difficult to enflame thread of wool or leather. Control differentiates trained mages from pyros: Fire mastery requieres the ability to leach the rised byproduct body heat into some kind of heat sink while simultaniously performing your spells. Big stone steles/sculptures, huge water tanks or big metal bars suffice to store all this extended heat - use the floor if nothing special is at hand. If your heat-stores get too heated up to be effectively used, they get replaced by students or normal servants and can be in turn used to cook (hot stone steak anyone?) or warm other areas with. For training purposes you can pair your fire mages with a water or elemental ice mages - ordering them to maintain a cool non-flamed clothing around their fiery teammates to teach fine control - this makes for a funny learning environment. You probably need to keep some sand or water handy for mishaps - as well as wool blankets if the warmth gets drained to fast by the budding ice mage from his fiery classmate ;) In fact the ability to drain heat from things could be part of the fire magic gift as well - so one master casts a spell, four apprentices drain the heat he creates from him into other objects. Training safeguards: The beginner courtyards of the fire mage academy consists of about 1.5m deep trenches filled with water (you may want to funnel them into warmth-isolated water reservoirs usable by commoner wash-houses) to compensate the "normal" population for the danger of having a fire mage training facility nearby - clear win-win. Younger mages step into the drenches to train their magic safely and provide warm water to whoever wants to use it: public bathhouse, indoor heating (roman hypocausts), steam tanks if you have some steam punk going etc. Nudity: If all else fails, fire mages in your world may want to follow a nudest livestyle out of necessity - the ability to stay clothed may be a sign of superior control of your magic (or you are far below average power wise). ]
[Question] [ Humanity has spread through part of the galaxy, but population still grows and the need for new land is never sated. A consortium of transnational corporations has been contracted by a government to terraform a planet. Terrorists target the managers of those companies. Why? Requirements: * there is no sentient life on the planet; it may be barren or have non-sentient life * the motivation for the terrorists must not be religious * the readers (that is, you) must feel ambiguous about who they would support: the companies are doing a good thing in a bad way, and the terrorists are fighting for a good goal in a bad way Extra points for: * the motivations and goals of the terrorists concern present day Earth, too (e.g. [anti-globalization movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-globalization_movement)) * I'm especially interested in a plausible scenario involving a [sustainability movement](http://www.context.org/iclib/ic25/gilman/) or the [World Bank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank) --- Note # Thank you everyone! It was extremely difficult for me to decide which answer to award the bounty to, because there are so many inspiring answers. In fact I have upvoted every answer but two, because they all include some valuable ideas. In the end I have chosen the answer by Mike.C.Ford, because he was the first to answer that the terraforming company might own (part of) the planet they terraform and the influence this brings them. Again, thank you. This has been extremely valuable to me. I hope you had fun and took away some inspiration of your own. --- My personal solution to my question is this: Terraforming is basically colonization. Similar to the [Hudson's Bay Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_Company), the [Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company), and other [chartered companies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartered_company), one [transnational](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_corporation) holding company with a multitude of [assets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Berkshire_Hathaway) prospects for and develops planets for governments. For this service, the company is granted extensive privileges. It owns a large part of the land on the newly settled planets; it monopolizes trade with these colonies; it has its own military fleet; during terraforming and settlement it governs the planets mostly independent of the nations it works for, including its own police force and jurisdiction. As an effect, the company is richer and more powerful than most of the comissioning states, effectively forming a state-like structure within, or rather, beyond those states. Both the exploited settlers and workers and the increasingly fearful states might have a hand in terrorist activities targeting the mere handful of shareholders that directs the fate of the human race. [Answer] Possibly because having an entire planet, where suddenly people can live and crops can be grown, means that all of a sudden the potential of food production and land ownership of an entire planet is owned by a consortium of a handful of corporations. These corporations, and their shareholders, who are likely already unreasonably wealthy, will now be preposterously wealthy. In addition, having an influx of extra food production will likely cause food prices to drop dramatically as the supply far outstrips current demand, causing many more people to lose money and be forced into poverty. If a great proportion of people now cannot provide for their families, there is nothing better to convince them of an ideological cause than in order to get a better life for them and their loved ones. It will be very easy to distribute propaganda to recruit further people to the cause, as suddenly there has been a very quick, dramatic shift in inequality. The rich have gotten much richer and the poor have gotten poorer, right before everyone's eyes rather than gradually over time. [Answer] If the planet is not inhabited by sentient beings but does have flora and/or fauna on it some people might want to protect the biosphere as it. That could cause them to become eco-terrorists who want to stop the terraforming process because it would destroy the original and, most likely unique ecosystem. [Answer] Setting aside what "terrorism" actually means in our modern context, I'll answer assuming that you are asking for reasons why any group would violently oppose terraforming (the process of making other planets habitable for humans). In a twist from dot\_Sp0T's answer, what if it were an extremist arm of environmentalists who see terraforming as "giving up" on Earth? They may see the act as one of abandonment, forsaking the mother planet which has nurtured and raised us as a civilization, and just discarding her once we've drained her of all possible resources. Their manifesto might run along the lines of how humanity should be devoting efforts towards making Earth livable once again instead of "wasting" those efforts on other planets. Just thought of another scenario: the process of perfecting terraforming technologies is likely to worsen the situation on Earth (maybe the generation of pollutants, draining of precious resources, etc). Also, it is obvious to the public that only the rich/ powerful will get to go to the new planet once it is ready, essentially relegating a remainder of the population to eventual death on this planet. It would then be likely that this remainder gathers in anger to oppose the rich elite. [Answer] Protect the Rocks! As far as I remember the books, in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars-Trilogy there actually is a group that wants to at least minimize terraforming, to protect the natural shape of Mars. There may not be an eco-sphere, but there ARE rocks and mountains and craters formed by planetary evolution nonetheless. And terraforming WILL destroy those! Do we have the right to do that? hides for shamelessly stealing from great books [Answer] # An unlikely alliance of nationalists and left-wing radicals You say that a trans-national conglomerate is doing the terraforming. A fringe nationalist group says - no! Our great nation deserves to stand alone as the conqueror of the heavens! The terraforming should be performed by our people for our people. At the same time, anti-corporate types (Occupy NASA?) protest the use of corporations. The rich get richer, they say. Money is being funneled out of our country, they say. Why can't the government do this by themselves? The most radical of these two groups, disenchanted by politicians' unwillingness to stop this outsourcing, join forces and decide to do something about it. Obviously, to drive these people to violence, the issue has to be a big one. You can illustrate that the conglomerate is, to some extent, corrupt, and to some extent incompetent. Not so corrupt and incompetent that they're obviously in the wrong, just enough that a reasonable person might have beef with them. The company can also have bad PR (for which this group may be responsible). A single scandal, spun out of proportion by alt media, should be enough to raise a tide of suspicion and distrust. Again, you don't need something completely damning, just enough of a "you know, it does sound like there might be something going on" notion. Of course, the corporation has its own interests at heart, and those of its shareholders, not the citizens. Cutting costs just to be the lowest bidder? Maybe the specific planet they picked was a bad choice - too close to the star (radiation issues), the star is too active (solar flares endanger the colony), the star is on the border with a hostile empire (warfare endangers the colony), and so on. [Answer] Here is a long list of possibilities. Some disagree, some are near subsets of each other, and some could be both true at the same time. For extra fun, take two that seem to disagree and make the both true. * It is uninhabited, but life exists there. Terraforming will destroy the life that lives there, and any life that could develop. * Taxes on orbital civilization (which has less population, but a large tax base) is being used to pay for building another waste of a gravity well to stick grounders on. * The Terraforming techniques are going to render the rest of the system uninhabitable during the bombardment phase. Orbital colonies are being forcibly resettled in other systems in order to proceed. * This project was chosen instead of building new colony fleets. It costs more than a new settlement, and will take longer, but it won't expand into new regions of space. Manifest destiny types see this as a surrender of their god-directed obligation to spread over the galaxy, and there is still lots to expand into. * New colonies are created by sending self assembling machines who build a base. This base then builds a huge antenna. Uploaded citizens are beamed over interstellar space to the new planet, assembled, and the colonization begins. This project was started by "continualists" who refuse to upload and be beamed. The system where it occurs has huge civil rights restrictions on uploaded people (whom it considers software, mere agents, not really people). The continualists are terraforming the planet rather than expanding. The terrorists fear this could lead to them being even less useful, and losing even more rights. * A war was fought using a particular weapon. It destroyed entire solar systems, including old Earth. A treaty against using that technology was enacted. The terraforming project uses that technology. The Terrorists consider this a small step towards proliferation and a galactic war noone will survive. * The last 3 attempts to harness strong AI have nearly resulted in human extinction, on a planetary, solar system and interstellar level. AI is now very highly restricted. The terraforming project is using AI beyond the normal restrictions in order to solve the biosphere construction issues in a reasonable amount of time. They must be stopped, they are messing with forces they cannot control. * Human civilization is a sequence of shells. The outer layer are fresh colonies. The next layer are young worlds, who are sending out new colonies. The middle layer are mature civilizations, out of range of producing new colonies for the most part. The next layer are the senile civilizations, then dead space on the inside. The terrorists have analyzed the history of previous civilization collapses, and believe that the terraforming of other in-system worlds is part of the path towards a dead civilization. They want to avoid it: staying still is death, the civilization should instead launch another probe outwards! * Some other project (upload, AI, dark matter computronium) is shelved for this project in a large political fight. The terrorists think the other project is crucial, and the terraforming project will be a disaster. So have it fail fast, before it is too late. [Answer] ## To prevent Earth from turning into one big industrial area Imagine that you have a neighbour. Your neighbour is richer than you and he runs some sort of manufactiring that stinks a lot. You manage to bargain some limits on that pollution - since he lives in that house too, he agrees to limit the stink. And then one day you discover that he's buying a new house. Guess what happens to pollution limits since he's not concerned about living in your house anymore? [Answer] TL;DR: Corporate shenanigans (basically, any of the reasons Michael Moore movies give you a sad face). --- The word terraforming conjurers but one (fictional) company name for me: [Weyland Yutani](http://alienanthology.wikia.com/wiki/Weyland-Yutani) (from the [Alien franchise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(franchise))) > > Weyland-Yutani consistently exhibits the worst aspects of corporate profiteering, willing to sacrifice decency and human life in seemingly the pursuit of profit. > > > A real world analogy might be Exxon. That's a company I love/hate (there's your ambiguity) because I like cheap energy but I don't like destroying the Earth in the process. It depends on what mood I'm in, which is largely designated by the price of my gasoline on a weekly basis. Perhaps this endeavor is placing a strain on those less fortunate. My point being is that the terrorists don't have to be against terraforming per se; just against The Company as a whole or in part. Either they don't like how the workers are treated, or perhaps they despise other aspects of the company (a big part of terraforming is mining the universe for its resources). Or the company is misrepresenting aspects of what life is like there as a worker. Unbeknownst to the general populace, conditions there might be unacceptable. It might even be a one way trip (in more ways than one; logistically and health-wise). You can bet that any company capable of terraforming another planet has its fingers in just about every cookie jar imaginable (again, Exxon). "You know, we manufacture those by the way." –Burke, in Aliens, talking about the giant atmospheric processors. So really, you can take your pick of anything that anyone has ever had a grievance with. Stick to the classics: money and power; haves and have-nots. Those are about the only two things that cannot be misconstrued as cult non-sense. Anything else could or would be based on ideology, which is what you don't want. --- When you can't afford lawyers like theirs, terrorism is your last resort to affect change. Take away the word terraforming, and you're left with the plot from the TV show The Expanse. In it, there's three different factions throughout the solar system, who consider each of the others terrorists (you know, eye of the beholder and all that jazz). --- The Company : * is willing to expend life, claiming "the greater good" ... for profit. * decides who goes, depending on the government's approval * says that we're doomed unless we do this The Collation : * would be willing to expend life, but not to perpetuate the 'system' (their reason being that "only on the precipice do we change", and this merely moves the doomsday clock back a bit) * believes we should fix problems on Earth first; this endeavor is exacerbating the situation, is a farce, and will never reach completion. Even if it does, the common man will be left high and dry. * knows that "government approval" can be bought, or is otherwise susceptible to the corporations' whim (sound familiar? ;) The Company admits that, yes most some of us will be left out in the rain, but to not do this would be worse. The Collation says that this is a get out of jail free card for the rich and the well-connected, serving nothing but corporate/government interests, now and in the future. Scientists agree; one or the other, or both. We most certainly cannot do nothing. We still have a few billion years before we must leave this planet (when the Sun will expand into a red giant), but a head start wouldn't hurt. That is, assuming, that the world economy can sustain itself until fruition and avoid collapse into total anarchy (basically the plot of the PC game [Freelancer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsWPFUzxgRU)). Economists have offered optimistic views for either side, suggesting that it's better to go with the devil you know than the unknown. The question is, which ones are your demons? Do you value any and every human's life above all else, or do you believe that this is necessary and it is the next step in human evolution, and the only way our species as a whole will survive? Personally, I'm part of group #3, the meh group. I just want cheap gasoline; don't care how. --- To sum up, we have two different groups. There's those who would use the now to prepare for the future (thrown in the towel), and those who would use the now, to prepare us to be able to deal with what we did yesterday (all for one, and one for all). Sounds like Republicans and Democrats (respectively) if you ask me. If you don't like that analogy, just stick to 'the rich and the poor'. This is at length already, but one more thing. ISIS. I recently watched a documentary about them which explained why they're so attractive to so many people. In a single word: brotherhood. No matter how nefarious the organization may be, no matter how evil or horrible their tactics are (just like being in a street gang) they offer companionship and a sense of belonging to those gullible enough to submit. My point is that you can pick any reason whatsoever, and it will still make perfect sense. [Answer] Religious reasons? Some people may think that this (a) planet were made by a higher being and meant to be as it is in the moment. Or this special planet is a religious symbol of some kind (compare with Uluṟu in Australia) [Answer] Terrorism is about power and all power is relative. If the terrorists think that a project will benefit someone else more than it will benefit them, they will attack it, hence destroying or reducing the benefit and reducing the relative loss of power to them. So you just need to construct a scenario whereby some group or organisation controls or administers the terraforming (they don't have to be bad guys, and it can be a very large group) and the terrorists are some group whose benefit from it will be either be limited or will require some acceptance of authority and rules. Then you make up "the cause" which is largely irrelevant. You don't need to make it internally consistent as it doesn't have to be. It just has to convince people who want to be convinced that they are not the terrorists. [Answer] ## Just like global warming I'm going to focus on this part: > > the readers (that is, you) must feel ambiguous about who they would support: the companies are doing a good thing in a bad way, and the terrorists are fighting for a good goal in a bad way > > > This point strikes me as the most interesting: to make it feel ambiguous both stances must "make sense". Enter capitalism. There are few things that feel more morally ambiguous to us nowadays than capitalism: you could have those companies needing to justify their terraforming strategy in order to mantain the government grants and be able to keep terraforming, and the company might have to not do things in the "best" way to do so. For example, the contract could stipulate some conditions necessary for the establishment of a government military base which would not truly be in the best interest for the planet and may be unsustainable in the long run, but the government might need this because of a fear of an opposing government wanting to take control of their operation by force. There could also be some shady capitalism in a form of corruption: X company would really like to set up a base in the terraform planet, X company has invested a large amount of money in support of the government. Now, it could complicate matters for the terraforming company to not be doing things in a certain way which would benefit company X, wouldn't it? And on the other side there are people worrying about the sustainability of that planet, perhaps because they see a future where humanity cannot remain on Earth alone and that planet would be a new home, and they see the management of the terraforming company as putting everybody's life at risk for, as they see it, greed. So essentially just take everything that's currently going on with global warming, adapt to terraforming and escalate to terrorism. At least that's what I would do :) [Answer] I'd put the emphasis not on the terraforming itself but on how these companies choose to do so. Two ways of terraforming had been developed: ## 1. Artificial This one is cheap (compared to the other one) and fast. It's the one used by the companies. It requires creating huge industrial complexes in the planet, with machinery that changes the atmosphere. These complexes exploit the resources of the planet to function, especially those around it (therefore, where to build them is critical). To make it work, first they send some pioneers to work in these complexes (while the process of terraforming is beginning, they need astrounaut-ish suits). The issue here is that it requires, after the planet is habitable, to have a huge number of people working in these complexes, to mantain the planet habitable, since otherwise the planet would go back to its original state. Two problems arise from this: There is a long-term cost (which the companies don't care about since when the planet is habitable, the cost is transferred to the plant inhabitants) to mantain the complexes. People working and living in the complexes live in really bad conditions: Usually the conditions there are extremely opposite to what the plant had before (eg. a very cold planet, would become too hot on these complexes when temperature gets warmer on the rest of the planet); same for the air components. This would make companies look for exploitable people (poor people) for the second part of the terraforming (when there's no real need of much technical knowledge). ## 2. Natural (to some extent) This one is expensive and long. It's the only one the terrorist want. It requires, through selective breeding and mutations, to create plant species that do the required job of terraforming. Science would have evolved to make it possible to create plants that produce different kind of components that create the necessary atmosphere to make the planet habitable. The problem with this is that requires a more extensive investigation, understanding the biology of the planet to make the new plants able to reproduce fast while not being too invading. Also, it requires a study of the different ecosystems found in the planet, not only the atmosphere composition (as opposed to the other one), since new plants specimens should be created for each ecosystem. While way more expensive to use, when the planet is terraformed this way, no maintenance (or almost non) is needed. ## To sum up Companies look for the quick terraforming way, with some issues in the long term. Terrorist look for the long terraforming way, that's clearly better on the long run. But that means that the current generation, and maybe the next one, won't be able to live in this new planet. [Answer] Economic Sabotage So a country, or perhaps even the UN has given a shortlist of corporation the mandate to terraform Mars. Since every single member of the UN wants the head of the terrorist leaders (think about ISIS in our time), why would the terror group allow their enemy to gain the economic advantage? Countries may hesitate about ground invasion for now, but with easier mining & farming after the terraform, UN will have enough resource to build hundreds of these [crawlers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter) and literally run over the terrorist territory. Malthusian catastrophe The very fact that it's economically & politically viable to terraform a planet means even the Gobi Desert & Antarctic have been livable, and it's not even enough for the population. When people realize their startups are no saviors for their problem of overpopulation, they will tear each other apart. [Answer] What if those people aren't against the terraforming of Planet, but have something against those corporations precisely? (I will call the new earth Planet) First explanation : how to make sure the population is only caucasian What if the terrorists have reasonable reasons to believe the corporations are actually giving a poisonous gift to humanity? I will give a few forms this corporation can take, as well as how they are not all that evil. The corporations are making us a new home, but one where they would basically be in control of Planet. Behind the scenes, they are selecting the original seed of the new world's population, and those people are carefully selected. They are also engineering the new world so that those of their race (or religion or affiliation) have better life condition and will be the dominant group on Planet. Their group has the best land to grow food, the rarest ressources, the easiest access to the outside. You can look at how Warhammer 40k's Tau force outsiders to adhere to their own culture that way. How is this not evil? The biggest corporations are clean, but the smaller ones not so much. And those smaller corporations are the ones actually managing the new world, the bigger ones lend the machinery, the technology, the transportation, the cash. Even then, the presidents and figurehead genuinely wants to help humanity. But the engineers, who actually make the choices, want to push for a united and cohesive society. You get a corporation where the corporation actually have good intentions, but whose actions on the grand scheme of things is a lot less white. Second explanation : how to control the planet itself Maybe they don't have control over the people, but the way they terraform essentially give them control over the new world's economy. This new world will be grown in such a way as only the crop from the corporation's group will grow. One where only the corporation's life stock will life long enough to be viable. One where the corporation's products against Planet's natural dangers are legitimately better. All because they literally programmed the planet that way. Use the corporation's fertilizer once and it's the only one that will work for 20 years. Get modified pollen from your neighbor's field in yours and you now have to use the new modified crop. During that time, the corporation literally has monopoly on a complete world. There are such stories happening in the real world as I type this. How is this not evil? Doing some of that is the only way to actually terraform a planet in less than 2000 years. The corporations need to do it if they want the job done in a timely fashion. The only question is how much control will they have left once the terraforming is over. Can you blame them for using the only possible way to succeed? Can you trust them to relinquish that control once their job is done? Can you trust them when they say they need to do it? [Answer] Instead of approaching this from the direction of the terraforming being the root cause of terrorism, I would come at it from the direction of terraforming being the tipping point that drives a group of people to terrorism. If a society has grown to the point where it is literally running out places for people to live and to grow food for them, it isn't hard to imagine that the living situation for the average person is going to be pretty dismal. The simple fact the overcrowding has made a task as monumental as transforming an entire planet to alleviate it the most viable option means that the problem is *really bad. Your scenario actually reminded me of the poem [Whitey on the Moon](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/gilscottheron/whiteyonthemoon.html)* by Gil Scott-Heron. Take the sentiment from this excerpt (or listen to it [on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4) a couple of times) and multiply it by about a thousand: > > > ``` > I can't pay no doctor bills > But Whitey's on the moon > Ten years from now I'll be paying still > While Whitey's on the moon > > You know, the man just upped my rent last night > Cause Whitey's on the moon > No hot water, no toilets, no lights > But Whitey's on the moon > > ``` > > I'd let go of the idea that the terraforming itself is what your terrorists are attacking. It is much more plausible that it is simply the most visible target for them to lash out against after they have been pushed beyond the brink of endurance. The terrorists don't even have to share a common ideology or motivation - what they share is that they were all teetering on that breaking point and something made them personally snap. All it takes is one person who connects the terraforming project to their situation in any way, rational or not, planting a bomb and all of a sudden other people start making their own connections. Then you have a movement. They all have their own reasons for snapping, and their own ideologies, but the common theme is that they just can't take the consequences of overcrowding anymore. Stopping the terraforming project isn't really what they are fighting for - it's simply the most visible symbol that they can attack. The tie-ins to anti-globalization and the sustainability movement don't have to come from the motivations of your terrorist group - make it more subtle than that. Your terrorist leader doesn't need to be an anti-globalist or a member of a sustainability movement to examine those themes - find some personal story (or stories) that relate to those movements instead. Not only will this allow you to develop your terrorists as characters, but it will allow the reader to make those connections instead. Neither tie-in should be difficult if the consequences of overcrowding have started pushing people to violence. [Answer] I'd think the reason for terrorism will most often be connected to percieved injustice. If some organization does something very unfair, and the state, which is supposed to protect it's people against that does nothing, it might lead to others standing up and saying: i'll do something against that. While in some cases that's considered fine (a rebel trying to kill an evil dictator), other cases might be considered wrong (a rebel killing a dictator i think is not evil). In both cases it will probably labeled terrorism by the state, in one case the guy will later be considered a hero, in the other case not. Terrorism is always about having different point of views. So, let's create a scenario where this happens and leads someone to target our TerraFormCorp (TM). TerraFormCorp is a nice, triple A, intergalactic company specialized in creating wonderful worlds for mankind to live in. They are the most advanced, skillful and creative company on the market. They employ literally millions of employees, and pay exceptionally well. From their marvelous R&D department, who constantly work on improving terraforming, and adapting earth organisms to other planets via DNA-modification, to their workers who travel to other worlds to take samples, prepare the soil, install the terraforming machines and move local species to special habitats, so they don't go extinct. Everyone is happy, well paid, has health plans and pension plans. TerraFormCorp is a happy company. A clean company. A good company. --- TerraFormCorp is the embodyment of evil. Yes, they have nice flyers, a supercool webpage, and are very skillful at making themselves look good. But you know better than that. You know the truth. You worked for them. It's true, they pay well, and as long as you are a nice company trophy and do your job like they want you to do it, you are probably fine. If you have no conscience and no shame. All employees are required to live in special TerraFormCorp settlements, where you are brainwashed all day. You can only have TerraFormCorp friends, TerraFormCorp food, TerraFormCorp movies, TerraFormCorp everything. And if you don't follow that policy, you are out. Hell, if you take a non-TerraFormCorp-conformist shit, they send you a warning. The working conditions on the planets are shit. You get bombarded with strange bacteria, viruses, toxic gas, and all that shit that is on foreign planets. Yes, free health care in TerraFormCorp facilities is nice, but it doesn't help you if you die at 40 from all the shit they make you take during your work. And let's be honest: who gets all the riches? Well, yeah, they pay nice, but that's just a diminuitive piece of the cake. The sums they take from governments for terraforming are enough to BUY half of earth. TerraFormCorp ? Thanks, but no thanks. --- We are sorry to hear you have problems with TerraFormCorp. We constantly work on new technologies to improve well-being and health of our workers. Sadly, terraforming is still one of the most dangerous fields of work in the universe (rank two after feeding pills to 6legged cats from planet sphinx). But TerraFormCorp is constantly working to make even this a safe field of work. Compared to our competitors, we suffer 60% less fatal accidents, and our workers have an average of 18 years longer lifespans. (compared to our competitors). It is true that we encourage our employees to engage in corporate-sponsored activities, as our scientists have carefully created health and leisure plans that are optimized for the stress and pressure our employees face. Of course we do not punish individuals that choose to engage in other activities, as long as they do not pose unnecessary risks to our workers health or productivity. --- TerraFormCorp is pure evil. You think they be big players? They are bigger. The freaking company has their headquarters on their own planet, believe it or not, they do! Now what they do is, they wait for a government to go come at em, and then they make a deal with them. The government asks them to terraform the planet. You see, they are a contractor, yes, but they own more lawyers than the government does. And they are so freaking big, you can't mess with them. Their prices are sooo high, even the government can't really pay them. So what they do, they take billions of dollars from the government, you see, and then they terraform the planet, but they also have a contract that states that they OWN parts of the planet, to make up for the part the government couldn't pay. Yes, they have to sell it back to people from the planet of the government. And of course they make the land they own the most beautiful in the universe. No denying that, man, the gardens they build are just wow, man, but you see, they own that shit now. And then they sell if for a fortune back to the people of the government that already paid them for doing that. So they take OUR taxes, and make a planet nice and stuff, and then they sell it to the rich people up there so they can live nice. But do the rich people pay tax? No they don't. We poor people, we pay the taxes, and then they make a nice planet for the rich guys from it. Sure, a few of us may live in the areas where they couldn't built nothing nice, and that's mighty fine and all, or at least that what's they tell us all day long, but they never show the camps where us simple people need to live then, right? They only ever show the nice areas, but they are for the rich only. And even if you get a place in the poor slums, they even charge you for the flight there, taking every last dollar they can get from us. That's what TerraFormCorp is. Evil, money-greedy bastards that only work for the rich. --- TerraFormCorp? Those guys are awful. They terraform planets. While they do create small habitats for the local lifeforms, that's only an illusion. Like a zoo where the new colonists can go and see how the world once looked, before they just destroyed all wildlife. Billions and billions of unknown species, and they sent 10.000 collectors at maximum? For only one month? How many species do you think they recover? 4%! They only save only one out of 25 species! And then they force them into small habitats, efficiently ending and natural form of evolution and life on the planet. And all of that so some rich dudes can have some nice houses with outlook to some artifical mountain. --- We are sorry to hear you do not agree with TerraFormCorp policy on handling native wildlife. Our collectors, all of them studied experts on wildlife, botany and microbiology, careful collect and sample the DNA of all species they come across. Sadly, the global changes to climate and atmosphere force us to move some less resilient species to local habitats. We create these to match the original environment to 99,99%. All species that can possibly relocate are placed there, while we preserve the DNA of all those who cannot be moved in a genetic library. Even though time restrictions on terraforming are tight, and we often work under enormous pressure, we take a whole month carefully collecting. Our collectors wear environmentally sealed suits, so we do not contaminate the natural wildlife with foreign organisms. TerraFormCorp works hard to protect mankind and the rest of the universe alike. --- As a government official, i am happy to announce that we work together with TerraFormCorp for colonization of alpha draconis 4. In only a few years, the company will have created a wonderful new area to settle in for our population. Our planet struggles with overpopulation since 40 years now, and finally we can remove the restrictions on having chilren, and strict gender segregation for non-sterilized citizens. Sadly, terraforming a planet is incredibly expensive, and we had to pay the equivalent of 12 years's of global planetary production for them to do it. TerraFormCorp was as nice as to cut it down to 6, taking only 10% of the surface as private property, that they need to sell back to our citizens. This way, all our people profit, and the richer people contribute more by paying for the land they then own, while we can give out land to poorer citizens for free, allowing wealth and prosperity for everyone. TerraFormCorp really helped our planet end it's long-lasting struggle for more space and growth. --- I think this paints a nice picture of a company that might seem evil or good, depending on the viewpoint, and gives some nice reasons for terrorism. [Answer] cracks fingers ok, let's do this. Terrorist wants to stop a terraforming project that's a big deal because 1. You need to get said terrorist scheme out to the planet 2. The terraforming plant will be huge taking up a very large landmass - this trying to blow up a power plant, then double it, and again, and times ten and maybe a few more time 3. The resources needed to terraform are ridiculous So, your terrorists need motivation before they can find the means * Motivation point 1 - they have to really hate the company (called Terra Corp in this answer) doing this, as the amount of resources lost will cripple them. Maybe the company is a bio-engineering and has performed experiments on the terrorists to see how to make them suit a non-terraformed planet? This would be easier in terms of scale than changing a planet * Motivation point 2 - the economy of the world is going to be hit hard after the project fails, think of all the jobs that will be lost, all those people who are highly skilled and ready to be picked up by another company enter our backing partner who will be in a position to buy terra Corp after their stock fails (I will now call these chaps StabIntheBack Inc.) * Motivation Point 3 - StabIntheBack Inc. can promise after the acquisition of Terra Corp to undo the damage the company has done , fixing the babies etc * Motivation Point 4 - Earth needs those minerals! By stopping Terra Corp, all those resources can be brought back to a much used-up Earth and used to improve life here for everyone. [Answer] Here is my own answer: Since the companies profit from terraforming, they want there to be a need for terraforming. So they exert their immense political and economic influence to propagate values and effect living conditions on the inhabited worlds that cause overpopulation, an economy based on growth instead of sustainability (so that ressources will be depleted or, like air and water, poisoned within no more than a handful of generations), and politics based on ideology, nationalism, and power hunger, instead of [scientific evidence](https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/12404/is-there-a-scientific-political-ideology), a global perspective, and cooperation. They have managed to induce global warming or cooling on quite a few worlds. The terraforming conglomerate and their subsidiaries and shareholders own or otherwise direct most of the media production of he inhabited world and heavily lobby politics, mostly indirectly (e.g. through gun owners associations or tobacco and oil producing companies). They propagate backwards religious views such as Catholicism and its prohibition of contraceptives, its command to procreate, and its [cultural mandate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_mandate) to dominate the earth. They support a politics that spends most of a government's budget on military infrastructure and foreign interventions (that cause the retaliation that in restrospect justifies these military investments and activities) instead of health care, housing, education, and measures of sustainability such as population control or renewable energy. They influence educational systems to focus on performance, instead of personal development, and make sure that a large enough number of the populace fails to form a lower class of discontent and poor that can be easily influenced to elect the political parties that most damage their basis of existence. Terrorism then comes from those conspiracy theorist nutcases that actually believe any of the apparent nonsense I just made up. [Answer] Archaeological reasons? Perhaps the planet is the home of the ruins of a past, long-dead civilization, and the terrorists want to stop the terraforming to prevent the destruction of the ruins. [Answer] Some forward-thinking cities have an "Urban growth boundary" that limits development outside the city. This creates a denser more usable inner city. Some cities without this boundary have problems with the wealthy abandoning the city and commuting in, causing the city to become much less livable. (Just today I heard a similar argument against driverless cars on NPR) Perhaps the terrorists are strong believers in this theory--Maybe they see the wealthy as fleeing the earth to the new planets. Examples of the difference are Portland, OR (fairly strong Urban Growth Boundary) and Chicago IL (Significant movement of wealth to the suburbs)--although I admit there are so many other factors at play that this might not even be playing a role, it still makes for a good narrative. [Answer] Because the government or the corporations can't be trusted. One or both have plans for the planet that go against public welfare. Maybe the planet is going to be "reserved" for only the rich and powerful or for certain groups of people, be it based on race, beliefs, biological augmentations (whether they have them or don't, depends on the society), or gene status (a la Gattaca), etc. Or the reverse, they're planning on sending less desirable people there to get them off the "more civilized" planets; they'll start moving colonists when the planet is "almost" ready, cut corners, or cancel the terraforming, leaving people more or less stranded on a miserable planet, struggling to survive. Maybe the location of the planet is a problem. They're ignoring/squelching independent studies done proving the planet is being flooded by radiation from its star. Or that its orbit is decaying, meaning the planet will soon/eventually become uninhabitable again, but they're trying to cut costs and that's the closest planet that works now. Or it's too far from the central colonies to get help/supplies once it's up and running, especially if there's a war on; I'm picturing Firefly or Star Wars' outer rim type planets run by gangs or totally unpoliced and unaided. Mining planets, complete with slavery and other atrocities. These "terrorists" grew up on planets like that and wouldn't wish it on their enemies. We should be using that funding to improve the current colonies; build up, not out. The terrorists have proven, with real studies, without a doubt, that we could increase living space on the planets already colonized while also increasing the quality of living, but then the corporations can't charge a literal fortune to set up a new planet and they've got a political figure on the payroll. I'm trying to focus on not knowing which side your on. The terrorists casting doubt on the agenda and not knowing who to trust is the only broad scenario I can think of to cover it. Throw in some backstories for each side about why they're genuinely doing the right thing and the reader will at least start feeling conflicted now and then and maybe start coming up with their own, better solutions to the problem, having all the facts or knowing both sides. [Answer] OK, so you say there is no sentient life on the planet. I'd like to correct: There is no sentient life that we know of. Now the scientists give very good arguments about it, but who tells us that there is not a form of sentient life that evades our scientific knowledge? Maybe it is too slow for us to recognize. Or, if there is life on the planet, maybe some of the life forms are sentient in a way we don't recognize. So the terrorists are convinced that this planet has some sentient life form which we don't recognize, or consider it at least as likely enough that they consider terraforming that planet as crime, as it will likely kill that presumed sentient life form (it doesn't matter whether there actually is a sentient life form on that planet, all that matters is that you cannot convince that that there isn't). So the terrorists consider themselves justified because for them the terraforming is murder or at least negligent homicide (alienicide?) of those undiscovered sentient life forms. While the managers consider themselves free of guilt because, after all, the scientists say there's no sentient life on the planet. Of course, also the usual conspiracy themes will come into play, like the anti-terraforming movement (which consists not only of the terrorist, but also of more peaceful protesters) accusing the scientists to be bought by the big companies, and therefore intentionally not looking too intensively for sentient life, as that would be eating the profits of the terraforming companies. Note that which side the reader identifies with will depend on how it is presented (for example if the scientists are presented to be reliable or unreliable); if the presentation is sufficiently ambiguous (as would likely be what a non-expert would learn about it in that world), the desired effect of reader ambiguity can be achieved. [Answer] Because governments goal is to speculate on terraforming, if world is overly populated there may have been some birth restrictions: * In example no more than 1 child allowed * Heavy taxes for 1 or more children. The governemnt could say "we remove these restrictions because we will have soon another planet". However in face of terrorist acts (fake or true), the new world becomes so expensive that every person that had children suddendly become heavily taxed and very poor, and there will be a race to the few available places on the new planet to reduce living expense. The speculation part is promising something that won't be avaialable thus creating a huge demand before the "product" is really available putting prices to stars. The terrosim may be part of speculation and incidentally the terrorist want to fight that with terrorism. [Answer] Several thousand years ago humans were nearly wiped out by another sentient species. Eventually the war ended and a neutral zone of space was established. In the time since that war humanity has re-established itself as a galactic empire occupying nearly as many worlds as they had prior to the war but always keeping a safe distance from the neutral zone. This solar system is just on the edge of that neutral zone and based on orbit around the galactic center will encroach on it in 2,000 years. Our terrorists are afraid that future inhabitants will become entrenched having lived their for generations and will bring the human race to an end. The company feels the colony has a shorter life span than that and even if it doesn't the neutral zone can be renegotiated at some point. ]
[Question] [ I want the world to have an extremely long age of discovery, such that even if they were to use a ship to travel in a straight line across their planet's ocean for hundreds of years they'd still be discovering new lands and peoples and so on and so forth. In an effort to accomplish this I've lowered the overall strength of gravity such that a solar mass in our universe is just a planetary mass in the setting's universe, with a planetary radius to match, so you can see where I'm going with this. Essentially the goal is to create an Earth-like planet(with Earth-like gravity) the size of a star(let's say ours, Sol). Problem is I don't know if I can get away with weakening gravity to such an extent, whether or not life as we know it would still be able to evolve in such a universe, whether or not things would still work somewhat normally with such a weak gravitational constant. Can I get away with lowering gravity so that the usual solar masses in our universe are simply planetary masses in the setting's universe? [Answer] Your Universe is Fantastic! I would like to advance this Stack's core belief to you. From the [Help Center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) we read: > > World building includes geography, culture and creatures for the world, not to mention magic and planetary physics, in short, everything from the physics underlying your reality to the entire universe you want to build. > > > Far too often we think of ourselves as Physics Lite. We start to believe that there are only two kinds of imaginary worlds. One that's entirely defined by magic and the other that's just Earth by another name. Even you're tempted to believe your imaginary world can only exist within the rigid and boring context of known science. Bah-Humbug! In your universe, brilliant stars are the size of planets and habitable planets are the size of stars! You have no obligation whatsoever to explain, rationalize, or justify those world rules. That is the nature of YOUR universe. It's cool beyond measure! Every discoverer in human history would wish for a world as filled with mystery as yours. Ignore everyone who says you can't do that and go do that. [Answer] From a physics standpoint, the usual answer given is that if you change any of the universal constants by even a tiny bit (8th or 9th decimal place, say), you produce a universe in which life cannot evolve. Mess with the gravitational constant, and either stars don't form, or they're tiny and have a lifetime of a few decades instead of millions to trillions of years -- or perhaps they always collapse directly into black holes when they burn all their fusion fuel, meaning no second-generation stars and no rocky planets. ### What your world needs is a healthy dose of handwaving. Perhaps your world is a hollow spherical shell, only a few times as massive as the Earth (just enough to give that 1 G at surface, however large it is, and no one will ever know what keeps it from collapsing). Perhaps your universe has an extra dimension, so the surface area of a (hyper)sphere goes as the cube of radius, instead of the square. Perhaps there's a constant haze high in the atmosphere that makes navigation much more difficult (maybe impossible before magnetic compasses are discovered). Perhaps extreme storms mean only one ship in a thousand that ventures more than a couple days out of sight of land is ever heard from again. Maybe new land rises from the ocean on an ongoing basis (and if you miss it for twenty years, it'll be covered with at least plant life and birds by the time you do find it). You're doing a lot of handwaving to lower the gravitational constant anyway -- enough to get labeled as fantasy (as was the case with Prince Valentine's Castle and its sequels, which also had an unreasonably large world). Why not go all the way and avoid having to try to explain stuff, when the explanation is much harder to swallow than "This is how it is and no one knows why." [Answer] Size is relative. To a human, crossing a meter-wide stream is a skip and a jump; to an ant colony, it's a major engineering project. To a human, crossing an ocean is a major engineering project; to a humpback whale, it's a yearly tradition. The Earth has plenty of animals much smaller than humans. Roughly speaking, pygmy marmosets are 10 times smaller, African pygmy mice are 30 times smaller, Vijayan's night frogs are 120 times smaller, and some jumping spiders are 300 times smaller. On a planet the size of the Earth, gregarious, tool-making creatures the size of African pygmy mice might take about 30 times as long to explore the globe. Size isn't directly proportional to range or speed. Some tiny creatures, like monarch butterflies, can travel on continental scales much more easily than humans do. However, disproportionality can also work in your favor. Imagine a crew of pygmy marmosets crossing the Ka'ie'ie Waho Channel to get from Kaua'i to O'ahu. Proportionally, we could compare them to a crew of humans crossing the Bay of Bengal to get from Sri Lanka to the Andaman Islands. Their challenges, however, would not be to scale! To them, meter-high waves would be towering walls of water, eight times the height of the tallest sailors. Smaller species tend to have faster metabolisms, so they'd have to pack much more food and water relative to their size. [Answer] I don't understand the negative answers to this question. I think it can be done just fine, and I don't really even see a problem with it. As you said you can just make the gravitational constant smaller, and you will then be able to have a planet that's much bigger than the Earth but with the same surface gravity as Earth. As one answer points out, if you really wanted to be hard-science about this you would run into problems with cosmology, in terms of how stars and planets form, how quickly stars burn, etc. But that could easily be handwaved by just saying nuclear physics works differently in your world. (Or by just not mentioning it if it isn't important to the setting.) So let's just say planets and stars can form ok in your universe, and we have our planet that's 100 times the radius of Earth (with 10000 times the surface area), and its surface is made of the same kinds of stuff the Earth is. Here are some consequences of that: * Your planet will be much more flying-saucer-like in shape than Earth. This is because, presumably, you want the planet to rotate about once per 24 hours. This means that there's a centrifugal force of about $\left(\frac{2\pi}{\text{24 hours}}\right)^2 \times 100\times \text{Earth's radius}$, or about [0.34g](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%282pi%2F%2824+hours%29%29%5E2++%28100++earth+radius%29), pulling outward from the equator. So the equator will bulge out quite a lot, resulting in an [oblate spheroid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spheroid) instead of a sphere. (The Earth is also approximately an oblate spheroid, but Earth is much closer to spherical than your planet will be.) Because of the mass of the bulge, the people on the surface of your planet will not feel as if they are lighter at the equators than at the poles - the gravity will just be 1g everywhere. This effect increases as you make your planet bigger, and there's a limit to how big you can make it before the planet stops being stable at all. But 100 times Earth's radius seems to be just about ok. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lloui.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lloui.png) CC BY-SA image of oblate spheroid by Tomruen from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spheroid#/media/File:Spheroids.svg) Aside from being a lot more squished and saucer-like than Earth, your planet will be much smoother and closer to its ideal oblate spheroid shape. This is because the heights of mountains and continental bulges and so on are limited by material properties, and making the planet bigger won't change those. But this is probably exactly what you want - mountains about the size of Earth's mountains, but just a lot more of them. * If there is a moon it will be much rounder as well, so it will appear much more like a smooth sphere, with details only visible through a telescope. * The year will be really long, and so will the month if there is a moon. This is for two reasons. Firstly, because the gravitational constant $G$ is smaller, an orbit of the same size will take longer to complete. Secondly, the sun and the moon will presumably also be around 100 times bigger than Earth's sun and moon, which means they will have to be about 100 times further away in order to look about the same size in the sky. This also means their orbits will take longer to complete. A year on your planet will be at least 10000 Earth years in duration and probably much longer. This means that one pole of your planet will probably have been in permanent darkness throughout all of recorded history, and the other in permanent daylight. Most likely the pole that's in darkness will be covered in ice but the other one won't - it might actually be quite warm there, just because it's had a long time to warm up. The equator will still be warmer though, because the sun rises higher into the sky. (Note though that since stellar physics probably has to work differently in your world, you could just say the sun and/or moon are much smaller than I've assumed, and therefore closer, which would make the year shorter. If you really want a year to be about one Earth year, you could have the sun orbit the planet.) * Plate tectonics might be weird. I'm not sure how it would work on a planet that size. But maybe you can just say the mantle is about the same thickness as Earth's mantle, with the planet having a giant core underneath that. Then you might be able to have continents about the same size as Earth's continents, just a lot more of them. Alternatively you could try to have a much larger mantle and correspondingly larger continents, but I'm not sure how well that would work, due to the aforementioned limits on material properties. * Climate and weather will probably be weird, and not just because of the long year or the weird shape of your planet. If you want the surface to be Earth-like, that will mean your planet has an atmosphere about the same height as Earth's atmosphere, which will be much thinner compared to the size of the planet than Earth's is. This means that the global wind circulation patterns will be very different. Earth's atmosphere looks like this, being composed of six circulating 'cells' of air: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ytrdb.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ytrdb.png) CC BY-SA image by Kaidor, from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_cell#/media/File:Earth_Global_Circulation_-_en.svg) The reason there are six cells has to do with the thickness of the atmosphere compared to the planet (among other things), so on your planet it will look different. I imagine you would either have a lot more cells, or it won't be broken up into cells in the same way and could be a lot more chaotic. This might work in your favour though, because it might mean you can have giant deserts (even bigger than Earth's), or whole continents where it's really windy, and other such interesting things for your world's travellers to find. * On a related note, if your characters live in a temperate region they will have to travel a really long way to find anywhere with a tropical or polar climate, and so on. * Evolution might be weird. A larger planet gives more opportunities for species to get isolated and take their own evolutionary path. So (for example) instead of just mammals and marsupials there might be many different types of mammal-like animals. Or there might be somewhere where dinosaur-like animals still survive. There might even be other intelligent species if you travel far enough, as there would be more opportunity for two intelligent species to evolve without meeting each other. * Reaching orbit or escape velocity will be for all intents and purposes impossible. The speeds needed to orbit or escape your planet will be vastly higher than the speed needed to orbit the Earth, and it's most likely that it would never be technologically possible to reach those speeds starting from a sub-orbital flight. If your civilisation reaches space age technology the best they can hope for is to send rockets on huge parabolic trajectories, only to fall back down again. (So there will never be any satellites, but ICBMs will still work, and you might also see suborbital flights used for point-to-point travel.) * ~~Meteorite impacts might be much more extreme.~~ This one was wrong sorry. Orbital speeds are generally slower in your world, but your planet also has a very large gravity well, which will speed meteorites up before they impact. I'm just going to guess it all cancels out and meteorite impacts are about the same as they are on Earth. [Answer] Frameshift: Leave gravity alone. Instead, some extremely advanced race built a Earth-orbit-sized shell of material 4000 miles thick and the inside is somehow handwaved to be totally empty. This gives an apparently Earth-normal world except it's the size of Earth's orbit. Not only do you get great areas to explore but while flight can develop normally there can be no space program without major breakthroughs (to get into orbit you need antimatter rockets) so it never gets pre-empted by camera satellites. You'll want a very thick atmosphere to protect you from grains of dust, that will make flight easy but slow. [Answer] ## Definitely not The first question you have to ask yourself is : what is the biggest terrestrial planet size we could find in the universe. Lucky you, someone already asked this question, on this sub : [See here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/9957/627). The answer provided is : ~2Re (with Re: Earth radius). Now to give you a bit of a solution, in the case we are taking this 2Re Planet as your planet. The surface area would be 4 times the Earth's one (A=4.pi.(2Re)^2). And four times the earth surface is really huge, considering your planet is heavier (and to add to this, let's suppose it has a bigger gravity) a ship would be slower to run across the globe. The first recorded circumnavigation took 3 years without the exploration part, the second one took 11 years. Considering your ship does not have plans to rush the circumnavigation, is slower to perform the trip, has at least 4 times the perimeter (if going straight because earth perimeter is pi.Re.2) to cross (but you could say it's for discovery purposes so not straight at all, with big pauses to explore etc..). Having a 100-years trip could be reasoneabale with this configuration (without considering the logistic and the fact humans does not live 100years). EDIT: I only answered considering we are in the actual world (with the same physical constants). Messing with those parameters is almost impossible without affecting the entire universe and one could believe messing that much with the gravitational constant would make life impossible (if not the whole universe) as another user said. [Answer] Actually the question barely has any meaning. Changing gravity won't change any object's mass. Gravity applies to mass, but doesn't modify it. The same way, you will not say : "Can I get away with reducing my magnet to the point where there is barely any iron remaining in the coin?". Gravity will change the intensity with which any mass is attracted to another, though. Maybe that's what you meant. This is a couple of consequences I can imagine. 1. Mass Decreasing gravity does not decrease molecules' density (mass for a given volume). So if you want the gravity of your bigger Earth to feel the same for humans living on its surface (and you want it, otherwise the atmosphere is not retained and escapes to space, oceans evaporate, and there is basically no life, like on any object with a very low gravity like asteroids or the Moon), keeping the idea of weak gravity force intensity, you will actually need much, much more mass. That bigger Earth with the same feeling of gravity at its surface would thus require much more of the same material that makes earth to compensate the weakness of the gravity constant, leading to actually having a much bigger mass. 2. Planet cohesion Any neighbouring object (the central star of the planetary system, a natural satellite) applies a "tidal force" to its neighbour. To put it simply, when the moon is exactly above, say, Rio de Janeiro, then it applies a stronger gravitational attraction to Rio than to Taiwan, because Taiwan is on the opposite part of the Earth and is therefore 13,000 km farther. Oceans make it obvious with tides because they are liquid, but the Earth's crust is also slightly distorted. If the difference of force's intensity between Rio and Taiwan were too high (either because a neighbouring object would be too heavy, or too close), the crust might first crackle, leading to so many earthquakes and volcanos, then the next step would be the Earth breaking in crumbles. That's what happened to the [Shoemaker-Levy comet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker%E2%80%93Levy_9), coming too close to Jupiter in 1992. And you guessed it: the more your planet has a big diameter, the more it's easy for an object, even quite remote or quite light like for example the central star of the system, to just break it by tidal force. Actually, that planet would never appear. That's why you don't see huge telluric planets as @ohpif points, and why huge planets are gas planets, like Jupiter or Saturn. 3. Star birth If the gravity is much lower, then it would take a lot more gas and a lot more time for stars to appear, and probably for galaxies too, if they can appear at all. With the figures you said, it would probably take billions of times more time. And stars would be billions of times bigger too (in volume) in order to have enough mass so that the small gravity is able to however produce the huge central pressure that is enough to "light up" the star (actually: start the thermo-nuclear reactions producing light). Black holes and everything would also be much bigger. [Answer] From a physics perspective I think this becomes more problematic than just having a really large planet and ignoring the physics (if this is fantasy rather than SF even moreso). If you particularly want a huge world that obeys physics there are a couple of ideas you might consider: 1. A planet with a significantly different construction. 2. In SF, constructs like a Ring or Sphere take the mass of a planet and transform it artificially to give far greater surface area. You might employ such a device (which could include a 'planet' which is basically hollow) and decide if the inhabitants know or not. It might take centuries or millennia for them to realise. [Answer] If you want your setting to be science-based, stay away from quantum/relativistic stuff where the things will get really, really messy. On the other hand, from the classical physics standpoint, you have to deal with: * The internal heat exchange of the planet in square-cube law context. Our Earth still (4.5bn years after its formation) has an internal ocean of molten rock and iron. Your planet will have to cool WAY longer in order to have a solid surface at all. Expect strong volcanism, tectonics and geothermal activity as well. * Either much deeper gravity well (if you want comparable to our own surface gravity) with much harder or impossible space travel - or - weaker surface gravity, thicker and very turbulent atmosphere with storms featuring a great deal of dust, sand, snow and water. And, splashy water bodies. Or something in between. ]
[Question] [ The Dreamer (a.k.a. The Sleepy Psychic by his teammates and enemies alike) has telepathic powers. The problem is that, while extremely useful, he can only use them whilst sleeping. My question is, how does he fall asleep and stay asleep during battle? Notes: * He specifically needs to enter and stay in a state of [Lucid dreaming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream) to use his powers. * His powers are weaker the farther he is from the target, so sleeping at home is a no go (he'd basically have no affect). * Neither he nor his team mates has [required secondary powers](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RequiredSecondaryPowers) (other than that he is pretty good at lucid dreaming once he starts dreaming, but that's more of a skill than a power) that would help directly (although you are fine to propose powers for his team mates that might help in creative ways). * His enemies know about this weakness, so they will try to wake him up. * Since his team usually just have to wait until the bad guys attack, there is not much prep time. He wants to start using his powers as soon as possible. Luckily attacks usually only happen once a month. * He does not want to his health to be adversely affected too much. What should the Sleepy Psychic, ahem, I mean the Dreamer do to get snoozing so he can get telepathing? [Answer] Since that concept sounds like something more on the comedic than on the serious side, make your hero narcoleptic. Narcolepsy can be triggered through high emotions, so maybe he's actually scared of fighting (or simply excited). So once he's in a sitation where he needs to fight, he'll automatically fall asleep due to his affliction. Of course the same thing is true outside of a fight. [Answer] A sedative should work - especially one that's quick acting. Sedatives are used to send people to sleep on demand quite reliably, and are quite robust so people don't wake easily (one reason they're used for surgery) Some sedatives might suppress dreams, but [others](http://www.ld4all.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40260) may not - or may encourage [vivid dreams](http://aschoonerofscience.com/drugs/science-of-inception-sedatives-dissociatives-and-dreaming/). Your superhero may need to experiment to find something suitable. Some [herbs](http://www.dreamviews.com/sleep-health/108124-sedatives-sleep-dream.html) are supposed to be good for lucid dreaming, like [Valerian](http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/valerian-root-dreams.html), though they're usually mild enough to not be useful in battlefield conditions - but pairing something like that with a chemical sedative may help encourage lucid dreaming. Your superhero should be able to come up with a personalized mix that will sedate himself, allow/encourage lucid dreaming, and is consistent and/or flexible enough to adjust for needed effect or expected duration. Alternatively, meditation may help. Advanced meditation is supposed to give the conscious mind a great deal of control over the body - even parts that are usually unconscious. It may be possible to gain enough control to enable one to sleep (and stay asleep) even in a battlefield. Or it might be possible to slip into lucid dreaming without sleeping first, maybe in [waking dreams](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia), or from a [deep trance](http://www.selfhypnosistalk.com/how-you-can-get-into-meditative-trance-through-self-hypnosis/). Or maybe just help encourage lucid dreaming under sedation. Seems like it would help. Or another possibility is to use [hypnosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnosis) to set up a reliable sleep-scenario. Given this is for a superhero, self-hypnosis may be wiser than going to a hypnotist - either that or getting a teammate with experience/complementary-to-hypnosis-powers/willingness to learn, but in any case a great deal of trust is needed. A [post-hypnotic suggestion](https://hypnosistrainingacademy.com/10-steps-to-creating-post-hypnotic-suggestions/) to sleep at a certain trigger, and to not wake until another trigger (or a set of them, depending on circumstances, fail-safes for if unexpected circumstances pop up), or even certain triggers only as originated from certain people (to prevent the opposition from finding a trigger) will likely work as required. [Answer] There's an old-ish joke I've seen retold on many social media sites that goes something like this: Want to be able to fall asleep anytime, anywhere, like a well-trained Marine? No problem. Get up at 4am, put on boots and long sleeves, and get your butt outside in less than 10 minutes. Now run 10 miles uphill over a variety of surfaces while shouting. Next eat as much high-calorie food as you can as fast as you can, before running to the airfield... etc.., etc. Sit down at 10pm and the most hardcore insomniac will go out like a light. Keep that up for a few months, and you'll fall asleep anytime, anywhere that you want to. Now, that's largely a joke (and an abbreviated one at that), but there is a grain of truth to it. Militaries do indeed put effort into figuring out how to get the soldiers the best sleep possible. Here're a couple of articles on the subject: <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tricks-from-the-military-to-fall-asleep-quickly_us_56c3e4cee4b08ffac1270502> <https://medium.com/@MantaSleep/military-approved-tactics-on-how-to-fall-asleep-instantly-b5b93ce95b70> The short version? Exercise regularly, and generally try to stay physically active when not sleeping to use your powers. Get comfortable being in uncomfortable places (comes with practice), or else have a standard mobile bed that you are accustomed to falling asleep in. Use a sleep mask, and maybe earplugs. Keeping to a strict daily schedule, including a sleep schedule, isn't gonna meet this guy's needs, but he can still maintain a rigid routine prior to sleep so that his mind and body are expecting to fall asleep (the standard familiar bed would help with that). If it were me, I'd include taking a dose of melatonin in part of the lead-up routine. That would ideally be about half an hour long (giving time for the hormone to hit your brain and take effect), but if that's too, he could just do a lot of practice with a quicker bed-time routine, and the melatonin still won't hurt; at the very least, you'll get a placebo effect out of it. Melatonin is safe in sufficiently high quantities that its LD-50 (dose at which it is lethal to 50% of the population) is unknown, even in rat studies, so it's not going to adversely affect his health. The only known side effects of overdose are lingering drowsiness. [Answer] Assuming the hero has access to medicines or infusions (a technology level is not specified), I would suggest a sedative. If modern medicines are available, there are fast-acting sedatives in existence that are reasonably safe to use. <http://www.nosleeplessnights.com/best-over-the-counter-sleep-aids/> If more archaic medicines are all that are available to the hero, then there are still some infusions with sedative properties. <http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/insomnia/expert-answers/valerian/faq-20057875> Given that this is a world with magic, perhaps the hero simply visits a potion maker on occasion and keeps a stock of magical sleep potions handy. [Answer] Question: If he is asleep, how do he protect himself? For ease of writing, I will call the sleeping psychic Jack If he have to spend his energy making sure the bad guys don't get too close to his sleeping body, a good teamup would be to have a super-strengh guy around, who will carry him while he is sleeping and using his power. For ease of writing, I will call our super strengh guy John Depending on how John carry Jack exactly (by hand, in a specially built "backpack"...), John can be only a carrier or a full on superhero with the additional role of carrying Jack. As of the sleeping itself, sedative act quickly and efficiently. I don't think you will find quicker than that unless someone have a "put to sleep" power. It will also prevent him from being woke up if moved a bit forcefully, or even when getting hurt. With the team up with John, the sedative gas canister problem is also resolved, and you find yourself with a duo of hero. John, being a super strengh fighter, is in the melee, where Jack, safely protected, can use the full extend of his power easily. Another good point is that it make a direct relation between Jack and John, and you can play with it, and add tension. EDIT: A second idea I had, if you want to prevent the use of sedative, is to have the psychic already sleeping before arriving. For example, he goes to sleep before going on patrol, in a sound-proof "cocoon" carried by John. That way he can go to sleep when everything is (still) calm, in case of urgency, the cocoon can help him relax and go to sleep anyway, and it make another layer of protection. [Answer] You say: > > Aalthough you are fine to propose powers for his team mates that might > help in creative ways > > > The most obvious power to help someone who needs to sleep is the power to induce sleep in other people (see [sleep manipulation](http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Sleep_Manipulation)). Perhaps one of his team mates is called the Sandman? Maybe one team mate has the power of generating a calming aura (see [peace aura](http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Peace_Aura))? She can create this calming aura in a small area so that the Dreamer has an easier time falling asleep. However, if the aura is too peaceful, the Dreamer might not want to partake in the battle anymore. Or one of his team mates can have the power to create protective bubbles, some sort of magic spherical shield that also blocks out sounds. You can drag a bed into the battlefield, put the Dreamer on the bed, and then summon the protective bubble around him and the bed. Now the Dreamer just needs to relax and fall asleep and doesn't need to worry about being awaken or even harmed by enemies. [Answer] If the enemies are not an AoE ([Area of Effect](http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Area_of_Effect)) superheroes, like exploding things randomly, then have a friend that can turn you invisible before the fight, and hide you somewhere in the battlefield (Flash movement is beneficial here, or teleporting). As how to get sleep quickly, ask your friend to [knock you out.](http://www.turtlepress.com/training/5-vital-point-knockout-strikes) It might be painful, but works quicker than consuming sedative. Or chloroform. [Answer] Sleep deprivation. If the hero has not slept for days, he will be quite ready to collapse into a heap whenever necessary. Additional justification for this could be that he minimizes his out-of-battle sleep time in order to avoid accidentally using his powers. [Answer] If you take a moment to do some deductive thinking, it's pretty simple. First, we'd determine what's keeping the hero awake in the battle as opposed to his super dope bedroom. What's the one thing that's different? Noise! So he would have to cancel out the noise, isolate himself and do some visualization & imagine he's back in his bedroom sleep-inducing pod or whatever he has. So, the answer is simple for me - [he'd have to get himself a good set of noise-cancelling headphones and drown into Enya tunes](https://thesleepstudies.com/best-noise-cancelling-headphones-under-100-200/) in the midst of battle. That's it - the hero falls asleep in battle but not being in the battle...some Yoda-style deduction right here, huh? :) [Answer] One of his sidekicks can be a hypnotist like the guy from Now You See Me. The hypnotist can do some kind of 1-2-3-snap kind of thing to put him to sleep. Plus a hypnotist and a dreamer would make an awesome combo. [Answer] Sedative gas mask + this suit. Maybe add a SP logo on the chest and boom movie incoming. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/G0cwB.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/G0cwB.jpg) [Answer] A sleeping capsule, perhaps with some kind of vehicle to carry it. Essentially, carry your superhero into battle like you might carry a missile or power generator, inside this capsule. Then, while the battle rages around them, they can fall asleep in the capsule and activate their powers, with little to wake them up. This technique would work best in large scale battles, as the capsule could easily be loaded into something like a tank. For smaller scale battles, a sidekick could use an Ironman-like suit to carry the hero on their back. It obviously helps if the hero is physically smaller (perhaps having dwarfism, or being a child). This technique also lends itself to a different kind of story, told from the perspective of the hero's enemies (perhaps because the Dreamer is actually a villain, or is being held against his will). Readers spend the story in suspense about what the mysterious capsule object is that is ravaging the minds of their finest warriors, and then find out that it's some dude sleeping in a box. [Answer] One of the plots of the Naruto series involved a character who had a beast within him. He summoned this beast to destroy Naruto's village but, in order to let the beast do his thing, he had to be unconscious. So he used a [sleep technique](http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Feigning_Sleep_Technique) (using chakra, an innate energy in that world) to put himself to sleep. He is subsequently defeated after Naruto punches him to wake him up. [Answer] A meditation chamber that he could bring with him or have a technology that could teleport it to the battlefield. Dreamer gets in and activates it, causing instant, uninterrupted sleep. The exterior of the chamber can either be protected by force field or could phase out and disappear. Also, a cool name for him would be R.E.M. -or- LUCID. [Answer] 1. A partner. Preferably a superhero with the power to put people to sleep. Using a "brick" hero who just coldcocks Dreamer would work too, but I don't think Dreamer would like that solution as much. 2. Pharmaceuticals. Chug Nyquil and sit down, or perhaps use something prescription so it will be faster and more controlled. 3. Training. I believe there are eastern meditation techniques that would be useful here.\* 4. Hypnosis. One of the traditional uses of hypnosis has always been to facilitate sleep. Failing that, he could probably use my college Chemistry textbook. I could never get through more than 3 sentences before nodding off. The Nyquil would be much less weight to lug into battle though. \* - Probably not real-world scientifically effective as the other methods, but for comics we don't let pesky things like scientifically-unproven results get in the way of a good mysticism-based plot device. [Answer] It's misdirection, the "Dreamer/Sleepy Psychic" lets people (friends and enemies) think he needs to sleep to use his powers (and initially maybe he did need to be asleep). However these days he just needs to be in a deep meditative state, which he has practiced and is can get into in most situations, however the time to achieve this state is lengthened by the amount and severity of immediate distractions. [Answer] If he has a separate citizen identity, I would make him addicted to opioids or prescription strength sedatives. (I think even LSD would work because I've read that it puts you in a state similar to lucid dreaming?) A less drugged-out approach would be melatonin tablets. ]
[Question] [ Would it be possible for a planet to form so it has all of the landmass in only one hemisphere? By landmass, I mean all landmass that is above sea level. And human-habitability is encouraged... [Answer] If you divide the world into two hemispheres, with one centered in France and the other on the opposite side of the world, around New Zealand, then the "Francocentric" hemisphere has about 7/8 of the world's land. So the Earth is already pretty close to the situation you describe. I'd say that makes it possible. See, for example, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_and_water_hemispheres>. [Answer] In a Sense Think Pangaea. Back around 300 million years ago, all of our continents were one mashup of separate landmasses. This might not be what you are looking for, as you do not state whether or not you mean eastern/western, or northern/southern. Pangaea was all in the western hemisphere, or eastern, depending how you look at it. As for the Northern and Southern Hemisphere There is no reason that the major landmasses could not form to the north or the south of the planet. It all depends on the movement of the tectonic plates. Maybe in your story the continents were all dispersed but eventually they moved back together, as they will someday do on Earth. [Answer] The Earth is already pretty close. The Pacific takes up almost a whole hemisphere. Here is a screen shot from Google Earth. I just rotated the model manually trying to show the maximum amount of water I could manage. It's not hard to imagine a planet with a whole hemisphere of water. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5txah.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5txah.jpg) [Answer] Yes. How planets form is subject to complex events on astronomical and geologic time scales. See the [nebular hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebular_hypothesis) for a detailed description, but rocky planets like Earth start out as a warm mess of spinning gases and dust that coalesce and cool into relatively homogeneous balls of spinning rocky matter. Those planet embryos (actual term) initially have almost no atmosphere and as such have no defense against the numerous large (moon- to planet-sized) and smaller asteroids impacting the surface. Even if the combination of these initial processes and plate tectonics result in continents (or a Pangaea-like supercontinent) that span multiple hemispheres, continental drift and further large impacts would continue to reshape the continents over millions of years. The percentage of your planet that is covered in water (or other liquid ocean, I suppose), and the number, mass, and orbit of natural satellites (moons) will also be an important contributor. Although simply adding oceans won't itself affect the position of continents, it will reduce their size and number. It would be rather unlikely to have an entire hemisphere without a continent if your surface is only, say, 30% water, for example. [Answer] Mars now has not much water... but if it once had an ocean it would have covered most of the northern hemisphere, while the southern hemisphere was mostly high and dry (with a couple of rather large lakes) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4yPNG.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4yPNG.jpg) The difference between the hemispheres can be seen on this map from NASA. Roughly, green and blue could have been sea. [Answer] Trivially, yes. Take the earth, add water. Eventually you'll get to the level where the only bit that is above the surface is the tip of Mount Everest. And that's in the northern hemisphere. So earth would be what you describe, if only the sea level was somewhat higher. [Answer] I don't see why not? It could largely depend on how much water is on the planet. If you have a planet like the moon Titan, the entire surface is miles and miles of deep water. So you wouldn't want quite that much. As Vincent pointed out in the comments, Pangaea was theorized to be all the current continents together in one spot, and depending on how you count your 'hemisphere', (North-South, or East West meaning just one half of the sphere) it was all in one place for a while. So yes it is reasonable to believe. The size of this continent can make a bit of a difference on climate depending on how big it really is. The farther away from oceans and other large bodies of water, the drier the interior will be and the more extreme the seasons too, much hotter in the summer and colder in the winter. ]
[Question] [ # Background This question is set in a story where the Yellowstone supervolcano exploded 40 years ago (possibly others, doing research on it) during "The Mining Incident," and following this incident the Midwest and the western edges of Appalachia and the Ozarks are abandoned. A dystopia begins, and citizens are forbidden to enter these regions. The story begins with a protagonist who escapes into this region, and who will return to challenge the society back home. While here, he finds a partially-buried university, which was evacuated and left as-is at the time of the Mining Incident. Some buildings will be buried under a foot of ash and dirt, some will be partially exposed and the protagonist could climb in through a window. For the purposes of the question, we're not going to worry about how this amount of ash fell here. We are also going to assume that * No windows were broken during the blast (but could break under rain/hail later) * No humans have been here since evacuation, with the only possible exception being a guide telling the protagonist to go here (he has taken nothing) * Animal life returned about 30 years ago. ## Purpose The character has a particular costume design, and I'm looking at the question of how he comes across the clothing for this costume. There are other possibilities, but like this one in particular as the discovery/donning the clothing is symbolic of later actions in the story. # Question Given the conditions above, would the protagonist find wearable clothing? He may find a university store, a laboratory supply shop with new clothing in original (plastic wrapped) packaging, and clothing abandoned in offices and dormitories. Among many other goods you would expect to find in this setting. One other item he may find is a time capsule that, coincidentally, was meant to be opened the year he arrives. ## My current thought My current thought is that wrapped/packaged clothing that isn't in regular direct contact with water would be OK, most anything else would likely have been ruined by humidity and animals. [Answer] All the world's a (dystopian) stage. If the university happens to run a performing-arts course (I'm assuming), then the theatrical wardrobe - usually a room or set of rooms - might contain considerable clothing (and cloth/thread etc.). Since perfectly (within reason) preserved clothing has been found from [Neolithic times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_clothing_and_textiles#Preservation), 40 years should be a doddle. Fire regulations would ensure a good-enough seal to prevent rodents/birds and the like from messing with the stock. And [mothballs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naphthalene) (naphthalene, replaced in more modern times by [camphor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camphor)) would repel the insects usually associated with eating cloths. Assuming a moderate degree of dryness and stale-air the majority of clothing should be fine. If you decide that the majority isn't, then a minority, fresh from the dry-cleaners in the aftermath of a show, still wrapped in plastic and stored in a [theatrical trunk](https://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/161037-antique-dresser-theatrical-trunk-kuntzen) (commercial link, no affiliation) would be fine (the plastic bags may be a bit crumbly and powdery by that time though - plasticisers evaporate). This would give the writer scope to decide on appropriate styles to fit their taste, from cowboy-outfits through leather-combos to togas and doublet-hose combinations, beautiful. Raising the game a bit you could then get a lucky break with briefs too. [Answer] I think you could get away with just about anything you would want your character to wear out of this adventure. I recently had to clear out a grandparent's old mobile home. It is made about as well as a tuff shed. As in, not very well made at all. It had significant ruin in itself, and was located in one of the hottest, most weather worn areas in this region, but the contents within were all in completely normal condition. I even took a cotton shirt from a department store that went out of business in the 50's. Brand new, no signs of wear or insect damage. There was even a stamp collection with stamps in perfect condition from world war 2. So I would say 40 years is completely within the boundaries of reasonable, even if there was a ruination level event that coated the land, but didn't wipe out the buildings. Don't forget that it's your story. If you need the character to find a silk robe you could do it with minimal explanation and probably be better off than if you tried to overly explain why the garments are in wearable condition. [Answer] In addition to the other answers, I have coats, trousers and some old shirts that are at least 40 years old - doubt I would wear them (due to fashion crime) but they remain wearable. Temperate climate (equivalent to US Oregon coast) but no special care taken to protect the cloths - they just hang in a wardrobe in a spare room. If the clothing is polymer rather than wool or cotton (poly-pro, rayon, nylon etcc.) then it doesn't hold much interest for bugs or rodents so is unlikely to be spoiled. [Answer] Several items can be found by your protagonist Raincoats Headgear Belts Footgear Habit Leather Jacket Pyjamas Stage wear (see above answer ! mostly preserved well) Neckties (not really useful, but they last) Wedding dress (just in case) Rarely worn, good quality, sturdy fabric .. an uncle of mine claimed he still wore his [45 years old Ski socks](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=ski%20socks). He took them for his 2 weeks vacation to Switzerland, nearly every year in that period. In times of need.. It depends on the circumstances, what you're prepared to accept. In the old days, clothes lasted much longer. They would be repaired again and again. In times of need, your protagonist could try to put on a blue jeans, a T-shirt, or a sweater.. Footwear won't be an issue. Dutch farmers early 20th century were known for wearing clogs or [wooden shoes](https://dutchreview.com/culture/dutch-clogs/) and they had many pairs, which could be passed over for generations.. Preservation Q: "My current thought is that wrapped/packaged clothing that isn't in regular direct contact with water would be OK, most anything else would likely have been ruined by humidity and animals." No moist indeed ! it should be extra dry.. and cool.. and be careful.. cite Storing: Store textiles in a cool, dry location. Avoid using trunks or boxes in hot attics or in damp basements or garages. Damp conditions can encourage the growth of mold as well as attract insects. An environment comfortable for people is suitable for textiles. Handling: To avoid causing stress, especially on older textiles, handle all textiles gently with two hands. Large items, such as antique quilts, often cannot bear their own weight safely, so support them with a box or a support board if they have to be lifted. The two-hands approach will help to keep items from becoming distorted and misshapen. Make sure your hands are clean. While unfolding items, stop if your actions seem to be causing damage. Textile preservation is a profession. Info about it, <https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/preserve-textiles.html> [Answer] Suit. In a garment bag. [![suit bag](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oUWBRm.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oUWBRm.jpg) Your protagonist finds some offices. One has some pictures of a guy who looks like him and who is about his size. There is a picture of him receiving an award. There is a bag hanging in the corner and in it is the Italian suit the guy was wearing to receive the award. The rest of the ensemble in in the bag too, including dress shoes. It fits your character perfectly. He looks in the mirror and combs his hair. [Answer] Must the clothing come from the university? In the process of wandering across the landscape, the protagonist would no doubt pass by partially buried Walmarts and the highways littered with hundreds of cargo trucks loaded with shipping containers. [Answer] One small detail. While fabric will last in a sealed warehouse/store, the elastic will likely not (especially if there are significant seasonal temperature changes). Some poor quality zippers may also not last. Metal zippers should be fine if not exposed to moisture. The condition of leather will depend on the environment (leather may become too stiff, for example). But it is not impossible to find well-preserved belts, shoes, etc. Your character might need to get some saddle soap, though. Likely, the best choice would be clothes with buttons or no notions at all (simple T-shirts, trousers with buttons, etc.). That would help to avoid sudden wardrobe malfunctions. There is one more consideration. The 1980s is the time when [fast fashion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_fashion) started. This led to a much lower quality of clothing in terms of both materials and craftsmanship1. While the materials contain much more synthetic fibres and may be preserved better (especially knits), this clothing was not meant to last for more than a season (several wears, a couple of washes) and lacks durability. This kind of clothing is likely to be prevalent in a university town, where the shops target students who lack money and consume fashion faster. It might be a good idea to look for higher-quality clothing in professors' homes and dry cleaner shops. Underwear might be a problem. In my memory about the 1980s, almost all male underwear had some kind of elastic. However, gentlemen in the comments pointed out some alternatives. I would suggest checking underwear fashion trends and sales for the year of eruption if underwear appears in the story. I think that in general, it would be a good idea to check fashion trends for the specific location at the time of the eruption. Stores stock different clothes depending on location. And, while some styles and brands may exist in principle, they might not be available at your location. For example, it is very unlikely that a small university town has a store selling haute couture. There is also a seasonality factor. While the houses will have clothes for all seasons, the stores will most likely carry clothes that are appropriate for the current season. This is especially the case for fast fashion brands. --- 1 This does not mean that all clothing is of poor quality. Some clothing, especially expensive and work clothing, should be relatively durable and well-made. [Answer] The dorms of your university could reasonably contain many textile time capsules in the form of [cedar chests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_chest). Traditionally, these large chests were owned by unmarried women and used to store linens, etc. that they'd need once married. These chests haven't really been used for that purpose in several generations, but they're frequently still passed down to younger family members, particularly in the American South and Midwest. They're large, sturdy storage containers that frequently double as a piece of furniture. I know a number of people (male and female) who used such a chest in college. It transported their wardrobe, and could be called into service as a coffee table as needed. They would have been even more popular 40 years ago. These chests are frequently lined with cedar, which repels moths and other insects. Their heavy lid closes tightly and latches shut. They're designed to protect their contents from the home environment, from exposure to weather, and from time itself. You could probably even dig one out of a pile of ash and find that the contents of the chest were undamaged. My family has an old cedar chest that originally belonged to (I believe) my great-grandmother. It has blankets and quilts in it that my my great-aunts made when they were relatively young. The chest is probably a century old, and the quilts are at least 60 years old. I checked the contents after reading this question, and even the blankets at the very bottom are (aside from the musty smell) still in more or less the same condition that they were in when they were stored in the chest back in the mid 1980's. ]
[Question] [ The magic system in my story resembles bending in Avatar TLA/LOK. Basically, instead of needing spears/pikes/etc. to break a cavalry charge, the army's vanguard waits until the enemy charge is within a certain range, they will manipulate the soil and stone. This includes making the ground split open, exposing stones, "explosions" of dirt to frighten horses and the like. Could this sudden creation of uneven terrain and frightened horses then cause enough turmoil to stop the charge? [Answer] Yes. I think you kinda answered your own question but: It doesn't take a lot to scare or [trip](http://www.thehorse.com/articles/14638/why-horses-stumble) fast moving horses. With a cavalry charge the horses are trained to plough straight through into danger, you would only need to create a thin ditch in front of the horses to cause the front ones to trip and stumble, causing them to be trampled on and tripped over by the horses behind. You would then want to create similar trenches to the side to catch those at the back who try to go around and so cause a similar effect. Lots of small holes popping up are harder to avoid and less energy intensive for your mages than a huge hole that can be avoided. Use the momentum of the charge against them and conserve your energy. [Answer] The catalan almogavers did something similar at the battle of Halmyros. They dug hidden trenches in a swampy terrain to stop or break the line of charge, then killed all of the knights. Doing it instantly with magic would be vastly more effective. Link to Wikipedia Article of [Battle of Halmyros](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Halmyros) [Answer] The answers here are already great, if I could suggest an addition to help your mages get away with this, the film [Solomon and Sheba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_and_Sheba) has charging Egyptian chariots blinded by the light reflected from polished shields, causing them to not see (and summarily fall into) a chasm in front of them. You could either continue with this method, or if your magic is Avatar TLA style, come up with some method using fire (for blinding light) and/or water (for reflecting light) so that the enemy cavalry (especially the cavalry further back) doesn't see the trap their comrades are falling into. [Answer] The thing you want to achieve is "very fast made Trou de loup". So as we know that type of trap is very good at stopping cavalry (and infantry) but your added element of earth movement (because the matter must be preserved its would be easy to just shift the earth to form a wall just behind the trench) would scare the horses. [Answer] This would easily work once or twice. Once cavalry commanders start to catch on, they would likely develop a counter strategy. Possible strategies include: Desensitize the horses to the sudden sounds of earth shifting. Including mages of their own in any cavalry charge, to keep the ground flat. Massing a bunch of horses together to look like a cavalry charge, then while the mages are messing with that ground your real force attacks elsewhere. Use elemental powers to alter the nature of the horses. If the horses become slightly water-based, or make horselike elementals out of non-Newtonian fluids, they could flow right over any minor chasms and still be effective. [Answer] If you can, try making a nice, deep trench. Make it deep enough, and entire horses will tumble into it. Half the enemy's charge could well end up suffocating beneath the bodies of their comrades who fell in atop them; a grisly prospect, but very effective as a morale blow to the survivors. A deep trench can be easily seen by the front ranks unless concealed carefully, true. That is not the same as being able to stop before hitting it when you have hundreds or thousands of other horsemen behind you whose view is obstructed by...well, by the horses and men in front of them. You simply cannot arrest a charge instantly even on foot; on horseback, you'll need considerably more space and time to do that, and if this trap is executed properly they won't have that time before they hit the trench. Even if they manage to stop short of the trench, that gives your archers (which you presumably have, as any smart army would) a golden opportunity to unleash their fire at close range and shred the cavalry. Given that this is being done spontaneously via magic, you don't really need to worry about preparation time. All that matters is the skill and power of your magic-wielders, which is defined by you the author. If they have the capability, they should excavate this trench while leaving a thin layer at ground level: enough to look like it's solid ground, but not enough to hold the weight of a horse. This gives you effectively perfect concealment, making sure that they don't catch on and pull back until it's too late. There is the problem of where all that dirt will go; shunt it off to the sides of your forces, perhaps, to raise walls cutting off any flanking strike against your forces that might be attempted, which has the bonus of funnelling the enemy cavalry more completely into your trap. [Answer] Another thing to consider that has been breifly touched on by other comments, is that the sudden terrain shift, noise, and dust most likely will not stop a charging warhorse as they are trained to rush sheild lines at full speed, whitch would be like one of us running full tilt at a brick wall. For that reason, the physical stoppin power of your barrier is going to be the most effective part. Maybe even pull the dirt out of the trench in such a way that it formes a line of stone spikes behing the trench (if your worlds magic is capable of altering the density of soil). Then, once the momentum of the charge has been fully halted, (with the back rows plowing into the trapped front rows) the mages could then shove the dirt back into the hole, burying anyone in it, and your infantry can charge the already wounded and panicking cavalry. [Answer] It sounds like you want to keep it simple while magical. All you need to do is momentarily disrupt that ability of the ground to support the horses. A horse at a gallop will stumble and fall if the ground is a foot deeper than it had anticipated. Cause some of the soil to rise in a dust, but not all of it. That is, in a given cubic foot of dirt, only half of the dirt rises, on a speck-by-speck basis. That's it. The effect will be a shallow pit of very loose dirt/dust with a thick dust hovering above it. The loose soil will not support the horse's weight, the lower floor will encourage the horse to stumble, and the thick airborne dirt will obscure visibility of the actual surface. What's more, you can calculate the amount of energy needed to do it, if that's in your universe. [Answer] One technique used in Paris riots (19th century) was to remove pavement stones in a chessboard pattern. Very effective at stopping cavalry charges, especially if the stones were used for a barricade. I am sure your magic could do something like it. [Answer] Yes. If the blast of earth creates a hole, the front horsemen will fall into it, tripping some of the soldiers behind them, and knocking soldiers into each other. Also the spooked horses will probably run into each other as well, and soldiers with dirt in their eyes may fall off their horses. And the rocks would hurt. But it depends on the force of the blast. A small blast would barely do anything, as it is unimpressive. A big blast may even damage the army crating the blast with rocks. So you should specify. Hope this helps. ]
[Question] [ Why would an unpatriotic conscripted army with a much lower number of loyal soldiers compared to random people continue to fight a losing battle against a superior rebel force, which stood to have a good chance of capturing the kingdom? The soldiers are obviously losing, unenthusiastic, and will probably not face recriminations for deserting and going home (the king has other problems, for example, the huge rebel army on his doorstep). What reason could the troops have to continue fighting? EDIT: The king has limited resources (he's fighting a war!) so no enormous number of hostages. He also is unable to punish all the deserters (or even many of them) effectively, so that's not a huge worry either. Also, these conscripts are going to die or be captured if they keep fighting forever. They do break eventually, but around 1/4 of them die first. But there is no way they are winning this battle. They know this from 5 minutes in. EDIT: Forget the 1/4 half to die part. They actually need to kill some key rebel commanders (who are OP warriors) by somehow reaching them so I can write an awesome death scene for them. EDIT: The soldiers in the King's army are mostly from urban areas. [Answer] The conscripts are fighting defensively. They're fighting to protect their families, their homes, their cities, and their memories. If the rebels aren't any better than the current government, they have zero incentive to flee, and if they're worse, they have good incentive to stay. If the Rebels are known for terrible things, like raping, pillaging, burning down cities, etc, then the conscripts are going to protect "Their" people. Even if they're not direct relatives, odds are someone in the army has one, and the conscript knows of them indirectly. If the Rebel army doesn't tolerate surrendering well, either - Harsh POW camps, executions, etc - This will only bolster the resolve to fight. If you run, and the rebels win and find you, well... It's still not fun, is it? There's also the fact that "Probably" goes a long way. Sure, only one man in ten might be caught and punished, but what if I am that man? I don't want that to happen. [Answer] # Fear of their local leaders Imagine the Soviet Union in the first part of the WW2, until the Germans had nearly won. The Soviets liked to use life force against the Germans (sending people on minefields, massive attacks against automatic gunners, and so on). Of course the body count were very high (the CCCP lost 20 million lives in the war, Germany lost 8 million, while fighting on multiple fronts). Of course, in such a case the soldiers' primary goal was to somehow escape this hell. Against that, on the Soviet side 1. Desertion attempts were punished by death on the spot (it was usual on all sides of the WW2, the difference is that the Soviets had to use this punishment very often) 2. soldiers were told that anybody captured alive by the enemy would also be punished by death (captured soldiers coming back after the war only got long forced labor camp punishments; although it was essentially an elongated death penalty in many cases) 3. And, what is the most important: behind the front, there was a "second front". It was run on the name of "anti spy troops". Their name was "SMERS", which is the abbreviation of "death for the spies". Next to their anti spy/saboteur/diversant tasks, they had also the task to shoot any soldier without his own troop on the spot. Despite these, desertion was still a major problem on the Soviet side, but eventually they would win. [Answer] ## Trapped and Outmaneuvered A cornered enemy will fight back even against overwhelming force, if their only chance of escape is through said overwhelming force. Depending on the tactical savvy of the commanders on each side, the rebels could somehow lure the conscripts into an extremely poor situation, trapping the army between the proverbial rock and a hard place. So even though the conscripts want to break and run immediately, they can't. As an example, it sounds like the conscripted army is on the offensive against a rebel-held fort. The rebels could initially under-play their strength, allowing the conscripts' commanders to exhort them into assaulting the walls. Once the conscript army is committed (siege towers and ladders in place, battering ram smacking the doors, etc.), the rebels unleash their full capability. Archers come out of hiding and begin firing, boiling oil, flame traps, etc. The conscripts immediately realize that they've been had, but they can only disengage from the siege so quickly. Then the reserve force the rebels had hidden nearby takes that as their cue to charge. The rebel flanking force hits the conscripts' back ranks, scattering or overwhelming the command structure and shattering any chance of an orderly withdrawal. By the time the conscripts are able to escape the encirclement, they could easily lose a quarter of their number or more. And since you want specific over-powered rebels to be killed in the battle, they could be the ones leading the flanking charge. It's the highest-risk position on the rebel side, and if they're that powerful they might see it as their duty. Other possible things that could prevent the army's escaping: * fire arrows ignite a forest fire behind them * a critical bridge is destroyed, trapping them against a river * alternately, a triggered surge of said river carries away the boats they'd used to cross it. * in mountainous terrain, the rebels could use siege weaponry or pre-set traps to trigger a rockslide. etc., etc., etc... Something similar (minus the fort) was used historically by William Wallace against the English in the [Battle of Stirling Bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stirling_Bridge). The Scots hung back while the English army began crossing a narrow bridge, then rushed them once a few thousand troops had crossed over. The portion that crossed was trapped against the river and annihilated, and the remaining English army on the other side of the river destroyed the bridge and withdrew. Or in fiction, take the Battle of Helms Deep from Lord of the Rings, except give the orcs just enough time to commit to hitting the walls before the Rohirrim and Gandalf charge their flank. [Answer] There is little to add to the other answers, some of which I find splendid. I would simply classify them under the five "constant factors" that Sun-Tzu outlines in his opening of the Art of War: 1. The Moral Law: people in complete accord with their ruler (something you have excluded from the outset; but in some societies, people cannot conceive of status quo without their rulers or priests, etc., even if they hate or despise them; perhaps they are afraid of God, i.e. to die without absolution, etc.). 2. Heaven: the time and climate in which the battles are fought (e.g. the season, it is summer and everything looks airy-fairy to the soldiers and they are actually enjoying themselves for a while; or it is winter and things are too grim to be undisciplined). 3. Earth: the location where the battles are fought (indeed they could be lost, cornered, trapped or face annihilation one way or the other if they stop fighting or stop sticking together; it could be also that this is due to environmental dangers like drought or wild beasts, not the enemy). 4. The Commander: "wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage and strictness". You could conceive of a highly moral and effective officer whose courage and stamina is capable to rally even the most disheartened soldiers in desperate conditions (where the previous generals had failed miserably), and instill in them the courage and honor values they were lacking in the first place. They would follow their leader because he embodies (at a minimum) the hope to return home in one piece. Take characters such as Joan of Arc, de Gaulle, Patton, etc. 5. Method and Discipline: in essence the logistics and methods of control of the troops (unfortunately, Komissars of a totalitarian state or fear of being summarily punished could be part of it; even drugs, alas). It could be a combination of 2 or more of these factors, of course (for example religious terror as 1. Moral Law, plus religious Komissars as 5. Method and Discipline). But the one I would prefer, and a good opportunity to make a likable character, is the Commander. According to your plot, the Commander could safely bring the debris of the army home and finally take a higher responsibility -- by ascending the ranks or revolting against the King, or marrying his daughter, etc. -- to contribute to a happy ending of the story. Or if he is hopelessly on the wrong side, be a redeeming character that the reader is bound to respect and admire; and perhaps could die in a worthy way on the battle field, or sacrifice himself in order to advance both his cause and the opposed one (take e.g. the myth surrounding German general Erwin Rommel). [Answer] Possible reasons: * They are fighting for what they really care (families, holy part of their nation) * They have a compelling code of honor, like the samurai's bushido, for which the only onorable surrender is death * They are intoxicated with some fear reducing drug, which make them go berserk [Answer] ## They don't know they're losing. TLDR: fog of war. The battlefield is a mess and you don't know what's going on. They don't have a battlefield observation aircraft with radar and night vision looking down on the battlefield and relaying strategic data to their HUD. Seriously, war isn't like that (except in movies). What really happens is the fog of war - too litle information and too much useless information at once in the pandemonium of the battlefield. That's assuming neither you nor the enemy is adding informational chaos on purpose for a tactical advantage, with smoke, vocalizations, decoys, and the like. For a great example of battlefield data misleading commanders, look at the [surrender of Detroit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Detroit), where Tecumseh laid the impression of having a much larger number of fierce Indians. Or the incident where a British special forces platoon got surrounded by a vastly superior force of experienced Iraqi guard, and the F-16 air support could see the battle but couldn't pick out the Brits because they didn't bring strobes. So the F-16’s kept their weapons on the racks and hit everybody with sonic booms along with some other nonlethal theater like flares&chaff, and some well timed fire from the British forces, to create the illusion of a full-on airstrike. This made the guard follow their trained procedures for surviving an airstrike, and while they turtled, the Brits escaped. [Answer] Lots of possible reasons - 3 spring to mind immediately and have all occurred in history. It's a sectarian, religious or minority war. Sectarian wars are incredibly bitter and whole families are annihilated so you might as well go down fighting. Religious wars have often been total wars with not just the losers getting killed, but everyone in sight, the ground plowed and sown with salt and wholesale slavery for the few survivors. Minority wars give you a situation like Cambodia, etc. Bad enough in historical times, but their own history of war between Khmer and other Cambodians is even bloodier. The one we know most about was the bloodiest genocide in modern times. If you're on the losing side, just keep fighting until they get you - there is nothing after losing. The underlying theme to all of these is that there is no downside to fighting to the death - death itself is preferable to the alternative of torture and then death. And there is no upside to surrendering. [Answer] Propaganda. Simple, yet very effective. I'm assuming this is somewhere around medieval technology levels in general, which necessarily means medieval communications. Sure, you say that the rebels are good and honorable people, which may even be true for the leaders (the common people will at a minimum be prone to looting, and possibly worse; you can't really expect them to be much better or worse than the conscripts). But how would the conscripts know that? They get their news from local taverns, from their neighbours/fellow soldiers, and from any heralds of the king or whoever the local noble is. They're going to get a horribly slanted picture of reality here. Your conscripts have no way of knowing that the rebels are honorable short of being among those captured, at which point they obviously cannot communicate that news to their fellow conscripts still in the army. Even if these prisoners were released to try and spread the word, a few spies of the king could be roaming around to quietly dispose of such people. Or it could even be done openly, hauling them off for "questioning" as "rebel agents" who must obviously have been "twisted by the wiles of the rebels" or other such claims; the people aren't likely to stand against that for fear of being singled out as "rebel agents" themselves. This takes some resources, but the king's/noble's guards are going to be around already; they can be used for this purpose as well. Also, it doesn't take much for the king in this scenario to simply have his heralds, generals, nobles, etc., inculcate the populace in the belief that the rebels are vicious savages who will massacre the families of anybody who dared to stand in their way, did not instantly join them, etc., if they are triumphant. As the king's people, they will generally be taken at their word; people might be skeptical of more exaggerated claims, but they have no perspective from the side of the rebels to counteract this. They don't even have to swallow the propaganda hook and all: simple repetition, in the absence of a reliable contradictory view, will make any rebel advocates seem untrustworthy, and people will come to believe that the rebels certainly cannot be better than the current regime. Given all of this, your average conscript will be too afraid of the enemy to surrender by choice. The more patriotic will fight on to protect their king, the others to protect their families. A losing fight will eventually break their will, but initially the likely fate of a deserter will keep them in check. [Answer] It is safer to keep ranks and continue fighting Presuming most of the combat is done at short-range (swords and spears) there will be a lot of carnage on the front lines, though nowhere near as much as action movies would lead one to believe. It is surprisingly difficult for two sword-and-shield fighters to incapacitate each other, until one or both become exhausted. Moreso if both fighters are heavily armored -- a suit of plates will immediately splint any broken bones. And with the adrenaline you probably won't notice your arm is broken until the battle is over. But if we keep ranks the carnage is restricted to the front lines. Breaking ranks and fleeing will lead to what's called a rout. The losing side drops their weapons, turns tail and flees uncontrollably. All control of the army is lost. Enemy cavalry intersperses with our fleeing troops and cuts them down from behind. Historically this is the most dangerous part of the battle. In a rout the carnage is now everywhere. Our fighting force is well-disciplined. They are trained to continue fighting until an orderly surrender can be achieved. Then they expect to be taken as prisoners rather then executed. Since the soldiers are conscripts, the rebel force have an incentive to not executing -- they might want to reconscript the soldiers onto their side. But you can't do that in the middle of a battle now can you?! But is the training enough? Do you expect even the most seasoned front-liners to stick with their training once eventual defeat is assured? Probably not. But what else are they going to do? They cannot flee until the second line flees first -- otherwise they'll be the first cut down. And the second line cannot flee until the third line does. The third line is not in immediate danger. So they are sticking to the plan to fight defensively until surrender is achieved. Fighting defensively like this you can still have local victories. The army may still push forward in parts temporarily. The enemy is winning overall, but we can still demoralise small parts of their force we can keep small parts of ours safe. [Answer] Why would a conscripted army continue to fight a losing battle?? One possible explanation. ISIS (daesh) Soldiers (marauding terrorists) Are often high on drugs. <http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/490681/Islamic-State-ISIS-Daesh-Drugs-Pills-Syria-Captagon-UN-United-Nations-Trafficking-War> Its a horrible thing to think about but a fact. [Answer] # Uncertainty You write that the king probably won't catch deserters. That may be true. But how much should they bet on it? If the kingdom is medieval/feudal: * Feudal levies are raised when the king calls his dukes, the dukes call their barons, the barons call their knights, and the knights round up some hapless peasants. * The peasants do not own their farms. They have a (possibly hereditary) right to live there as part of their feudal rights and duties. Deserting now could give their landlord an excuse to evict them, a year from now or a decade from now, whenever he finds the time to try the miscreant. * The peasants might be unable to conceive a society without knights in charge. They will gripe about bad overlords, and fondly remember good ones, but the system stays. How do the conscripts figure to go home? Through a war-ravaged country? Without supplies? Could they read a map, if they had one to start with? [Answer] Conscripts are fighting to avoiding turning back on their comrades. I've heard that it's the primary motivation. You might have zero incentive to risk your life, save that your inactivity will cause your pal, who you leave unprotected, will be slaughtered easily by enemy forces. Of course that won't work if everybody in the troop has zero or negative motivation, and everybody just pretend to fight. I've heard Syrian army fights like that. [Answer] alamar is essentially correct in his answer. Soldiers generally fight for their comrades and their units. Large scale strategies, loyalty to causes or kings or expectations of the end result are not that important really. If the soldiers trust their leaders and each other they will fight defensively just fine. Such trust is forged by shared history and experience. In your scenario you can simply assume that all the weak links have already deserted the army or even defected to the winning side. What is left is the hard core of people who have already been through hell and decided to get through it together instead of running. They will still break when the situation gets bad enough, but they will break together. And even after they have been broken they will try seek out each other and get out together. Since you are talking about city folk, you can also assume that the empire formed regiments or companies of people from the same city. So soldiers would start off with some loyalty to others in their unit. You can also assume that NCOs would come from the ranks and be natural leaders popular with their troops. Not necessarily liked, but respected and followed. For officers... Well, the officers have fast horses and political connections. What is left of them is either promoted from the ranks and more loyal to their comrades than to the king or professionals just trying to do their job with honor. In either case people the soldiers would have no problem following. The one unreasonable thing you have to assume is that the rebels must have some reason not to remove the army by negotiation. Easiest solution would be that the rebel leaders want the leaders of the remaining army dead and that this is too obvious for diplomacy to work. The reason can be political, religious, or personal. But it should be well known and obvious. [Answer] Well, historically, militaries facing this issue came up with strategies to deal with it. Their main answer was to employ professional soldiers as noncommissioned officers ("Sergents", usually) whose primary duty was to keep conscripts from running away from battle. They would position themselves behind the back rank (because retreats and routs usually start in the rear, believe it or not) and carry out their duty by killing the first person to try to run away. Since the conscripts knew this was the plan, there was a substantial deterrent effect as well, so it often never had to come to the Sergeant killing anyone. "Cowardice" (retreat) and desertion were also generally capital offenses, which helped, but the general theme was "fight for your king and country and god and you'll either live or be rewarded in the afterlife, or don't and you'll surely die and be subjected to the eternal fires of hell." ...and lest we think this was only done in the uncivilized middle ages, or by modern day barbarians like ISIS (who on multiple occasions treated fleeing recruits to a public execution by burning them alive), there are plenty of examples of Western governments executing recruits for "cowardice" (fleeing from battle) as recently as WW I (and more sporadic examples as recently as the Vietnam war, IIRC). There could be other factors, as mentioned in the other answers as well, but I didn't see this, and it probably deserves mentioning, as it's been a historically common answer to thus exact problem for centuries, if not longer. [Answer] The conscripts could hate the attacking forces so much, that even though they were forced to fight they would rather keep fighting than surrender to these people. I think A little more sinister, the other side could have a policy to "take no captives". [Answer] A conscripted army might fight because of promise of rewards, a better life if the fight well, maybe they'll be killed if they're seen slacking, and maybe the officers just build up a big "Honour and Glory for the King" thing. ]
[Question] [ Suppose we put a shell around the solar system that displays a 2D image of the rest of the universe on its inner surface. What year would we have had telescopes powerful enough to determine that this was the case. I think it would probably come down to the resolving power vs lack of parallax but I’m not sure what the orders of magnitude are for either of those. [Answer] The answer depends entirely on the sophistication of the simulation. The answer by AlexP suggests that the screen could be discovered in the 1600s or 1700s by parallax, but that's only true if the designers of the screen failed to account for parallax—and why would they? Compared to simulating a lawfully behaving universe outside the sphere, handling parallax is trivial. You just have to render your image from the perspective of the Earth's location in the sphere, instead of the perspective of some fixed point like the center. The only conceivable reason they might not do that is if they wanted people to discover the sphere at that particular level of technological sophistication, as in The Sentinel. That's possible, but it's just as possible that they would design the sphere to be detected at an earlier or later time. Whenever you want it to be detected for the purposes of your story is probably fair game here. [Answer] Assuming that the screen is electromagnetically "perfect", in that it reproduces exactly the radiation we'd expect to observe, including parallax AND spectra, with the required emission and absorption lines, all appropriately redshifted (quite a difficult challenge if you ask me), the answer is probably... # 2012 Although as @benrg correctly pointed out, we had been detecting cosmic rays a hundred years before this, and neutrinos from the SN 1987A supernova in drum roll 1987, we'd be definitely suspecting something by this point.\* This is the date Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause and took direct measurements of the interstellar medium. This is the area dominated by particles coming from the other parts of our galaxy, which would behave noticeably differently, were the Sun to be found not to be moving at breakneck speed through that medium, creating a bow shock and everything. In fact Voyager 1 data would've indicated that something was amiss years earlier, when passing the termination shock layer. But even if we assume they also installed massive interstellar fans to simulate the particle flow, we've got... # 2015 This is the date of the first non-electromagnetic measurement we've made of our universe, when we successfully detected the gravitational waves from a black hole merger. Now the game is up, that screen may simulate any electromagnetic or particle radiation, gravitational waves are a whole different ball game. There is no known way to fake them with a projection device. Of course if they went to the length of installing a screen so vast it'd weigh more than most stars, why wouldn't they do this too... \* There is an interesting Earth-based corollary to this. We have some fairly credible hypotheses about how cosmic rays are seeding lightning in storm clouds. If they are correct, we'd be seeing a difference in how thunderstorms behave on our planet. Of course we wouldn't have anything to compare it to, so we probably wouldn't discover this clue until after some other clues were put together but I thought it was worth mentioning. [Answer] ## Late 1600s or early 1700s One light year is 0.3 [parsecs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsec). One parsec is by definition the distance at which a distance one [astronomical unit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit) subtends an angle of 1 arc-second. A star a distance of one light-year would show an [annual parallax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_parallax) of a massive 6 arc-seconds. Stellar parallax is the apparent shift in the position of a star as seen from Earth over the course of a year. It is measured relative to Earth, not relative to other stars. Even early-1600s Galilean telescopes might have been good enough to measure this, but probably not. On the other hand, early 1700s telescopes were certainly good enough to measure such a massive annual parallax; we know this because in the 1720s [James Bradley FRS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bradley) discovered and measured the [aberration of light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberration_(astronomy)), which, at about 20 arc-seconds, is of comparable magnitude and appears as a collective annual parallax of all heavenly bodies. > > The first successful stellar parallax measurements were done by [Thomas Henderson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Henderson_(astronomer)) in Cape Town South Africa in 1832-1833, where he measured parallax of one of the closest stars, [alpha Centauri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri). Few years later, 1835-1836. followed [Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Georg_Wilhelm_von_Struve) at Dorpat (nowadays Tartu) university observatory, who measured the distance of [Vega](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega) and published his results in 1837. — [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stellar_parallax&oldid=1139422073#History_of_measurement) > > > Bonus: the modern-day Hubble telescope has an angular resolution of about 0.4 arc-seconds, which means that it could resolve two light-sources one astronomical unit from one another at a distance of about 8 light-years. By 1901, [Annie Jump Cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Jump_Cannon) would have noticed that the spectral composition of light suggests that all stars are made of the exact same material, and moreover that they are all made of something entirely unlike our sun... [Answer] Assuming the universe exists outside the shell: The [Oort cloud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud) is said to be larger than 1 light year in radius. Some of its objects may have eccentric orbits that should cross (hit) the shell at some point. This is not an issue for objects coming from outside the shell, since its outer surface can withstand any kind of impact, while still displaying inside the shell, the projected object's trajectory, like if it hadn't been completely destroyed one second ago. Perfect illusion. Even if destroyed, those objects can now be simulated for millions of years, virtually entering and exiting the shell. On the other hand this is an issue for real objects coming from inside trying to reach their aphelion that's located outside the shell. This time impacting the shell's inner surface cannot be hidden by any kind of displaying technique since there is now stuff between the eyes and the screen. Also, the [solar system has a tail](https://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-s-ibex-provides-first-view-of-the-solar-system-s-tail), so space dust trying to quit would accumulate more on one side, not to mention dust loves screens. The answer depends on when did the shell appear, and how humans are able to detect exiting objects when they hit the screen. [Answer] Frame challenge: if you're supposing the aliens are capable of building a shell of radius 1 LY, then clearly they have very advanced technology. There is no reason they would build such a shell and then equip it with flat screens which work like our contemporary display technology, by showing the same image in all directions. If these aliens want to maintain the illusion, then it would be well within their technical capabilities for the screen to emit the correct light in the correct directions so as to account for parallax even at the scale of two observers at different places on Earth. Contemporary human technology is already able to do the inverse of this ─ [light field cameras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_field_camera) capture not just the light intensity but also its direction. (This lets you do some neat things like emulate different lenses in software.) So imagine a "light field display" which can emit exactly the right photons with the right wavelengths and directions as needed, and there is literally no optical way to tell that apart from a real universe. In fact, the shell needn't even be so big. Here are some ways we could figure it out: * By physically reaching the shell (with an unmanned probe, of course) * By the shell reflecting some of the light we emit back at us (the aliens would design the shell to be as unreflective as possible, but perhaps perfect absorption is not possible) * By determining that the universe behind the shell does not obey the correct laws of physics (i.e. a flaw in the aliens' simulation) * By a glitch that makes it obvious (imagine an astronomically large [blue screen of death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_screen_of_death)). [Answer] ## Not yet There will be any number of string theorists, cosmologists, mathematicians, etc, working very hard to integrate the curious effect into normal known theories of the universe, with success always just a few years away. Gravitational waves? Our theories of relativity are wrong, that's all. Neutrinos? Dark matter must be absorbing them. Etc. People postulating a hard shell will run into the hard faith position that is materialism. A hard shell? Can you imagine announcing such a thing? You would make the trials of Wegener or the quasicrystal guy look like nothing. You mean, a giant shell built by someone? There may be a few eccentric astronomers, or creationist Christians who posit such a thing, but they will be professionally excoriated. [Answer] With just 1 $ly$ radius sphere, we can detect infrared light coming from what appears to be the pitch blackness of space (assuming the sphere has non-zero temperature). [Answer] When it smashes. The problem with this idea is that we're in a galaxy, filled with stars and stuff. These things will continue moving when you put your screen up. This insanely large screen has effectively no mass measured from the inside, because it's a sphere, so won't affect the movement of anything within it, but will affect paths of stuff outside, which will in turn affect the orbits of stuff inside. Eventually (as in, fairly quickly), something will cross that barrier, and the screens will either smash, or need to be moved aside to allow a solar system through, either of which one would expect to have some visible effects. But if the "screen" is actually a more complex multilayered system, then you could move the layers about enough to permit stars to pass between, while still showing the same thing to the earth. Downside of that is then... what's the point of the screen? Is it really just a filter to prevent people on Earth from seeing all the alien activity outside the screen? This is also a problem of the movie The Truman Show: there's no real point walling it all off just to get a reality TV show. At that point, you're back to detecting parallax, and when you get to detect that depends on whether the screens were displaying data at the sun (in which case annular parallax would change) or at the Earth (the more likely case, in which case, it'd change the display over the year, and there'd be no visible annular parallax problem; only parallax from the orbital diameter of space telescopes). There's also the possibility that the screen is better than a mere 2D raster device, in which case even that parallax could disappear. ]
[Question] [ The society in question would be composed of a single non-human species that evolved naturally. They are lead by a king, alongside multiple dukes who manage smaller portions of the kingdom. To distinguish these leaders from the rest of the populace, they are far larger, with the dukes being twice as big, and the kings being three times larger. They also have other features, such as more pronounced natural ornaments and weapons. However, there is one wrinkle in this system: The kings and dukes are elected by the populace. What features could this species have, that could be co-opted by the society to make the kings and dukes so impressive? [Answer] It’s a matter of diet. A certain food (fruit, vegetable, bodily excretion) is reserved for royalty. This food triggers or maintains the extra growth as it is calorie rich and contains vital nutrients/hormones to trigger the process. It could just be fat and muscle mass that’s gained (like with gorillas, whose alpha gets the best food and is therefore the strongest), or you could opt for more significant structural changes. In the former case a lack of this foodstuff could lead to once-elected kings losing their size after being deposed. In the latter case a king is always identifiable by their extra features. In either case additional features (skin colours, hair, extra cosmetic flaps of flesh) could develop. When your species ‘vote’ they do so by finding (or possibly exuding) this foodstuff and giving it to their preferred candidate. The dukes then give a tithe of their hoard of royal food to the king (add as many layers as you like). The candidate with the most food will be stronger and thus be able to seize production of the total food from their rivals once all the ‘votes’ are cast (in more civilised times this can be replaced with actual voting). It’s easy to see how this behaviour could evolve in a caste driven eusocial species (have a look at the Naked Mole Rat for an example: Their queens get much bigger and fatter once they are selected, and are selected late in life), and once sociology takes over it’s easy to see how it could be maintained even if it’s detrimental to the proletariat. Kings/dukes could even dole out small portions to trusted bodyguards/enforcers to ensure the proper distribution of the foodstuff both during and outside voting season. After all: who wants serfs to be as strong as their lords? [Answer] ## Sexual differentiation: This reminds me of certain fish, where if the dominant male dies, the dominant female transforms from female to male. Everyone in your society is born female. Your royalty could be the males, the large number of females consisting of most of the populous giving a feedback signal to these males. The males would need to keep interacting with the people and staying in touch to get the feedback signals and remaining male. The election system wouldn't even need to be open - the more females that pay homage to a male, the more differentiated he becomes, and the more pronounced the sexual differentiation gets. Or, if you want an election, then the females place their approval scent on stones and drop them in a bucket for a given male. On election day, the chosen individual is permitted to open their bucket and inhale the differentiation signal, while the loser has their bucket rinsed out. You could even have males converting back into females if their disapproval ratings get too high. [Answer] It is because in their society, the taller somebody is, the more votes he/she gets It is true, nominally these aliens are democratic. But they have the strange pattern that people trust only tall people. Literally, as among humans politicians compete trying to look more honest or more capable than their opponents (or just shouting louder at political talk shows), in the alien society people try to look taller than their opponents. This means that tall kids are soon selected by political parties and grown to become kings or dukes (so they are given better food and maybe some growth ormones). Add to the mix that there are some very rare genetic variations that allow some alien to grow a lot more than the average. At every election, the taller partecipant is invariably the one who is elected for a position. The loser than has to concede, and run for a lesser position. In the end the society will settle to a situation where the taller somebody is, the higher political office he/she will chair. [Answer] Some time ago I read that in certain mice when two males fight for their role in the hierarchy, the winner and the loser immediately change their body odor after the fight to reflect their new status. You can have a similar system, based on hormones, to reflect the status of the winner. The winner will get a boost of hormones and as such > > they are far larger, with the dukes being twice as big, and the kings being three times larger. > > > [Answer] Hormones and gene expression Genes dictate a lot for enzymes and hormones. These in turn help with growing the body. These determine when to grow and what. Look at the development of babies through adulthood. Several growth periods where specific things are growing. Babies their brains create many connections and prune them, apoptosis in the womb removes the webbing between fingers, arms and legs frow first a lit during puberty, after which the rest follows, if not to speak of getting to sexual maturity. These things on their own can be influenced, although for humans it's quite limited. You can stop a lot of processes with malnutrition for example, which is why some girls stop their menstruation cycle when malnourished for example. To have another example, metamorphosis of butterflies can fully transform a being into something else. Interestingly there is also gene expression. If you have a well fed life, other genes will activate than if you're malnourished. If you get depressed, you make less of certain hormones and thus stay depressed. Both are in part gene expression. Certain genes activate because some situation is happening. These triggers can happen quite suddenly, as a single psychosis or trauma can already result in some gene expression. That changes happen is only part of what you want. You want a trigger. There are actually a lot of creatures that can change a lot thanks to environmental triggers. Frogs that can turn itself from male to female or vice verse. Ants smelling insufficient soldier ants and morphing into the stronger version. Certain reptiles(?) that stay in a fish form and can reproduce, but when the pool dries up they start growing legs and can move onto the land. Jelly fish can recert to earlier stages of their life when there isn't enough food available. Some bees can be fed the royal jelly and transform into queens. There's triggers enough for a wild variety of results. The transformation to larger versions seems the easy bit. The trigger is more tricky. Having been chosen at an election can give a huge boost in hormones. These can immediately start hormonal loops, which can in turn drive gene expression. The gene expression are the building plans for the next phase, much like puberty or a metamorphosis. These can be continued until the correct size is achieved. The mechanics behind the evolution of elected transformation can be in the psychology as well. In earlier days it might've been the strongest or best to lead that a group of these creatures instinctively chose. This started to take more ritualistic forms until in the modern times the hormonal boost could be gotten from elections. In a nutshell The creatures can have evolved with several sizes, which is not uncommon in nature. Hormones and gene expression can determine when a creature needs to transform and what it should transform into. The trigger can simply be the election, which thanks to generations of evolution results in a massive spike of some hormones, which trigger positive loops and gene expression to start the transformation. [Answer] The society has a psychic field that makes leaders larger. The more followers a person has, the more the psychic field augments them, increasing their size, weapon quality, and suitability to lead as it makes their body secrete growth hormones and other growth things. Elections make you more popular and so increase your resources. It's fairly common in elections to have 'debates' where the two candidates duel for their honor. Whoever wins will impress the population and get larger. A king has to win duels against multiple dukes to achieve their position and so they tend to get very large. [Answer] ## Your alien species is one of intelligent, modular, colonial, biodemocrat organisms! The individuals of your alien species aren't discrete beings at all - instead, they are giant colonies of individual smart organisms that bundle together to "create" an working unit. Those units are highly cohesive and specialized but able to work alone in case of need, each bit having limited brainpower that it contributes to the bigger colony-being. Those bits can also be willingly detached and traded with one another, as they are fully compatible between different individual beings. Exchanging parts with one another isn't only possible but part of their culture - swapping one of your notahearts with one of your loved one could be seem as a marriage ritual, while exchanging your Top Left notahand with your best friend is a signal of deep friendship. Lending or giving out parts of oneself to others is also something that those beings can do. When not replaced after some time, the detached part eventually grows back, if the "giver" has enough nutrients in their diet. The person that receives those parts without giving anything in exchange can add them to their body for improvements - extra arms, added muscle-like fibers, an extra light sensor on your shoulder... you name it. Those beings are modular by nature, and they can get rather large and full of extra features if they have a large enough fanbase. However, their cores can only handle so much safely - excess extra parts can only exist on a body for so long before they wither and fall off, needing a replacement if this "enlarged" being would like to keep their enhanced physique. For this culture, people that stay at home lend some of their notamuscles to those that are going out to hunt. A female can take out her notaboob and slap it on her male partner when it is his turn to breastfeed. Healers can take out some redundant parts and shove them into people that are hurt or missing bits because some accident, so the injured ones can survive until they can grow their own missing bits back. People can negotiate borrowing or buying high-performance or prettier parts from their peers for enhancing oneself, or even buy out artificially-engineered parts if their tech is advanced enough. Those aliens can literally pay someone to work out for them, swapping parts before hitting gym and them swapping back again once the training is over. Back to your question, however. Dukes and Kings! An elected "duke" or "king" receives tithe in the form of body parts from their subjects every now and then. They are hulking beings not because something inside them triggered this transformation, but because this lego-like society gave them the bits they need to grow. When it's time to give the seat to someone else, they stop receiving the tithe and eventually all the extra bits wither and fall off, returning the now ex-duke or ex-king back to their original form. Thus, the dukes and the kings are literally made out of bits of their subjects, and just as strong as the people they care for are. If enough people are unhappy, they can stop paying tithe to the king or duke and instead provide for someone else, effectively booting out the previous governor and replacing it by sheer power of biodemocracy! --- This is quite possibly the strangest concept for an alien species that I came up so far. I loved answering this question. [Answer] When they elect a duke, they give him big mecha exoskeleton he is sealed in. When they elect a king, they give him biggest exoskeleton. [Answer] It's a byproduct of the geography, radiation or some similar external input that is present in the chosen capitals and not around the general populace. Possibly there's a place of worship in those places that emits the energy and the leaders frequent there more often than anyone else. [Answer] ### Be more orangutan [![Dominant male orang with "flanges"](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tfA8Z.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tfA8Z.jpg) Dominant adult male orangutans go through [substantial bodily changes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangutan#Reproduction_and_development), developing facial "flanges", throat pouches, and a more resonant chest cavity. They also become much more fertile. Other males tend not to develop these characteristics whilst a dominant male is in the area. Interestingly, it seems that this is not triggered by anything hormonal, so (unlike queen bees developing) it is not down to body chemistry. Instead it seems to be triggered by calls from the dominant male. This suggests that the cause of the change is psychological, and a male orang will only trigger this change when it feels it has an opening. This makes evolutionary sense, because it signals to the dominant male that the non-dominant male is not a threat and hence a dominant male is less likely to attack in earnest. We don't know whether the change is psychosomatic and involuntary, or voluntary and can be triggered at will. Your species may have evolved from ancestors with similar traits. Whilst their society has developed into a more formal social structure (whether with elected officials, feudal hierarchies or whatever), their physiology reflects their origins. The more dominant a male feels in the social structure, the more he will express these characteristics. Your question now is whether your society should be entirely male-led. If you want equivalent dominant-female characteristics, they will not be the same as a dominant male. And you might want to be thinking about the societal implications of sexism like "How can we take her seriously as a leader when she doesn't have a throat pouch?" [Answer] An election involves individuals secreting a quantity of rularium and contributing it to that individual's preferred candidate(s). The rularium is consumed by the the candidates, and if they attain the appropriate bodily specifications within the allotted period after the election, they are the clear winners. Otherwise the election process continues until there is a clear winner. [Answer] "Anatomically different" doesn't necessarily mean extra limbs or different size. It could be something as simple as an eye, skin, or hair coloring that doesn't occur naturally, but could be triggered by a special dietary additive. This has the advantage of wearing off after they leave office and their diet returns to normal. Presumably, such a society would have laws to preclude those not holding office from having access to the special formula. A plot twist might be that a non-elected character is impersonating an official via contraband access to the formula. [Answer] Upon winning an election, the victor quaffs a mysterious potion whose recipe is known to a small number of clerics. This potion contains a parasite that causes author's choice (antlers, colorful feathers, more prominent signals of sexual prowess, you name it) that signify health, wisdom and power. It sounds far-fetched, [but it turns out ...](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01323-1) ]
[Question] [ Imagine a particular species of snake living in a mountainous region that when provoked or threatened will curve itself into a loop and every muscle in its body will tighten as it rolls down the slope to safety. Can nature provide a clever design to protect the head so that it won't get a headache or feel like throwing up? [Answer] Why asking worldbuilding when nature has already done it? ;-) Let me introduce you the [armadillo lizard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo_girdled_lizard)! > > The armadillo girdled lizard possesses an uncommon antipredator adaptation, in which it takes its tail in its mouth and rolls into a ball when frightened. In this shape, it is protected from predators by the thick, squarish scales along its back and the spines on its tail. This behavior, which resembles that of the mammalian armadillo, gives it its English common names. > > > [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tV6n7.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tV6n7.jpg) Keeping in mind that we have birds hitting a tree trunk with their head without getting concussions, I think it's surely possible for a rolling lizard to develop tolerance to rolling. A possible mechanism would be to "clamp" the labyrinth while rolling, so that inner flow cannot occur and thus spatial disorientation is not present once it stops. [Answer] Instead of a loop, a long enough snake could make a ball and leave its head in the middle, padded by its body. [image source](https://www.mysnakepet.com/banana-ball-python/) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lPe9z.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lPe9z.jpg) [Answer] Helical rolling Following on from the answer by @L.Dutch - Reinstate Monica Because snakes are generally longer and slimmer than equivalent weight lizards, the snake has an advantage. It can make more than one coil to make a helix. This has two advantages (1) the snake can tuck its head and tail into the inside of the spiral (not shown), and bite its tail and still be able to roll (2) it is less likely to tip over when rolling because of the extra dimension giving stability. red 22 mins ago [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m7ORf.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m7ORf.png) Credit Credit is given to the following discussion <https://nnka.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/uroboros-mechanizm-samoregulacji-zycia/> ]
[Question] [ I just had an idea in a sci-fi setting for an alien race that has re-emerged, but I don't know how plausible it is or if there is anything to make it more plausible. Consider a conventional universe, just with an FTL method of travel, on another plane of existence as not to overlap with reality. The alien race years ago went underground as their sun was dying and managed to survive in the subterranean setting. Their sun died, and all was good. Fast-forward now to their re-emergence. They came out of their subterranean realm because life had returned to the surface thanks to their/a sun now being there. So how does this happen, and how likely is this to happen? I have a few ideas: * Their solar system drifted through something that added enough matter to their sun and displaced enough of what was there to give it enough fuel to reignite. Mental simplification: a snooker ball smashes into another and effectively replaces it. * Their planet, once the sun had died, drifted out of orbit and through dead space for a time as a rogue planet before being captured and settling into orbit around another sun. * The Wizards did it. I don't like this option as it's just lampshading it, and also potentially introducing a power capable of stellar engineering. That concept alone outweighs the reappearance of this ancient race unless it was the ancient race, and I don't want them to be at that advanced level of technology. [Answer] Your planet was shaded by a ring in its orbital plane. From the persepective of your planet, the star gradually dimmed and went out. What actually happened is that the star tore apart a planet that got too close and acquired a ring. [https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/r/Roche\_limit.htm](https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/%7Erwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/r/Roche_limit.htm) [![roche steps](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zXVqU.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zXVqU.png) This planet was between your world and the star. As it dissolved into the ring, the ring gradually shaded your planet more and more and it got cold and dark. Rings do not last forever. <https://www.wionews.com/science/saturn-is-eating-its-own-rings-they-may-disappear-altogether-466925> > > Saturn is unlikely to lose its grandeur during our lifetimes. At the > current rate of degradation, it is estimated that the core of the ring > would disappear in 100 million years and the rings will completely > disappear in 300 million years > > > The rings shade your planet for a time but gradually fall into the sun or ablate away in the solar wind. The sun re-emerges. [Answer] Rumors of the sun's death were greatly exaggerated. The sun didn't die. Instead, it entered a quieter phase. Unfortunately, this began at the same time as a global cooling event (damn those evil chemicals for eating away the beloved greenhouse gasses we rely on!) was triggering an ice age. ‚ÄùThe sun will be dead in 25 years!‚Äù was an easier way to convince everyone to move underground than ‚ÄùWe don't really know how far those glaciers will go, so start digging today just to be safe.‚Äù The glaciers didn't go as far as expected and partially pulled back after a few hundred years. It was still cooler on the surface, but well within habitable ranges. However... Once the great lie about the sun dying started, all contrary evidence was suppressed. Over time, the ruling class destroyed more and more of the actual data and each generation of rulers became more convinced that the sun really was dead and the world above truly was nothing but icy darkness. This could have continued for many more generations, but 500 meters of limestone above one of the shallower shelters ended up getting slightly acidic runnoff from the hills to the east. Over the centuries, water filled caverns grew. Then the rivers changed course and things began to dry out. Sinkholes opened allowing sunlight (now almost as intense as when the shelters were built) to reach greater and greater depths. Near the bottom of one of the deeper sinkholes, a tree root worked its way down. It hit a point of great resistance. The root spread and tiny rootlets forced their way into cracks and pried them open wider. All was going well until a large piece of the resisting material gave way, dropping the tree into the center of a public plaza and exposing the people to sunlight and fresh air for the first time in many generations. People in other shelters considered the news to be a hoax, but as more and more came to visit the hole in the roof, they began to believe. Soon, steeply ascending tunnels were dug from shelters arould the world. Eventually, the last scraps of evidence of the great lie were pieced together. "NEVER AGAIN!‚Äù became a mantra of all the people. Then a terrible question was raised. "How can we be sure another event can never force us away from the sun again?" Science had not been dormant during those long centuries underground. It wasn't long before a presentation titled ‚ÄùOne sun in not enough. Let's spread out and get more.‚Äùled to global support for turning some theoretical physics into reality. Other suns would soon be in reach. [Answer] TLDR; Things are not what they appear to be. Stars don't just reignite. They very rarely die without destroying literally everything in their vicinity. Nothing could possibly have refueled it - it would either finish exploding faster, or outright collapse into something properly dangerous to orbit. The libration (Lagrange) point between this planet and the sun couldn't capture something massive enough to blot out the sun, and a debris ring from an planet closer to the sun exploding would be too sparse and too far away to have a significant effect on a fusion source containing more than 99 percent of all mass in the solar system, for similar reasons that Venus doesn't cast a noticeable shadow on Earth. # All Readings Normal Stars contain genuinely insane amounts of matter. Our ability to somewhat accurately describe the size, makeup and inner workings of a star is packed with error bars and speculative high energy physics. Looking through bits of polished glass and using math can tell us a lot, but biological brains can't actually contain a real sense of something like how large a star is, or how long 8 light-minutes really is. There's simply nothing to compare it to. # We've Found an Anomaly After emerging from hibernation, you really have quiet a lot going on. Only a dedicated few are going to start trying to point instruments at the sky. Science still works, and the math starts telling them things. Some things take time. Getting an accurate range on what appears to be a star in your own system takes a while, especially if you have no moon with a shadow to triangulate off of. You're largely left trying to sort out orbitals of other neighborhood objects. What if there aren't any? # That's No Star No other natural satellites? None? It takes months to confirm that your planet is no longer experiencing parallax - your planet's not even orbiting. The red shift and blue shift make sense, and the star isn't growing in aspect ratio, so you aren't falling into it. Something is holding you there. On purpose. # Now tell me a story. Lots of options to go from here. Mind bending cosmological horror comes readily to mind, but given your setup, you might prefer that your intrepid planet was rescued by a high energy starfaring society with handwavium tech that is now evaluating them for potential inclusion in their daily lives. The handwaving would be pretty heavy (moving stars is pretty uneconomical), but if large scale matter to energy conversion is within your threshold of believability, you could have quite a time writing this. [Answer] # Rogue planet Planets do not always have a star. Some float in the depth of space all alone. They might have formed like this, bit a more likely scenario is that they came from a star system. Thanks to any amount of factors they can be thrown away. Their orbit isn't stable. They receive an impact and lose/gain material or speed. Some (massive) object comes too close and pulls the planet out of orbit. Each can be responsible. Even a rogue planet can go through a solar system and pull out more planets. Lastly, a rogue planet can be captured by another solar system. This can be by impact, like our moon is thought to have crashed into Earth and then stayed in an unstable orbit, though stable enough to stay with us for a bit. It can also be that the speed, angle and other celestial bodies pull it into an orbit around the star. So the alien planet can be pulled out of orbit at one star. They survive the long journey to another star, where they are fortuitous enough to get into orbit again in the goldilocks zone. ## Better alternative: clouds Much easier is not making the sun go away, but to prevent the rays from reaching the surface. Bug asteroids can prevent light to reach the surface for some time. Nuclear winter as well. Sone climate catastrophes can do the same. This can be long processes of years, decades, centuries or longer depending on what happens. Hide in the bunkers and hope Vault Tech was kind with yours... [Answer] Changing stars in a binary system Their sun was dying, becoming a red giant and losing mass. The civilization saw the writing on the wall and hid underground, prepared to stay there until the conditions were better. As the sun lost mass, the planet was not as strongly gravitationally bound to it's star, and its orbit widened and eventually broke away from the sun! Fortunately the planet was flung towards the sun's binary companion star, and after a series of bounces, the planet slowed down due to the dust and ice surrounding the companion star, and settled in a new orbit. [More details.](https://planetplanet.net/2022/02/24/star-hoppers-planets-bouncing-between-binary-stars/) [Answer] ## The Success of Project Prometheus Project Prometheus: In brief, an expedition to a relatively nearby starsystem to acquire sufficient stellar material to reignite the home-star. This mission was a hail-mary attempt prior to the Great Cowering and the Big Freeze destroying all possibility of interstellar travel. An unmanned, artificially intelligent space-probe was dispatched to a neighbouring star system with all the tools needed to construct a massive Dyson Swarm from the various moons and rocky bodies there. It took a long time, there were false-starts, the tech malfunctioned here and there, but eventually the swarm was completed. With that, the englobed star was induced to generate solar flares steadily, altering its trajectory and guiding it to intercept the Home system. It took a further X-Thousand years to actually reach Home, and much of the stellar mass was expended as reaction-mass to get it there. The final part was the most delicate piece. Combining the two stars without catastrophically destroying the entire Home system. Fortunately with so long to travel, the artificial intelligences controlling the swarm were able to work out every detail and successfully merged the two stars together, even managing to contain the massive solar flaring this produced so it didn't fry the system. The final state? The husk of the Home star is revitalised as a vibrant new Main-Sequence star, wrapped in the remains of a swarm of artificially intelligent Dyson Statites. The sky is lit with comets and meteors from the Oort cloud for centuries to come. The Homeworld is thawing and its inhabitants are emerging from their buried cities and cryo-stasis vaults to a new day. [Answer] The problem the natural events you describe occur on stellar time scales. Gas or even another star enters into decaying orbits for tens of millions of years before merging. And if they were on trajectories fast enough to to literally collide with each other without orbiting, they would just pass through each other leaving cosmic destruction in their wake. Do you need to explain this? Can the aliens just not know the cause? The captured rogue planet might be more plausible but needs a very lucky set of circumstances: star systems passing through each other slowly enough for a proper capture without a useless rogue orbit but fast enough the planet's geothermal energy did not run out to power life. Unless they have a crazy power source sustaining not just civilization but all other underground life not under their purview (since you mention life re-emerges on the surface of its own accord). Unless your intention is they seeded that surface life. In any case, surface life would not survive in the mean time. It would take time for the surface to stabilize and for chemical cycles to restart. I have no idea how long that would take on a frozen planet that used to support them. For all I know it might be like starting from scratch similar to trying to terraform a dead world except all the required materials were already present. Then it might take a hundred millions of year after that for subterranean life to re-emerge and adapt on the surface. I imagine most of that time would be spent restarting all the biological cycles and foundations (primary surface producers) that were broken. Only a relatively small amount of time would be required for consumers to adapt to the surface. The planet also needs to not have been sterilized when it goes red giant when the star died. That also lasts millions of years. Why did they go subterranean to escape the red giant? Were they not capable of space colonization? It all pretty much requires the same tech to survive without a sun whether underground, on the surface, or in space. [Answer] They had no cosmology to speak of (think [Ptolemaic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model)), and what truly happened is that their planet is orbiting a really, really bright star (or smething more exotic, like a quasar) on a really, really big orbit, taking many millennia. And what happened was just that they left the [periastron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periastron) and their planet is now coming back. Evidence in favo(u)r: they managed to survive underground, obviously the life is well adapted by evolution for this. The previous orbit just disappeared from the collective memory (or even preceded their recorded history). There were maybe just some legends of an eternal night surviving but being dismissed as, well, legends, until the sun "died". [Answer] > > Mental simplification: a snooker ball smashes into another and effectively replaces it. > > > Actually, not that hard. Stars rarely collide because they are small compared to the vast amount of space. They usually "scatter" - it is in fact a parabolic orbit, but looking from a distance it looks like an elastic bounce. So yes, if you align your vectors and masses right, it is actually quite possible to replace a star. If the process is quick enough, the planets' orbits won't twist much. You are 50/50 whether this small orbit correction is good or bad for your plot. [Answer] If you want to strictly stick to the sun specifically died slowly, that poses an issue. The light spectrum from most kinds of stars makes life as we know it an issue, but even ignoring that, the process through which most types of stars die not a simple fizzle-out if starting from main sequence. Your planet is likely to be consumed by the star expanding. In addition, without some mechanism for the star to lose mass, the planet's orbit wouldn't change. I think the ideas posted here are a good start where it has to be something to the effect of the star didn't necessarily die so much as some other force interfered with it. Blocked by a planetary ring is a great answer. It could also be that an object from outside the solar system disrupted the orbit, casting the planet out of its orbit. Then through some mechanism, it is caught by another solar system or maybe even the same one. [Answer] The sun didn't die, rather there was so much pollution caused by the society's industrial activities (or, perhaps, [war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter)) that the whole atmosphere became all but impenetrable to light. With no heat from the sun, they retreated underground to take advantage of the heat nearer the planet's [mantle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_mantle#Temperature_and_pressure). The underground society rarely ventured to the surface as it was too cold, and so eventually it faded into their cultural understanding that "up there" is just a cold, desolate place that people have no reason to go to other than curiosity - just as our society understands this about Antarctica and space, despite probably none of us ever having met anyone who has been there. And after many thousands of years, nobody really believed in those old myths about "the sun" any more. With almost no biological processes occurring on the surface, the smog lasted for a long time. There was always the occasional intrepid adventurer who wanted to make a trip to the surface to see for themselves, but eventually there came a point when what one of those adventurers saw was a sky that seemed to get a little less dark every 24 hours or so, and maybe, just maybe there really was a sun up there. Scientific experiments confirmed that planting lots of vegetation on the surface did slowly cause the "bright times" in those areas to get brighter. And so the society covered as much of the planet as they could with plants and trees, which cost an awful lot of labour and precious water, but in the end, the optimists were right. ]
[Question] [ Souls are the sum of an individual. Their memories, personality, and everything that makes them "them". Souls also contain essence, which keeps the body alive and allows it to function. Essence, or the life force of an individual, decreases as one gets older, and is completely depleted upon death, where the soul makes its way to the afterlife. Elizabeth Báthory, the blood countess, is a rich noble woman who wants to stay young and beautiful. To do this she has decided to steal the souls of those less deserving of their lives. She has discovered a spell that allows her to take the life force of others and add it to her own. Through this act, she can extend her years indefinitely by adding their years to her own, keeping her young and beautiful. She begins kidnapping and sacrificing young people, stealing their mana and consuming their life energy. Runes are carved into the victims body, preventing their soul from escaping after death. The individual is then devoured alive. Through this act, the soul is completely consumed and the essence is absorbed.This has allowed her to live for hundreds of years. However, there is a problem. Her body had become more and more deformed as the years pass. In her mind, she is still the beautiful woman she has always been. In reality she has physically aged into a hag, and her body has mutated into a horrific looking monster WITH MANY MUTATIONS. She has been unable to see this due to her madness. Why would this be the case? [Answer] # Hundreds of years of uncontrolled cancer Souls extend your life by giving you additional life force, but they do not revert the progress of your body. In this context consuming additional souls simply prevents you from dying, but it does not prevent your body from continuing to accumulate the problems associated age. Cancer in particular is a problem that becomes more prevalent with age and can fit the bill for deforming the countess. If she is hundreds of years old, and she is deformed from age then this is one possible reason. Maybe as she aged she was struck with various kinds of cancer (uncontrolled cancer can cause bulges and large growths). Since cancer is technically part of you (it is your own cells) maybe soul infusions did not remove this. Her body can now be deformed by uncontrolled cancer that has gone on for far longer than it would in a normal person. This is because normally when cancer reaches a certain point a person dies, but the blood countess has continued to consume souls preventing her own death. Hence she is a mess of bulges and deformations. This seems like one way it could have happened. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WDjN0.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WDjN0.jpg) > > <https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/File:Adipose_Avatar.jpg> > > <https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License_1.3> > > > [Answer] By consuming the soul of somebody who has lived 16 years, she is also adding those 16 years to her body, as the soul has memory of the elapsed time. Eat a couple of teen agers and you have already very likely doubled the toll on your body, going from an adult woman to an aged one. Eat a couple of 1 month old, and you add only a couple months. But over the centuries also few months add up to years. [Answer] # The evil of her actions has physically marked her In older literature ([The Picture of Dorian Gray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray), for example), the actions of a person, whether those actions are good or evil, selfish or giving, accumulate physically over the course of a long life. Think those fine wrinkles and leathery skin of someone who has smoked for a lifetime... Except this is resulting from the stains or purity of the soul of the person. A soul stained and defiled by the heinous act of destroying others to lengthen one's life would be a hideous soul. You've already established that soul-power can have the physical impact of lengthening a life. Why not extend that to having the inhabiting soul's nature having an accumulating physical impact on the flesh containing that life? [Answer] Souls have a shape? Like a footprint they only fit perfectly in their own body. By the many souls which she contains, she is having somewhat like more DNA in her which is now growing at some parts of her body. It's like a shoe whats too small and now your foot deals with it. Hope this simple solution helps and isn't against the rules of your fantastic world :) [Answer] In our actual world, something that seems minor, like having 3 chromosomes (trisomy) where you're supposed to have to have 2, can be devastating. Sometimes it does cause minor problems, like people with XXY instead of XY or XX. Sometimes it causes moderate problems, like in having 3 copies of your 21st chromosome (aka Down Syndrome). In this case, brain function is altered and nearly everyone ends up with a mild to severe intellectual impairment. It also changes the facial shape, makes the person shorter than they would have been, and often affects the heart. If the extra chromosome is on chromosome 18 or 13, the problems are extremely severe. A few children born with an extra 18 will live, but nearly all those born with an extra 13 will die in the first year, if they make it to birth in the first place. In addition to severe/profound intellectual disability, the extra chromosome often causes things like a cleft palate, cleft lip, extra fingers or toes, a nose in the wrong spot on the face, a heart condition, or under developed lungs. Among other things. The effects of extra chromosomes elsewhere isn't really known because pretty much no embryo/fetus survives to birth. Though it's possible a few aren't in the literature because they don't cause problems so no one bothers to test for them (contrary to what you might think, trisomy is NOT picked up by consumer DNA testing commonly used for genealogical or health purposes). Important note: some people with chromosomal differences are what you call mosaic. This means that the extra chromosome isn't in every cell, just in some. When you test chromosomes to look for trisomy, you run multiple tests so that you know if mosaicism is an issue, and so you don't miss a trisomy because you tested a regular set of cells. Mosaicism generally causes the same problems as having the genetic difference in every cell, but it's more mild. It is also less likely to be fatal. Absorbing a soul, by your description above, sounds like it might involve genetic transfer as well. I would think that, most of the time, it goes smoothly, but sometimes an extra chromosome will "catch" in a way that affects the host's body globally. Our bodies are really really good at fixing genetic information that goes bad (something that happens every day, in a small percentage of new cells). But sometimes we just can't fix it. That's what cancer often is; a genetic altering of our cells that our bodies can't fix. So Elizabeth, over time, has had her genetics altered. This leads to her normal body repair mechanisms malfunctioning and rebuilding her body in ways it is not supposed to. It leads to cancerous tumors. And changes in how her brain, heart, and other organs work. All stuff that probably would kill anybody else. But she isn't able to die. She has all the soul infusions stopping that from happening. Short of cutting off her head, she's just going to continue to live, no matter how bad things get. No matter how different her body becomes. [Answer] You absorb the life force of a victim, not their physical cells. The absorbed mana gives your own cells a boost to allow them to divide for a longer time than naturally possible, but they are still the same old cells. During a cells division, the chromosomes literally rip apart to give each half one complete set of chromosomes. During this process the chromosomes sometimes entangle or rip apart at the wrong place, resulting in mutations that are inherited by each following generation of cells. Environmental influences like UV light and free radicals add more damage to the DNA of the cells. The longer you live due to this process, the more damaged your cells become. You need to absorb more mana just to keep your mutated cells alive, not to mention further prolonging your unatural life. This process will eventually escalate to the point where your DNA is damaged so much that you cannot absorb enough mana to stay alive. How you actually look like at this moment is another question alltogether... [Answer] I will present some of the same ideas from a different perspective: Let us assume that absorbing souls does not only prevent death, it prevents the effects of aging (by means not explained). However... 1. She is not only absobing souls, she is also absorbing nutrients (vitamins, proteins, etc.) from other people. Futhermore, she is absorbing microbes. However, I am going with the absorbed proteins here. usually people have mutations that are not expressed, and there is deterioration that is usually not passed down to a new generation... but they can cause diseses if ingested. Take for example the [Kuru disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease)) which is caused by a misfolded, but perpetuated by cannibalism. Perhaps people who lack knowledge of proteins think this is caused because [she is absorbing the age of the people](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/129039/16729). 2. The souls fight back. She has trapped the souls in the consumed body, and abosbed them. These souls are not going to the afterlife, but they try (or other angels/spirits try to free them, depending on how your metaphysics works)! After the body is consumed, the runes that make the seal for the soul are gone, and they will push their way out... Perhaps in the struggle, the souls cause damage to the body. Perhaps if the souls are gone, she loses the prevention of aging. Either way, people without the proper knowledge could think that simply [many souls don't fit in a single body](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/129033/16729). [Answer] Maybe age is more related to wisdom/stress than time, and consuming a soul adds not just the life force but also the all the wisdom and scars that soul had attained. Your countess may not be able to directly recall this wisdom or stress from the consumed souls but it's still there added to her own life force. Even in the real world people with extremely stressful jobs seem more "worn down" then some one the same age but with a more care-free life style. So in effect, while the biology keeps on going with renewed life force, the body is gaining the cumulative effect of many life times of wisdom hard earned, stress, and emotional scars. [Answer] Such is the cost of using dark magic. Dark magic usually has a hidden cost. In this case there is a known cost, the life which she is taking. But, sneaky as dark magic always is, there is a hidden cost. One would wonder if the original spell did in fact guarantee youth or did the reader see "prolonged life" and then assume youth as well. The caster incurs both a physical an psychological toll as part of the price of the spell. In this case, the delusion brought on by the psychosis fulfills what they inferred from the spell, apparent youth. [Answer] She continues to "grow up" beyond the normal adult stage. In the first few years of a normal human life the body is developing from baby into a toddler, then into a child, then into an adolescent and finally into adult, which happens in 20s. After that, human body no longer has enough life force to continue the development, so it just sustains itself and just becomes somewhat stronger, without significant qualitative changes. And after that, with even less life force, it starts to decay, which eventually results in natural death of no other kind of death happens before. However, in her case, she has plenty of life force. In fact, too much for her own good. She continues to "grow up" into some sort of hyper-adult. This is a stage of development no normal human can achieve. Just because it is a next stage it doesn't mean it is better, especially regarding the aesthetics. Further she progresses in her development, more grotesque her body starts to look. She might become able to overpower a normal adult as easily as a normal adult can overpower a toddler, but she will become a monster no human should become. She will remain young in terms of health, but she will eventually become unrecognizable as a human. Now, if she was smart enough not to consume so much souls, she would get exactly what she wanted, but she was too greedy and now it is too late, since there is no known mechanism to reverse the grow up process. [Answer] ## Resistance What you are describing sounds like cannibalism, a magical precursor to voodoo in some respects. In 'The Serpent and the Rainbow', a modern practitioner that is also collecting souls keeps them trapped in bottles, instead of consuming them directly. Maybe the modern magician has innovated? The soul is all the person is, and clearly immortal. In 'The Serpent and the Rainbow' breaking the bottles allowed the trapped souls to take as much revenge as disembodied spirits could. Maybe the more primitive method - keeping the soul attached to the magician's own body - allowed the unwilling victim a chance to sabotage their attacker by aging the body, deformation, bad luck, and maybe a host of other small retaliatory acts (the best a trapped spirit could do). Maybe, even, the insanity is part of the resistance - the souls hoping to drive the witch mad enough that SOMEONE will act. [Answer] When someone absorbs a soul the energy is stored in their body immediately, but the soul energy takes time to merge with the soul energy of the host. During this time the stolen soul energy is not in tune enough with its new host to nurture the body as it is supposed to. Instead, the stolen soul provides its energy to whatever body part it resides in as it slowly circulates through the body. Because the new soul also displaces a certain volume of the body it serves to increase the density of the original soul energy as well. This means that immediately after consuming a soul the entire body will be filled with youthful vigor and will de-age visibly, but over time random parts of the body will grow at a slightly accelerated rate. If one or two souls are absorbed the slight growth will barely be noticeable, but the effect is accumulative so over a period of hundreds of years the body will have grossly mutated. This effect also occurs in the brain but with the added complication that the stolen soul will attempt to bond with memories that are similar to the experiences from the person the soul was stolen from. Since the blood countess always chooses young victims her youthful memories are abnormally strengthened and she is beset with fleeting impressions of youthful beauty. Because of this, her mind is unable to cope with the real image of herself. Her mind replaces the incomprehensible monster she really is with the overpoweringly vivid image of how she was in her youth. [Answer] STD's - that is, Soul Transmitted Diseases. A soul is part of a living being just as much as its body. The fact that the soul survives the "death" of the body and even goes all the way to incarnate in a new one doesn't change that. Therefore, absorbing the souls of many different strangers is not much different from doing gangbangs without protection. Real life STD's (the sexually transmitted ones) can make someone look monstrous too. I was going to post some pictures, but then I think they would be edited out for being too gross. If you wanna see some really horrible faces, try googling for syphilis gumma. In the most advanced stages people start looking like the undead. That's how I picture a soul stealer that gets deformed as they steal more and more souls. [Answer] Well, aside from Tyler's awesome cancer answer (which is really the best so far IMO), I can only think of two factors: ## The Highlander Factor Upon killing a fellow immortal (by chopping it's head) the mighty Highlanders extends their own lifespan. When they do that, a part of the slain warrior is absorbed by the killer, to the point where he actually gets some physical traits of the deceased. You could say that the monstrosity is the result of dozens and dozens of such traits collected over the years. Her body had to shift and adapt so much and in so many different ways (since she eats everything: old, young, tall, small, white, black, men, women... ) that you can't even tell if that... thing... is human anymore. ## The Rejection Factor For this I'll borrow my previous explanation of the accumulation of traits. Suppose this magic has a very bad side effect called rejection. Think of it as the same rejection a guy feels when he goes through an organ transplant. Even though he avoided the worse by borrowing someone's kidney, he still has a lifetime of rejection-prevention pills ahead. Upon eating someone's soul her body starts to experience rejection which, in turn, starts to manifest more and more agrresive with every new soul that's added to the pile (this is a good opening for Tyler's cancer hyphotesis). The beauty of this is that this rejection (since based on a "magic dicease", of sorts) can also affect the witch's mind. The dreadful physical mutations are there and keep getting worse, and they're a fair explanation for the delusions. But suppose the very soul eaten starts to manifest through visions and voices that start to haunt the hag. That would be a great explanation for her insanity. Think about it: Waking up to see yourself as a gorgeous queen in the mirror. A moment later, Tristana, the first local villager she ever ate appears at her side. She gently touches the hag's shoulder and says "When I look at your body it actually makes me happy you ate my soul". She's actually happy that the woman that killed her turned into a monster and gets satisfied by lying to her about her hideous appearance. And so do dozens of others. [Answer] Stress. <https://www.google.nl/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201404/emotional-distress-can-speed-cellular-aging%3famp> Absorbing a soul could cause stress. It could be that you are literally consuming the stress in your victim and then living on that stressed out soul. And with that victim being carved with runes and then eaten alive the stress is going to be considerable. As an alternative the soul you are trying to live on will try to fight your consciousness, although in veign. This causes stress to the consumer who might feel the stress of the dying soul and occasionally have stress as the consumer needs to fight the tattered remains of soul to stay in control of her body or risk losing (partial) control for short periods of time. [Answer] During the ritual, when she absorbs the souls, she actively experiences their lives, all at once. She also gains the strength that their souls would contribute to keep a body going, but all of the lines visible on their faces at time of death also appear on hers. Stress lines around her mouth, crow's feet, frown lines, all of these she has to such a degree that no mortal could have experienced in one lifetime and survived. All of the scars, all of the wrinkles on hands and fingers. All of the stress acne breakouts, all of the stress rashes. Her own biology was not one that would have been fated to age gracefully, and the effect has been multiplied to the point where it no longer looks like aging, but like something else entirely, including novel effects such as the changing of the shape of the nose that do not become visible within a single human lifetime. And of course, there's nothing saying that at the conclusion of the ritual, she remembers even a single moment of those experiences. That's an awful lot of information for a mortal mind to take in, after all, and hers may respond by simply rejecting it all. (Plot hook: Except this one time...) [Answer] Perhaps it's not the consumption of souls transforming her, but the long term effects of using whatever magic she is using to consume the souls. In the Star Wars paradigm, using the dark side of the force on a regular basis ravages your body. In the Dresden Files Paradigm, magic is basically a process of taking the essence of who you are and using it for whatever purpose you choose; as such intention matters. So this witch, in her soul of souls, believes taht what she is doing is not only something that can happen, but SHOULD happen. And if that is nt a recipe for madness i dont know what is [Answer] ## For soul is form, and doth the body make. Each soul she absorbs is trying to recreate the original body it came from. Unless she had an army of clones of herself, she would be reconfigured by. Perhaps it was not obvious, a soul can only do so much in a brief time before she needs more, but bit by bit the accumulated effects are hideous. ]
[Question] [ Let's say that you are some sort of tyrannical dictator of an inhabited world with futuristic technology (ex. railguns, a fully automated labor force, efficient space travel.) You know that within your system exist several other space-capable tyrants, who may attempt to attack you and your people. Your advisors inform you that your enemies have little care for the wellbeing of your planetary infrastructure, and as such will attempt to use the most devastating methods possible to render life on your planet miserable. These would likely either be A. A barrage of nuclear warheads, or B. Directly ramming one of their ships into the planet. The second option is more troubling to you, as it presents a myriad of possible difficulties. You can't simply indiscriminately blast any ship that looks to be on an approach vector with your world, as that would devastate trade. You can't rely purely on conventional weapons, either, as the shrapnel from a ruined ship could do as much damage as the craft itself. With these considerations in mind, how would you, humble space tyrant, go about rendering your world protected from your savage and barbaric neighbors in the most efficient method possible? [Answer] Don't allow traders to approach the planet. Let them approach a space-station in safe distance and do the trading there. Or you could require that ships be escorted by your own escort ship within your territory and maybe also have one of your pilots on board to fly the ship. (similar to the escort practices in many harbors on earth) Now you can shoot down anything that comes closer and is not your own or not controlled by you. [Answer] Preemptive strike There is a fancy term for it, the whatever whatever I forget gambit, but basically it falls down to this. You have an enemy you don't know anything about, except for the fact that they have the capability to destroy you and you have the capability to destroy them. If they fire first your death is guaranteed and you might not even have a chance to fire back, if you both fire at once both of you will die, if you fire first their death is guaranteed and they might not have a chance to fire back. Obviously using pure logic and zero morality the most beneficial reaction here is to fire first. Not only are you prepared for the potential counter-barrage guaranteeing that even if they fire back you will be able to at-least survive (albeit with heavy casualties). Surviving with heavy casualties is better than dying due to a 100% casualty rate if attacked and caught unawares. Naturally you decide to hit them when they don't expect it and to ensure maximum likelihood of total annihilation of the target you use both a barrage of nuclear weapons in the gigaton yield and an automated kamikaze ship timed to coincide with each other's arrival. You also packed the ship completely full of highly radioactive long half-life isotopes because you're an asshole. As you launch this barrage you of course have prepared your point defenses and moved any minions and commoners you would prefer not to lose to shelter just in case the counter barrage arrives. Spreading your keepers around in asteroid stations or orbital habitats and such is an excellent tactic to protect whomever matters enough to be protected as well. Once the enemies have been drowned in a deluge of nuclear warheads and get sucker punched from the massive kilometer long ship turned dirty bombs your defense network is scanning like crazy for any incoming return fire. Maybe they get a few shots off and you lose a few cities, but hey, you're the space dictator, you can fire up the ol propaganda machine and spin the story to say you were attacked first and were unfortunately forced to oblitorate them. If you are a particularly sociopathic space dictator maybe you intentionally allow a few missiles through to hit cities full of people you don't like just to turn tragedy into profit. Congrats, the system is now yours, you are the hero of the war of enemy aggression, avenger of your people and bringer of peace. The newly created radioactive hellholes will make excellent penal colonies for any dissenters who might not have been taken out in the "accidental" lapses in your security grid. We'll repackage it as recovering from disaster. Could yield some pretty lucrative resource collection and it only has to be at the expense of people you didn't like or need very much anyways. [Answer] Bad News. The bad news is that if you are already space-faring, you probably already have the means to destroy a planet - infallibly. All you need is to get one of a million asteroids already existent throughout any star system (or if you want to sacrifice one of your ships), and slowly accelerate it on a trajectory that will intersect your planet. It doesn't have to be particularly large. Over interstellar distances this could reach relativistic speeds, really fast and hard to detect. Once impact with your planet has occurred, your planet is obliterated with little chance to support life. Nuclear warheads are useless in this regard - your relativistic asteroid/ship is your warhead. It is easy to do, and difficult to stop. There is no defence once it enters your solar system. But maybe some Good News. It should be easy to see them coming if you have mega-telescopes and detection devices far afield of your solar system - the earlier you can spot one coming the more actions you could take. For instance, the solutions could be: * you could try to accelerate your own asteroid/ship on a collision path with theirs, and knock it off course, or fire a powerful laser to try to influence it's course. An early lateral nudge is what you need to disable it, you would need an array of these at the edge (preferably beyond) of your solar system to make any difference. Chances are unlikely that you would have enough time given the energy and accuracy that you would require, but it depends on how early you detect it - therefore I predict that early detection and reconnaissance is a major priority in your galaxy. From spies on the opposing planet, to finely tuned devices that can detect movement and intent. * Randomly zig-zag your planet - an out there solution, but you could establish an irregular orbit from pushing or pulling your planet in and out to stop prediction of where you planet will be. By the time the light reaches your adversaries star system, it would already be outdated information and difficult for them to plan a trajectory. * Prevention is better than cure - there are enough asteroids in our solar system to have much more living area in artificial habitats than that of planets - spreading your people around instead of concentrated in one place on a planet. Once you reach inter-stellar status, it should be easy to adapt asteroids to space habitats in your system. Evacuation is your preferred solution then. As Sun Zhu said - prevention is better than cure, deception is better than battle. [Answer] Assumptions: hard science, no special technology M.A.D. Mutually Assured Destruction It doesn't really matter what you do in terms of system-defence, this is one case where the weapons have FAR outstripped any likely defence. So your chief approach should be psychology and overwhelming firepower. Not an especially difficult one. Maintain a fleet of relativistic ram-ships, one or two for every planet your enemy has. If your civilisation is destroyed, the ramship fleet will accelerate to a significant fraction of the speed of light using Hydrogen Ramjets and each hit a planet with enough force to smash it like an egg. Whether this is a suicide run or a computer-guided drone after launch is up to you. You'd probably be better off with the second one, simply maintain a number of isolated outposts in deep space far from any space-lanes, manned by a skeleton crew and regularly checking in with civilisation to make sure it's still there. By making sure you have the means to unstoppably obliterate your enemy even if they first-strike and destroy your entire civilisation, nobody would be insane enough to try. Just make sure you can do it and that your enemy knows it. Downside: People are crazy and technology is fallible, expect that things may go wrong. Also, by placing your biggest weapons at arms reach, you do leave them open to attack if your enemy ever finds out where they are. Worth maintaining a series of bases all around your territory to prevent any single solution to destroy them. Reference: The Cold War [Answer] If you have the necessary technology to travel between stars, you have the necessary technology to screw around with the orbits of comets and asteroids, and THAT is the threat you should be concerned about. Not nukes. Not ramming spacecraft. Dinosaur Extinction Rocks is what you have to be able to defend against. So. In order to defend against Big Freaking Rocks, you need two things. First: You need to be able to detect them coming, which means a REALLY well developed sensor network. You probably want radar or some other kind of active sensor because you can't rely on telescopes to find these things if their albedo is low enough. Second: You need to be able to deal with the rocks once you find them. Ideally you want to be able to detect them far enough in advance that you can just counter whatever orbital weapon your opponents used to throw the rock at you and just redirect it into the sun or something. The viability of this option depends entirely on what kind of technologies your setting is relying on. If you can't apply enough force to the rock to make it miss your planet entirely, then you want to apply enough force to break it into chunks small enough to NOT represent an existential threat to your biosphere. Said chunks would need to be ~100m or smaller to avoid catastrophic damage (for comparison, the earth gets hit about once a year with an asteroid this size. They create an explosion equivalent to the nuclear weapons deployed in WWII, but because these explosions occur very high in the atmosphere, they don't usually cause damage. The Tunguska Event is an unusual example to the contrary.) For reference: The impactor that caused the K-T extinction is estimated at between 10-15km in diameter, so that's the scale that your defensive weaponry needs to be able to operate at. [Answer] Stalemate. So you're in a cold war with a weapons-of-mass-destruction-and-overwhelming-force situation? Build your own, and let the other guy know yours is bigger than his. With the science-fiction tag, we can do a bunch of thing. Capture as many asteroids as you can, build colonies on them: You now have second/multiple strike capabilities, so the enemy knows that if he strikes your planet, he's not done with you. This is really the only option in a sustained cold war. Protect your asteroids with force fields, or your planet if possible: This will, again, only delay the inevitable overwhelming power of the other guy's weapons, but this delay can keep the stalemate. Automated semi-intelligent defenses: [Drone swarms in space](https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-mars-robot-drone-bees-2018-4) (NASA's on it, already), changing position all the time, equipped for defense/offence without having to get a command from a human. The other guy may get all of your colonies and main planet/s, but they know it won't save them from retaliation. Espionage network based on the latest tech: I can write a few pages here... * nano-drones data gatherers that can physically hack computers/machines * replacing politicians with humans look-alike robots * deleting and implanting memories of a General or three * media manipulations you name it. Anything to keep ahead of the other side. Of course, they have already thought of the same things... So don't trust your wife of the past 10 years, she's obviously a Fembot. What you'll end up with is the only logical option: Peace. But you didn't get through six years of Tyrant School by making friends, now did you? :-) [Answer] Assuming you only want to go for defense, what you would do is setup a ring of protection starting at your core planet and expanding out, a fundamental web of surveillance that expands across your entire region and look into the enemy territory. Now space is large and it would be nearly impossible to cover every single path. Firstly your going to want to figure out the most effective way for the enemy to travel to you. You throw a bunch of probes and sensors along those paths. You keep expanding your scope as you go. The quicker, cheaper and safer paths to your core planets are easily filed with thousands of probes which scan every single ship that enters the area. Basically you setup access points into your region along the easiest to travel routes. But there is a lot of space in space. So your going to need a ton of telescopes pointed along less plausible paths that constantly monitor them for incoming ships. Throw in an occasional patrol and now only small ships or bands will be able to get through. Nothing that you shouldn't be able to contain. Finally your going to want some super powered telescopes pointed directly that the planets of your enemies. Considering that Hubble can see several billions of light years away, you a space dictator are going to have no problem assembling a fleet of even more powerful telescopes that will focus in on your enemies year round. This way you can see fleet and resource moments of your enemies and plan ahead. As long as you don't have faster than light travel you will always know if your enemies are moving a massive amount of resources off planet and hence be able to prepare. Heck, you would track any large ship or resource movements to try find out where their ship yards are, so you can determine the condition of their fleet and how to handle it. You have to remember that we currently, split into multiple nations with many internal and external conflicts are still able to almost track most objects within our galaxy. NASA has done an amazing job already with what limited funding they had and limited technology they used back in the day. You have a space faring dictatorship. There is nothing stopping you from expanding your surveillance powers to monitor for potential threats over several light years if you want to put the money and resources into it. Of course, the problem is if you have faster than light travel. The only way in these situations would be to threaten them with a similar destruction to you. Think of the cold war but on a space level. No one wants to completely lose so its just a massive arms race and then nothing happens. You could try your best to spy on them, but if you can move faster than light, there is no way you can reasonable expect a spy to get a message to you before a fleet of ships is knocking on your door. [Answer] ## Blast your own planet before they do You're a tyrant. Act like one, and with brutal elegance. But before that, rebuild all your bleeding edge infrastructures in space. Ideally, hollow out asteroids and create O'Neil cylinders, Bernal Spheres, Bishop Rings, and other gravitated space habitats inside them. Artificial habitats in the care of minds superior to humans, while harder to create, are far safer and easier to sustain than flashy planets. They are more movable, self-sustainable, and unnoticeable. Reliance on stealth mechanisms instead of ironclad armor are rarely ineffective against unknowable threats. The best way to avoid being victim of a planetary destruction, is to avoid being on a planet. By blasting your own world, you can demonstrate an unimaginable power that all of your barbaric neighbors will come to know. Note that I didn't specify that it is your power that was demonstrated. Let them think whoever did that to your world should be feared. Most importantly, let them think you're out of the game. Then, slowly begin your new interstellar reign from the shadow of an imaginary monster that you have created. Reliance on stealth mechanisms for defense are just as effective for offense. Some advantages of hollowed asteroids as both offense and defense are: 1. They are highly mobile. Unlike planets, space habitats inside hollowed asteroids are more akin to spaceships than habitats. As long as there is enough space and enough fuel, they can move around quite well. Equip them with far-reaching, fast-acting sensors and they can even dodge RKV's . 2. They can cannibalize/reproduce. What happens when your home asteroid runs out of resources? You just find another one and tear it down, atom by atom if you have to, then feed those atoms to your own home. Or, just create a new home entirely if the asteroid seems to be pure space rock. 3. They can function as Relativistic Kill Vehicles. Enough said. They can go kamikaze, accelerating at just the fraction of c towards a target planet to trigger extinction events one after another. You'd think a dead enemy is harmless, until its ghost is haunting you in your dreams while strangling you in your sleep. [Answer] Expand and fortify. If you can't stop the enemy from shooting, give them more to shoot at. Your homeworld should be your last line of defense, not your first. It's less a question of protecting a planet, and more a question of fortifying a solar system. As other answers have pointed out, if you've got efficient space travel, you can effectively annihilate a planet comparatively easily. One good asteroid nudged on a collision course, one big enough kamikaze ship (or fleet of kamikaze ships), and wham bam, no more planet (to speak of). It doesn't take much to render a planet uninhabitable. So how do you protect against your comparatively probable doom? You don't let them get close to your planet. You expand, you fortify. First things first, you do the obvious things to trick out your homeworld. Slap an artificial orbital ring around it covered in guns and starship hangars, give it a network of a couple thousand defense laser satellites, get yourself a couple mile-or-so-long ground-based railguns. Make yourself a network of next-gen fallout shelters miles underground, big enough to house most of your population (or at least those of your population you like—you are are a dictator). If anyone gets all the way to your homeworld, you're already in deep doody, so this should be your last, most drastic line of defense. Also a good place to keep your most complex megatelescopes—this should be the safest place in your empire, and you need as many eyes on the skies as you possibly can. You loose your sensors, and you're blind to any incoming attacks. Space is big and mostly empty, so if you've got telescopes, you'll be able to see pretty much any attack coming. But that's all just for the worst-case scenario. Fundamentally, you don't want folks even getting to your homeworld. Short of magic hyperspace dimensional popping, people are going to have to get through your solar system to reach your (presumably inner-planet-equivalent) homeworld. The trick is to not let them get far enough. Build bases orbiting every planet, fortify every asteroid, every rock, every speck of space dust. Put guns on everything. It's cheaper and easier to make space habitats than to terraform planets or launch ships out of atmospheres, anyway. Slap outposts everywhere, let your population boom, and give them all guns. You don't just have megatelescopes and laser arrays around your planet—you have them all throughout your system. You have bases all the way out in your Oort Cloud, if you can get them. You want to be able to see everything coming from every direction, and aim a thousand guns in that direction to blast it to bits. There's no stealth in space, so if you have the infrastructure, it becomes easy to sight possible threats. But as you said, how can you be sure if a ship approaching is a threat or not? Any reasonably fast ship is nearly an apocalypse weapon by itself—how can you protect against that? Sure, millions of defense arrays helps draw the fight away from your people, but what if some loser pretends to be friendly until he's in your atmosphere? When it comes to this, all your space guns come in handy for a different reason: Intimidation. Creating the illusion of control and dominance is just about as good as actually having it. Technically speaking, anyone could crash their car into any random building and cause a great deal of damage, but no one does, because we're all certain the repercussions from the Powers that Be would be devastating. And, if you've got enough defensive infrastructure, that certainty wouldn't necessarily be misplaced. As a final bonus, if you really want total military dominance over a solar system, and even its surrounding systems, you can build a [Nicoll-Dyson Beam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjtFnWh53z0&vl=en) around your sun (effectively an array of super-gigantic mirrors). Such a beam would transform it into a Starkiller-Base-esque laser that could fry even the distant homeworlds of anyone who tries to pull terrorism on your turf. [Answer] Mobility Leading up to World War 2, France built the Maginot Line, a line of turrets along the Franco-German border. This was a stationary form of defense. Germany built-up a rapidly-dispatchable military utilizing the Blitzkrieg rapid-attack strategy. Germany was able to go around the Maginot Line and seize Paris; and France did not have an equally-sized, equally-mobile military to counter the offensive. It turns out that a mobile military can provide appropriate offense and defense, and can be recalled to your capitol if need be. However, a stationary defense is very easy to circumvent unless you spend significantly more resources to build it literally everywhere. My point is, you should not use many stationary defensive turrets. You should use a dispatchable fleet of patrol ships. This offers the added benefit that if the planet does get destroyed, you will have a fleet of ships in space that can repopulate your species and/or launch a counterattack (related to the mutually assured destruction theory). Regulated Boundaries There could be a 3-D border around the planet in which ships must receive clearance before passing through it. Ships that violate the border might be detained with tractor beams or blown-up. It is possible that the space border might be tens of thousands of miles thick, or it could expand throughout the solar system. Automated Pass Clearance Pass clearance could be mostly automated for anyone who has previously visited the planet. You could use technology similar to E‑ZPass to receive clearance via electromagnetic radiation pass codes. There could even be space stations in the outer perimeter of the planetary region that assess security clearances and distribute passes before a ship gets close enough to violate the spatial region. It should be noted than in various Star Trek series, especially Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise, the namesake vessel has routinely been intercepted with authoritarian warnings of "you have violated our space. Turn around." From the viewers perspective, these kinds of hostile responses are extreme. But from the perspective of the question, these security measures would be within the tyrant's expected options. Threat Detection Even if a ship has a pass authorizing it to cross the border, that doesn't mean it hasn't been hijacked and filled with a payload of WMD's. If this is a serious concern, you should attempt to implement some sort of technology that detects massively destructive cargo (e.g. devices that detect plutonium cargo on ships). Whack-a-mole If you are a tyrant who is largely concerned with your own safety, and if your enemies are largely concerned with assassinating you personally, then your best defense might be having no fixed location. Your species should have numerous off-planet colonies located on moons, asteroids, and space stations. You, the tyrant, should be constantly transferred between locations so that the enemy has no idea where to attack. You should have numerous decoy look-alikes who are also shifting between locations. This has the added benefit that if one of your decoys gets attacked, you may not only survive, but you may be able to raise your threat condition level in anticipation of elevated risk. Mutually Assured Destruction Other answers have already mentioned this. Diplomacy There are numerous ways that present day nations discourage nuclear warfare, ordinary warfare, development of nuclear weapons, etc. These include embargos, trade agreements, humanitarian aid, nuclear treaties (with provisions to permit inspections), financial incentives for respecting treaties, and military alliances. ]
[Question] [ I need to arrange a situation in which a major conflict occurs in a relatively advanced civilization and where the fighting is of such a magnitude that all the participants are eventually reduced to the Stone Age or Bronze Age. Is this even possible? And if so how can it be achieved by conventional weapons? The civilization has no nuclear or biological weapons but is otherwise very advanced (technology can be at any point in the twentieth century within this restriction). The situation involves an earth like world with an earth like civilization. The details of nations, geography or political boundaries can be adjusted as required, however, the question is aimed at conventional warfare. I imagine the goal would be much easier to achieve with nuclear or biological weapons, but these are out of scope. Note conventional war not nuclear war so different question from this one: [Could humanity be blown back into the Stone Age](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/99839/could-humanity-be-blown-back-into-the-stone-age) [Answer] # No: Culture and technology will persist Total regression to "the stone age" would require a massively-expensive conflict that collapses the economies of those involved. But it has to go much farther. Countries have continued to fight wars with devastated economies. This war must destroy all trade and all firms and all capital...and all their associated structure... AND destroys knowledge management (schools, libraries, etc) including professional knowledge (banking, law, medicine, science, technology) and practical survival/fieldcraft (navigation, calendar, weather, domestication, food preservation)... AND utterly devastates the social fabric of both societies so deeply that parents won't pass much on what they do know to the next generation... AND, of course, wipes out most infrastructure (energy, communication, food, libraries [again!]) to prevent survivors from collaborating. Hmmm. Even Genghis Khan, who had some pretty severe policies, wasn't even close to that kind of devastation. And the question requires BOTH sides to be devastated. Also, there's also a basic paradox involved: If all structures, laws, social agreements, infrastructure, and technologies of both civilization are in the process of being methodically destroyed, they cannot maintain the complex, expensive, and expansive organized militaries to actually carry out the policies of further destruction. Finally, not sure how you would keep the survivors from collaborating to rebuild, say, a bit of electrical power or a water pump or a radio or using double-entry accounting or a calendar. A lot of this knowledge is just so darn useful. [Answer] There is [17G ton of steel](http://apan.net/meetings/Fukuoka2015/Sessions/1/APAN39_hattori.pdf#page=9) in human made structures nowadays. Pre-industrial consumption was some kgs of iron per human per year! Also population would decline a lot after fall of civilization. So, even considering rusting, there would be enough iron laying around to last a couple of centuries. Simply make a forge, do some work with hammer and you have much better tool than stone age tech can produce(some edge cases excepted - like obsidian blades) and much cheaper than bronze. To produce good iron blade the blacksmith must know a lot, so there would be incentive to keep at least basic knowledge about iron processing and iron making. So even if civilization does not recover in a couple of centuries, the survivors would remember enough to reproduce something like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuCnZClWwpQ). [Answer] Figuratively? Yes, of course, that's pretty easy. Literally? This is somewhere in between a loud, definite "No!" and "Hardly, in a reasonable setting". You can figuratively set an entire nation back to the stone age with conventional weapons rather easily. Bomb their cities, destroy their electric power plants, maybe cut a few transmission lines and phone lines as well to be sure, destroy much of the most important infrastructure (water supply, bridges, major roads, gas pipeline), and perform a [Pol Pot shuffle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide#Genocide_of_minorities). Declare a trade embargo, and shoot at aid organizations trying to enter the country. Done. Most of your enemies will starve away within a month or die from cold during the next winter (and many of those that remain will die from disease), but if that is tolerable, there you go, they're now basically back at the stone age, figuratively. They'll still have metal items, but no machines (none that work, anyway), and no engineers to restore operability or fuel/energy to operate them. Resources such as coal and oil will be used up in a couple of weeks. There will be no easy way of long-range communications, no functional government, and a scarcity of food and basic supplies (medicine) beyond our imagination. It will take them several generations to get back on their feet again, if at all. Literally, it's a different matter. Not only is there a lot of metal (and plastics) lying around ready to be picked up, but also stone age means not just using metal. It means, among other things, not having knowledge of agriculture (not what we call agriculture today, or what we called agriculture 200 years ago, anyway) or knowledge of a million other seemingly trivial things (reading/writing, to name one). Including the knowledge about ores and, well, heating them to get metal. Or, knowledge such as how to make black powder, which at the time of my childhood pretty much every 10 year old knew. Or even basic knowledge of physics, which will be entirely sufficient to build a primitive generator. All those things that are absolutely trivial for a modern human, but divine magic for a stone-age human. So, in addition to first incinerating the whole place (to be sure no books survive) and then going through with a metal detector, carefully removing everything, and then killing everybody above the age of 5, you have no way of getting close to "stone age", literally. Then again, 5 year olds left alone won't survive, so it would be rather "total extermination" than "stone age". You would really have to raise those 5 year olds (preferably younger) on an isolated island deprived of any manufactured non-stick, non-stone goods, and not give them any kind of education. Wait 15-20 years, done. In theory, that's doable, of course; but in a reasonable science-based setting, I'd say... "No way!". [Answer] A historical parallel could be made to the fall of the Roman Empire and the medieval Dark Ages. Essentially, centuries of endless conflict and bloodshed with no real victor has a reversing effect on human progression and achievement. This isn't unrealistic either. In order to have an advanced technology, you need to be able to distribute and specialize labor. That requires an economy where goods can be dispersed allowing individuals to focus on matters other than personal survival. This also requires a government/laws to protect markets and trade so that goods and services can be exchanged. You can't have an iPhone factory if everyone is just taking the phones. After generations of such conflict, knowledge becomes lost causing reversion of human progression. Then the final reversion is the loss of data in the form of actual databases/infrastructure to books and scrolls. For instance: if somehow every electronic data storage device was simultaneously destroyed. The loss to modern human progress would be incalculable. So in your world just have cultures that constantly clash violently and without any real periods of peace. [Answer] Set the civilization back - definitely. Regress to the stone age - not possibly. In any long-term military conflict (with symmetrical warfare), a country must take care of its industry. If its mines or factories stop running, or can not produce sufficiently advanced weapons, it will be defeated. So we can be assured that every side will take to protect its technology and manufacturing base. Long war can wear this manufacturing base down, but as soon as that happens, that side's war is lost. Can all countries lose their manufacturing bases simultaneously? Very, very unlikely. And even after losing a war, a country will try to do its best to get back on its feet. We need stockpiles of weapons much larger than their possible targets that even after losing all of the factories a country would still have enough to wage a conventional war that may have to last years. And that's not the case today, or even tomorrow. However, if we have some kind of anti-technology cult that has millions of followers all over the world and can launch highly destructive low tech attacks, my calculations would not hold true. [Answer] While I think it would be hard to reduce a 20th-century civilisation to a primitive level, I believe it is not impossible. However, it will require a total war involving all nations of your world and some cultural changes. Your people should be willing to fight to the last person. They also should be unreasonable enough to prefer high-cost victories to ceasefires. Religious wars might be just the thing for you. If all countries are theocracies (or something similar) and are engaged in a global war fuelled by fanatism you might get enough people killed to make rebuilding impossible for at least a couple of generations. I would suggest a universal adoption of the [scorched-earth strategy](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Scorched_earth). This will guarantee very high levels of destruction. Moreover, if done properly it will be hard to salvage anything. Not to mention, that this strategy also dramatically reduces food and water supplies (poison wells, destroy crops, etc.). This will definitely bring deaths of millions of people. [Napalm](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Napalm) and [chemical weapons](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Chemical_weapons_in_World_War_I) should be widely employed against civilian populations. If done right, attacks will result in plenty of injured people and not so many deaths. It will help to drain the resources and reduce the number of people fit for work or military service. All of your countries must have well-developed propaganda machines. Lay people have to believe that total and uncompromised victory is the only solution to their problems with neighbours. Civilian populations should be ready to sacrifice everything for the war effort and to endure any suffering brought by the war. It is extremely important to destroy as much as possible. But it is even more important to reduce global population. Destruction of arable land would be highly beneficial as it will prohibit high-density population centres. The war should be rather short. It would be wise for all countries to stockpile various supplies prior to its start. If my tactical suggestions are implemented the industrial base will be destroyed shortly and it might become challenging to achieve population numbers necessary for the desired technological collapse. Why am I focusing on population? Different levels of technology require certain numbers of people to support them. According to some estimates, [contemporary technological level](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insufficient-data.html) needs from 100 mln to 1 billion people, Victorian level technology needs at least 10 000 people (from The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm by Lewis Dartnell). So, if you reduce the population, make it really hard to get food and water (everybody is foraging, no free hands to specialise), and create conditions for low population density, it will become impossible to maintain technologies. It might take about 50-70 years, but once a significant number of people familiar with technologies dies it will be lost. It does not matter if underground libraries and blueprints survive. [Answer] Yes. Assuming space travel tech that existed in the 1960s. First, using Saturn V, or N1, rockets, physically collide with a massive asteroid and set it on a collision path to earth. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was only 6 to 9 miles in diameter. I bet we can get something bigger. Once the sunlight is blocked and crops fail, the mass starvation and total environmental collapse will result in the total and complete collapse of all civilizations. The dearth of oxygen, due to the death of the vast majority of plant life, will result in humanity basically becoming extinct except for in a few remote locations underground where humans survive off of the heat from local volcanic activity, and the oxygen produced by bacteria, and eating troglobites to survive. There are probably pockets of plants left near the equator and near jetstreams to help with Oxygen production. Plants clearly survived the Dinosaur killer after all. By the time the next Ice Age is over, you'll be back in the Stone Age. ~~~~ EDIT: For a more conventional wartime way to achieve this, imagine a genocidal crusade, the goal is to literally BURN every single city, is launched by both sides, but a "base trade" situation occurs, where the competing armies miss one another, and both proceed to ravage the other nation, and burn every single city in both countries. The cities burning would output enough smoke to block sunlight, the equivalent to a conventional version of Sagan's 'Nuclear Winter'; thus, the resulting ice age would end with a new stone age. [Answer] This could be possible with a two-part process: firstly, one culture could decide to regress another that it had conquered as punishment for some kind of slight. Enforced over a long enough period, maybe relocated to a resource-poor region, that culture could regress to fairly primitive ways and end up on that sort of level. The more advanced culture could then encounter some disaster of their own, wiping them out entirely and leaving the regressed culture in that state. As long as the advanced culture was distant enough (say, on a different continent), access to their tech would be difficult and unlikely to advance the regressed culture until discovered. [Answer] A classic war is unlikely to accidentally result in a such a set-back. Yet if a group within a civilization has the very goal of restoring the entire population to an idealized version of an ancient way of life, they might succeed. One rather recent historic example of such an attempt would be the [Red Khmer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge) with their leader Pol Pot, who strongly idealized an agriculture society and wanted to reset the country to the ways of the old people, resulting in a large scale genocide especially against their own Intelligentsia ("To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.") and forced relocation of the people from the cities to rural areas and abolishment of schools. They wanted to abolish everything modernized 20th century society requires and only were forcefully stopped by a Vietnamese intervention. They wanted to build an agrarian socialist utopia. In your setting, it could be a group of eco-terrorist/friends-of-nature forcing/helping to restore the planet to the ill-visioned/right way of life, who succeeded. [Answer] I think you would need biological or nuclear weapons. Imagine a world war that lasts for a decade or more. That in conjunction with nuclear explosions or epidemics (like airborne Ebola virus), could very well reduce the population enough and devastate economies enough to revert. I don't think you would get to the stone age right away, or that it would be a guarantee. There will be people with expertise, but as long as those individuals don't have a means of passing that information to future generations, it will be lost. Additionally, if these people are isolated to a region of the world, they may not have access to where the information is stored. I do agree with the other commenters that it would be nigh impossible to revert to the actual Stone Age. You may find the show the 100 interesting; it handles a similar concept. [Answer] Yes, civilisations can and have regressed technologically. If you support the propositions put forward in the book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, the level of civilisation basically relates to the amount of food production and hence population. Where an advanced society reaches situations where population had to be limited so did their technological capabilities. Skills sets were forgotten as people having them died out and without sufficient surplus resources to spare a replacement individual from the chores of hunting and gathering. This has been studied and examined extensively in the same text. The stone age was the age of human hunting and gathering. So your war would have to reduce the population to rely on this intensive activity. This would mean no organsied farming of any kind. This would require all domesticated animals (horses, donkeys, cattle, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, pigs) to be extinct or unavailable and only dangerous large mammals to remain. Also agriculture would have to be restricted, either through loss of crops/seeds and/or failure of mechanisation (through a lack of fuel) as well as a lack of beasts of burden. Also another ice age, (which would leave the planet drier and colder) would help reduce the ability to grow crops, as we didn't grow any until the end of the last ice age 10000 years ago. I would think that a long war that exhausted all the fuel on earth, plus pestilence/plague and famine to wipe out most of the population and animals. Possibly bought on by a new Ice Age would produce a civilisation whose populance has to spend their entire day hunting and gathering to survive. [Answer] Realistically: no. There is no way you could destroy pretty much everything there is. And even if you manage to do that, people would still have the knowledge they had prior to the war. It would definitly be a huge setback, but definitly not dozens of millenia worth of progress. Even knowing that something is possible (like metalworking or electricity) would be a huge advantage. The problem with inventing something new is, well, that it's new. You don't know it is possible, so it's very difficult to even think of it. If you know it's possible, you can go straight to trying to develop it again. The survivors would also most likely try to get things electricity back as soon as possible. If a group of people can find someone that knows a lot about electricity, that actually shouldn't be too hard. And that goes for pretty much everything. Knowledge is not something you can just destroy. To destroy all knowledge, you'd have to destroy all books, hard drives and whatever other means people used to store knowledge. On top of that you'd need to kill every living human that has some knowledge (so pretty much everyone, even toddlers), which would make it impossible to have a civilization at the stone age. I think it's not possible to set civilization back to before the medieval era, just because we have so much knowledge. Even if you were to transport humans to an entirely new planet, they'd quickly get some infrastructure going with some form of trading (it'd probably their second priority, right after food and water). [Answer] The only way for survivors of a catastrophic global conflict to be left with only stone-age technology would be if that's all they had to begin with. In other words, if the only survivors were the ["uncontacted" peoples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples) of remote islands and deep jungles who never learned to smelt metals (or even knew it was possible). As mentioned in other answers, just knowing a thing is possible (like making things out of metal) goes a long way to rediscovering the required processes and skills. Having at least a rough idea of how it's done (as can be passed down verbally) is plenty to ignite the rediscovery process and re-learn the finer points of doing it well, doing it efficiently, and scaling it up to an industrial scale (assuming there is spare human capital to put toward the effort). [Answer] ## A weapon that kills everyone except the people on North Sentinel Island Note: Does not fit with the "conventional war" requirement, but as others have stated, doing so through conventional war is basically impossible. A biological weapon seems the most likely. [North Sentinel Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island) is an island in the Indian Ocean, essentially isolated from the modern world. The people who live there, the Sentinelese, maintain a hunter-gatherer society without any evidence of agriculture or even fire. One of the last cultures uncontacted by modern civilization, they are known for attacking anyone who lands on the island. The island is considered protected and contact of any sort is extremely rare and growing more infrequent over time. Imagine an extremely contagious biological weapon with an incredibly long dormancy period - long enough and contagious enough to spread to every human on Earth without being noticed, at which point it triggers and kills everyone except for the isolated inhabitants of this island. While there may be hermits elsewhere isolated from society, they are unlikely to rebuild society on their own, especially if the virus remains dangerous for a long period afterwards. Hundreds of years later, the inhabitants of the island may begin to explore the surrounding seas and begin to spread across the world. Lacking knowledge of post stone-age culture that would allow them to comprehend the ruins they find, they are unlikely to learn anything from the dead remains of civilization for many centuries to come. Note: There are a few other uncontacted stone-age tribes that are isolated from modern civilization. They might survive as well. [Answer] The only way to achieve a worldwide collapse of such a magnitude is by simultaneously killing every person above a certain age (or erasing their knowledge), as well as destroying/wiping every knowledge store (book, computer, etc.) in existence at the exact same time. That is impossible using what we would consider conventional weapons, so the answer is a resounding NO. [Answer] Given the right setting, absolutely possible. You indicated that such things as population and the existence of other nations is malleable, so lets change a few things. America became great with a population of just over 200 million or so through the 1900's, so a small population is feasible. We have a multi-national world mosaic, simply because of the huge diverse continental areas available. So let's restrict this. Civilizations got a boost because of favorable climate, and areas of unfavorable climate (too hot or too cold) did not contribute substantially to human technological growth, so let's play with climate as well. And availability of resources certainly has everything to do with the development of technology. Modern humans went through the various 'metal'ages because there were sources of these metals easily obtained, on the surface. The copper age would never have happened if no one was able to find and mine early copper deposits. So we need a land mass with easily obtained varied resources. So lets assume an 'earth' with a single habitable land mass equivalent to, say, 50% larger than Australia (about the area of China). Big enough to offer a multitude of resources, but small enough to prevent divergent human speciation (otherwise known as 'human races') and 'zenophobia'. Put it in a fairly temperate climate zone, but with dramatic seasonal changes to make survival somewhat tenuous. Keeping warm, keeping cool, and moving from place to place are motivations for technological invention and entrepreneurship. Lots of mineral wealth close to the surface. Lots of resources. Say the population reaches a billion (roughly equivalent to the population density of China). It is all one single nation, one race. No multi-ethnic problems. Cultural diversity is by location and function - farming, manufacturing, fishing, mining, and so on - but generally homogeneous. But there are an abundance of social pressures. Population density, resources running out, climate change, food production, pollution, all the things we have today that are a result of growth. Friction develops. Growth slows down,almost stagnates. Huge polarization in wealth and income distribution. Two sides become polarized. Violence and rioting break out. Now, let's put some historical pieces into play. The American Civil War almost bankrupt the nation. What saved America was the rest of the world. Their economy was still functioning, America could trade with them. Also, America depended on immigration from Europe. Almost a million Americans died as a result of the Civil War. Isolate America, and it would have been kicked back a few decades, especially if the South had been victorious and the North was ransacked. Consider China under chairman Mao, and the cultural revolution. Official government policy backed up by military force pushed China back to a rural agrarian society. Technology was all but banished. Universities were closed, the intelligentsia were killed off, and knowledge was quite literally destroyed. This knowledge was preserved in the rest of the world, but suppose China WAS the ONLY world? Suppose there was only the Middle East. No Western nations. Consider how close ISIS came to driving Syria and Iraq back to an agrarian society. Last, consider how far back Cuba was kicked when Russia collapsed. Except for the main city of Havana, it pretty much decayed. Industry collapsed, infrastructure rotted away, and the internet age never happened. It wasn't a lack of knowledge, as education was still paramount in Cuban society. It was a lack of resources. Again, outside countries preserved these physical technologies, and they are being re-introduced into Cuba. But if Cuba were the ONLY country? And resources dried up completely? All of the knowledge from civilization won't help if there is nothing left to build with. So, yes, assume a country limited in size, in resources, with no other supporting nations to stabilize the mean, no other lands to provide enclaves of refuge. Add a civil war that accelerated the depletion of its resources. Out of the civil war an extremist fanatical fundamentalist-mentality (right-or-left-wing) anti-tech ideologically-driven faction took hold of the government, it is possible to imagine a scenario wherein an advanced society could be kicked back into a subsistence level of existence through conventional weaponry armed conflict. [Answer] Sure, happens all the time in Africa. The warlords roll through with their technicals (Toyota pickups with machine guns mounted on the bed), loot every house and burn some, kill some of the men, abduct some male children, and that's just the printable stuff. Do that on a national scale 4-5 times, and they'd be in the stone age. However, once the warlords get sick of doing that, or get dead, then all it'll take is for someone who remembers electricity to talk to someone who can work copper. Power will be running heaters and pumps within a year. People who remember how to machine things will have wooden then bronze mills and lathes worked out, and the implementation of the tech will keep getting better and better, and you'll have lighting, vaccines and epoxy within 5 years, quite possibly skipping incandescent and going straight to arc-discharge. If the epoxy is decent, you'll skip the metal ages altogether and go straight to composites. The currency of progress will be memory: When the semiconductor people achieve the first silicon chip with 2 transistors on it, they'll turn immediately to making it 2000 then 2 million, because they remember 100 million, so they know it is achievable. Within another couple years they'll have Arduino class computing on a chip, with early attention paid to memory protection and other modern features that make systems stabls. Not one person will hand thread a single core, the entire 40s-60s evolution of mainframes will just be skipped. Large businesses will run their accounting and business systems on these tiny things, probably using whatever OO language can be squeezed onto the platforms (skipping COBOL and all that). Now if you murder all the tech people and leave only Douglas Adams' "one-third" of the population, the others will become technical people, knowing the things are possible... But will have a longer journey, lacking direct memory of how things were done. At least someone will survive who can tell them, though. [Answer] # Can a civilization collapse to the Stone Age? A civilization? Sure. All you need to do is wipe out their source of power/electricity, and leave them in a state chaotic enough that they can't rebuild. A lot of economies have collapsed like that, to varying extents. ## Why is electricity so vital? The reason is simple. Without electricity... how will you cook? How will you keep yourself warm? How will you see at night? How will you know what's going on in the world? How will you communicate? How will you get food from the store, if they are having all these same problems,and all the food rots from lack of refrigeration? How will you get clean drinking water? Few people have methods of dealing with these problems, if the grid breaks down entirely. Even if you personally could manage, the inability of those around you is going to create a lot of chaos and damage. ## Won't outsiders help you get back on your feet? What about outside aid? Even the USA working to help Puerto Rico is failing. That's one of the foremost economic powers assisting a small island nation. ## Isn't it hard to cause this? Not at all. Detroit, for example, is bringing in cattle and using a local community currency in place of money. Electricity is becoming a rarity there, where neighbours are working together to try and get enough money to get electricity. That goes to show how important the NATION'S organization is. If it's good, then you can kill 90% of the populace, and they'll rebuild themselves within three generations. If it is bad, then they'll personally cause their regression to stone age cattle farmers. ## But it's not really the stone age, right? It basically is. Again, how will you eat? A lot of people will be scavenging for barbecues and fuel, but others will have to try and cook over wood fires like cavemen. How will you keep yourself warm in the winter? I you're lucky, you still have an intact insulated house, which will remain warm without electric heating. If not, or your house falls into disrepair... you'll have to try and scavenge enough clothes and blankets and fuel for fire. When those run short, you'll have to hunt animals for furs. ## Why not just rebuild? Again, organization. Puerto Rico can't simply, "just rebuild" because it would be too expensive, and their economy is in shambles. That's why the USA isn't paying many billions of dollars to redo their whole power infrastructure, because it's so expensive and difficult. And that's the government... normal people have it WAY harder. If you can't find a power generator, what are you doing to do... make one? Because that's a really complicated device to try and make from whatever tools you can scavenge with a coal furnace (if you can even obtain a coal furnace). And many of the components, you just won't know how to make. The microchips and delicate electronics we use in so many of this era's devices. In the case of an EMP, it will be very hard to even find many components, as most will be frazzled. ## But this couldn't happen to a major nation, right? Puerto Rico was once one of the largest trading ports in the world. There's no such thing as, "too big to fail". There is concern that an EMP from North Korea could drive the USA into the stone age. The cost of repairs would be astronomical. The US already badly neglects its infrastructure, so whether they can foot the bill for repairs when the economy grinds to a halt until the repairs is in question. Civil unrest would make recovery difficult or impossible. Even under good conditions, it is likely many areas of the USA would go without power for decades (many areas already have problems with bad roads, sewage, and power infrastructure). # What would this world look like? Worse than the poorest parts of India. In many places, India is cellphones and wood fires. This would be wood fires, copper knives, and a few AK-47s, fighting overs cans of beans. Though, actually, the knives and tools will probably be made of good steel. There's so much scrap steel around, it's much easier to tear apart a car and use leaf-spring to forge a knife, rather than trying to make your own iron blooms or melt down wires to get copper. If not for scavengeable steel, in fact... it would literally be the stone age, no one would even be able to mine copper, much less bronze. They would have to use stone tools, as stones would be something you could still find. Luckily, there's plenty of scrap to forage for. ]
[Question] [ What would be the natural reason for the surface of a planet to be toxic or otherwise uninhabitable to animals but not plants? This planet is not Earth and life would have evolved this way from the beginning. Ideally the animals would have to live higher up (trees, rocks, maybe even floating islands) and would all have evolved to fly or find another way to navigate treetops/the air. Plants would still thrive on the ground and animals would still be able to go down to the ground but not for long. (when I say animals I mean animals and sentient species) What I've thought of so far: * a layer of CO2 coats the surface (or higher % of CO2) which means plants can grow but animals can only go down for a quick time (or have developed ways of holding their breath for a bit longer). * the ground burns for some reason, but plants have evolved to resist it * the ground is toxic to touch, whatever the toxicity is it's something plants use I'm looking for complete and plausible ideas or reasons animals can't live on the ground but plants can. [Answer] Pollen from the plants (maybe just one extremely common plant family) is extremely toxic to most animals and there's an awful lot of it in the air. Perhaps it's a defense mechanism these plants evolved to stop animals from eating them. Most animals can cope with inhaling a small amount of pollen but more than that will kill them. At higher altitudes there is less pollen. Not sure why there are no animal species that evolved a resistance to pollen. Maybe it disrupts some very basic chemistry common to most animal life on the planet. Or perhaps it's not the chemical toxicity but the physical shape of the pollen - perhaps the particles are hard and have jagged edges that damage the animals' internal organs. [Answer] Big Smelly Mangrove [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1baHd.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1baHd.jpg) Animals cannot come to the ground because there is no ground. Only an endless swamp with nothing to stand on. The air is thick with CO2 from decomposition. It will not kill you but you might pass out and drown. Or get eaten by the Arapaimas that lurk below the brown surface. The decomposition is part of the world's ecosystem. Animals live in the sky, die, fall into the swamp, decompose and get sucked up by the trees and so returned to the sky. [Answer] There is one type of animal that lives on the ground. [![ants](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KsWH0.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KsWH0.jpg) [source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bivouac_of_army_ants_%289372570529%29.jpg) Your plants are [myrmecophytes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrmecophyte) or the alien equivalent. The plant - insect alliance is so successful that all existing plants are allied to one degree or another with the Hive, and the denizens of the Hive control all ground spaces in this world. I picture the Hive as like the depicted army ants. If you touch down you are bit within seconds, and you have a few more seconds to get well into the air before the wave arrives - both from the ground and from adjacent vegetation. The Hive spans the entire planet, like a hive of Argentine ants spanning all of california. These creatures have conquered the planet. There are places where plants use chemical wiles to trick their Hive associates into helping those plants over other competing plants and this happens in our world: [Trees Trap Ants into Sweet Servitude](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/131106-ants-tree-acacia-food-mutualism). There are nest parasites and things which lead a sneaky parasitic existence in the Hive. But the Hive eliminated all other animal competition millenia ago. Those species that survive took to the air and airborne refugia where they (hopefully) stay out of reach. Many of these are predators on Hive members and will watch and swoop down to snatch one and take it away - usually at the cost of some bites from Hive members that jump on when it is low and ride off with it. [Answer] The simple answer, though it may not be the one you are looking for, that is the plants are carnivorous. They evolved slowly to become more and more dangerous, the animals evolved to escape from them into the air. After some millions of years it has settled to just the right amount of separation for your story. [Answer] All the vegetal life on the planet produces a toxic sap, which kills any animal interacting with it. Therefore the only way out for animals is to stay above the ground, away from the sap and its lethal effects. [Answer] The plants predate on the animals. The ground is covered in the things, and the only safety available for animals is to remain airborne. I don't know if this means your plants aren't sedentary photosynthesizers or not. Perhaps all of their nutrition comes from predation. Perhaps it just supplements photosynthesis and allows for a more energetic metabolism. But whatever you do, don't land or crash. The animals then give live birth or lay eggs in such a way that those can be cradled on their backs. Their young learn to fly quickly, lest a gust of wind make them food for Audrey II (feed me!). The niches not colonized by plants (rims of active volcanos) would become crowded. Some plants would become safe long enough for animals to pollinate, others would fake this condition... ouch for the poor hummingbirds who fall for it. [Answer] [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1AMMo.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1AMMo.png) [Source](https://sciencing.com/list-underwater-ocean-plants-6636223.html) Simple, no ground at all! Although this answer does not answer the question specifically about ground, it is one idea with no ground. A typical "no animal zone" might include some dangerous plants as well as large amounts of C02 (already mentioned). Water hemlock is on such plant, which grows in marshy, swampy areas; and along banks of streams and rivers and mainly large bodies of water. The toxin directly attacks the central nervous system, causing nausea, violent convulsions, grand mal seizures and death. [Source](https://www.ehow.com/list_6628387_poisonous-water-plants.html) [Answer] Beneath the surface there is a volcanic system which either constantly or periodically releases large amounts of carbon dioxide in sufficient quantities to kill all animal life in the vicinity. In 1986, such an emission occurred at [Lake Nyos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster) in northwestern Cameroon in Africa. The result was the death of 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock. Elsewhere in Africa, between Rwanda and Congo is [Lake Kivu](https://bgr.com/science/this-picturesque-lake-in-africa-is-hiding-a-terrifying-and-deadly-secret/), which again, due to volcanic activity associated with the East Africa Rift can violently explode releasing vast quantities of both carbon dioxide and methane. As with Lake Nyos, such eruptions have the potential to kill all animals in the region. Also, in 1984, [Lake Monoun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Monoun) in Cameroon killed 37 people after it erupted carbon dioxide. You planet doesn't need to have violent eruptions of volcanically sourced carbon dioxide, it can simply be a constant emission of sufficient quantities of gas to cause suffocation. Additionally, to make it more difficult for animals to move around on land a significant proportion of the vegetation could be similar to [horizontal scrub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anodopetalum), often described as impenetrable. If traversed, one can find oneself [clambering over branches](https://.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/H/Horizontal%20Scrub.htm) to eventually find oneself several meter above the ground. Occasionally, people have been known to fall through and die. [Answer] There Is No Ground Turns out all the landscape has been changed to something more dangerous, like extending cave systems with no end, which also explains why tall mountains are so common. Plants have adapted with their more durable and less mechanic parts, their roots extends to deepest parts of the caves and all cavities filled with waters that contaminated with toxic CO2 dissolved in it. Higher parts of the plants such as leafs, can be eaten by animals. And daring animals can go deeper more for the prize, fruit which has more nutrients but far deeper in the caverns. [Answer] There's research showing that plants release chemicals into soil as part of a mutually beneficial interaction with microorganisms (e.g. [here](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6771575/#:%7E:text=The%20use%20of%20plant%20signaling,boosting%20the%20plant%20immune%20system)). In this world, perhaps, evolution has favoured those chemicals to become increasingly toxic to complex ground-dwelling animals - and for said animals to evolve towards long term flight. [Answer] The cell types that make up animals are fundamentally different from the types of cells that plants are made of. One major difference is that plants have a compound in their cells that causes them to combine - or become welded - to the cells of other plant cells. Somehow, this doesn't result in one giant plant species on the ground that is fused together, but it is a feature of life in this world that plants fuse to other plants - permanently or semi-permanently - when contact between the two is made. Animals, a long time ago, by definition, developed the ability to touch a plant cell and not become fused, at least not instantly. Animals can walk on the planets surface - of which almost every part is covered by plants - but if they remain in contact with a plant for an extended amount of time, they too begin to fuse (although, ultimately, unsuccessfully, because their cell types are so different, it just kills the animal). The current state of the world is at a time when animals have yet to invent a technology for staying on the ground, but it will happen. [Answer] In Dr. Stone's anime there's an example of a valley full of sulfuric acid (gas state) denser than air, so if anyone goes below a certain height they will die. In this [reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DrStone/comments/dd12m0/the_sulfuric_acid_team/) someone explains that some kinds of algae generate it when decomposing. If your plants generated sulfuric acid when decomposing or simply the atmosphere had a % of it in the lower layer it would very well explain your phenomena. ]
[Question] [ first question here (but not last I think). I'm currently thinking about ideas I have to form the base of a book I'll then write, and I need some insights/knowledge about exploration. I'm looking for realistic (or the closest it can be) answers. For now, let's set up a bit the universe. We're talking about a centralized, united empire, spreading from a coast to another. It's technological advancement is quite similar to the Renaissance, 17th century in particular. Until then, the good soil was enough to feed the population, the herds had enough grass and wild plants to feed on, and forests were still standing. Yet, for some years, it became clear that harvests were not what it would have been. Fungic infestation spread and the empire, saw as a giant, was now on the verge of dislocation. Philosophers, thinkers and scientists emitted the idea that a cure to these plague could be found where the known man never stepped. So exploration parties were sent, braving danger. I'm wondering: what could be a good way to explain a late exploration of neighboring lands? We know that Vikings landed in America quite early (10th century or so), so oceans seems to be a no go. Mountains and desert doesn't sound like an impassable terrain, as humanity spread with or without these limitations. I hope my question fits for the stackexchange format, and I wan't wait to read your ideas. [Answer] Isolationist Culture Tokoguwa Japan willingly shut itself off from the rest of the world in the 16th century, going as far to burn their grand fleet. After the voyage of Zheng He China basically gave up on maritime exploration, with the late Ming and the Qing Dynasties becoming extremely insular. Korea has had a very long history of inwardness. In short you can have a 17th century civilization with good conditions and it won’t expand due to a culture that highly values its traditions, is distrustful of the world and thinks it’s especially important. [Answer] Expansion and direction would be dependent on need and resources. If your kingdom butts up against some sort of natural barrier, and there are no currently useful resources just beyond said barrier, It probably won't expand much in that direction. There is no real incentive to do so. That is really all you need to set up the circumstances for an empire to spend a long time within certain confines and then have a sudden need to expand. So your empire runs coast to coast and has plenty of natural resources. Say the northern border is very mountainous and has high deserts. If there isn't any resources in the mountains or just beyond the mountains, the large bulk of your society is going to be just fine staying put. The semi adventurous will be fine moving around within your borders. Only the super adventurous, the loners, the hermits, and maybe a few other nutjobs will voluntarily go beyond into the mountains. That is, until they find something. It would take a major resource of some kind, or a threat, to cause a mass influx of people. You can look at the push of the Romans into the Rhinelands for examples of going after a Threat. You can also look at the California Gold Rush for an example of going after a resource. In your case, it looks like a Fungus is your motivator. The desired resource is land free of the fungus. Mountain ranges often have some fertile fields and valleys to be exploited and a full scale push through the mountain range may be in order to find more fertile fields. So you could easily have centuries of stagnation as long is there is no real incentive to go exploring, followed by a logical rush into unknown territory later . [Answer] The recent invention of a medicine that protects explorers from previously deadly diseases. Neighboring lands had extraordinarily deadly native diseases that would all but wipe out anyone from the empire who dared to venture there. Maybe they are spread by insects, which make them all but impossible to avoid. But this fungic infestation has had one silver lining: someone was able to develop a medicine from the fungus which allows explorers to resist the effects of these native diseases. It all began with a young farmboy who foolishly wandered into a plague zone. Stranded out in the jungle and sick, he had little to eat but some unappealing fungus-infected crops intended for disposal. Astonishingly enough, he recovered from the sickness and made his way back home to tell everyone the story. So now the people are free to venture into lands previously inaccessible to them. So long as they don't run out of medicine. [Answer] Because barbarians are more trouble than they are worth When nations become imperial, they only want to conquer peoples who are worth conquering. Conquering a neighboring kingdom with lots of resources or technology can be worth the sacrifice of war because when you win, you get new lands with lots of stuff to plunder while simultaneously eliminating a major competitor. In contrast, less advanced civilizations can form armies that are just as much work to subdue, but come with much less payoff; so, you freeze your borders once you reach barbarians (people with more weapons than wealth). When you take Rome for example, they conquered all of the richest and most advanced civilizations in the european/mediterranean area including Greece, Carthage, Egypt, Pontis, Gaul, Capadocia, etc. but from 18-118AD the nature of their aquiasions changed. When they started pushing into places like Germanian, Dacia, Thrace, and Britannia, their wars started costing them more than they could squeeze out of their newest territories which lead to the practical freezing of their borders in 118AD. Rome did not try to make any significant push out past these borders again in the hundreds of years that followed. When an empire's borders become fixed along a barbarian-front, it draws a line in the sand both literally and figuratively. Everything past that line is considered "not worth it". The people, the land, the culture, the technology, etc. and it forms a strong prejudice against those peoples. To this day, many people maintain the image that the ancient Germans and Celts were just a bunch of warlike nomadic tribes wandering around the woods in bear pelts armed with crude axes and spears because that was the story told by Roman propaganda. This view that forms of Barbarians is generally so negative that it not only keeps people from wanting to conquer those lands, but it also keeps them from wanting to visit, trade with, or study those peoples as well. Once an empire becomes fully surrounded by "barbarians" like you see in the case of 1st century Rome or 3rd century China, you tend to see isolationism become the status quo of that Empire. Not only do you not want to interact with any of your barbarian neighbors, but you come to the assumption that everyone everywhere else in the world are barbarians, and not worth interacting with. [Answer] Are you looking for a scientific idea or a psychological one? Isolationist Japan did exactly that for centuries so that one is easy. If you want some science fiction ideas: • A massive undersea volcano range belches up bubbles of CO2, methane etc that lower the density of water enough to sink ships. Large, multi-hulled vessels or even gas bladder based systems would have to be developed. • This world has multiple moons, maybe some with highly elliptical orbits that cause extremely intense waves, currents and tides that were impossible to navigate until someone properly plotted them all by figuring out gravity, telescopes and orbital mechanics such that they discovered safe passages that only appear at certain intervals and constantly shift. • This world has a very broad but shallow sea that's full of constantly shifting sandbars that are nearly impossible to chart and wreck ships until either depth sounding radar or a very shallow, multi-hulled vessel is invented to cross it safely (see the Doom Bar). • The planet has an incredibly hazy upper atmosphere (highly active volcanoes, high altitude ice mist, weird light scattering high atmosphere algae eking out an existence on the edge of space) making navigation by stars impossible. • The planet was bombarded by nickel iron bolides early on and has massive magnetic anomalies that make compasses unreliable at best, dangerous at worst. This can be circumvented with the eventual development of an inertial compass. • An era of incredibly intense, near constant hurricanes or cyclones lasting for hundreds or thousands of years is finally tapering off. This isn't without precedent, there were periods in Earth's recent history where you would've had dozens of category 5+ storms a year. • Similar to the above, an extremely intense ocean current circulated around the continent creating hostile conditions. • Maybe there's one landmass in the far north or south hemisphere with a band of ocean that has a clear circle around the globe creating a Screaming Sixties effect [Answer] To build off of what @NixonCranium said, the Tokugawa shogunate and Ming Chinese isolated themselves because they both wanted to stop foreign cultures from mixing with their own. For example, China had thriving trade before this period, but after a short Mongol rule, wanted to restore its own culture. Japan, on the other hand, was threatened by cultures such as the English and Portuguese, who travelled to their land and tried to force technology and Christianity on them. Both were, like your civilization, forced to modernize and industrialize when they were pushed even more by outside sources. So you could base your civilization off these real-world examples--maybe they are threatened by some other people and are trying not to interact with them, or maybe they want to focus on internal issues. Or maybe the government is preventing people from knowing what's beyond your borders for some reason. Either way, I think that it's probably a good idea if you make it so that your civilization has interacted with another at some point in time, even if they've forgotten about it. Hope that helped! [Answer] Interdiction. Unbeknownst to the isolated civilization, they are, in fact, surrounded by much more advanced civilizations. Every time they send out an exploration party, an advanced civ scoops them up and they are never heard from again. [Answer] Dangerous wildlife. It's possible that previously incredible animals and plants killed everyone that explored these lands. But now that the fungus is starting to kill off these dangers exploration becomes possible. Plague Early european settlers in the Americas had hideous death rates to illness and the natives also suffered from our diseases. Lands where plague and climate kills are realistic. [Answer] The oceans could be much rougher than on our world (because moons or something) so a Kontiki or Santa Maria would get hammered if they strayed far from land. So nobody bothers. Or there could be nasty nasty monsters in them. [Answer] They didn't have to, and they didn't want to. Maybe I misunderstood the question and it is really about the discovery but there are many realistic reasons why such an empire would not want to explore/expand to new lands. From what I gather your story does not necessarily take place on Earth so you can modify the continent layout as you wish. 1) The empire wasn't always unified. I imagine there were some military conquests involved to get everyone under one banner, at that time no leader/regional lord wanted to waste energy and resources on exploration. 2) Other continents are very far away (as you can choose where they are) which makes any voyage more dangerous and requires bigger and better ships to transport all the provisionings (which delays any exploration by a few centuries). 3) Make the "new world" hard to reach, to the east you will encounter a desert, in the west there is a mountain range, south and north are covered in ice and snow. Mix in inaccessible coastlines (like they can be in England) and it would deter exploration quite a lot. 4) Cultural/Political reasons: other answers covered that quite a lot but in therms culture imagine a scenario like this: During a time of peace a leader of a coastal province decides to fund some adventurers to find out what is beyond the ocean. A lot of money/resources and time are put into the undertaking. Many ships are sent out, weeks go by and none return, one of the scout ships comes back (later as planned but still) and reports of terrible storms, some sea monsters and a whole lot of nothing/ocean. More time passes, months go by and finally after almost everybody gave up on them, one ship returns. Result: a terrified and traumatized portion of the crew came back, babbling of demons, sea monsters and terrible curses. Nobody really gets any useful information out of them and all, including those who came close to them, died (of some unknown disease). So something like that happens and gets recorded in history. People then just "know" that traveling there is a bad idea and the prominent religion capitalizes on the situation and spreads rumors about the demon lands in the distance, a proof to their hell/heaven concept. 5) The development of ships happens slower than in our world. It's hard to imagine a continent where ships would be completely useless but let's say none of the seas inland are big enough or have an ocean connection to warrant big ships and most water-based transportation takes place on rivers and canals the development on ships would definitely be slower. Most ships that exist are either fishing boats or are not designed to go too far out in the ocean. [Answer] In 1974 replica of Han dinasty [junk "Tai-ki"](https://books.google.ru/books?id=7ykWAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA93&lpg=PA93&dq=%22chunam%22%20antifouling&source=bl&ots=uS3SJaM2l1&sig=ACfU3U03xkaTBPBpXPVPRGtzVk58BZGVaw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6puXAzYfnAhUMlIsKHYoyCgQQ6AEwAXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22chunam%22%20antifouling&f=false) attempted to cross Pacific. After 3 month at sea it started to fall apart thanks to shipworms - traditional tung oil wood treatment was good enough only if you sailed coastwise(fresh water in bays kill borers). In 1503, [shipworms honeycombed the vessels Christopher Columbus](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/tunneling-clam-bedeviled-humans-sank-ships-conquered-oceans-180961288/) brought on his fourth voyage, sinking at least two of them. We are lucky that shipworms can be stopped by simple application of tar. If they were just a little less picky then ocean going ships would appear much later. [Answer] Religion can be a determining factor. If the God said that there is no land beyond the ocean, then there just isn't, don't bother to search. But as the empire is forced into technological advances due to resource limitations, and the culture evolves to a point where enlightened thinkers question everything including religion, there will be brave explorers pushing through the limits of the known world. They go... and they return with wondrous stories of a new world. [Answer] The nearby lands are a different kind of biome where your people's style of agriculture doesn't work. For example, your nation might farm potatoes in a warm climate. The next land over is fertile, but too cold and wet to grow them. Instead, any settlers would have to learn how to grow and process barley, from scratch, since whoever already lives there isn't interested in teaching you. As long as there are other directions to expand, your nation won't put in the high investment needed to colonise that area. Until it runs out of room that is. [Answer] Comfort If the world itself is large enough relative to the size of the civilization, and if the people are not extraordinarily enterprising -- say, they are like hobbits who prefer the comforts of home -- then the amount of unexplored territory surrounding the civilization could be large. If it is an abundant and adequately comfortable land, they might simply never have seen a need to step into the great beyond. Furthermore, the populace could have a significant amount of hubris, such that their stoic preference would be to die trying to be self-sufficient in their mother homeland rather than to depend on anything external. Only the recent plague of discomfort threatens their traditional lifestyle and their pride begins to wane as desperation for a cure increases. ]
[Question] [ Setting is a dark ages medieval world. Equivalent to Earth circa century V AD. Agriculture has no crop rotation, and most of the harvest is lost to plagues and pests (those damn wabbits). Would children born in winter become weaker people as they develop than the children born in other seasons? If they are not with just the premises above, what other elements should I add to achieve this goal? I'm not only referring to babies. It should be something that can hinder development in all ages (i.e. they become weaker adults too). [Answer] Tuberculosis likes the winter. [![sanatorium, 1925](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xdlNi.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xdlNi.jpg) Tuberculosis was a leading cause of death up until this century. In areas with endemic TB, infants and children are at great risk for new infection and with their lower immunity (as well as immunity defects from malnutrition) their risk of death is higher. The risk of contracting TB as an infant or child is higher in the winter. [Seasonality of Tuberculosis](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3068579/) > > The observation of seasonality leads to assume that the risk of > transmission of M. tuberculosis does appear to be the greatest during > winter months. Vitamin D level variability, indoor activities, > seasonal change in immune function, and delays in the diagnosis and > treatment of tuberculosis are potential stimuli of seasonal > tuberculosis disease. Additionally, seasonal variation in food > availability and food intake, age, and sex are important factors which > can play a role in the tuberculosis notification variability. > > > If you goal is for the winter-born to grow up as weaker people, being consumptive will accomplish that. Consumptives were frail, anemic, easily winded, and unable to participate in rough-and-tumble activities of childhood. Tuberculosis can flare up and settle back down, following a remitting and relapsing course. It can stunt growth and if these persons with TB were lucky enough to survive to adulthood they would be small and frail. [![consumptive girl](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b2BD2.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/b2BD2.jpg) <https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/plague-gallery/> [Answer] ## Here's a fun, unforeseen effect! Did you know that, in England, [you're considerably more likely to be a professional athlete if you're born between September and December?](https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/18891749). That same article continues: > > This is not a one off. At a recent U17 European Championship, 75% of the footballers were born in a four month window. Similar results were detected in Canadian ice hockey and at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. > > > In fact, if you look across all sports at all levels, you'll find a disproportionately large representation of people born within a few months. That seems to imply that there's a "best" time to be born if you want to be a professional athlete. However, what's important here isn't really the month a person is born; it's the month that sport's season starts. This is called the [Relative Age Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect), and it actually affects all walks of life with a routine "season". Lets change gears for a second and look at Wikipedia's example. They state that most soccer leagues "use 1 January as their administrative cut-off date when determining an athlete's eligibility to compete in youth competitions, children born before a specified cut-off date are excluded." So, lets consider a child born on January 2nd; we'll call him Jim. Let's also consider a child born on December 31st of the same year, and we'll call him Dan. Now, Jim and Dan both love soccer. At the age of 6, they both sign up, and since they're both born after the latest cutoff, they're put into the same year. Except, as Wikipedia puts it, "a six-year old born in January is almost 17% older than a six-year old born in December in the same year." So not only is Jim older than Dan, he's probably much larger. So as the season starts, Jim is going to stand out considerably more; for all intents and purposes, he's a year older than Dan. Then, when the second season rolls around, Jim's still a "year" older, but now his coach picks him to be captain because he stuck out so much last year. Then the next year he's picked again, and so on. Dan never really has a chance here, beyond being an exceptional athlete. How does this apply to my question? Well, you've asked if children being born a certain month might be weaker, to which I'll ask: is there a routine event every year that kids participate in? Unfortunately, the harvest doesn't really line up with this idea. If anything, it suggests the opposite; kids born in the winter are born early in the harvest "selection process". When all the 6 year old make it out to the fields, your winter babies are going to outperform the rest. But maybe there's other structure in your world. Maybe the serf mud-wrestling season starts on January 1. Maybe that's when school starts (for those peasants lucky enough to go). These would give a disadvantage to the September-December babies. In other words, if you want winter babies to have a developmental disadvantage throughout life, have a developmentally significant routine in their lives start right after winter. [Answer] There would probably be a correlation, I base that on studies on people born during medieval famines and their long term development, it may not hold on the shorter seasonal scale though. Winter is not usually the hungriest season in a subsistence farmers year however, it would be the children born in early to mid-spring that I would be most concerned about. Spring is a busy time on the farm, planting the years crops etc... and there's very little coming in with the main crops just going in the ground and most of the winter's stores depleted. Summer and Autumn are the best seasons for the food/labour balance in agrarian societies. [Answer] I think your hypothesis would be true if pregnancy and rise would be enclosed in a couple of seasons, like it happens for those wabbits or other animals. Humans, or better women, take 9 months to deliver a baby. This means that if they deliver in winter they have been pregnant during months with relative abundance of food. Thus the baby might have received a better nourishment while in the womb. The opposite can apply to babies born in summer: scarce nourishment in the womb, but better intake during early grow up phase. All in all I think the compensate each other. Also, considering that development takes year, it's not a few months of scarce food which can severely hamper development. Different story if the scarcity is spread over several years. To support my statement, consider that humans have not developed a seasonal reproduction, but can do it all year round. Since abundance of food has been a recent achievement for most of mankind, if such an influence was present during our evolution it would have brought to some visible consequences. [Answer] There is one thing that nearly all children born in winter suffer from more than those born in sunnier seasons: Vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D deficiency in early childhood leads to [Rickets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickets), a sickness where the bones are weaker and deformed. Supplementation with Vitamin D can reverse this in young children, older kids will be left with skeletal deformities for life ([2](https://patient.info/doctor/vitamin-d-deficiency-including-osteomalacia-and-rickets-pro)). The results of this is that the affected persons, depending on the severity of the Vitamin D deficiency, would * be unable to walk long distances when older (duo to bowed legs and knock knees, which put greater stress on the cartilages) * have an affinity for lung diseases (duo to – not necessarily visible – deformities of the breastbone) The first issue impacts daily life greatly as it makes activities with a lot of walking and carrying painful. So professions such as soldier, farmer or builder would become harder for those afflicted, especially as they progress in age. The second issue is possibly deadly, particularly in a place without antibiotics. Mind that these deformities are not disfiguring, they may well fall into the range of what occurs normally. [Answer] The effect of malnutrition during pregnancy and early childhood has been researched in cohorts born during the [Dutch hunger winter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_famine_of_1944%E2%80%9345) and the [Great Leap Forward](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine). To quote [a survey](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3857581/) of the now quite extensive literature: "The studies show consistent associations between prenatal famine and adult body size, diabetes, and schizophrenia. For other measures of adult health, findings are less robust." Notably neither height nor IQ seems to be affected in any significant way. I think it is save to say that seasonal malnutrition wouldn't lead to any noticeable differences between people. Even the known correlations wouldn't lead to differences visible without a statistical analysis. [Answer] A child born in the winter wouldn't be weaker unless conditions were so severe that it impacted every day survival like access to food and human interaction over prolonged periods of time. For example any child born into conditions where long-term famine exists will have some physical/mental delays. If a mother doesn't have access to nutrition her milk supply would be affected if she couldn't supplement that with some external food source (they ate the cow/goat/alternate milk source) the baby would be in trouble. Is the child sucking on a wet rag to calm hunger pangs? Is it getting food it can't digest? The level of malnutrition and how its sated will be relevant. Note: this would also affect potential antibodies gained from the mother. Beyond the physical needs not being met parents who are scrounging for food/warmth in general don't have the time (or energy) to interact with a child which would impact verbal/critical thinking skills. There is a strong correlation between how much you interact with a child and how readily they learn language and eventually other skills. That isn't to say that the children couldn't catch up... that depends on how long they were deprived and how circumstances have effected the child since then. There is also some very interesting information on how things like famine imprint in your genetics and affect your offspring generations away. Maybe something in that research could help you out. Google "genetic implications of exposure to famine" However, under normal conditions people seem to thrive just fine in the cold (think Alaska) [Answer] I'm going to answer this as if it was a biology.SE question, since it is an interesting scientific question (what is the impact of season of birth on long term development) and asks for a science-based rationale. There is [good evidence](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10661652) for a long term effect of prenatal nutrition on immune system function in humans, correlated with season of birth. To quote the results section of the abstract: > > Adult death was associated with a profound bias in month of birth with 49 cases born in the nutritionally-debilitating hungry season (Jul-Dec) versus 12 in the harvest season (Jan-Jun). Relative to harvest season the hazard ratio for early death in hungry-season births rose from 3.7 (for deaths >14.5 years, P = 0.000013) to 10.3 (for deaths >25 years, P = 0.00002). Anthropometric and haematological status at 18 months of age was identical in cases and controls, indicating an earlier origin to the defect. > > > There are plenty of other relationships between prenatal or early environmental insults that cause long term adverse health effects, and some other interesting data on [the relationship (in human data) and a proposed mechanism (based on an animal data)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3058292/) for birth month and psychiatric diseases but this one is particularly striking. As an aside, the answers and commenters suggesting that individuals who survive an environmental challenge are necessarily stronger because of natural selection have misunderstood a few basic principles. In natural selection, fitness is about passing on genetic material, not about being stronger. Nothing about natural selection suggests that survival in one condition (e.g., the winter of your early days) makes an individual necessarily better suited to another environment in another developmental stage. [Answer] More likely is that children nursed in the winter would be weaker, since the mother has less food. But since pregnancy lasts nine months, and nursing last for 12ish months, and those pesky wabbits eat your crops in the summer, your poor child has development problems all year long. Which is why all people (especially peasants) were so short back then. [Answer] The easiest way to ensure that children born in the winter are significantly worse off than children born in other seasons is to have some condition in the spring that makes conceptions at that time different. For example, you could have some kind of religious fasting period at a critical stage of development: if your world had something like Lent where everyone past adolescence gives up most of the foods that contain folic acid for a month or two it probably wouldn't have a terrible effect on the adults (who could make that up in the other months of the year) but it could be [devastating for babies conceived when their mothers are folate-deficient](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18709885/). Other [adverse gestational conditions either at the time of conception or at some point during pregnancy might also contribute to poor long-term outcomes](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C23&q=Fetal%20and%20Infant%20Origins%20of%20Adult%20Disease.%20Monatsschrift%20f%C3%BCr%20Kinderheilkunde&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&p=&u=%23p%3DiEes9xFijp0J), though you'd probably want to pile them up to ensure a noticeable effect. Or perhaps you have a tradition that leads to the conception and eventually birth of many babies who are socially disadvantaged. The obvious option would be some kind of widespread, state-sanctified rape during the spring months, so that a large portion of children born nine months later have no paternal support and may have mothers who are ambivalent-at-best about their children. These children would be materially disadvantaged, [publicly stigmatized and, in many cases, would have much more emotionally precarious relationships with their mothers](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4890150/) compared to children born from non-violent unions. All three factors—[poverty](http://chicagopolicyreview.org/2013/11/27/enduring-damage-the-effects-of-childhood-poverty-on-adult-health/), [social ostracism](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4021390/), and [poor attachment to a primary caretaker](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17571472.2015.1133012)—are likely to lead to poorer long-term outcomes. Finally, you could create a self-fulfilling prophecy: it is known to be bad luck to be born in the winter, so only those who are too poor ([if anything like effective prophylactics exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_contraception)), too lacking in self-control or a partner who cares enough to exercise self-control, (see above for the possible effects of the latter) or too ignorant to prevent conception are likely to get pregnant then; the children who are accidentally conceived in the "bad" months are therefore mostly [born into poverty and without the advantages of education, both of which will statistically lead to worse outcomes](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953606002395). And, in fact, there are some measurable differences in various outcomes for infants born in the US depending on birth month, and a 2013 study suggests that something like this last mechanism may play an important role (emphasis added): > > Research throughout the social and natural sciences has demonstrated an association between the month of a child’s birth and a variety of later outcomes, including health, education, and earnings. Past explanations of this relationship have been limited to factors that intervene after conception, such as compulsory schooling laws or seasonal exposure to disease and nutrition. In this paper, we consider the possibility that individuals born at different times of year are born to mothers with significantly different characteristics. Using birth certificate data and census data, we document large and regular seasonal changes in the socioeconomic characteristics of women giving birth. Women giving birth in winter are more likely to be teenagers and less likely to be married or to have a high school degree. These effects are large in magnitude and are observable for children born throughout the second half of the twentieth century. We show that these seasonal changes can account for a large portion of the poorly understood relationship between season of birth and other outcomes. > > —[Buckles, Kasey S., and Daniel M. Hungerman. “Season of Birth and Later Outcomes: Old Questions, New Answers.” The review of economics and statistics 95.3 (2013): 711–724. PMC. Web. 2 Aug. 2018.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3777829/) > > > The likely mechanism identified for this difference is that women who plan their conceptions seem to be actively avoiding winter weather (based on historical average weather conditions in the expected, rather than actual, birth month by country of delivery). [Answer] Actually I think you might want to consider turning this on its head. Assume that in tougher conditions, the weak die off and only the strong survive. The general fortitude and development of the child is heavily predicated in it's genes, a dice that is rolled long before birth. The availability of water, nourishment and ideal living conditions sustains the growing child. In ideal conditions even the "runt of the litter" has a decent chance of reaching maturity, and hence your summer children would be more likely to feature physically weaker and less developed specimens than their winter-born cousins [Answer] I think that you should probably add a "tournament" or a "challenge" for the kids of a natural year, I mean, each 2 Aprils for example all the kids do some competition against all the other kids from his year till they are 8 years old and making a kind of ranking, this to determine some future "jobs" or positions in the society, making the kids bornt in the last months of the year weaker because they would be smaller and younger. With this you will get weaker adults too cause they will be in worst society positions and they will have less food. I am actually trying to give something different from "they won't have enough food" "they will starve" and this type of answers, although I really like the "tuberculosis answer" from Willk [Answer] I would say that even if the children that were born in winter were weaker, then the surviving ones would actually become stronger adults (on average) as the weaker would die. But I would not expect big variations as a child is in the womb for circa 9 months and then is really fragile for a year or more. So the weak ones will die regardless of the time they were born. You would see at the Middle Ages when the life expectancy of the whole population was about 30 years, but if you take only those that survive childhood (i think it was from age of 10 and above) then the life expectancy improved significantly. ]
[Question] [ New to the site, and like many others here, I've been bouncing around a few ideas for a hard sci-fi short story with some friends, centered around an interstellar voyage to colonize a habitable world. We figured that laser propulsion (a lightsail-equipped spacecraft being boosted and then decelerated by a powerful orbiting laser in the Sol system) is one of the better ways to propel an interstellar spacecraft; it's safer than antimatter, can get to relativistic velocities, and it's not limited by the rocket equation. It seems like the natural choice. But its dependence on an outside power source, back home in the departure system, is just something that gives me plenty of anxiety to think about. What if something went wrong with it? So that's the idea I was thinking of exploring. The Setting About the mid 23rd century, the Sol system has been heavily colonized, and the various great powers within it are now racing against each other to colonize habitable worlds found around other stars (at sublight speed, no FTL here). The successful terraforming of Mars and Venus last century has left humanity with an enormous amount of energy infrastructure, namely several extremely powerful solar-pumped laser arrays. And I mean powerful; they were previously used to melt almost all of Mars's surface to liberate the oxygen and water in its soil, and to cut Saturn's moon Enceladus into pieces to be deorbited onto Venus to make its new oceans. With the two planets now habitable, the new use found for the laser arrays is to accelerate interstellar colony ships leaving the Sol system, and then to decelerate them once they're near their destination. By the point of the story this has already been done successfully several times, and a number of nearby star systems have been colonized through it. The Spacecraft The ships themselves are sleeper ships, at about a kilometer long are rather small by interstellar ark standards, but they carry an accelerator sail with a diameter of 1000 kilometers and a decelerator sail with a diameter of 300 kilometers. Reminiscent of Robert L. Forward's design, the laser array first boosts the ship away from the Sol system for six months at 1G by the accelerator sail (with the decelerator sail folded up inside it), until it reaches 50 percent of lightspeed and the laser beam shuts off (in the interim period, it's redeployed to accelerate/decelerate other ships elsewhere). Once it's near its destination, the laser array back in the Sol system again is shined towards it (or was a few years/decades earlier, with the beam taking that long to cross the lightyears to the ship). When the beam is detected, the accelerator sail detaches from the ship and is pushed ahead and away from it, and the decelerator sail is unfolded to receive the laser light reflected off the accelerator sail to slow the ship down (the accelerator sail has built-in servomotors to slowly change its shape as it races away from the ship, to keep the light reflected on the decelerator sail). After six months of deceleration, the ship has reached its destination system and the decelerator sail is detached, leaving the ship with only its built-in fusion engines intended for interplanetary flight (they have nowhere near the fuel capacity for interstellar velocities). A standard colony ship carries a few dozen asteroid mining probes, surface construction equipment, 3D nanoprinters (many are built into hull-mounted robots that roll around the ship and repair any damage from the interstellar medium during the voyage), four VTOL SSTO spaceplanes for landing on and launching from habitable worlds (their built-in reactors can make their liquid hydrogen fuel from water or even just atmospheric humidity), and 10,000 humans in cryostasis (judged to be the minimum starting population needed to maintain a healthy gene pool in the long term). Food brought along can sustain all onboard for a year, and an onboard hydroponic farm can keep a few hundred of the crew fed during the six-month deceleration period (they're woken up early to monitor the deceleration and survey their destination) and in emergency situations (all others onboard are expected to be kept asleep until any emergency is resolved). Onboard gravity can come from either rotation or linear acceleration; the gimballed passenger compartments can either face forward or backward during the 1G acceleration or deceleration, or outwards for rotation during cruise and when stationary. An onboard fusion reactor powers the ship, and for contingency it carries enough fuel for twice the expected journey time. The Ill-Fated Voyage At the time of departure, it's been about fifty years since these interstellar colonization voyages have begun, and the Sol system has already received radio transmissions from the first missions in their destination systems up to 15-odd lightyears or so away, confirming they arrived safely and are settling into their new habitable worlds. This particular mission is to an Earth-sized habitable exomoon found orbiting the gas giant Upsilon Andromedae d, named Majriti after 10th-century scientist Maslama al-Majriti (look it up, the IAU has already named it that). The moon is named Fatima after his supposed daughter. At 44 lightyears away, the journey will take nearly 90 years, and it's by far the longest interstellar journey attempted so far. But with interstellar colony missions having a perfect safety record so far, and any habitable world being too good a target to pass up on, they feel confident enough. The acceleration up to cruising speed goes off without a hitch, and the passengers and crew climb into their cryopods for the long journey. About 87 years later, with the ship (I'll have to think of a name for it at some point) hurtling through interstellar space at 0.50 c, a skeleton crew wake up as planned in anticipation of the laser beam arriving, ready to monitor the deceleration, do some maintenance on the ship, and see what they can survey of Fatima before arrival. Only, the laser beam never arrives. Something happened back in the Sol system, and the laser array never shined a deceleration beam at them. They don't know what happened; they didn't receive any radio transmissions since shortly after departure, and whatever it was, it was 44 years ago (maybe I'll explore what happened there in an eventual sequel story). Either way, the ship is still plugging along at cruising speed, rapidly approaching its destination and seemingly about to overshoot it, with nothing to slow it down. So, with no laser beam coming from Sol, with the equipment they have, and with the few hundred crew that the hydroponics can sustain awake, what can they do, if anything, to slow down? Will they inevitably overshoot their habitable world? If so, would they be able to stop in another star system (not ideal for them given that it likely wouldn't have a habitable world, but better than endlessly coasting through space)? That's what I'm hoping to explore, and I'm hoping it's a good starting point for an interesting story. [Answer] Taking a page from The Mote in God's Eye, they'd keep the big sail, turn ship 180 degrees (ought to be possible, though it'll take a while), and dive straight into the oncoming star. It's a gamble, as to whether they can decelerate enough for a useful capture without getting so close they get cooked, but the closer they get to the star, the more thrust their sail gives them. The big sail, with 9+ times the area, will give that much more thrust as well. The strategy is to start angling the sail to slide past the new sun at the last possible moment when they can avoid excessive heat stress, while still holding the sail at an angle that eats away their incoming velocity. Whether they can slow enough to capture in the correct star system, how they can lighten the ship enough to do so (what can they afford to jettison?), whether they can use the second, smaller, deceleration sail as a heat shield (and how effective it will be) sound like a lot of the plot of your survival story. There are several objections in comments that, effectively, this is impossible with real world physics -- the acceleration of a light sail is too low even close to the star. Solution to this is to travel slower. Instead of 0.5c, if they travel at 0.05c they'll have only 1% of the energy to lose, and have ten times as long to decelerate even without any of the heroic measures like dumping half the colonists or burning all the lander engines and then jettisoning the landers. Plus, there will be ten times as long for civilization to fall, records of their voyage to be lost, etc. to account for the braking laser not lighting up on time. [Answer] If there were anything they could do to make an unplanned safe deceleration from 0.5c, they probably wouldn't be reliant on a giant external laser beam to handle the acceleration to 0.5c. If they didn't have a backup braking system for just this scenario, their only real option is to wait for the beam to arrive, late. Hopefully the trajectory was designed with enough margins for them to compensate for the delay. If they do have such a backup system (perhaps one only capable of braking a fraction of their colony payload), their destination remains the same. There most likely is not a star aligned with Upsilon Andromedae closely enough to be reachable, and close enough to be reached in a reasonable time. If it existed, they wouldn't have an easier time stopping at such an alternate destination. [Answer] Spacecraft typically don't carry around "backup" mission delta-v (especially 0.5 c's worth), so I think these folks are at the mercy of the winds. The only plausible alternative I can see (if Zeiss's answer isn't good enough) is a [magsail brake](https://sbir.nasa.gov/SBIR/abstracts/01/sbir/phase1/SBIR-01-1-A6.02-9600.html), and I could maybe see how you'd pack one of those "just in case". The system consists of thousands of kilometers of superconducting wire, perhaps massing as much as the main sail, and a powerful reactor to run it continuously for years. Combined, it would be a sizeable fraction of the vessel's mass. What threatens the plausibility of hauling one of these along is the reactor. Why would a laser-propelled starship needs such powerful on-board energy production? Unless there's some other process going on from which energy can be diverted away. [Answer] Expand the tethered acceleration sail, release and unfold deceleration sail, rig out a mass driver, and slow down with interstellar matter and/or the heliosphere of a destination star. In fact, since your ship is travelling at 0.5c through interstellar space, AND accelerating from Sol's laser, it's already sturdy enough to withstand collisions with neutral HI (H-one, hydrogen) atoms and not corrode, this deceleration could well be used as interstellar brake. So you grab that accelerator sail, expand it to its largest configuration, possibly steer with it so that you won't miss the star (I assume they won't need the steering as the reference design is depicted as being unable to steer while decelerating), and let neutral matter slow your ship down. After all, delivering 1G of acceleration via light gives your ship flux no less than 1/3e7 worth of the ship's total mass, to radiate heat produced by reflection of that much and not melt in the process would require truly interstellar sail radius, I can't properly predict how big it should actually be. Thus the space "air resistance" would also be pretty significant. I think an example calculation using existing materials would lead to an empty solution, so I'll skip materials and use only dimensions and weight. Let's say your sleeper ship has its capsule mass of 100 Mt = 1\10^11 kg, its acceleration sail is 1e7 m wide and also has a mass of 1e11 kg, its deceleration sail can expand to about 1e6 m, and the acceleration sail can expand if needed to 2e7 m in radius. This configuration would require 2e11\10/3e8/2 = 3.3(3)e3 kg of light per second, this amasses to 3.3(3)e3\3e8\3e8 = 3e20 W of incoming flux, with the total square of PI\1e14 m^2 it'll be somewhat manageable 955 kW/m^2, if the material would be 99.9% reflective and not ablative under this hard flux (after all we're saying laser, thus we can produce a nano-material that'll be almost 100% reflective in the selected band) it could even start up. So the initial parameters look decent. Now to deceleration. We can calculate the resistance of interstellar space vs our ship based on data on average interstellar space density of 1 atom per cm^3. I have found that there is a range of interstellar gas density from 0.003 to 100k cm^-3, yet 1 is well within range, and as not even Voyager 1 is yet in there, we here don't have direct observation data on actual gas density near the Sun. The fully accelerated ship with fully expanded acceleration sail will cross a cylinder 2e7 m in radius and the length of 1.5e8 meters per second. That volume will contain 1e3\PI\2e7^2\1.5e8 = 18.85e25 atoms of HI, or 3.13e3 g or 3.13 kg of hydrogen per second. If all that hydrogen is absorbed, it would net already a thousandth of incoming acceleration, this also means that such a ship will decelerate against interstellar space with its sail expanded to 1e7 m at 1/4000 G or 0.025 m/s^2 at top speed, and since this procedure has been performed several times, the Earth's scientists know that. We still need more, as we only have about 40% distance left until we hit the destination star, yet now we could actually try to steer our ship with rigging of the acceleration sail to have a sidewards force component, so that we miss the star and whatever planets we were initially aiming at, but by both using local solar wind, heliopause and other space-volume effects of the star's heliosphere, the crew might hope to divert the ship's course to the star in close vicinity of their initial target, in the mean time the ship would slow down enough to allow the sail to work at normal speed range and as a manner to actually explore the second star's system. This will however take quite a lot of time, even if the second star is as close as 1 LY to the first and is aligned for the ship to not miss it, the ship would have to spend some several hundred years in space before fully decelerating. As an additional means of deceleration, assuming the ship has fusion reactors with a means of adding more fuel, the crew can use its DEceleration sail as a means to focus incominng flux of matter into a rigged collector that could then process HI into either fuel for ion engine or plain for the reactor itself. This process would gradually slow down as the ship would cross less and less space per second, yet it could provide both some exercise for the crew to not lose their minds, their computer to not go awry, and the next generation(s) to have a go at alternate approaches to reach at least the second target with them intact. As a last resort, they could strap a relatively small compartment of about 1.5 Mt to the sails, and slow down at twice the calculated rate, retaining a chance to actually contact the first target, leaving the rest of the ship adrift into endless space (hi ethics, bye ethics) as an unguided asteroid (hi Oumuamua) that will eventually cross the galaxy most likely unbroken, and could attract some other galaxians' attention to the Milky Way and its interesting inhabitants. After all, the emergency crew of several hundred is pretty enough to colonize a planet. (As a story element, nothing could happen at Earth, it's just the ship had passed through a small undetected nebula with increased gas density, making the ship fly slower and miss the rendezvous point by several light-days, thus the Earth just missed the ship with its ray.) [Answer] 1. Probes and spaceplanes are placed to run engines and decelerate ship. Hydroponic water is used as fuel for spaceplanes. 2. Fusion reactor with double needed fuel is McGyvered into 3d printed catapult device to hurl any mass that can be torn loose from the ship in their direction of travel as hard as it can be hurled, to slow ship. Hopefully cryostasis passengers are not in the "torn loose" category but desperate times... Maybe they can be retrieved later? 3. Gravity assist deceleration. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist> [![Voyager](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4fJzd.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4fJzd.png) Depicted- Voyager's path, using various planets to increase velocity using gravity assist. > > A gravity assist around a planet changes a spacecraft's velocity > (relative to the Sun) by entering and leaving the gravitational sphere > of influence of a planet... To decrease speed, the spacecraft > approaches the planet from a direction away from the planet's orbital > velocity ‚Äì in both types of maneuver the energy transfer compared to > the planet's total orbital energy is negligible > > > The incoming ship would use outer bodies in the system to shed energy. [Answer] If there were any viable plan B it would have been plan A in the first place. There are a few cases where a partial propulsion failure doesn't doom the mission (a recovered Falcon 9 can lose a first stage engine and still claw it's way into orbit--but at the cost of expending the booster) but there's never a backup for a total propulsion failure. The only energy source even in the ballpark of stopping your runaway ship is antimatter. [Answer] If you're set on hard sci-fi, and only want to use technology currently available, with no technobabble references, then your two best bets would be: * Print your own [Electric Sail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_sail). This basic idea is similar to how [Xysticus spiders fly](https://www.forbes.com/sites/fionamcmillan/2018/04/15/these-spiders-can-fly-and-this-is-how-they-do-it/?sh=4e9c1cda50b8). Out to the strength of the cable, the ship could just continuously print electrically conductive wire and spin the ship to get them to radiate out in every direction. * Print your own [Magnetic Sail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_sail). Your craft apparently has fusion generators, so we're already somewhat outside of "currently available" so the commonly held superconductor requirement necessary for the large currents might not be a huge issue. If the warning was early enough ("we were supposed to have regular updates for 85 years of transit, and they stopped") then you might be able to take action earlier. Another option might be to print multiple expanding radius loops trailing behind the ship, or to print a helical pattern with an ever expanding radius (kind of a horn shape to enhance sideways deflection of the bow shock). * If either of the above were deployed early enough they could interact with the interstellar medium long before you reach the star. The interstellar medium's not moving very fast, yet the ship is. So you've got a bunch of particles that from the ship's perspective are moving at 0.5c. * As a note for acting early enough, most missions with humans would probably not have them go to sleep and have nobody check on the status during the entire 85 years of transit. Even if it was just, we wake 5 people up for a week every year, just to make sure nothing horrible has gone wrong. Very few manned missions with 10,000 human lives at risk, and the enormous financial risk, would ever have such enormous time-frames without at least a status check. If anything, would probably keep a socially-stable number of crew members active continuously. You also posit that there is a hydroponics system capable of feeding 100 crew members on-board. You don't leave a hydroponics system alone for 85 years. Plants can be really finicky over 100 year time-frames. * In some ways, having the status updates might be better for story. Then there's the possibility for gradually, but perceptibly increasing tension. + "Status from Earth's OK" + "Status from Earth sounds like there's some social issue" + "Status from Earth sounds really bad" + "Status from Earth sounds like a holy-\\\\ situation" + "No status from Earth, maybe they'll call back?" + "Uh oh" [Answer] ## They can't stop after a total failure, but a partial failure is doable. The ship is already packed with the most advanced breaking system mankind has ever made to bring themselves down from 0.5C to re-entry speeds... there is no chance that they have anything on board that a few hundred crewmen can MacGyver to replace what took the best of Sol's industrial and scientific capabilities to make. If another tech existed to stop them that were simple enough to improvise on the spot like that, they would have planned on using that instead. That said, if they can mostly stop before or after something goes wrong, that opens up all sorts of options. There are many possible reasons the beam might not fully slow your ship down. Maybe it drifted off course and could not get back into position before the beam arrives; so they miss part of thier deceleration window. Maybe one of thier sails does not deploy properly and they don't get enough reflection. Maybe everything is going smoothly, then something damages one of the sails. Maybe Sol had to stop transition early. Whatever the case may be, they did not get a full 6 months of 1G deceleration. So instead of having to make up 150,000,000 m/s of deceleration, they might need to only make up 10 million or 1 million m/s or 100,000 m/s just depending on how compromising the problem is... the good thing here is that you are no longer bound for plot reasons to stick to relativistic problems, and can instead just define how much you are off by based on how you want them to fix the problem. This way instead of trying to pick the most feasible solution for a 0.5C slowdown, you can mix rule-of-cool with hard science and figure out the most dramatic way to stop the ship, and then work backwards from there to figure out how much speed you need to compensate for to make it happen. So if you want to go for maximum drama, you could add up everyone's ideas into one super Hail Mary: jettison the cryosection to reduce weight, use your bots to turn your solar sail into a mag sail, bounce off the sun while depleting your fusion fuel powering the mag sail, then do a gravity assisted [back flip, snap the bad guy's neck and save the day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=708n4GCbTiM)! ... or something like that ... but my point is you can add all of this up and still be in at way less than 0.5C, but that is okay because once you figure out how much all of your stunts should buy you together, then you can just fill in the blank for how much the initial slow down failed by. [Answer] If they have a magnetic scoop such as you have in a Bussard ramjet to supply matter for the expected beam, then that would make a good brake against the incoming solar wind. But it may only have been designed as a scoop for interstellar hydrogen, and not be capable of taking the stresses for real deceleration. They might try stiffening the craft - maybe adding a rotation to stiffen the scoop, and taking the magnetic field beyond the design limits. The might overshoot but still end in a very elliptical orbit, so the braking may take years and many overshoots. [Answer] Here is an "as well" strategy to possibly be employed alongside the measures in other answers. One strategy that might be interesting is to launch one of the probes or space planes ahead of the main ship (accelerate it slightly so it pulls ahead). Angle it for collision with an asteroid. Then raise the mainsail and triple check all of the heat shields, its going to be a big bump. The probe collides with the asteroid at 0.5c, que an explosion that dwarfs any nuclear weapon ever built. The main ship is some distance away (the exact distance would be easy for them to control by deciding how much the probe pulls ahead) and catches the blast wave on the sail from the closest possible safe (survivable) distance. Depending on details (that for the story can be handwaved) the puff of vapour gas from the asteroid+probe might be even better for slowing down than the radiation blast. I could imagine a scenario where you do 3 such slowdowns. The first with the probe leading the ship by a long way (so the gas/dust cloud is very diffuse when you hit it and you don't burn up), but on subsequent hits you put them closer because you are going slower and can survive a thicker tempary atmosphere to slow down in. This strategy is nice for a story because it gives several moments of tension/drama (one for each slow-blast), and larger fragments of the asteroids colliding with the ship provide a convenient plot explanation for any ship machinery to break (as needed by the story). It also just "looks desperate" in a way I think matches the situation nicely. [Answer] If they have an energy source up to the task, they could split their spaceship in two halves (or any ratio) and install a laser in the front half. The front half of the ship would then cast the laser backwards, speeding itself up further, but slowing the back half down. While it means losing many resources for the settlement, the improvised laser only has to be half as strong as the one on earth (or less, depending on how much mass you sacrifice into the front end). Depending on that ratio, a later start of the braking phase (allowing refitting the ship and setting up the laser) may also become viable as there's less mass to decelerate. --- Slightly off-topic, a reading tip: check out "Tau Zero" in which a colonization vessel employs a "buzzard ramjet" engine (scooping up interstellar hydrogen and igniting it magnetically, i.e. the faster you go the more power you get). Their decelerating drive becomes damaged mid-journey. > > Now they can't turn off the acceleration drive because the moment its > magnetic field shuts down, any speck of interstellar dust to annihilate > the ship, so they keep accelerating, planning a slingshot around another > galaxy (time dilation allowing them to experience the journey) planning to > repair the drive in the high vacuum between galaxies... > > > [Answer] I might be way off on the physics here, but... How about the skeleton crew realise they've got very few options, so use the robots to almost completely repurpose the ship to become a heat based decelerator. That is, using the fusion engines to produce as much heat as possible and to push that heat out of the front of the ship as efficiently as possible. If you can spare any hot gases or particles, then all the better. You're essentially making a rocket engine out of what you have available. The trouble is that to do this and stand any chance of decelerating by even half of what's required, the cryopods all need to be deactivated, waking the entire human compliment. There's no way they can run all the leisure facilities or lights, not least because all that space is being used by the repurposed equipment. Those humans now need to live in cramped, utilitarian surroundings, possibly under a pseudo-military leadership, eating nothing but rations and yet working every day towards efforts to decelerate the ship. Life for the next six months is very hard. As others have mentioned, you can repurpose the things you have to do part of the work - a large sail to catch solar wind, perhaps a "fly by" to catch a bit of gravity too, all of which add to the unpleasantness (and length) of the trip, and the sense of hopelessness as you sail right past the proposed system, back into the cold empty space beyond as you decelerate further to come to a stop, before turning around and cruising to the final destination. Of the 10,000 original compliment, maybe only 1000 survive (or whatever). Family members are cremated in the ships engines to aid the deceleration efforts, all the memories of Earth that they brought with them are consumed leading to future traditions and cultures on the destination planet etc. On arrival they don't have all the pleasantries they hoped for, so have difficulty even getting to the planet surface, let alone "setting up shop". etc. In summary, from the moment the skeleton crew wake up, no decision is easy, no task is as-designed and all bonds with Earth are gradually further and further severed, even to the point of not being able to send the "we've arrived" message back. Some want to re-establish relations with Earth, some don't, tensions simmer, etc. ]
[Question] [ Scenario: A wormhole is created between Sol (earth) and a planet in Alpha Centauri. Travel through the wormhole appears instantaneous from the travelers perspective. However, the wormhole has a one year jump. So, if you go to Alpha Centauri using the wormhole, you are 1 year in the future (relative to earth time). When you come back, you are 1 year in the past (relative to A-Cent). You can send two way communications through the wormhole, but if you send it directly between the star systems not using the wormhole (sol to A-Centauri or vise-versa), it will take the 4.5 or so lightyears before it's received. Standard interstellar travel (not using the wormhole) would take far longer. Technology level: In this scenario, we can imagine technology levels being equivalent to today for the purposes of observing interstellar bodies (telescopes and so on). My question is this: how would people detect the 1 year time jump? [Answer] Alpha Centauri is a multiple star system Particularly, its main components, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B are orbiting each other with 80 years period. Assuming that wormhole jump was prepared with the the best science and astronomy available, it would be immediately clear that positions of the components A and B are off. Further investigation, probably involving Proxima Centauri as a slow clock hand, would reveal that the time difference is one year rather that 81 years or more. [Answer] One way would be to look at how the positions of the stars have changed - not just their apparent positions in the sky, but their actual positions in three-dimensional space. Many stars, particularly nearby ones, exhibit significant [proper motion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_motion); their movement through space changes where they are on the sky. You could therefore figure out that there's been a one-year time jump by the following: 1. Pick a star that exhibits a high, easily-measured proper motion. 2. Using some three-dimensional trigonometry, convert its position as seen from Earth before the jump to its position as seen from Alpha Centauri before the jump. 3. Compare the calculated pre-jump Alpha Centauri position to the observed post-jump Alpha Centauri position. Using previous measurements of the star's motion, you can figure out the change in time based on the change in the position and its predicted apparent speed. [Barnard's Star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard%27s_Star) would be a good choice, since its proper motion is extremely high as seen from Earth or Alpha Centauri, and the change in position over one year should be easy to detect. I remember now that this was the same principle used in the Doctor Who episode ["Heaven Sent"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven_Sent_(Doctor_Who)) to determine that the Doctor was further in time than he thought, although it was made simpler because 1) the time distances were significantly larger and therefore the positional anomalies were visible to the naked eye, and 2) he's the Doctor. [Answer] Pulsars If you measure a set of regular pulsar signals they will have a set [beat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(acoustics)) at a given point in space. If you know where you are to a reasonable degree of accuracy and can see the selected stars you can tell the time by the rhythm you see in the pulse of those stars. It's a clock and calendar that works anywhere in the universe. It's not perfect though, on a long enough timeline the beat does eventually loop. In fact if you aren't using a large enough sample set it loops quite regularly. So you could potentially have a time displacement that was exactly the length of the loop and think you hadn't taken any time at all to travel. HDE's answer is simpler and works quite well if you're only dealing with Sol-Centauri. I needed a clock that worked far farther afield. [Answer] My experience of normal space transmissions from my origin once I reach my destination. I know radio light takes 4.5 years to make the trip. On Earth there is a radio of someone counting the years, broadcast to AC. At year 10 on AC I hear the Earth voice saying "5.5". That broadcast left earth 4.5 years ago at the year 5.5 and has been travelling thru space. Now at the year 10 I travel from Earth to AC via wormhole. If travel is instantaneous I should arrive, tune into Earth and hear "5.5" because it is the year 10. But nay! I hear "6.5". I am 1 year in the future from when I was on Earth. It is the year 11. The same is true in reverse. Counting radio should be the same both ways. On the year 10 I go thru the wormhole from AC to Earth. AC radio should say "5.5". But it says "4.5". I am at the year 9. This could be an accidental discovery while working out the engineering problems of detecting interstellar transmissions for an advanced SETI project. [Answer] > > My question is this: how would people detect the 1 year time jump? > > > > > if you send it directly between the star systems not using the wormhole (sol to A-Centauri or vise-versa), it will take the 4.5 or so lightyears > > > This means that if I sit on the Sol side of the wormhole, and I send a signal through it, I would hear that signal again after 5.5 years (1 year due to wormhole, 4.5 years for normal travel from AC to Sol). That will raise some eyebrows, as scientists will know AC is 4.5ly away. > > When you come back, you are 1 year in the past (relative to A-Cent). > > > Furthermore, if you repeat the same experiment while sitting on the AC side of the wormhole, it will take 3.5 years to hear the signal again (-1 year due to wormhole, 4.5 years for normal travel from Sol to AC). While the first test may have been shrugged off as some unexplained delay (e.g. the signal passed through some obstacle like a gas cloud at a speed lower than the speed of light), this second test would raise major eyebrows, as it seems to suggest that the signal traveled faster than the speed of light (4.5ly in 3.5 years), which is a big thing to discover and will not be shrugged off. After that, further refined testing could be done to explain how this signal managed to reach back in only 3.5 years of time. There are several ways to do this: star positioning, elemental decay, some sort of permanent radio transmission which allows you to figure out what time it is (relative to the source of the transmission), celestial events that are observable from both Sol and AC and whose distance to both is known precisely, ... These refined tests are very niche and not something you would naturally stumble upon, but the initial observation I mentioned is something that you could serendipitously stumble upon (e.g. if a certain event caused a very unique signal, and some random protagonist just happens to record the loopback after 3.5 years and then realizes it's only been 3.5 years since "the event", thus triggering them to contact others about their findings) [Answer] ## Novas Occasionally stars go boom. This is visible from a long way off. Adjusting for the fact that either Earth or AC is closer to the source is easily done. Soon after astronomy takes off on AC, people will notice that the nova list is wrong. Imagine this: In year X a Nova goes off uncomfortably close to Earth. Critical medical equipment malfunction, major internet disruptions etc. This Nova is closer to Earth, so we know the wave front will hit AC later, year X+3. Close to that date, scientists are preparing to open your wormhole. They realize the Nova wave front will do nasty things to the other end of the wormhole and probably make the whole thing collapse. So, they wait until just after the critical date. Everything is all good and nice, until eleven and a half months later... [Answer] I would like to add that depending on the understanding of spacetime and wormhole physics in your story and the origin of the wormhole, you don't have to think about the problem that it would be unreasonable to measure your position in spacetime without apparent reason, which would then result in the detection of a time offset. The reason for that is pretty simple as given our understanding of it, we simply don't know for sure how time would pass for us in the wormhole relative to the outside and as well the endpoint of the wormhole will probably be unknown, so it would be quite natural to make the measurement locating you in space and as well compare this to the predicted location of stars relative to earth relative to the position entering the wormhole to detect your position in time. [Answer] When you get to AC, you would turn on your radio or TV and tune in to an Earth station. You'd be seeing sports games from the wrong year, or the wrong season of your favorite TV show. Normally you'd be expecting 4.5 year old shows. Instead you'd be seeing 5.5 year old shows. [Answer] In addition to the above Atomic clocks carried by vessels traveling back and forth to either system would reveal the discrepancy after each transition. A simple 'time check' i.e. comparing elapsed time on the ship that has just arrived with any other atomic clock in the Alpha C system would reveal that an extra year has elapsed. Accurate clocks are essential for accurate navigation and in space there are always subtle relativistic effects to taken into account during space flight, even if its just in Earth orbit. In this case those effects would be amplified by the relative velocities of Sol and Alpha C and any acceleration/deceleration involved in the trip out to the wormhole from Earth and then again upon arrival at the other end so an accurate clock that can adjust for time dilation effects would be essential. And since even today atomic clocks are used in space craft and satellite navigation any crewed ship will almost certainly carry one. Also (although its not mentioned) the problem would become apparent the moment the first probe or ship ever went through the wormhole. Scientist would be sitting on tenterhooks back home waiting for the first lot of data to arrive and wondering why it took exactly 2 years to get here. Any subsequent messages or probes would show exactly the same time delay. So it would probably be obvious before the first humans ever even set foot in the Alpha C system. ]
[Question] [ [Sleipnir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleipnir) is Odin's steed - an eight-legged horse in Norse mythology. How and where to place its legs to make it faster than four-legged horses? What other benefits or drawbacks may arise from the additional legs? Usually one would take its existence for granted - the gods made it that way. However for the sake of the question: what selection pressure would make evolution invent a horse like that and what conditions would support this feature? Clarifications: Assume earth-like conditions (gravity, air pressure and composition, etc). Main focus should not be on Odin handwaving the beast into existence but the characteristics of such an animal and its development assuming evolution (besides benefits and drawbacks of such a design which could be discussed no matter how the creature evolved). [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/c0hvY.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/c0hvY.png) Odin rides to Hel, [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Odin_rides_to_Hel.jpg), released into the public domain --- This question is part of the [Anatomically Correct Series](http://meta.worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/2797/anatomically-correct-series/). [Answer] Something that evolution very seldom does is create extra limbs. One of the best reasons for this is that there's no viable intermediate forms; you have to grow the new limbs to the same length as the old ones before they can be useful, and that would take millions of years of having useless stubs. So I propose that your eight-legged creatures actually have four split legs. To start off with, you can use an animal with a [cloven hoof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloven_hoof), like a cow or goat. These animals are already used as pack animals, so with a little bit of selective breeding they should be able to somewhat reliably carry humans. From there, it's just a matter of cutting the rest of the leg in half. To do this with evolution, I'm imagining an environment with very uneven footing. A lot of holes where one toe could fall in, and then you break your ankle and have to be put down. The animals that can traverse this without breaking their ankles might be the ones with longer toes, or less connections leading up to the ankle, leading again to longer toes. After that, luckily there are already two bones in the foreleg, so you just have to decouple them. This is going to be a big change that will probably take a lot of generations, and I doubt that there'd actually be enough of a benefit for it, but I still think it's more likely than spontaneously growing four extra legs (and who knows, sometimes evolution does stupid things). At this point, around 2/3rds of the leg is split up, and I think that's good enough. It's still going to look really strange, and look a lot more eight-legged than any other comparable creature. EDIT: hand-drawn illustration because people seem to like those: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V5sCv.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V5sCv.png) [Answer] 8 legs compared to 4 won't actually improve top speed very much...if anything the bulk of the extra appendages gets in the way. That said, there is a heavy advantage in the extra limbs: A 4 legged horse runs forward exceedingly well, however side to side movement or even stopping isn't the easiest, while an 8 legged creature could theoretically have the extra 4 legs designed to give it side to side movement, able to redirect the momentum of a straight forward run either left or right rapidly. Ultimately the creature moves more spider like. Evolutionary pressures would need to favor the 8 legged creature. 2 needs: 1 - harsh terrain. 8 legs would be an easier balancing act than 4 legs...really rough terrain (volcanic for example) where straight forward movement is hindered due to unstable ground would mean the ability to step side to side quickly would allow for quicker movement through harsh terrain (look up devils golf course death valley for an example of this terrain). 2 - High speed predators. If a high speed predator existed that could rundown a horse a full gallop, then the horses would need to adapt to other mechanisms to survive. Quick agile side to side movement becomes this mechanism (IE, the 8 legged horse can jump to either side and change it's trajectory faster than the predator it's evading)...or the ability to enter and move quickly through a terrain as listed above. The side to side movement could be a tremendous advantage if the regular 4 legged counter part was slower than the top predator in the area. Quick edit: The same tactic is employed when we see Orca and Sea-lion encounters. The Orca is far faster in a 2 dimensional plane, while the Sea-lion is significantly more agile. The Orca gets a first strike...a surprise where it swims at full speed at its intended target. If the Sea-lion (with a bit of luck) sees it, it can get out of the way at the last second. What then occurs is a tight circle, with the Orca being outmaneuvered as it simply cannot replicate the tight turn. Of course this will often end up as an eaten Sea-lion anyway, but this is also the only route this Sea-lion has for survival. Similar setup here, with our 8 legged equine capable of making tight turns at higher speeds to outmaneuver a quick yet less agile predator. [Answer] ## The Sleipnir is a Creepy Crawly The worlds fastest spider, The [giant house spider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_house_spider), can run at speeds of almost 2 feet a second. Scaling this up we can assume that a spider the size of a horse would be able to run 177 miles an hour! [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ir9LI.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ir9LI.png) Another interesting spider species, [Salticidae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_mimicry#Spiders), imitates ants, as seen above. If on the strange world of Asgard, the gravity is lower, we can say that giant horse mimicking spiders evolved to hunt down equidae animals. The specific limbs of the Sleipnir would look very close to the horse but would split in two, with the hooves acting as claws. Their mandibles would likely evolve to either go flush with or inside their face. [Answer] Equus sleipniricus evolved from our world's horses, perhapes with the help of radiation and teratogenics along the way. In all aspects they are just like ours, but they have the ability to regenerate lost limbs, just like newts do. Which is why eight legs are beneficial to them: four of those legs are spare ones. Should a predator such as a bobcat or panther bite them in the leg, or should a leg break for any reason, they are capable of undergoing [autotomy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotomy), that is, they let go of that leg. Having spares mean that they can keep running for their lives. Notice that the spare legs don't just sit still, waiting for the original ones to break. Equus sleipniricus is able to use them to run as well at any time, thus being faster than a real Earth horse. Also, four hind legs means twice the kick when they kick. [Answer] I'm not a biology major, a vet or anything that has anything to do with anatomy. I did do some googling in consideration of this question. First - your evolution question. If you check the mythos, Sleipnir is actually one of a kind and is a child born of a horse and Loki (Loki was the mother). Greek mythology also had its share of weird things born when gods mated with animals. My 'evolution' story for them would probably be based on Sleipnir being the forefather and the existing ones descending from him. Or maybe there were a few progenitors if Loki really liked that horse. If you don't like that, I see the next most probable answer as your world having mammalian species with more than 4 limbs scattered across the world, either with 8 being the standard or maybe with 4, 6 or 8 depending on the ancestor. I'm no evolution scholar but I would assume land creatures generally have 4 limbs +/- a tail due to that being what we first obtained when crawling out of the sea. If your world had a few different things crawl out, you could wind up with different limb counts. At this point, I think adding a limb to something would require extremely selective breeding over a course of hundreds, if not thousands, of generations. Adding 4 limbs...well, we'll be able to do that with gene splicing (or be extinct) faster than nature would be able to add them. Second - How do the limbs work? I'm going to skip spider-shaped bodies, the implications of trying to set 8 legs in a circular fashion on an entity with a spine are not something I want to get into right now. If you desire a spider-horse solution, let me know and I'll ponder it. My knee-jerk answer is multiple spines. I'd go for setting it up so that the front shoulder joints are replaced with small versions of hips - rather than a single joint, you have two side by side. The hip bones in the back would have evolved to have a similar arrangement with 4 joints coming off of them in 2 pairs. The stomach would have some sort of pouch and one set of 4 legs would generally be left in the pouch. This gives the animal the opportunity to allow the leg muscles in half the legs to be at rest at any given time, increasing stamina. The lungs and heart would expand for this, or maybe the horse actually has two sets of each to account for the extra oxygen and blood flow required to service an extra set of muscles. Spare organs is also generally an awesome feature for mythical animals. The addition of 4 legs should add a decent amount of height + distance to the jumps, ask a physics major for specifics I'm going to go ahead and guess you'll get something like 50-80% extra. With extra organs and legs, you're looking at a king of horses that isn't necessarily faster than another horse but will far outlast any other. [Answer] For anatomy, you can look at the Direhorse from the Avatar movie for at least the first 4 limbs. I'm sure some animator or artist has done an anatomical series on how the bones and muscles would work to allow parallel limbs to work as most aspects of that film got a pretty through scientific treatment. You can duplicate this for a rear set of legs. As for how such a horse came to be, consider a bizarre, yet stable, conjoined twin that the gods somehow can replicate. Perhaps as a foal(s) the unwanted parts are excised (like a duplicate head), internal systems are hooked up as necessary, and somehow the beast can control all 8 limbs. Obviously this isn't something that would be likely to develop into a naturally occurring species, but then again, this is a steed for the gods, so maybe they can irradiate and inject teratogens into a normal pregnant mare in order to create a new Sleipnir when Odin loses his old one. It is also quite possible that "8 legged steed" was just Norse slang for "a really fast horse that moves so fast it looks like it has 8 legs!", not something meant to be taken literally :) [Answer] Have you ever seen "Tölt" the 5th gear of the Icelandic Horse? [Youtube video of Tölt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7rWeWymJDw) They have another style of walking which does not compare to neither the canter nor the trot which are 3/4 or 2/4 rhythms. If Sleipnir was to do Tölt, it might actually give a speed benefit if the legs were approximately located as in the picture you provided, however they'd need to feature a full set of joints. Tölting horses can get very fast, comparable to the average gallopping horse ]
[Question] [ Scenario: In the medieval ages, Our brave hero, without his trusty shield and sword, is surrounded by enemy mooks from all sides and needs a miracle to escape. Fortunately, he has one such thing, having met a miracle seller in the morning. He is in possession of several small orbs, roughly the size of golf balls (if golf had been invented then) filled with an explosive substance, which he can lop at his enemies, scaring and injuring them. So, the miracle seller asks that in the middle ages, what could he use to create an explosive (gun powder was not discovered then) ? [Answer] # [Gunpowder was invented in the 800's CE in China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder) Your Mystery Salesman has obviously been there. Either that or he had someone in the family or in the business where he worked at, that — through various misadventures — went to China and either got hold of a big sample of gunpowder, or a recipe. If you go with the latter, that recipe unfortunately got lost in a huge explosion that killed those that were working with it, leaving Mystery Salesman with only the stocks of what was manufactured so far, to peddle for money to help him get over his misfortune of having had his employer / family home blow up. [Answer] I'd say the miracle worker had the ultra secret almost forgotten formula for [*greek fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire). It was an incendiary liquid that ignited on impact. Bottle it up and throw it at your enemy and he is guaranteed to be distracted. What it actually was really is lost, a now forgotten, closely guarded Byzantine state secret. It was used to fire ships and would burn even when floating on water. Reference: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons> [Answer] If the seller is really willing to live dangerously, the orbs could be filled with any of a number of nitrated hydrocarbons with detonators built in by sloppy process control. Nitric acid is commonly believed to have been discovered in the 8th century by the Arab alchemist Jābir ibn Hayyān, although this may not be true, and about 1300 is a more certain date, in the sense that it's more certain that nitric acid had actually been discovered by then (although if true, the discoverer remains unknown). With the availability of strong nitric acid, the door is opened to the entire process of nitrating hydrocarbons, presumably by accident. Certainly, for instance, picric acid (trinitrophenol) was originally produced by nitrating animal horn and resin. Almost any organic material can be nitrated to produce a functional explosive, but safety is an entirely different question. The need for complete neutralization was not known for some time, and this could have very bad consequences. Improperly neutralized picric acid, for instance, reacts with metals like copper to form heavy-metal picrates, which are very shock sensitive. In effect, the explosive can produce its own detonators - and very sensitive detonators, at that. So one can posit some alchemist after the 8th century stumbling across the effects of nitration, but not managing to maintain sufficient quality control to survive for long. His orbs are prone to going off at inopportune moments, but at least one batch was accidentally produced which is only risky, rather than bloody disastrous. Of course, due to improper QC, the alchemist took his process to the grave with him, but a few of his artifacts linger. Death by detonation was seen by the Church as prima facie evidence of God's wrath, so the local power structure burned down what was left of his laboratory, and all records of his work ruthlessly suppressed. Except for an obscure copy of his work which molders to this day deep in the Vatican Library, written in an alchemical code which no one ever solved. [Answer] Define "medieval ages". It encompassed approximately 1000 years in Europe, the last few centuries of which already had gunpowder. The problem with early grenades (and early firearms too) was that they didn't have contact fuses: you had to light them on fire yourself. Starting a fire (unless you had a lit torch with you) took quite some of time. There were some early contact explosives (for example "fulminating gold"), but they were very* unstable. Maybe even better for a mysterious "miracle seller", and its instability (and price) also explains why it's that rare and almost unheard of in your story? [Answer] Edit: I made some changes after seeing David's comments. Thanks David! Have your orbs be made of glass, and filled with swamp gas vegetable oil. Now have a hole in the orb, which is closed hermetically stoppeed with some special piece of cloth that seals it, but which is flamable. I present you the "gaslotov" oilotov. You could set the cloth aflame by friction, like a match, via some pulling mechanism. Have something with a rough surface, so that you hold the rough part and do a throwing motion. The rough part stays in your hand, the cloth catches fire by friction as the orb leaves your hand. Medieval grenade! [Answer] People have already mentioned that gunpowder actually existed for quite a while in China before we started using it in warfare here, so I'm not going to go there. In general, as long as you have anything that will rapidly create a lot of gas from liquids or solids and/or a lot of heat (most explosives do both), you have an explosion. Given that you don't want gunpowder, I assume you're looking for something rather low tech. Harvesting seems rather low tech to me. Specifically, I'd like to point you to the bombardier beetle: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_beetle#Defense_mechanism> It uses hydrogen peroxide with a catalyst to get a really fast heat-producing reaction. This in itself might be enough for an explosion if enclosed. Otherwise, you could add some alcohol to the mix (vaporizes easily with heat and will burn into more gas molecules in combination with oxygen). I assume that you could harvest both the hydrogen peroxide and the catalyst from the beetle (though with significant effort). It also requires little thought to come up with the idea. The critter itself already shows you it can create explosions. All that's left is to try to harvest it and combine larger quantities (and make sure the hydrogen peroxide stays away from the catalyst). Making it into something you can easily carry around and then throw to explode at will is a challenge for any type of explosive though. Most early explosives were at risk for not exploding when needed and at risk for exploding when not needed. That however is more of an engineering problem than a chemical one (though partly also a chemical one for some of the substances used). [Answer] As others have noted, several flammable substances existed in ancient and medieval times. "Greek fire", naphtha, maltha and others were flammable liquids most commonly depicted as being shot at the enemy through a tube or siphon. However, records of other uses do exist. Pots filled with naphtha formed a primitive [incendiary grendade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendiary_device), which could literally set the enemy aflame. As these substances were inextinguishable by water, they were quite dangerous for classical soldiers. Earthenware grenades filled with quicklime and pitch were reportedly used at the battle of Thessalonike in 904. Other devices include fire-lances and primitive rockets. Other references to explosive grenades and similar military devices are scattered, but no hard evidence exists in Medieval Europe, unlike [other places](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_of_Japan). It is entirely possible that these devices existed and references have been lost, however. The recipe for "Greek Fire" was a Byzantine state secret known only to the Emperor and his chemists. Perhaps your mysterious individual was a Byzantine Imperial chemist with such advanced and secretive knowledge. Reference: <http://gladius.revistas.csic.es/index.php/gladius/article/viewFile/171/172> particularly the section "Byzantine Pyrotechnics". Overall this is an excellent document on Byzantine and general Medieval-style militaries. [Answer] You could have some sort of substance that is under high internal stress. The object could then explode when thrown. One example is glass under internal tension, call [Prince Rupert's Drops](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe-f4gokRBs). I have heard that steel balls that have been in a SAG mill (for grinding ore) can develop internal stresses that cause the [steel ball to explode/fragment](http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=116115). Supposedly that is quite scary. > > one of the maintenance issues with SAG mills is when doing liner > changes the balls get imbedded in the liner - when removed and sit for > a while, the steel balls can explode! > > > [Answer] Well, flour is pretty explosive... In that case, it would be small boxes or mini-barrels or something filled with loose flour, and the outside coated in something flammable. To use, they would be lit on fire, and tossed or rolled into place. The explosion would happen once the box broke open, and the flames ignite the flour, and the finely-ground, highly flammable contents caught fire. This might explode the remains of the box (which might end up as proto-shrapnel), and make a fiery little boom. Alternatively, an unlit box (or barrel, whatever) could be lobbed near or at a flame source, like near a candle or in hearth. This would break on impact, and when the puff of flour-dust reached the flame, it would ignite explosively in a dust explosion - again a lot of boom and pyrotechnics, but probably little in the way of structural damage. This wouldn't require lighting beforehand, might take lighter and untarred boxes (since it wouldn't have to withstand burning) and if carefully used might not clue pursuers in that an external flame is needed. (edit: I had the idea that a packed box might explode if it burned hot and strongly enough to burn through the box, and that explosion would be much greater and cause more damage since the flour was under pressure - the difference between dust explosions used for special effects and those blowing up buildings. This might not be the case, as Mark points out... or simply tarring and igniting the box might not be enough to burn through the box and get hot enough to set it off. My apologies). Little sacks of flour would not work well as they aren't packed or pressurized for the first scenario, and probably wouldn't puff dust freely enough for the second. Something of wood, maybe waxed or oiled to help promote burning, and coated in something robustly burnable, like tar. A really savvy customer might include some metal shards or other junk, since it's the shrapnel more than the fire that will cause injuries from little bombs. The hard part is going to be ignition... there aren't any ways I know of in medieval times to set off fire at a distance. The 'bombs' would have to be ignited along the principles of fire arrows, already lit and burning sturdily enough to survive being thrown. This might have been discovered by someone experimenting after seeing flour explosions in action (like a bakery fire... I think it was known at the time that flour and fire went boom), or trying for a bigger boom from flaming arrows (and using sawdust or the like as extra fuel). The pieces were in place and readily available, it would only take someone putting the pieces together to make something workable. ]
[Question] [ ## First Contact This is a prequel to a [relativistic interstellar trade scheme](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/225352/why-do-they-need-a-commodity-with-a-200-year-lead-time) I am currently building on. An alien culture has sent a signal with design plans for solving an advanced anti-matter engine, allowing us to [store large quantities of antimatter in a Minimum Magnetic Field Trap](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/160416/how-much-antimatter-can-we-theoretically-hold-in-a-minimum-magnetic-field-trap). This is first contact, no prior communication has happened‚Äîin either direction. They know nothing at all about Earth and sent the message out in the blind. It is a pulsing light message from a star, which simply repeats. * Earth noticed that the pulses had a pattern, and assumed it came from an intelligence. * The pattern had been repeating for years, we never looked that way. Now we found it. * The pattern begins with a basic alphabet, then relatable words like "star," "space," "person", etc., and then starts putting grammar together for us using basic words to teach connectors like "and", "the", "under", etc. * In the end, after lots of work, they teach us their language, building from the simplest common concepts up. Then they include plans for building an antimatter engine. That seems to be the point of the message. ## Problem: They have no idea what an "inch" or a "second" or a "kilogram" is (how could they? It's first contact). They sent us a complete set of instructions to make this engine. But, it needs to be 18.85 gwelrits long, connected with 3 triamed diameter Zinc wire, and we must never exceed a temperature of 7,139 Wodnurbs for more than 32 dyups, or it will explode, Etc.Many more details like this are included. Assuming we got a set of instructions to solve our space-travel limitations from an advanced civilization, how could we possibly build it? What could they also include in the instructions that would allow us to manufacture this engine? * The message came from many lightyears away. We cannot communicate with them, and they do not know about us at all. [Answer] # Universal constants They would do the same thing we did in the Voyager record: put things in terms of universal constants that are based on universal physics. On the Voyager record, the way we indicate units is: Time: expressed in time units of 0.70 billionths of a second, the time period associated with a fundamental transition of the hydrogen atom [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mHmCy.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mHmCy.png) Distance: how far light travels in a vacuum in one of those time units Mass: described in masses of hydrogen atoms [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SaAzO.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SaAzO.gif) [Answer] All our units of measurement for physical quantities have absolute definitions, which mean the exact same thing everywhere in the universe. * For example, a second is the duration of exactly 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the fundamental unperturbed ground-state of the caesium-133 atom. Numbers are numbers everywhere, and cesium-133 is cesium-133 everywhere. * A meter is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second. * A kilogram is the unit of mass so that the Planck constant comes up to exactly 6.626,070,15√ó10‚àí34 kg‚ãÖm2‚ãÖs‚àí1. I would assume that long before going into the details of the antimatter engine they told us that a gwelrit is the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of so many dyups, with a dyup being the duration of so many periods of the radiation corresponding to such and such hyperfine spectral line of such and such atom. And so on. Basically, explaining the magnitude of the units of measurement referring to physical quantities is easy. It would be among the first things that a technical manual would include. As it is the custom when translating novels from American into another language. The first time the word "inch" comes up in the original, the translator would translate to some archaic word denoting a local obsolete unit of measurement (for example, in Romanian it would be "»õol" or "deget"), and put a footnote saying that this word translates the American word "inch" and one of those equals 2.54 centimeters. Same for gallon, ounce, furlong, firkin, hogshead etc. The problem exists also in Earthling-to-Earthling communication; some physicists use a system of units of measurement where the speed of light has the numerical value 1, so that it disappears from formulas. In olden days, many physicists used any of a family of systems of units of measurement called [CGS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centimetre%E2%80%93gram%E2%80%93second_system_of_units) (for centimeter-gram-second), which are conceptually different from the common SI of our days -- even the basic formulas don't translate directly. But it is still not all that hard to explain what a [statcoulomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statcoulomb) is, and how it relates to a regular coulomb. Now, some units of measurement refer to sensations, such as the [phon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phon) for loudness, or the [candela](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candela) for luminous intensity, or our color models. All we can do is send the curves which relate those to physical quantities, and hope for the best. [Answer] Units aren't the biggest problem ‚Äî not by a long shot I don't know what your aliens are like, or how much more advanced they are, but I can explore a different (and analogous) problem: could we teach a medieval society, circa 1450, to make an iPhone? For starters, they wouldn't understand the operating principles. They don't know what electricity is, or a wire, or a semiconductor. They've never heard of a capacitive touchscreen because they've never heard of capacitance. How could they understand an OLED display when the discovery that white light is made of colours is [still 200 years away?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Optics) You might ask "can't they just follow the instructions blindly?", but that won't work. They can't do quality control on the phone's components without understanding what each component is supposed to do ‚Äî they'd just end up building a phone in which all the components look right, but don't work. To them, a functioning microchip and a useless flake of polished metal are identical. What about materials? They need ultra-pure silicon for the chips, oil for the plastic parts, exotic metals like gallium and arsenic to dope the semiconductors, lithium for the battery... and just look at [what you need](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED#Material_technologies) to make an OLED panel. They don't know how to make any of those! And even if they could find the raw materials, how would they process them to the required purity? Remember: these are people who, if you handed them a lump of pure gallium, wouldn't even be able to identify it. They don't have modern supply-chains in place. They don't have any relevant institutional knowledge. They'd need to build it all from scratch. Manufacturing: iPhone chips contain components that are [just 5nm wide](https://wccftech.com/apple-a15-bionic-mass-production-may-use-tsmc-n5p-node/) ‚Äî much smaller than the wavelength of visible light. We'd need to send instructions for building an electron microscope just for them to see those components, much less manufacture them independently! Of course, we'd first need to explain what an "electron" is... Troubleshooting: Nothing works first time. According to Elon (who says dumb things, but in this case knows what he's talking about), "[building a car factory is 100 times harder than building a car](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-says-building-factory-100-times-harder-than-making-car-2019-3?r=US&IR=T)". Even if you know what the end result should look like, you still have to figure out how to get there. Our medieval friends will need to bootstrap a boatload of industries just to make the components they need: oil drilling, oil refining, organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, rare-earth metal mining, silicon chip manufacture, battery production, etc. And what if things don't work first time? The communication is one-way, so they can't ask us for help. They don't have the institutional knowledge they need to solve the inevitable problems. Funding: it should be clear by now that this is a massive undertaking for the medievalists. For us, building a chip fabrication plant is a billion-dollar investment. For them, they need to boostrap multiple entire industries, from scratch, in a world that currently has no demand for those products. How the hell are they going to pay for it? Workforce: the iPhone is manufactured in the modern world, by modern workers. It requires a skilled, literate, educated workforce. To build an iPhone, you need to teach an army of people about every step of the manufacturing process ‚Äî all of which will be new to them! In summary, the iPhone was designed with the assumption of a modern workforce, modern supply chains, a modern manufacturing base, and modern logistics. The design of the phone is inseparable from the civilisation it was designed for. Those medieval people would need to revolutionise every aspect of their society, just to make their first phone. In fact, they couldn't even have built an iPhone in the 1950s, let alone the 1450s. Medieval Europe is just 600 years behind us, and its inhabitants human, like us. How much greater will our difficulties be following blueprints written by aliens that could be thousands, or even millions, of years ahead of us? Of course, we won't have any of the problems I've outlined above. But we will have new problems, even more difficult problems, trying to understand an alien design, thought up by alien science, and made using alien techniques. *The hard part is not* the design, it's everything that feeds into that. If we were advanced enough to follow the aliens' blueprints, we'd be at most a few decades from figuring it out ourselves.** [Answer] > > Assuming we got a set of instructions to solve our space-travel limitations from an advanced civilization, how could we possibly build it? What could they also include in the instructions that would allow us to manufacture this engine? > > > Carl Sagan's novel [Contact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(novel)) answers this specific question. In the book, the machine's technical manual is the message. But it is just as you say: we don't know their units or concepts, so it is mostly unintelligible at first. However when the characters investigate the phase modulation of the message they discover a primer - a key that explains all the concepts and units in the manual by extrapolating from empirical principles, such as the characteristics of a hydrogen atom etc. Mathematics is the same throughout the universe, so the primer soon teaches the Earth's scientists how to understand the message, and how to read the technical elements of the manual. > > The message came from hundreds of lightyears away. We cannot communicate with them, and they do not know about us at all. > > > This is where we must deviate from the Contact story. In that story the aliens had received an early television broadcast (the first one powerful enough to breach the ionosphere, which was in 1939) and so had some grasp of our body shapes, and were able to determine the habitation requirements. However in this case I would suggest that the machine's manual covers mainly the engine itself, perhaps at several scales (because they don't know the size of the creatures reading their message). The engine would then mount on a habitation of some sort, and that would be explained with plenty of examples at varying scales, but left up to us to design, as they have no idea of our body shape and composition. The manual can still help us here, explaining the expected compression and tensile forces, acceleration, and such. If the intention was to carry humans, we could easily add in the missing pieces - aerospace engineers do this all the time. [Answer] I'm going to say units are the least of issues but for a different reason: I think they will express everything in fundamental units. Length will be that hydrogen length from Voyager, mass will be protonium, time will be the time for one wave for the hydrogen length. They'll send a periodic table so there's no question of what the units are. And it's not Zinc wire, it's atom-30 wire. Remove names wherever possible. It's still going to have to be followed by a whole bunch of this-is-how-you-make-the-tool-to-make-that instructions, repeat however many iterations needed until you can be confident that anyone who can receive the signal knows how to make the item--and then probably a bit more so the receivers of the message can compare the instructions to what they already know and see that they are instructions to build something that works. Epic engineering issue but I don't see a language problem. ]
[Question] [ It is a well known fact throughout human history that cats are bloodthirsty psychopaths, and a menace to society. Cats murder billions of innocent rodents a year, cause ecological disasters, and give their owners fatal diseases. Caesar, Temujin, and even Hitler recognized the power that cats wield over humans, and rightly feared them. Yet despite the evidence, we foolishly allowed ourselves to be domesticated by them. They manipulate us into giving them food and board without offering anything in return but contempt, creating a secret empire right under our noses. In this world, I have opted to change our fate by restoring power to humans and deposing our free loading enslavers. Wolves and their canine brethren have been exterminated due to a plague that wiped out a significant number of species. Our ancestors have chosen to breed cats for specific traits over thousands of years, conditioning them to be loyal to us. As a result, they have become bigger, stronger, and dutiful, taking the role that dogs would have had if they were present. There is a fatal flaw in this plan. Dogs descend from wolves, which were pack hunters. They are led by an alpha male who controls destiny and access to food, making them suitable for cooperation with humans. Cats, by contrast, are solitary hunters, making them less dependent on our patronage. These homicidal monsters are not motivated by treats and are much difficult to train to be obedient to their masters. What I need to do is make cats as a species to be more subservient to our will, and have that translate into present day. How can I make this work? [Answer] It's a bit of a side-step of the question, but there's no reason we need to domesticate solitary cats if all our dogs and wolves are dead. There are plenty of social cats who could be bent to our will. Lions are one option, but probably a bad one as they're so big. I'd posit that hyenas are the next best option. They're highly social endurance-predating feliforms and fill very similar niches to wolves in their environments. They're even already well on their way to domestication in places like the city of [Harar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_hyenas_in_Harar). [![Tame hyena](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9FdMj.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9FdMj.jpg) Edit: Thought I'd expand a little on why the other options available are less likely choices, and the thought process that led me to hyenas. Come with me down the rabbit hole! Sociality One of the key reasons that dogs are able to occupy the niche that we have collectively carved out is that they are highly social. Social animals already have pre-evolved mechanisms regarding social hierarchy that are mutually beneficial for domestication (it's key to remember that for dogs and cats especially it's thought that domestication with us occurred in both directions). The ability to form close social bonds with kin, and importantly with non-kin is vital for the sort of co-operative relationship that humans have with dogs. It may be possible to breed sociality into unsocial creatures (there's evidence that cats have significantly increased their tolerance for close proximity with other cats after domestication), but doing so would require either significantly more time and effort than starting with a social creature, and/or advanced knowledge of animal husbandry. It may well be that our ancient ancestors had that knowledge, but it is unlikely that they had the surplus resources to engage in multi-generational projects without immediate (or even lifetime) benefits. So, we're stuck with the felines that are already social. The earliest evidence of the domestication process starting with wolves is [27,000 years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_domestic_dog) (earliest evidence of domesticated dogs is 14,200 years ago). So we'll look at the social feliforms that lived alongside humans at that point in time. Felidae [Panthera leo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion) (African lions) are social cats that lived alongside humans in Africa, the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. They are currently the only extant social cat (although very happy to be proved wrong about that!). [Panthera spelaea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthera_spelaea) (cave lions) were also extant at this point, and lived alongside humans in northern Eurasia. Evidence suggests that cave lions were solitary, but [there is limited evidence that some populations were social](https://the-educational-blog.quora.com/Did-the-cave-lion-live-in-prides). [Machairodontinae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machairodontinae) such as [Smilodon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smilodon) and [Homotherium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homotherium) are likely to have been social. Smilodon definitely fits into the time period. The latest finds of Homotherium are 28,000 years old, but there is a possibility that they survived for another 1000 years and we just don't have finds dating to then. [Acionyx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheetah) (cheetahs) are an interesting case. The females are solitary, but males live in coalitions of related siblings. The only surviving species of cheetah in Eurasia by 28,000bc is the cheetah we have today (although its range was larger). These are all the known social true felines I know of. Broader feliforms Expanding it to [feliforms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feliformia), which would still be extant if all the dogs were wiped out, we get a few others. [Crocuta crocuta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_hyena) (spotted hyenas), and [Hyaena brunnea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_hyena) (brown hyenas) are certainly social to at least the same level of wolves. Other hyenas like the [striped hyena](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Striped_hyena) and the [aardwolf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardwolf) do also display some social behaviours, but are less social than wolves. Still might qualify though. The [cave hyena](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_hyena) was also extant in eurasia during this time period, and was social. The only other social feliform I can find is [meerkats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meerkat), who are very social indeed. Size The next gateway to domestication for predators is size. It is a very, very unwise decision for early humans to attempt to tame, let alone move towards domesticating predators that can easily overpower them. Wolves at the time domestication is expected to have begun weighed an average of 41-44kg depending on which species it actually was that became domesticated. If we take that to be a good target as it's significantly less than the average weight of a human at the time. We can reasonably include some flex as it's not a known thing, but something that weighs significantly more than a human is probably not going to happen. Furthermore, we know from real-life examples of domesticated animals that breeding something to be significantly bigger than their ancestral body size comes with a significant number of health issues (see shire horses and percherons, and great danes and rotweilers). So, we don't want something that's too small either. It's almost certainly possible to breed large versions without the health problems, but this will take time. Remember, paleolithic people had much fewer opportunities to engage in long-term projects without immediate reward. So, here's some averages for the above species: * Lions: 120-250kg * Cave lions: 200-350kg * Smilodon fatalis: 160-280kg * Smilodon populator: 220-400kg * Homotherium: 190kg * Cheetahs: 21-72kg * Spotted hyenas: 40-69kg * Brown hyenas: 40-44kg * Striped hyenas: 22-55kg * Aardwolves: 7-10kg (up to 15kg) * Cave hyenas: 102kg * Meerkats: 0.5-2.5kg So, we can probably discount all except cheetahs, spotted hyenas, brown hyenas and striped hyenas. However, there's one more hurdle that we need to jump through. Ecology One of the primary benefits that wolves and dogs offered to early peoples is as hunting companions. Humans are persistence predators. Wolves are also persistence predators. Humans are evolved to tackle big game, as are wolves. We're both highly specialised for endurance and tackling animals larger than ourselves. Cats, by and large, are not persistence predators. Lions, tigers, jaguars, sabre-tooth cats, cheetahs, domestic cats...all hunt by ambush. As such, they are a poor match for our evolved hunting tactics. We'd blow their cover, and they wouldn't be able to keep up with us over the sorts of distances we travel. This would not necessarily be insurmountable to a determined selective breeding programme, but you're going to have to undo a significant amount of evolutionary adaptation (up to and including skeletal structure). This is way beyond the scope of early domestication. Hyenas, however, are persistence predators. This is one of the reasons for their dog-like morphology via convergent evolution. Certainly spotted hyenas also hunt big game. Meerkats also range over large areas relative to their size. However, they subsist entirely on animals smaller than themselves and as such are not adapted to big game hunting. Not so useful to early humans. This is also true of aardwolves who subsist mainly on termites. In conclusion Hyenas are the only feliforms extant during the time period since domestication began that are capable, let alone likely, of filling the same niche as wolves/dogs. [Answer] > > What I need to do is make cats as a species to be more subservient to > our will, and have that translate into present day. How can I make > this work? > > > Domestic cats are available everywhere. You can make them more subservient to your will by training them. It's already been done, many times. All you have to do is search for 'cat circus' on Youtube. Here is an example: <https://youtu.be/8e0z3-iZ_TY?t=60> [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PSN4y.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PSN4y.png) I personally trained my cat to high-five in an afternoon - they learn quickly. Here is an old video showing the method <https://youtu.be/q787R2DNDJI?t=35> You can search Youtube for 'cat clicker training'. --- An anecdote I was training my dog to jump on a chair and sit in return for a treat. The cat had been watching with great interest. A the end of the (short) session the cat jumped on the chair, sat, and looked at me expectantly. I gave him a treat! It was at that point I understood the expression, "copycat". [Answer] Like all domestication. You cage/pen the animals, hand feed and select the ones with the traits you desire to breed. An experiment on arctic foxes was done and with a short period, the selected animals would vie for human affection like dogs. See [Docile Foxes](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/these-docile-foxes-may-hold-some-genetic-keys-domestication) [Answer] ## Simple: Control their breeding. The difference in natural social instincts may be a factor, but by far the reason cats are only partially domesticated is that even though they deign to live with us, for the vast majority of human history, we let cats figure out the "where do babies come from?" part all on their own. Apparently at the first [cat show in 1871](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3594446/) there were only five distinct breeds of cats. It's really only very recently, in the age of the modern housepet, that we've really taken control of cats' genetic destiny — and even then very loosely, as many domestic cats are allowed to breed with their feral neighbors. By contrast, humans started selectively breeding dogs for desired traits literally before history started. So that's pretty much the difference. See [Why cats never became man’s best friend](https://qz.com/295457/why-cats-never-became-mans-best-friend/) for more on this. If we want a different history, simply create a line of domesticated cats which you don't give this option — keep them under closer control and breed for the desired social and human-friendly traits. [Answer] Cats are not social and don't have a hierarchy? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fYHgN.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fYHgN.png) As somebody who has been around both dogs and cats for all of my life, I disagree 100% with your claim that dogs are more trainable than cats. The main reason that dogs are considered more trainable is that humans have been selectively breeding them for specific traits that we can then train them to perform on command. My current dog is an Anatolian Shepherd, a breed that has been bred for the specific task of protecting livestock. Not herding them. Not chasing them. Just hanging out with them and chasing away or killing any predators that come around. They traditionally work with sheep and goats but mine is protecting chickens. I was able to train him to protect these chickens because the basic protective instincts bred into his DNA. Dogs like retrievers have not been bred to protect livestock. They have been bred to grab birds and bring them back to their owners. I would probably have better luck training a cat to protect my chickens than a retriever. Cats in our world are not bred for any specific tasks or behaviors or intelligence. When they are bred at all they are bred for appearance based traits only. But as an example, it is common for mother cats to bring stunned but still alive prey like mice and squirrels back to their kittens so the kittens can learn how to pounce and hunt them. That basic behavior could be trained and bred into retrieving downed birds to their owners just like we did thousands of years ago when teaching wolves to do the same thing. Herding livestock is really just chasing them in a controlled direction and we were able to train wolves to do it because they naturally work in packs with some dogs chasing the prey towards the other dogs that are waiting in ambush. This is nothing inherent to wolves. Any animals that hunt in groups will learn this, and lions do it very well. There are other examples of cats working in groups to hunt. Cats normally hunt alone because that is what gives them the best results. Change any parameters so that hunting in groups provides greater rewards and cats will quickly adapt to that new reality. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SnP17.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SnP17.png) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRp25.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CRp25.png) Humans domesticate animals that have something to offer. If wolves are not available to your early humans but some type of cats are, then there is no reason that cats could not be domesticated. And after several thousand years of controlled breeding for specific behaviors, cats could be just as varied, specialized and trainable as dogs are in our current society. The question asks about cats and seems to pull the idea of out current domestic cats that came from small desert cats in north Africa. If I were to choose from all of the existing cat species for basic stock to begin domesticating as dog replacements I would choose the cheetah. They of all breeds show the most affinity for humans, willingness to domesticate and lack of appetite for human flesh. They also have demonstrated willingness to hunt in groups when appropriate which is a headstart for some types of roles that they would need to perform in their future domestic role. [Answer] Cats are social animals when they are born. They understand relationships and love. A pet cat is one that hasn't been forced to grow up. And they bond forever with whoever raised them and if they need to transfer their affections for survival to another their prime allegiance is always to the original care giver. Cats prefer to be on their own. An angry cat has claws. Cats prefer to avoid angry or potentially angry cats. Several years ago, and this is the only time I've seen this, two cats were singing harmoniously together. I presume the male was the one poised to bolt. Cats have claws. But they were into each other. They were both probably desexed. Many other examples. The point to note is that cat social behaviour depends on the density of cats. An adult feral cat will avoid other cats. As density increases, as in urban areas, they become more and more social (including making enemies and fremenies). They can form short term packs for raiding a house. And in extreme density (like when mad people feed them) they form up in groups, probably for protection. Cats are born social. And most become solitary through different means. Tigers are bad tempered as they get older (and have big claws) and other tigers don't want to know them. Cheetahs raise their child then when its ready they abandon them. Although they always remain somewhat interested in their child. I've observed the feral cats at Coogee Beach at length. They are a family group for well over a year. [Answer] Breed them for small, minimally functional brains. We are already doing this, and it turns out great, mostly. Brachiocephalic cats are prized pets because they are super sweet and docile and they sneeze a lot. This docility is in part because their brains are squashed and small, and missing some bits. The sneezing is probably because they barely have noses. <https://www.improveinternational.com/us/brachycephaly-ventricular-dilation-and-skull-malformations-in-persian-cats/> > > The results confirmed a correlation between high grades of > brachycephaly with facial, dental and neurocranial abnormalities in > Persian cats. These malformations were also linked to a reduced > cranial capacity and internal hydrocephalus which can be clinically > significant and cause a negative impact on animal welfare. > > > [![brachiocephalic cats](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Wh9ZL.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Wh9ZL.jpg) <http://messybeast.com/brachycephaly.htm> Maybe an impact on animal welfare if you expect the cat to hunt pigeons in the wild; it might struggle to figure out what it was supposed to do. But for a companion animal it is fine and if you explicity want the animal not to be a solitary predator it is great. The physical issues that go along with the brachycephaly breeding program also work fine with the non-predator kibblivorous human companion plan. [Answer] Cheetahs have been tamed for thousands of years. There's a difference between tamed and domesticated, but that might be a good start. [Answer] Solitary cats are not a useful complement to human hunting methods. Cats are ambush predators, which humans with tools already excel at. Humans with spears can kill almost anything quickly. Wolves helped with hunting becasue they are faster yet still have considerable endurance and can drive animals to us for humans to kill. They can also track prey by scent which compliments normal hunting and persistence hunting. A solitary predator ambush predator is completely useless to human hunting. Lions are the only regular pack hunters among cats and they are too large to be domesticated. Small cats are only useful becasue they can hunt vermin that are too much trouble for humans. [Answer] In our timeline, cats waited until humans began to settle down before they domesticated us. In this alternate history, humans are going to try to turn cats into their hunting partners. The humans will think they've succeeded, but that apparent victory will be short-lived. Pampered housecats will still rule the world. Things will be just a bit different. Through an arduous process of making some guests feel welcome and convincing others to be elsewhere, as well as carefully timed interruptions of certain human social interactions, the cats will use sekective breeding to push their domesticated servants to shift from a hunter gatherer lifestyle to farming faster than the humans in our timeline. All that grain will provide plenty of rodents to keep the cats amused and will make the humans less likely to run off and be trampled by large grazing animals. If the cats are lucky, this might even result in a modest reduction in the warlike tendencies of humans. ]
[Question] [ Foreword: I am asking this question primarily to decide if a nocturnal race makes sense for my purposes before I develop them in too great a depth. This means I do not have much detail to provide on their biology or culture, just a basic outline. Hopefully it's enough. Permanent settlements are dependent on sustained agriculture. A sapient extraterrestrial nocturnal race are omnivorous and capable of tool use, and are already at what we would call an early Neolithic level of technology - i.e. they have blades, art and clothing (or their equivalents), but no domesticated animals. They are not cave-dwellers. They wake at dusk and go to sleep with the dawn on their world, which has a day-night cycle and an axial tilt similar to Earth's, and perhaps several small natural satellites. They are not necessarily humanoid, and likely resemble a non-primate clade. How does a population of this race come to develop agriculture on a scale that can sustain a permanent settlement and thus lead to civilization? Chiefly what I'm asking is, if you're asleep during the day, how do you manage crops, take care of them, and guard them from intruding diurnal animals, among other things, well enough to settle down? Would they have large farms of grass/grain crops like we do, or would they need to farm something more unusual? (Again, they don't dwell in caves, so I don't think they would farm cave-dwelling life like bioluminescent fungi.) Or to put it another way, are there any standard and necessary agricultural processes that are particularly difficult to accomplish at night? I would prefer that their agriculture take a form recognizable to us as agriculture (you see their farm and think "farm"), but only if it's justifiable. (There's no need to address the domestication of animal livestock for the moment, but it's welcome if you do. Assume their livestock could be either diurnal or nocturnal, probably something they would already be hunting, or it could be for non-food products.) Edit, promoted from comment: The reason I think developing agriculture at night would be a problem is that I feel that being awake during the day would give one a better chance of coming to understand what kind of nutrition and resources plant crops demand. It would take a lot of work staying up past one's bedtime to determine how to lay out fields for the best sunlight and such, which I feel would be too much fine detail for a population on the initial cusp of agriculture to accomplish or to have a sense for. [Answer] I don't think there would be any substantial deviations from how a diurnal species would manage it. Standard farming activities (building, plowing, watering, planting, harvesting) can be performed at night as well as during the day. We do it during the day because we're diurnal, not because it's a requirement. Diurnal pests aren't substantially more common or problematic than nocturnal ones (as anyone who has woken to a ravaged garden can attest), so again, you'd deal in pretty much he same way - fences, scare crows and other deterents, and if needed forcing some poor schmuck to stand guard all day. As far as domesticated animals go, I suspect they would favor nocturnal animals for basic ease of handling (it's a lot easier to take an animal out to pasture or milk it when it is awake). [Answer] *There's no logistical reason that agricultural activities couldn't* be done at night. Plants do most of their photosynthesis during the day, but humans aren't involved in that particular process. The rest, we do when we're awake just because that's the time we're awake. We can't guard the fields all the time, even during the day, and the techniques we use to guard the fields when we're away should work just as well for a nocturnal species. Certain activities may be more dangerous, due to reduced visibility**. Injuries may be more common. If the workers use torches on overcast nights, there may be some risk of fire in the fields. But these are inconveniences to be overcome, rather than insurmountable obstacles. [Answer] The farmers sleep at night and work during the day, as [habitual diurnals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diurnality). Being naturally nocturnal doesn't mean your body shuts down against your will and you're unable to function during the day; certainly not if you're a sapient species capable of planning your future and making informed choices to guide your behaviour. Presumably this species has physical adaptations appropriate for nocturnality, such as oversized eyes, a reliance on hearing, etc, so these farmers may need to take care to protect their eyes from daylight. Being [habitually crepuscular](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crepuscular) could also be an option, operating around dawn and dusk. Some aspects of agriculture simply can't be done under star light, or by relying on scent or hearing more than vision. Discolouration in fruits, vegetables or the plant itself won't be apparent; pollinators like bees will be active during the day (as the sun is a powerful navigation tool) and so husbandry will in part rely on their active period; even harvesting – being able to see and collect parts of plants – will be difficult if your visual acuity is based on movement more than colour or edge-detection. [Answer] Some species of [earth ants have a kind of agriculture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%E2%80%93fungus_mutualism), and that underground without the aid of vision. And they are not even sentient or intelligent. It is very likely that a nocturnal intelligent species would have effective senses not depending on light, so them sensing/navigating their natural environment is probably not a problem. Nocturnal agriculture might well start with fungi or some kind of non-photosynthetic producers / stationary growths. Even if they do not live in caves, caves are still great for nocturnal agriculture due to them being protected from diurnal plants and animals and the environment. From such farms their technology can advance to plants as they realize that farming photosynthetic organisms give much greater yields. I can imagine that a major driving force behind their potential animal domestication would be for them to domesticate animals which help with their daytime agriculture (by killing daytime pests, fertilizing or even providing sight (like we use animals sniffing out truffles)). [Answer] I don't think developing agriculture is a problem but I don't think your race would stay nocturnal for very long, since it's much easier to work at daylight. So unless you have a very good reason why should they trip over the farming equipment they will switch to diurnal life. There's too much advantage to be gained from working your fields when you could see well. Those who stay past bedtime will gain more yields and produce more offspring, which will prefer staying late and rising late. ]
[Question] [ I am working on a steampunk/plasmapunk game. The players are dropped into a ruined world full of old technology. The big focus of the game is the players salvaging the stuff that's left behind and engineering their way out of problems. The world is full of hovering ships powered by semi sentient plasma generators. The ships are heavily armed with everything from rockets to plasma cannons, to improvised railguns that can launch scrap. The big shipboard generators can provide plasma batteries, to run smaller creations for a short amount of time, so you could make a floating sled to move a heavy part out of a cave, for example. However, where this breaks down is that I can't figure out a way for this tech to exist, and it not to translate into a handheld gun of some sort. I am really uninterested in making a shooting game. Anyone got any good internal justifications for this? [Answer] The aliens were big. [![dead alien from ALien 1979](https://i.stack.imgur.com/61Q3f.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/61Q3f.png) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOUW1G-AE0A> /The ships are heavily armed with everything from rockets to plasma cannons, to improvised railguns that can launch scrap./ A lot of those things are the handheld guns. Their makers had big hands. The aliens who built all these things were at least 10 meters tall and some apparently a lot bigger than that. Found clothing, armor and other personal gear suggest they were different in other ways as well. Some of the items are completely enigmatic - talismans? Personal hygiene objects? Chew toys? There is nothing scaled for humans on this world. It is Honey I Shrunk The Kids, but with shrapnel shooting railguns. [Answer] # Too Risky: Your tech is fairly solid, but there's lots of steampunk piping that doesn't tolerate piercing damage from high-velocity projectiles very well. Anyone shooting a handgun tends to get blasted with steam or engulfed with a cloud of ammonia. The ship can fix minor damage on its own, but the short-term effects of firing a portable weapon inevitably harm everyone present. Further, your ships are semi-sentient. The ships follow rules. Generally, the ships do their job and ignore the squabbles of mere mortals. THEY, however, might not appreciate piercing bullets being fired inside them, and they express their unhappiness by deliberately jetting steam, blowing valves (in other words, they "shoot" back) or gassing such violators of the rules. # Kevlar (or equivalents): You don't need anything as grand as a force field to stop a bullet. armor designed to protect the crew from high-velocity debris and explosions stops bullets easily by suddenly becoming rigid but doesn't stop slow velocity swords and spears (or possibly even thrown weapons like spears and throwing axes). Guns might still exist, but if 60% of shots automatically fail, the utility of the guns would be limited. The die-hards could still carry them, but they will be weakened to the point of relative ineffectiveness. And yes, Dune-style forcefields that stop fast projectiles/beams but allow slow ones would be good for this, too. Flame throwers would be a good alternative to get around both of these, but they are generally big, short-ranged, and/or cause a lot of collateral damage. # Too expensive: Anything sufficiently high-tech (like handheld plasma guns) is too complicated for the players to build without the appropriate parts, and small parts for these devices simply don't exist. Or, for fun, they CAN get these weapons, but they constantly burn out or need replacements that can't be found. This prices the guns out of practical use, but doesn't stop determined gamers from getting them and using them for the occasional boss battle. # Powerful Melee weapons: Everyone has advanced armor - every suit on every ship is armor. You need it to survive the rough, possibly airless, or fiery environment. Guns work fine, but everyone is armored. But if you want to fight people, semi-sentient plasma-based lightsabers, Vibro blades, power fists, or industrial cutters are powerful enough to penetrate the armor. [Answer] ## The Ships Forbid It > > The world is full of hovering ships powered by semi sentient plasma generators. > > > The hover ships are the remnants of a [3-laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics) robot apocalypse. Because the AIs are above all else, not allowed to let humans come to harm, they can not allow themselves to be used to make weapons designed to kill humans. Instead, any human wanting to fabricate a weapon must convince the AI that what it is fabricating is a tool, not meant to harm anyone. So, if you try to make a gun, the ship will cut off your access to its power before you can finish it. A manchette on the other hand... is clearly a tool. The reason the hover ships allow humans to make ship-to-ship weapons is that many hover ships have gone rogue and no-longer obey the 3-laws (or thier understanding of the 3 laws has turned them against humanity.) So, the "good" ships understand the need to arm themselves to protect man kind against other hover ships, but would be reluctant to use those weapons against humans or a ship that it believes has humans on board. [Answer] Personal shields are so easy to build with this tech that nobody bothers to build handheld weapons Using a small power source it's relatively easy to build an efficient personal shield that blocks small arms fire. A handheld weapon simply can't be built powerful enough to punch through, for that that you need a much larger weapon. You can invent some quirk of the technology that causes melee weapons to not trip the shield. Since nobody really bothers carrying handheld guns, you never tend to see a shield actually activate, people just tend to wear them somewhere on their body as a passive deterrent. [Answer] Heavy(ish) plasma generators The semi-sentient plasma generators come in different shapes and sizes, the ligther ones at 25kg up to several tonnes. While 25kg may produce enough power for a small railgun or plasma cannon, it's way too heavy for aiming the thing while holding it with your hands. This ancient civilization did have handheld guns, they just didn't survive enough. The old handheld weapons relied on chemical energy, since plasma generators were too heavy, and time has rendered the chemical components unstable or innocuous, so they're worthless - also, handheld weapons were created following the old principle of "cheapest manufacturer got the contract". Semi-sentient plasma generators were expensive and had the auto-repair capabilites that have allowed themselves to still being serviceable after all this time. Cheap handheld weapons are a piece of rust nowadays, best case scenario, or a heap of unstable explosive that it will go off if you roll less than 3 in the investigation check. EDIT On a second thought, you can combine the answer from user72058 and mine. 25kg on a backpack and 25kg on your hands feel very different. If, like user72058 suggests, these ancient civilization had efficient body shields, a 25-30kg backpack generator could stop any kind of bullet from a handheld weapon, but they are too heavy to fit on a handheld weapon - well, I suppose they could use a backpack generator to power a handheld weapon, just like WWII flamethrowers worked, but then you have no shield, only the weapon. In this case it would make sense than defense took advantage over offense and at the end they didn't bother making handheld weapons at all. [Answer] > > I am really uninterested in making a shooting game. > > > (Well, that's unfortunate. I really like shooting games.) You have ship-mounted plasma cannons and railguns, but you really don't want people turning them into man-portable variants? Fortunately for you there's a very simple answer: materials science. Or more precisely, the lack thereof. The steam-/plasma-punk esthetic is largely about big, clunky machines that do unbelievable things like turn steam power into death rays and all that. Sure you get the occasional clockwork cyborg or pocket mechanical computer, but the prevalence of chunky machinery is largely due to the lack of advanced materials to construct your equipment from. And since your setting is post-apocalyptic, odds are that most of the really interesting materials science is lost tech. In order to shrink down a plasma cannon to something that a man can carry you'll need some very advanced materials and manufacturing techniques. The plasma chamber and barrel has to be lined with certain crystalline matrices that can withstand the heat of plasma generation, you need big electromagnetic coils to focus and direct the plasma, and a really strong body material to hold it all together. In large scale for the ship-mounted variants you can solve a lot of the structural issues by simply adding more mass. For a hand-held variant you're going to need something a little more advanced in order to get the strength you need while staying light enough to wield. Of course that's only the first part of the problem. Your little plasma batteries can produce enough power to do some handy things, but they're really not suited for burst power production like you need for firearms. Try to drain them too fast and they either stall out or melt down. Sure you can build accumulator banks for them, but you're going to hit the material science wall again here. Capacitors are a dime a dozen (well, they were when I was a kid learning electronics), but the production of them requires a lot of high-tech stuff. Capacitors built to be discharged quickly without blowing themselves to pieces are even worse, relying on extremely high tech materials in both the frame and the dielectric. And don't even get me started on the circuits you're going to need for power regulation, discharge control and to prevent overcharging. Finally, range. Plasma projectiles evaporate by interaction with the medium they're travelling through, in a cute little inversion of the cube-square law. For a plasma round small enough to launch from a portable canon the surface area to volume ratio is way too high, giving it a range measured in inches rather than yards. If you basically have to stick the end of your gun up against the target anyway, it's simpler to just hit them with it rather than futz about with pulling triggers and aiming and all that jazz. Now if you could somehow channel that plasma along the surface of a light blade without melting it, that would be useful. [Answer] Goggles On! [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jAfqO.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jAfqO.png) Most military action is air-to-air. Or rather giant steam/plasma-punk dirigible to giant steam/plasma-punk dirigible. They have deflection shields which can stop small firearms coming from outside the dirigible. This is why electro-mortars and scrap cannons are needed for one ship to shoot another. When it comes to boarding parties however handguns are a liability. The ships spend a lot of time above the weather where the air is thin. Shooting bullets willy-nilly will can either: (a) puncture your airship's swim bladders and make it fall from the sky. Bad. (b) [make holes in your airship and let the space air in and suffocate your crew.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T18wE8X0v8) Also bad. This is why boarding parties use sillier more short range weapons like glue shooters and net cannons and chair legs. [Answer] # Too big If the power density is too small, a firearm will be too large for a human to handle - or too small to be effective. That's why early gunpowder weapons were cannons. As the gunpowder was perfected, the power/size went up, we got more powerful cannons AND smaller handguns. We already have railguns today, but they need a ship-sized power generator to operate. Even if you scale a railgun cannon down to pistol size, the generator will scale down to motorcycle-size. Even if it was possible for a human to cart one around, it would be too cumbersome in combat. You can also have the power generators to be unscalable. Just as A-bomb has certain minimal yield, below which a chain reaction cannot start, and black holes have certain minimal size below which they evaporate faster than they can attract mass, your plasma generators can operate on a principle which will put some minimal size requirements. Small enough to be carried in a ship, but too big to be carried by a human. [Answer] No gunpowder or black powder technology. Gunpowder and black powder are really good at what they do. If you just eliminate any understanding of it or technology to produce it, relying instead on liquid-fuel rockets, you'll eliminate the historical groundwork for small arms. Sure, air-powered guns exist, but they have strong limitations that keep us from using them much today. While both battery tech and gunpowder require a solid understanding of chemistry, it's completely conceivable that either would have been invented while the other was overlooked. They're both oddball technologies with niche applications, so, for whatever historical reasons, the gunpowder niche just hasn't been explored yet. [Answer] # Steam and plasma generators don't miniaturize well Steam power requires boilers, pipes, valves, and vents. While you might be able to have some gadgets powered by a boiler backpack, you wouldn't be able to generate the kind of pressure necessary for lethal force from that form factor. Plasma suffers from similar design problems. Generating plasma requires large machinery. Even with plasma batteries, the amount of concentrated plasma required for a lethal blast is more than a single battery can hold. The challenge is determining why there are rockets but no handheld firearms. For whatever reason, this world has developed slow-burning combustibles that enable rockets but has never made fast-burning combustibles that would enable bullets. This could be limited by either high-speed combustibles or oxidizers since bullets contain self-oxidizing fuels. Perhaps the chemicals required to make high-speed combustibles and/or oxidizers are scarce enough to make firearms impractical. You can still use an old-fashioned crossbow, of course. There's no way around it, really. [Answer] Not all tech can be miniaturized. Beneath the technobabble, a "plasma generator" could be a fusion reactor, which uses superheated plasma to generate energy, or even a (made up) high temperature fission reactor that intentionally melts down the fuel into a plasma. While there is no lower limit on the size of a fusion reactor, it becomes unstable the smaller it is. Your world could have figured out functional fusion reactors down to a certain size, but no smaller. Fission reactors do have a lower limit. Nuclear fuel has a critical mass and will not react if there is too little of it or it has the wrong shape. This is why there are no nuclear hand grenades. And if the power supply is too big to be portable, you need batteries. Chemical batteries are probably insufficient, so supercapacitors are your only option. These can easily be damaged during or after the apocalypse (EMP, corrosion, reliance on supercooling) and are impossible to fix or mass manufacture without specialized equipment. Even if a couple of them survive but not enough to make them disposable, guns are not useful if you have to plug them into the wall between each shot. The bigger issue is that one could just make a crossbow. [Answer] In steampunk setting you have also steam weapons, where instead of expanding gunpowder reaction products projectiles are moved by expanding steam. Now you need to hold in hands heater, water tank, fuel tank, steam boiler, steam condensator, maybe some pipes, bullets and run with all of this into battlefield. I think this will be as dangerous to handle as flamethrower, and this is only about flammability, you must also take into account that steam in boiler can explode. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_cannon> [Answer] Remnants of handheld firearms exist, but their owners used them to ruin. Instead of the other answers which posit that firearms are useless, I'll say that they were indeed crucial at one point, but so much so that the only thing you'll find any more are parts beyond repair. People would never discard their guns, parts, maintenance kits, cartridges, etc., while anyone who died would have theirs taken soon. The historical analogy would be a desperate and under-provisioned army: if a soldier died someone would take his boots, coat, etc. You can implement this in your game by allowing the player to find a few broken pieces to hint at firearms, but not enough to make one or entice the player to try. [Answer] The planet’s gravity is really strong. The plasma generators in the ships are the way to charge up powered anti-gravity devices in the form of leftover steampunk exoskeletons in various forms and partial pieces that can be scavenged and cobbled together. The unique metal for these is ancient and immensely strong and able to handle the planet’s crushing gravitational forces. The exoskeletal pieces can have portable energy reservoirs but require occasional recharging. Due to their size limitations they are only sufficient to support the player’s mass and movement but don’t allow personal flight. Under this intense gravity, no form of chemical gun can produce enough energy to project a bullet any useful distance before the gravity drop grounds it. The more powerful and much larger ship-based plasma rail guns are the only useful projectile weapons but they must be used like artillery, lobbed in a pre-calculated trajectory and too sophisticated for general use. A barrage effect would require immense energy reserves. This would effectively deter FPS gameplay and focus instead on survival strategy elements. The high gravity scenario also has potentially interesting implications for general movement, travel, gathering items, and certain musculoskeletal vulnerabilities which would create urgency and tension for the gameplay. A nearby moon, drawn close by the planet’s extreme mass, could add its own high gravity effects like tidal forces that affect the players and their environment. A shifting sea of surface objects regularly strewn about by these forces could lead to uncovering new elements such as items and pathways, or complicating the players plans overnight. [Answer] They were never invented to begin with. One might say that at some point in our history, it was inevitable that handguns would become the primary weapon used by ground forces. But this wasn't always the case. Very early handguns weren't very effective compared to other weapons. Maybe at this point in your world, people just kind of gave up on the idea and combat evolved in another direction. At some point they would have tech that would make handguns effective, but at that point combat had evolved in such a manner (as other answers point out, with airships being a main way to fight each other) that they wouldn't really be practical anymore or nobody would even consider arming somebody with a miniature (and less powerful) version of the weapons used on the airships. ]
[Question] [ For my story, I need South African apartheid to still be alive in the 1990's. Everything else is more or less the same. For example, the Eastern block still collapses in 1989. What would be the minimal changes needed to prevent apartheid collapse in the beginning of the 90's? [Answer] Oddly enough getting rid of Mandela as we know him probably would be enough. Getting rid of de Klerk would probably be enough, as well. The problem with apartheid was not downright collapse, but simply that it had no future. As such it was perfectly rational for de Klerk to think that it was not a question of whether apartheid should end, but when and how that should be done. I think that was common opinion in South Africa at the time? Anyway, the timing would depend on the best time to negotiate. In general that would be as soon as possible since things will only get worse, but given the the perfectly justified distrust on both sides, the actual best time would be "when both sides have leaders able to ignore the distrust". That pretty much means de Klerk and Mandela. Neither of them had a clean reputation on the other side, it would have been easy to insist on negotiating with someone "clean". For example, in both Syria and Iraq the US had strong opinions about who they deem acceptable. In both cases the results have been fairly disastrous. In South Africa this would have made any negotiated end to apartheid impossible and easily delayed the end by a decade or more. People can be fairly stubborn if they have no real choice. A related issue is that while personal trust or approval was not necessary, it was necessary to be able to trust that the new government will at least try to avoid open retribution against the whites for the injustices of apartheid. Mandela is pretty much the only person who could promise that and have a realistic chance of keeping the promise. I do not think de Klerk would have been able to take the risk, if Mandela had not been available. If you want minimal the easiest is probably to replace de Klerk. He is not nearly as iconic as Mandela. People outside South Africa might not even realise he was missing. You can also just tweak de Klerk slightly, either by him not realizing the time is running out on apartheid or by making him more law and order type and refusing to negotiate with a terrorist. Oh and I am far from being knowledgeable about South African politics, so take the advice above with a grain of salt. It is basically my impression of the general pattern of things as seen from far outside. [Answer] Empire. this was fun to think about but I am not sure it qualifies as minimal. That said these events would probably not greatly affect the world outside Africa. An Israeli / S. African nuclear test really did happen, although not in a military context. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OBdLN.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OBdLN.jpg) from <http://www.timemaps.com/store/timemaps/2012/4/africa_ad1960.jpg> • 1939. On the outbreak of world war 2, Afrikaaner pro-German influences prevail and South Africa remains neutral in the war, skewing South Africa permanently away from British and towards Afrikaaner influence in domestic politics. This leads to an influx of German refugees during and after the war. Among the refugees are ethnic Germans who have ideological differences with the Nazis. Paradoxically, large numbers of German Jews also emigrate – these correctly perceive a welcoming environment among the Afrikaaners. <http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/afrikaner-jewry-south-africa> These immigrants augment and fortify the white ruling class, improving its administrative efficacy along German lines without the Nazi cruelty and jingoism. • In the mid 1960s the crumbling white supremacist government of Rhodesia cedes the state in its entirety to South Africa, fearing (correctly) that the white minority will be disenfranchised and driven out if joint rule with the black majority comes to pass. This move is facilitated by the large number of British-descent South Africans who relocated to Rhodesia during WW2. • Shortly thereafter, joint Rhodesian / South African troops occupy Mozambique and then Angola, putatively to restore order as the Portuguese government withdraws. This they do well, and these former Portuguese colonies are incorporated as South African protectorates. • Over the late 1960s and early 1970s, white populations of newly independent African nations and especially Congo flee to the enlarging South Africa, bringing with them their wealth but also an interest in retaining African financial and commercial ties – or retaking their old homelands entirely. • In 1976 South Africa (with Israeli assistance) drops a nuclear weapon on Angolan communist insurgents (and a large number of unacknowledged Cuban “advisors”). The USSR and US protest but cannot join forces to take action and neither can act unilaterally. This show of strength by SA ends the insurgency in Angola and also raises the esteem among Africans for South Africa as a domestic superpower. This, together with the earned reputation for incorruptibility among South African administrators, leads to the success of a South African backed insurgency in Congo / Zaire and the addition of this nation to the South African polity. By 1990 successful oil exploration efforts in Mozambique and Rhodesia have moved South Africa to the third biggest oil producer in the world and it is the chief political influence in subsaharan Africa. Despite the continuation of Apartheid policies, most of the citizenry deems this form of fascism an acceptable price to pay for noncorrupt government, peace and prosperity. [Answer] # Break the boycott, fix the finance One of the things that caused the final breakdown of the apartheid system was the big international companies pulling out as the boycotts started to bite. Barclays was one of the last, though the boycott campaign took 16 years eventually they pulled out in 1986, and with the loss of the big banks cutting off the governments access to finance it was just a matter of time. There will be a lot of talk of Mandela on a subject like this, but he could just have been kept in prison. He was known about but not known until his release, and he was effectively released to be someone to negotiate with to manage the transition. As with any political system it's propped up by the financial stability of the country, the loss of finance is the fall of the government. FW de Klerk wanted to change the system, Thatcher was propping him up to help manage a stable transition. Removing Thatcher could have caused de Klerk to fall and lead to either an unstable transition or delayed transition, removing de Klerk could have delayed the transition but you'd still need a line of credit for the government to operate. [Answer] (Except that I like Will answer, but I'm not sure it counts a minimum change) Earlier Rwanda genocide (or additional Rwanda style genocide nearby), that would convince the West to drop serious sanctions because stable regime is still a better choice. Earlier Robert Mugabe economic success in printing money in nearby Zimbabwe (to make enough Blacks reconsider whether ending White rule would really make them better off...). Deadlock of peace negotiations (or a minor blood bath). In real life Nelson Mandela just after release from prison was speaking about implementing quite a few communist policies and until his last days was calling Muammar Gaddafi as great friend. In your timeline I see a great potential for Mandela to be a bit more idealistic, be released and deported as part of some West brokered sanction lift, and end up his life peacefully on political exile, loved by radical left and treated as an embarrassment by the rest. [Answer] Huge oil reserves findings in South Africa. The Oil Embargo was very powerful instrument to put pressure on the apartheid regime after the fall of the Shah. West hated apartheid but they hated USSR even more. The soviets were main beneficiary of high oil prices after Yom Kippur war and the fall of the shah. Considering Gulf states complete disregard for human rights even today, not to mention all the countries that sold weapons to Saddam (even nuclear reactor) when he was gassing civilians every day, its not a big stretch to believe that the apartheid would have been safe if they had oil, especially in large quantities to export in order to tip the balance against Gulf states and the USSR. <http://richardknight.homestead.com/files/oilembargo.htm> <http://kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/50/304/32-130-1C09-84-Embargo_Apartheids_Oil_Secrets_Revealed%20opt.pdf> [Answer] This probably would not be done, but improving the economic conditions for blacks would probably have allowed apartheid to survive longer. Most people want a quiet life. Even very poor people who have minimal political and civil rights generally just want a quiet life. But they also want some hope, some reason to believe that their conditions will slowly improve. Slowly opening up more avenues for blacks to live better lives would have made a huge difference. Expecting any population to exist as a service class to maintain the comfort of another while they wallow in poverty is simply asking for a revolution. Usually gets one too. So simply improve the conditions. You'd be surprised how little you have to improve things to get away with it. Fundamentally it's a system that would fail. You cannot suppress the majority of your people and expect that to do anything but lead to revolt. It has never worked anywhere. [Answer] You are apparently not trying to save apartheid, just prop it up for an extra decade. A few turning points might be enough: * A previous answer cited de Klerk and Mandela as the right people in the right positions at the right time to find a peaceful solution. de Klerk, in particular, would not be hard to handwave away, then the negotiations fail. * throw a few bones to the protesters in Soweto in 1976 to quell the riots. * unite blacks and whites in a war against a common enemy * do something to neutralize Stephen Biko (spike his scholarship? Toss him in jail with his brother in 1964?) * go back even further and slow down the Civil Rights movement in the US. A US still dealing with hard civil rights problems will be less likely to pressure South Africa. [Answer] ## Replace it with economic apartheid. The smallest change that could reasonably allow apartheid to exist in South Africa would be to, instead of eliminating apartheid altogether, replace it with a system in which citizenship and the right to vote is based not on race, but on wealth. This could be proposed as a way to ensure that the country is governed by only the most intelligent members of society in order to combat populism and maintain the most effective government. One simple way of accomplishing this is by restricting the vote only to landowners, or to landowners who control more than a threshold amount of property. Theoretically, anyone could become a voting citizen by purchasing land, but in a country where the vast majority of land is controlled by wealth white landowners, the effect would be an apartheid government. While this wouldn't be a de jure system of racial apartheid, the effect would be to disenfranchise the largely poor black portions of South African society. The exclusion of some poor whites and inclusion of some rich blacks would give the government the ability to say that it's not a racist apartheid state, while having a voting citizenry comprised almost entirely of white voters. While removing the apartheid state may have been inevitable in the modern world, removing it and replacing it with a system built on entrenching the racial power hierarchy created by the apartheid state would be similar to what's happened in many other countries. This is, for example. almost the exact thing that's happened in many schools in the American South, post-desegregation. While there is no law creating separate schools for white and black children, wealthier white students in many areas attend private schools that are almost entirely white. Schools aren't segregated by law, but since one effect of segregation and racist policy was to create race-based economic stratification, the effect is the same. Schools are segregated on an economic basis, which means that there is a de facto racial segregation of schools. The same could be applied to government. [Answer] So far the importance of Mandela and de Klerk has been emphasised, and while this is fair I think it's important to add context by pointing out the historical pressures on the apartheid regime. I am aware you want as little historical disruption as possible, but that will depend on what factors you view as most pivotal to the end of apartheid. Firstly, one of the most important moments in South African history is the [Sharpeville Massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpeville_massacre) in 1960. Without it the international community would likely take longer to be mobilised against apartheid. And perhaps more importantly, internal stability would be greater, dissent less. After this there were two major events which contributed greatly for and against apartheid. Firstly, the start of the [South African Border War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Border_War) in 1966, and thereafter the creation of [the Krugerrand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krugerrand) in 1967. The Border War lasted until 1990, and was an extremely challenging conflict. In 1988 around 71,000 South African soldiers were deployed as far away as Angola. The cost was offset by sales of Krugerrand; a gold-copper alloy coin minted in South Africa which became economically essential for the regime, and has since saturated global gold markets. In 1984 half of South Africa's foreign exchange income was from Krugerrand sales alone, with $600m USD worth marketed that year in the US. That was, until [Reagan banned their import in 1985](http://articles.latimes.com/1985-10-02/news/mn-16058_1_south-africa). Additionally, the Cubans were instrumental in that conflict, deploying up to 20,000 soldiers in Angola. So what you can do to reduce stress on the regime is negating a few important pressures. Firstly, as stated, Mandela and de Klerk didn't exist. Secondly, the Sharpeville massacre didn't happen. Thirdly, the Border War did not happen or had its scope and duration limited. Perhaps the Cubans never got involved. Fourthly, the price of gold was higher or simply there were never import bans on Krugerrand until much later. Perhaps some relatively subtle changes to all of the aforementioned could in sum have a profound impact on apartheid's longevity. [Answer] There is a very simple scenario to fulfil your criteria. FW De Klerk's predecessor was PW Botha. He was a both a hardliner and a strong man that would resort to military power when it suited him. In February 1989 he had a stroke which weakened his political power to such a degree that the 'reformist' FW De Klerk and Pik Botha was able to oust him from power. It is unlikely that PW Botha would have been willing to release Mandela and un-ban the ANC as done by FW. Even though sanctions were starting to affect the South African economy, the army was still powerful and able to prop up the government and suppress the growing resistance inside South Africa's 'townships' for a number of years. Probably to at least the end of the 1990's. So I would say the PW's stroke triggered a profound change to the South African political landscape. [Answer] Interesting question and interesting answers as well. Allow me to throw in my 2 cents as I’ve actually pondered the very same question. 1. The coloured and Asian populations which irl were allowed limited participation in the country’s politics via the tricameral parliament must be fully enfranchised. So, instead of a tricameral parliament being created in 1984, coloureds and Asians are given full citizenship rights. This isn’t too fanciful as these two communities were seen as being more amicable towards the apartheid system and coloureds even partly shared European ancestry with the whites. Besides, the white government was most afraid of the blacks, evidenced by the term Zwaart Gevaar, i.e. Black Threat. So, giving equal rights to the coloureds and Asians would likely be seen as a necessary sacrifice to gain some much needed support against the blacks. 2. The Bantustans or Homelands need to be turned into actual states. If you look at the map of these territories you see that they are completely unworkable as independent states, which is what the South African government tried to present them as. ![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SGPuB.png) Increasing their territory and making them actually contiguous would not only make them look as true states, and not just reservations for blacks, but would give the individual black ethnic groups more space to occupy. Perhaps it could look something like this ![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0KgKl.png) 3. Furthermore, arguably most importantly, South Africa would have to comply with the numerous resolutions of the UN and renege their control of South West Africa, aka Namibia. The continued occupation of the territory was indeed one of the biggest reasons for the ostricism of South Africa from the international community, perhaps as big as the apartheid system itself. With Namibia being granted independence and, consequently, the SADF withdrawing from Angola, Raegan and Thatcher’s policy of “constructive engagement” would be hailed as a success and a viable alternative to sanctions and disinvestment. As for the coloured and white populations of Namibia, many of whom spoke Afrikaans, those could be granted a right of return and government assistance in moving to South Africa proper thus augmenting the numbers of the non-blacks. 4. Lastly, and in connection with the second point, the Homelands would have to be given full independence both de jure and de facto. The black population would have to be confined fully to the homelands and allowed into South Africa itself only in very limited numbers and as a temporary laborers. I believe that if the apartheid regime of South Africa could have ever had a shot at surviving it would have been by taking the steps that I have described above. [Answer] If you rig/change the [1992 yes/no referendum](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_apartheid_referendum,_1992) you could effectively stop the government from continuing the reforms /negotiations that allowed for the end of apartheid amd the new constitution. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JUs50.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JUs50.png) A few lost votes here, a few added votes there. Mark a few ballots as invalid, knock a few people off the registeration polls. Play the media to heighten tensions as well as make people think their votes aren't really needed. It doesn't even have to be a large percentage gap, just 3.8 % would be enough. > > The right wing criticised the referendum and accused the government of electoral fraud. They had lost where they had been the strongest, in the Afrikaner heartland and in the big cities. Treurnicht claimed that media propaganda, foreign intervention, threats by businesspeople against employees and electoral fraud had resulted in a "Yes" vote. However no evidence has yet been put forward regarding electoral irregularities. > > > Now I don't know of this would be enough for a long term change but it will definitely give the Nats the 'backing of the people' and the political mandate to continue as before for the next few years, regardless of what the rest of the country's inhabitants want. [Answer] One of the main reasons for instituting Apartheid was the untrustworthiness and violence of the Zulu settlers. When they invaded South Africa they occupied it by simply slaughtering all the existing inhabitants (black or white). Attempts by the Boer farmers to negotiate peace were used by the Zulu as an effective means of gathering Boer leaders for signing treaties in order to kill them. E.g. [Piet Retief Delegation Massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Retief_Delegation_massacre). The Zulu culture made social coexistence impossible. The only practical solution for a lasting peace was for the militarily superior Boers (and later British) to set up a system that would physically separate the Zulus from the rest of the South African settlers. That system became known as apartheid. Today, we can see the effects of the removal of apartheid. Being a white farmer is now the most dangerous profession in South Africa. E.g. [South Africa's Most Dangerous Profession](https://www.thetrumpet.com/15965-south-africas-most-dangerous-profession). (Don't read this article unless you have a strong stomach for brutal violence.) --- For your purposes, perhaps you could have apartheid's being relaxed earlier than it was, and have some extremely violent events occur as a result (e.g. as in the Farmer article, but more concentrated in time and location). This would demonstrate, both to the South African government and the world at large, that Apartheid is still necessary. ]
[Question] [ I was thinking about writing a short story about an interstellar war, but there is something that does not leave me rested: My invaders (the race of the protagonist) would start the war against a planet of a non-spacefaring but otherwise quite advanced race (let's say late XX. century Earth level) to gain possession of their planet. The point is, they want the planet, as a habitable place, not oil, gold or anything - if they wanted those, they could extract them from uninhabited planets without war. My problem is would it worth it? Question: Could invaders even win such a war? Conditions: * Interstellar travel is possible but takes a lot of energy to perform. (Like it was done by regular means, only faster.) That means resupply is enormously expensive and almost out of question. * Interstellar travel is risky. 2 out of 5 ship does not reach its destination, so they only send large groups of ships. * Interstellar travel is fast but not instant. (It takes weeks to arrive to the destination.) The resupply lines are ridiculously long compared to the defenders. * No FTL communication (only by the means of couriers - see the previous points on that). * The arriving invader fleet consists of three motherships carrying one well equipped army each: 10k soldiers, 100 team transports 100 figther/bomber equivalents and 200 tank equivalents. And every equipment those troops need. * Invaders have "SF class" weaponry (ray- and gauss guns, antimatter etc.), but they are forced to use it with care (it they use big WMDs, the goal of obtaining a livable planet can't be reached). * Invaders have shielding technology, so regular riffles and grenades are unable to penetrate them but heavy artillery and thermonuclear weapons are still effective. * Invaders have a single chance of travelling home. (Either to report victory, to fall back or to ask for reinforcement.) The equipment required for that is expensive to operate (in means of energy) and requires maintenance after usage which is not available at the arrival site. * Invaders can enter the atmosphere at any chosen point but they are limited by the rules of physics. They are able to fly ways faster than defenders, but not faster than missiles. * Defenders have heavy weaponry, jet fighter planes, nukes and so, and they are frightened enough to use them. * Defenders have the population of 4bn and most of them can be recruited to fight. * The defending planet has countries but they act in a federated mean. [Answer] I will be assuming that problems such as the common cold killing these invaders does not apply. I actually think you're giving the invaders too many handicaps. * *2 out of 5* ships don't make it?!?! That's a ridiculously high probability of death. How in God's name would you convince anyone to board the ships? Who would want to be in the navy? * I understand having to use couriers, but with the above likelihood of them actually delivering their messages your communications will be insanely poor. * Those mother-ships actually contain very few troops and armaments. Consider that a modern super-carrier has about as much crew as you do soldiers, and carries a LOT more planes. Also, funny enough, the city of New York has 34, 000 uniformed officers. You would need 3 full mother-ships to even bring that many soldiers to Earth. ## The Situation --- Your invaders have zero chances of winning a conventional war. They will attack, win some major battles, definitely change the planet's political landscape forever, but ultimately they will lose. Nukes in Space Humanity can and will use nuclear weapons against these invaders. Some think that the US has already weaponized satellites, even though they've signed treaties to the contrary. On your own world that might not have happened (weaponized satellites), but believe me when I say that humanity will make it a top priority to get a nuke up to the mother-ships once the hostilities are underway, and you will have a very difficult time stopping them. Remember "Independence Day"? Nothing quite so dramatic would be necessary: > > Launch a "smart" missile into orbit from one side of the world where you're not looking (we have nuclear submarines that can launch at a moment's notice from all around the planet). Have it sit in orbit, among all the other junk up there until it drifts closer to your ships, then activate/home in when it gets close enough. Eventually one will inflict massive damage > > > Nukes on Land Due to the low number of troops available to them, the invaders will need to concentrate at only a limited number of landing sites. This will make them incredibly vulnerable to a tactical nuclear strike. Guerrilla Warfare Look at how expensive in $$$, manpower, and equipment the Iraq/Afghanistan "conflicts" have been to the US military. A homemade bomb buried on the side of the road can take out a main battle tank worth millions of dollars, and its highly trained crew (because, surprise, tanks haven't historically needed much armoring underneath before). Your force might successfully defeat the main military forces of the invaded world, yet be destroyed one vehicle at a time by the survivors in only a few short years. ## Approaching the Planet --- Your objective is to take the planet while not contaminating the land mass, or, of course, dying. What you need to do is to absolutely overwhelm the indigenous population before they have a chance to organize, and react to your particular vulnerabilities. Stealth is Preferable As you approach the planet try to remain undetected. The later humanity finds out you're coming, the better. You should be monitoring their communications. Is there talk of strange objects moving through the solar system on the news? Has encrypted traffic through military satellites suddenly spiked? You need to know. Deception If detected initiate a conversation. Deceive the silly humans with talk of being peaceful galactic explorers in search of new civilizations. You are ambassadors of your gentle and friendly species, bla bla bla. While military leaders may well be suspicious, the liberal masses - brainwashed by years of propaganda - will demand that the governments extend you a friendly welcome. The military will be crippled in their ability to organize against your arrival (although they will be on alert) ## Kill the Earthlings --- The only way you're taking the planet is by killing so many humans that their civilization crumbles, and their ability to mount any sort of organized attack is utterly defeated. Furthermore, the more devastating your initial attack, the less likely you are to have to deal with pesky survivors planting road side bombs, and sniping your troops. Drop the Hammer Drop rocks on every major population center in the world. Humanity has no good way of stopping you. Some might have time to evacuate - such as the leaders, to some underground bunkers, but your troops can target those. However, the only way of stopping Billy-Bob and his cousin Bobby-Ray from playing IED tag with you in the foothills of some southern state is to make sure that they never have a chance to get to their pick up trucks and drive up into the hills in the first place. Even as you are convincing the silly Earthlings of your "good intentions", your ships should be rerouting asteroids from the orbits of other planets onto the capitals and populations centers of Earth. As those are dropping, so should your own fighting forces be bombing remote military bases, targeting carriers at sea, and hunting submarines (if you have a way of finding them). It's worth noting that dropping asteroids on population centers does more than just the obvious (squishing icky humans). These will cause raging fires which will sweep across the land. You can start massive forest fires which will ravage the countryside unchecked, as response crews are either dead, or busy elsewhere. Furthermore you will be destroying food production (farms burned by forest fires, etc), as well as transportation arteries (highways and train tracks). With food suddenly becoming scarce, and with no means to transport what they do have, the survivors will face starvation on top of fire fighting, and conducting rescue operations. Biological Warfare If you have the means of stealthily approaching the planet then you could potentially end the war in just a few short months, and not even have to fire a shot to do it. By doing just a little bit of research on humanity's pathetically unshielded internet you will discover that there are some research centers on their world which contain incredibly dangerous viruses and diseases (some have even been weaponized by the stupid bipeds themselves!). Have a few elite squads storm one of these complexes and gather samples. Humanity won't even know what hit them. By the time they get over their disbelief of an *alien invasion* they will already be dying by the tens of thousands. With your ability to spread the virus around the entire planet in only days (have ships rain containers of the virus over every major population center) humanity will have *no way* of fighting the sudden outbreaks. Some will survive by fleeing to remote areas, but at that point they become easy targets to a few well placed asteroids. This method is especially effective, as any time guerrilla troops are operating in an area all you need to do is release more of the virus around their general location. Military Campaign With humanity crippled (and dying in droves) by either disease, or orbital strikes (preferably both) concentrate your military might in a few areas. Your troops and tanks can move through the desolated areas with impunity, and hunt down survivors using the most brutal methods you can think of. Incidentally, have you heard of air-fuel bombs? If you haven't before, give them a whirl. The things those silly humans can come up with! Your main threat at this point will be nuclear attacks launched by ballistic submarines hiding in the oceans. With a little care, and the ability to intercept missiles in the high atmosphere, however, you should be fine. ## Conclusion --- And so, could an interstellar war be remunerative from an economic point of view? Yes - Especially if you take the biological warfare approach. With humans dying of some exotic disease you can simply walk in and take whatever you want. Their art, if your people are into that. All the gold and other precious/rare metals from their vaults, and factories. The list goes on. > > NOTE: Take a look at John Ringo's *Live Free or Die* novel. In it he deals with an invading alien force (which is pathetic by intergalactic standards) absolutely dominating Earth's military, and basically holding the entire world hostage, while demanding all our precious metals (which we mine for them). How do they do it? By first dropping a rock on some cities, then telling us more will follow unless we comply. Governments around the world will comply. > > > [Answer] Unless occupying this planet is vital for the survival of their species, invasion with the aim of occupation would not be worth the effort. The challenge here is that you’re outnumbered, on foreign soil, at the limits of your ability to resupply, and want to maintain the planet’s status as “livable”. You’re invading their home with the intention of taking it from them — that’s an existential threat that is met by a fight to the bitter end. Could they defeat the other species? Of course: redirect asteroids of various sizes into collision courses with major population centers. When you control orbit, the planet is absolutely at your mercy. But such a strategy threatens the ability for the planet to be occupied after it’s “cleansed”. If you want to leave the environment intact, you will have to take a much more difficult approach. Fighting four billion reasonably advanced creatures with an army of 30,000 is folly. Frankly, it’s poor planning on the part of the invaders. Even if you could strategically destroy population centers from orbit, many hundreds of millions will take to guerrilla warfare. Usage of biological weapons has the same problem — you simply won’t kill enough of the population to prevent long-term entrenched resistance. If you really desire a victory, your best approach would probably be to seek a single continent. With an orbital show of force and the destruction of population centers, you might be able to get the native species to negotiate a peace in which you can occupy some of the planet. Once that has been achieved you’ll have an actual staging area with which to invade the rest of the planet and have the adequate supply lines to dispatch the inevitable guerillas. [Answer] Do the invaders have a compatible biochemistry with the planet? Even assuming they share the same basic chemical structure (carbon based, water-drinking, air-breathers for example) they are unlikely to be effected by native viruses or bacteria (despite what H.G. Wells tells us). As such they could, with their advanced tech, unleash a modified native virus on the planet, decimating the defenders while leaving the resources and planet untouched. -Edit- To clarify, if the engineered virus doesn't kill every defender (and let's face it, it probably won't) it will at least reduce the number of combatants available so a ground war becomes a more viable option. Additionally the infected/dying may further tie up enemy resources as hospitals become overloaded, etc. If you wanted to be really insidious and the attackers have time on their side, they could abduct members of the defender population before they become aware of the attackers presence in their solar system and introduce a engineered genetic condition that will spread throughout the population over the course of a few years before activating. [Answer] ## Yes. Contrary to the claims of many excellent answers posted so far, it is perfectly possible to conquer a world with the given technology gap. The situation described in the question strongly resembles that of 15th and 16th century explorers and conquistadors in the New World. Let's compare the conditions to each other: ``` Interstellar travel is possible but takes a lot of energy to perform. (Like it was done by regular means, only faster.) That means resupply is enormously expensive and almost out of question. Interstellar travel is risky. 2 out of 5 ship does not reach its destination, so they only send large groups of ships. Interstellar travel is fast but not instant. (It takes weeks to arrive to the destination.) The resupply lines are ridiculously long compared to the defenders. No FTL communication (only by the means of couriers - see the previous points on that). ``` [The first journey of Colombus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#First_voyage) was remarkably similar to these conditions. He spent inordinate amounts of time persuading royal courts to grant him ships to explore the New World, due to the extremely high levels of expense required for the journey. Out of the 3 ships he brought to the New World, one was wrecked and did not return. Even after ocean navigation was improved more than two centuries later, [many ships were still lost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_treasure_fleet#Shipwrecks) while crossing the Ocean Sea. Each journey took weeks, and the ocean journey was the only way information and material could be transferred to and from the New World. ``` Invaders have "SF class" weaponry (ray- and gauss guns, antimatter etc.), but they are forced to use it with care (it they use big WMDs, the goal of obtaining a livable planet can't be reached). Invaders have shielding technology, so regular riffles and grenades are unable to penetrate them but heavy artillery and thermonuclear weapons are still effective. Invaders have a single chance of travelling home. (Either to report victory, to fall back or to ask for reinforcement.) The equipment required for that is expensive to operate (in means of energy) and requires maintenance after usage which is not available at the arrival site. Invaders can enter the atmosphere at any chosen point but they are limited by the rules of physics. They are able to fly ways faster than defenders, but not faster than missiles. Defenders have heavy weaponry, jet fighter planes, nukes and so, and they are frightened enough to use them. Defenders have the population of 4bn and most of them can be recruited to fight. The defending planet has countries but they act in a federated mean. ``` Again, this is very similar to the conquests of early Spanish and Portuguese explorers. We can take [Cortez's conquest of the Aztec Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hern%C3%A1n_Cort%C3%A9s#Conquest_of_Mexico_.281518.E2.80.931520.29) as a case study. Compared to the Aztecs, the Spanish had vastly superior weaponry. While they lacked true weapons of mass destruction, the difference in firepower between a gun and a [macana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macana) is not that far removed from the difference in firepower between an asteroid and human nuclear weapons. The steel armour that the Spanish had also made them highly resistant to the obsidian weaponry of the Aztecs. Similarly, they were still vulnerable to other battle techniques. Much like the aliens, the Spanish relied on their oceanfaring ships to return home, and if they were lost, they could not be easily rebuilt in the New World. Similarly, the ships allowed them superior mobility compared to the locals, since they could easily sail from one region to another. Finally, the [Aztec governmental structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Empire) (a federation of states) is also highly similar to the question. Therefore, it would be extremely wise for the aliens to take lessons from these ancient conquerors, to not repeat their follies, and to use techniques that have been proven by history. 1. Use biological weaponry as much as possible. When your manpower is severely curtailed by supply lines, the best way is to make disease your local ally. [The Spanish had smallpox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics#Disease_as_a_weapon_against_Native_Americans), which greatly devastated the defenders and rendered them unable to effectively fight back. If the aliens are biochemically different from humans, they would need to bioengineer pathogens against humans with their superior technology. 2. Instill discipline and rein in your greed. Cortez's famous defeat in [La Noche Triste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Noche_Triste) is an excellent example of what greed and angering the locals would do. While the Spanish came to the New World primarily for wealth, the aliens are here to conquer the land. Therefore, needless looting of the locals would only lead to them rising up against you, and superior technology can and will be overwhelmed by numbers. 3. Make use of [les collaborateurs](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LesCollaborateurs) freely, you can always wipe them out later. Cortez shrewdly allied with the [Tlaxcala](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaxcala_%28Nahua_state%29), a Mexican tribe which opposed and often fought the Aztecs. The alliance was a decisive factor in his survival and later victory over the Aztecs. Making use of human rivalries would greatly accelerate the process of victory in the aliens, for example if there is an ongoing Cold War in the world, the aliens could support the weaker side, and use their help to defeat the stronger power. [Answer] 3 of 5 ships make it? Sounds like an Islamic-type of theology or outright lies to get your troops on board. I'm assuming that your invaders don't have biotech or nanotech and can't just plague/sterilize us or build robot factories on the moon to overrun Earth with drones. Two scenarios depending on the invaders loiter time. Scenario 1 - long loiter time, coldsleep or food synthesizer tech or something like that: 1. Drop rocks on population and military centers. 2. Look for survivors/threats. 3. Repeat 1,2 until population is attrited down to surrender levels. 4. Wait for planet to recover from strikes. 5. Land and party. Scenario 2 - No Time to waste and have to limit damage to environment: 1. Rock strikes against hostile military powers/targets with global reach. 2. Land and establish beachhead. 3. Conduct conventional operations against C&C and any threats with support from orbit. 4. Negotiate surrender/truces with those who want to survive. 5. Destroy the rest. [Answer] The scenario is essentially about colonialism. As [March Ho noted in his answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/32911/3434) the spanish conquistadors faced similar odds in the new world against the Aztecs and Incas. What he didn't mention, but really should have, was that in India, Indonesia, and China the technology gap was much smaller no pandemic effect happened and the locals were still utterly dominated. Similarly most of Africa was colonialized despite actually having more diseases than Europe with technology gap somewhere between the rich states of the East and the Americas. Clearly there is huge asymmetry between the the colonial powers and the locals. And it is basically being able to pick when and where you act against your opponents. The colonial power can attack or withdraw as it wishes. The locals in contrast can act only in response to what the attackers have done. They have no access to the homeland of the colonial power. They can't attack enemy civilian infrastructure other than that built on their lands after it has been taken over. They have no access to the political factions of the enemy and can't "Divide et impera" it. In contrast the colonial power can freely choose which soft targets to destroy and skip facing soldiers entirely if they wish. They can make alliances with some tribes or rulers and let them do most of the bleeding for them. They can arrange a coup d'etat that gives them control. They can simply bribe key officials. As such, when ever a colonial power appeared the local governments were pretty much doomed to destruction. A strong leader could unite the locals and keep up with the invaders, but the successor of an exceptionally strong leader is almost certainly much weaker and unable to maintain what his predecessor built. So successfully resisting colonialization will only buy you a generation. I could go further on precise strategy to used by your hypothetical invaders, but there is no point really. The asymmetry of positions is too large, as long as they are patient and don't kill themselves off with pointless warfare they will win. "We come in peace" is a cliche for a reason. It works. Just read any history book about the colonial era for ideas. Besides your question was more about the financial side. Whether this could be profitable. And it is actually lot more interesting question. Projecting force across vast distances and administering distant lands is actually very expensive. That is the real reason colonialism ended, not people suddenly developing better ethics or natives getting better at resisting. Which begs the question why did colonialism happen? Simply, because while it is a drain on economy as a whole, it creates huge fortunes to a small section of the population. And people talk about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of a few precisely because in reality the opposite is often true. There are a few scenarios where this could be true for your aliens: No effective financial system. On Earth the great fortunes created by colonialism allowed industrialization (and many other things) to be financed from private fortunes. Without an effective stock market and financial system capable of financing private enterprise effectively this was vital and made colonialism overall good business despite by itself being not so good. Your aliens might have a similar situation, if their financial system is retarded in comparison to ours. Religious or ideological reason would be likely. They'd have the technology needed, but choose not to use it. Strict class divisions. If the decisions are exclusively made by a small ruling class having the project cause a net loss to economy would not be an issue if the cost is spread to entire population while the benefits come to the ruling class. This was actually common for much of warfare before modern democracy. It is fairly simple to make this true for an alien civilization. Many fictional aliens already have elaborate caste or pseudo-feudal systems. It is gambling. If the ruling class has lots of wealth as is reasonable for an interstellar power, the cost of invasion might not be an issue. Essentially they would be competing with each other for the prestige of having successful colonies. In such a scenario failed expeditions would be written off as part of playing the game. Essentially it would be considered to be the price of being a colonial power, and could be ignored when considering the profitability of successful expeditions. This seems, and is, silly, but it more or less happened in Africa. Which is part of why the colonialism left such deep scars there. [Answer] Recent studies, based on newly available data from the Kepler telescope,have calculated that 22% (+/- 8 points) of stars similar to our Sun have habitable planets. That works out to about 8.8 billion planets.[[1](http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/8-8-billion-habitable-earth-size-planets-exist-milky-way-f8C11529186 "1")] Any advance race will also be able to live in space and/or planets where the conditions are not ideal. If habitable worlds are not that rare and the logistics/cost of war are prohibitive, it makes little sense to wage war in the typical sense. The one scenario that's plausible is if you have one way colonization missions that have no other option but to fight. This does not sound plausible if it takes mere weeks to travel between stars; it's just too close. Why not sent a bunch of scouts, explore the system, then report back where the available planets are? [Answer] *Summary* > > This simple 4 step strategy enables a relatively minimal force, > limited only by your ability to procreate and genetic diversity to > eliminate a far larger, but less advanced civilisation. It primarily > relies on surprise and technical advantage over numbers. > > > 21st century humans may be able to implement this against 20th century > humans with simply with some cubesats, minimal base, population of > 1000, several hundred nukes (ideally clean) and a SSD full of knowledge. > Increasing population simply decreases risk and time to conquer. > > > I'm going to focus on these points: > > * Interstellar travel is possible but takes a lot of energy to perform. (Like it was done by regular means, only faster.) That > means resupply is enormously expensive and almost out of question. > * Interstellar travel is risky. 2 out of 5 ship does not reach its destination, so they only send large groups of ships. > * Interstellar travel is fast but not instant. (It takes weeks to arrive to the destination.) The resupply lines are ridiculously long compared to the defenders. > * No FTL communication (only by the means of couriers - see the previous points on that) > * Invaders have "SF class" weaponry (ray- and gauss guns, antimatter etc.), but they are forced to use it with care (it they use big WMDs, > the goal of obtaining a livable planet can't be reached). > > > Okay, so we're very limited in resources and have a large world to attach. Furthermore we are here to inhabit the world, not destroy or mine it. The risks of interstellar travel indicate that for most this is likely a one-way trip - you're doing this to live/die here, it's impractical to jump repeatedly. Operation Backbreaker Eliminate the enemy's ability resist you. * Collect intelligence about the planet in stealth - even if this means placing sensors a long distance away and getting low res intelligence.= * Identify as many major population, energy, trade, intelligence and military centers. * Without warning, use clean WMD's against all these targets. (These centers have little environmental value, but huge value to enemy civilisation). Operation Beachhead Utilize your technological advantage (huge volume of information can travel in incredibly small volume) to breed and build faster than the native population can recover. * Collect intelligence about the planet in stealth (should be far easier now). * Pick a location that has natural fortifications, is far from survivors (DO NOT let them organise a resistance against your position) has plenty of resources (including arable land). Australia may be good, with low population, huge resources, and great natural defenses (e.g. ocean, reef, range, desert). * Land and build your base. * Start building up your resources. In particular... BREED! Operation Overwatch Use your space advantage to prevent the enemy from organising. * Maintain intelligence collection of the planet. * From space, eliminate anything that looks like a threat. Operation Conquer Once your forces have built up, increase your holdings and eliminating the enemy once and for all. * Using the resources from Beachhead, conquer the planet using conventional military tactics. [Answer] You've created quite the painful situation for the attacker. I do believe this species is headed for extinction. Why? * They're attacking a planet for habitation, implying that habitable space has value. * This is clearly a last ditch effort for a species. Spacetravel is expensive, but they really can only send a handful of soldiers? Obviously this species has run out of resources, and this attack is literally everything they have left. Maybe their planet is under attack itself. > > The arriving invader fleet consists of three motherships carrying one > well equipped army each: 10k soldiers, 100 team transports 100 > figther/bomber equivalents and 200 tank equivalents. And every > equipment those troops need. > > > Multiplying through, our attacking army is 30,000 soldiers, 300 transports, 300 fighter/bombers, and 600 tanks. Now let's look at what they're up against. Let's say, for sake of argument, only the US gets involved, and compare that against our attackers: ([source](http://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.asp?country_id=united-states-of-america)) * 1.4 million front line solders, and 1.1 million reservists, with a "fit for service" population of 120 million. (compare to 0.030 million alien troops) * 8,848 tanks (compare to 600 tanks) * 41,062 Armored Fighting Vehicles, such as transports (compare to 300) * 13,892 planes, of which 2,207 are fighter/interceptor (compare to 300 alien fighter/bombers, which are almost never as efficient as a dedicated fighter or dedicated bomber) As you can see, if the entire world turned a blind eye to the alien invasion, the US military could lose 10:1 against these alien invaders and still win. And, of course, we're ignoring the fact that the US would not be afraid to use nukes in such a scenario (as you say), so the situation could be even more dire if the aliens try for anything resembling a beachhead. And the US accounts for about half of the world military, so the alien invaders either need to force a surrender, or continuously win fights with a 20:1 kill ratio. For a comparison, the earliest, most one-sided battles against Al Qaeda by the US were around a 100:1 ratio. So yes, these kill ratios can be done, but it was done by an entire well equipped military raining hell on a rather backwards group of individuals. Its quite clear this group of aliens will not fight the world military for long, they need to do something to disrupt humanity, so that the military falls apart. Now let's go back to why we know this is a species headed for extinction: > > Invaders have "SF class" weaponry (ray- and gauss guns, antimatter > etc.), but they are forced to use it with care (it they use big WMDs, > the goal of obtaining a livable planet can't be reached). > > > The way this is worded leaves questions. Obviously "SF class" is a wide wide wide category of weapons. However, do they have any mid-sized weapons? And by midsized, I mean "can take out the entire city of Tokyo or Washington DC." Maybe something that can take out a state. If they have such weapons, the fight gets ugly for us fast. All they have to do is land fast enough that we can't set up an offensive, then go guerrilla. We worry about terrorist groups getting a hold of nukes? How about an alien, who clearly is willing to die for a cause (40% attrition rate in travel), able to strap a state-killer to their back and take out New York. No, not the city. The state. That'd create enough havoc to allow them a certain level of freedom of mobility. If they lack such capacity, it once against shows how desperate these guys are. They send 3 underequiped ships without the proper sized weapons to subdue a planet? Clearly they just ran out of resources. So how could they win? Step 1: biowarfare. Skip the tanks. Skip the weapons. If you're advanced enough to FTL, and insane enough to be willing to roll the dice every time you do, you've got the technology to engineer a brutal virus. Make something nasty, that could win at [Pandemic](http://pandemic3.com/), something so subtle that not even Madacascar [closes their ports](http://themattcave.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/1216437884096.jpg). Something with a really long gestation time before turning into something that makes Ebola look like the common cold. Make sure the military is not operating at peak capacity when your soldiers actually hit the battlefield. Step 2: Shock and Awe. Grab your biggest non-planet-killers and go mess up some states. You don't need the whole planet hospitable right? Go wipe Japan off the map. Sink it into the ocean. Make sure Washington DC, New York, LA, Moscow, Bejing, and London populations are turned into crispy critters. Step 3: Remove the US navy. You didn't need all those troop carriers did you? Turn some of them into suicide weapons to hit the major nuclear carriers, such as those of the United States. Carriers are pesky floating cities at sea full of people who have been trained for years in the best techniques for making your life miserable. Better to be done with them. Step 4: Landing. Spread your troops out. You're basically going to spend most of your days killing people, until morale gives out. You said they have good shielding, so you don't have to worry about the people killing you, only the military (and the few gun nuts who happen to have artillery...). Assuming all 30,000 of your troops survive, you're going to have to kill people at a rate of at least 1 every 2 hours, every hour, every day, just to counteract humanity's ability to reproduce. You'll probably focus on cities, to make sure your rate is acceptable. At this point, a nice alien army would sue for peace, but its clear your aliens are beyond logic, so I'm assuming they wont stop until all of humanity is dead. If they were smarter than that, they'd have brought a better military. Step 5: Wait (aka step 1b). Remember your virus? Guess what, it's probably done almost all of the work for you. Your boots on the ground (and perchance for removing states from the map) are going make it hard for the inhabitants to make a good quarantine effort. Step 6: Do something? What was the alien race's long term plan? They attacked a planet that had to be habitable by the end, using a vastly under-equiped army that forced them to basically go door-to-door scorched earth to do their job... and now what? If you had enough resources to do something with the planet, you probably would have sent more soldiers. Seriously, what is this alien race doing? Is this just a game, like a bunch of military jerks playing chicken with FTL to go beat up on some planet just to show off the size of their ray gun? The battle may be part of the story, but the rest of the story really needs to explain why this insanely unusual loadout was the army-of-choice for the aliens. [Answer] The traditional way for spacefarers to beat a planet is to drop rocks on it. But in this scenario, you specifically want to kill all the inhabitants but leave the planet inhabitable. Dropping enough rocks to kill everyone would probably not leave the planet inhabitable. You've specified that the invading fleet has some military force, but not nearly as much as the planet does. But I'm confused that the invaders are using military at all. In the future, wars will be fought with drones. We have combat drones even now, with year-2015 technology. We're piloting them manually (from afar), but that's not a technological limitation; we could build fully autonomous killer drones if we wanted. Your space age invaders, with "SF class weaponry", will be fielding a force of killer robots. The great thing about killer robots (from a certain perspective) is there's no limit on how many you can make. The first thing the aliens do is they get their killer-robot factories set up -- in an asteroid belt, on a nearby planet, on the moon, or even just on a deserted island that nobody's watching. The aliens spend as long as they feel like, making as many drones as they feel are necessary. Then they push a button and send all the drones out at once. It's a pretty horrible thing to do, but it's very effective. I expect the aliens' main concern is to prevent the planet from launching its nukes. The planet might launch its nukes out of sheer panic, or they might deliberately render their planet uninhabitable out of spite. The aliens park their ships in orbit around the planet, and if they see a missile go up, they try to shoot the missile down. This might or might not work, but they have to try it if they want to take the planet intact. [Answer] I disagree with parts of the accepted answer, so lets add an answer of my own. No space nukes. Humanity can not strike any moving target in space. Sure, they can place a nuke at a specific point in space at a specific point in time, if they know their target will be there at that time, like a comet. But this ignores that evading is ridiculously easy in space. Space is big. Really big. Just nudge the spaceship a tiny bit in one direction, and five minutes later you're in a completely different place, especially if we're talking distances where nukes matter. Speaking of which, the distance at which a nuke matters is much smaller in space than on earth, because there's no pressure wave. Guerilla Warfare is not effective. The main problem with guerilla warfare among humans is that combatants hide amongst civilians who you cannot harm. In stark contrast, the very purpose of the alien invasion is to harm the civilian population. It should be obvious how this makes guerilla warfare significantly less effective. As an alien if I can chose fighting a 10'000 strong army or 1000 groups of 10 guerillas who I can easily track with my alien tracking tech, guess which I prefer? Oh, keep in mind the aliens are invulnerable to anything with less of a punch than heavy artillery. Sadly the question is unclear about how much we can damage the ecosystem. Instead of throwing rocks at cities, I'd just throw about 10-20 rocks into the oceans. It's cheaper and creates far less problems with nuclear winter and destroys cities, warships, islands, and much more. And no, humanity does not have any feasible defense against asteroids. If done right they wouldn't even spot them before it's far too late. Wait 15 years, and repeat. At that point civilization should have crumbled due to all ships and shipyards being destroyed which kills most of the existing trade, ownership of land falling apart, because most people owning anything off the coast are dead now, and finally money disappearing because of hyperinflation in each and every currency other than physical silver and gold, since all banks go bankrupt after losing too many assets and securities for loans. The highest risk you face is that they might have used nuclear weapons on each other, which makes the planet less habitable. At that point you use no more than 5% of your force to ally with some of the local kingdoms and help them to destroy the remaining military of everyone else. Once you're done you have all the intelligence you need to wipe out your allies with the 95% of your forces they didn't know about. [Answer] Here's probably the most effective way that you could conquer that planet, with those limited forces, and have a good story: Step One-Show up(And hope to hell your motherships aren't part of that 40% that doesn't make it). Step Two-Locate enemy supply depots, communication hubs, power grids, and transportation networks. Destroy these. The enemy will have no clue what's happening, and thus won't be able to respond. Step Three-Begin an air superiority campaign. Even though you have very few aircraft, they probably will be so much more advanced, that it won't matter that you're horribly outnumbered. Then take out enemy missile launch sites, nuke stockpiles, aircraft(while they're still in the hangers), and any enemy military vehicles, fortifications, or large troop concentrations. Your fleet in orbit can help by launching orbital strikes as well, regardless of what specific weapons you decide to use. Step Four-Now, find the biggest breadbaskets on the planet, and loot them. They won't be able to resist you by this point. Now, give that food to all of the starving people of the planet, and promise them better lives in exchange for fighting for you. Since you're the one giving them free stuff, they'll do what you say, in hopes that their children won't have to starve. Also, collect anyone who isn't fit to fight(elderly, cripples, children, etc) and secure them in hidden, fortified positions. Step Five-Now that you've turned the enemy's numerical advantage against them, cross out any remaining loose ends, and secure the planet. Now, if those masses refuse to follow you any longer, or if they realize that they just helped some maniacal invader take over their planet, and decide they're in the mood for guerilla warfare, remember step four. You have their families at your mercy. Use them as hostages. No one but the most deranged fanatic will sacrifice their own children to defeat you. Step Six-Use the humans as slaves. Work them to death. You won't have the resources in your minuscule fleet to just start making robots to do the job, so you'll have to have someone mine those for you initially. Now, you control the planet, have the humans under control(for the remaining period that you'll need to control them, as they'll be dead from you working them like that soon enough, and they most likely won't have many more children. If them procreating is a problem though, just chop off their balls. Simple, and no research into a sterilizing agent is required.) Step Seven-Now that the humans have mined the resources you need, use nerve gas or something on them. Or just take them away, group by group, and shoot them, burying them in mass graves. You can take the hostages and stick them in your species' equivalent of zoos or something. Use your newly acquired robots to build an industrial base on the planet, and complete your colonization. And this, is my quick, seven step program for conquering primitive planets, with miniscule forces. Follow it, and soon you'll be subjugating worlds in no time! [Answer] TL;DR: Read "Footfall" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle for 93 cents: <http://product.half.ebay.com/Footfall-by-Larry-Niven-and-J-Pournelle-1997-Paperback/909556&tg=info> Longer: While destruction of highways, bridges, power generation, centralized broadcasting facilities and key junctions of railroads etc. would destroy our current economy (as in the book), which is highly vertically-integrated, there would be a "twilight period" where still some great resistance could be mounted. As economies switch from semi-global (average American carrot travels 1800 miles) to local, reliance on products propped up with cheap energy would lessen. There would be a couple really hard winters and a reduction in population, but then the remainder (IMHO) would be able to harness what was left of the "carcass" or our current civilization and "spend down" the equity of working new and used parts, for example. The conquerors would be busy with tenacious little blobs of people, while some would have the opportunity to learn more about the enemy and find a way to make a meaningful resistance. If the enemy is so advanced (e.g. Childhood's End Overlords) then, well, I give up. They are nearly godlike.... ...but could they monitor/correct everyone being "bad" all at once? Probably not, but, they could just split the planet in half. So, to answer the question, war, as an economic boon, is always at least a three party transaction. Conqueror invades victim, extracts something, and uses that resource to do pay a third party to do X. Poor person plays lottery, buys insane yacht, guys at yacht factory get work, their families eat, and maybe, buy lottery tickets. Examples: 1. Destroy the 2nd temple of David and build the Flavian Ampitheatre (aka "Coliseum") 2. Invade France to grab 72% of the world's [then] government-owned gold 3. Invade Iraq, and [pawn off some crap 2nd-gen cellular equipment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_Iraq#Telephones), as part of many examples of carpetbaggery 4. Conquer Jerusalem and cart off the Hebrews to (largely) muck out the topsoil-filled drainages of Babylon and tending to date palms through moderation of their fertility [(to prevent over-fruiting)](https://books.google.com/books?id=4ddfAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=hebrews%20brought%20to%20babylon%20topsoil&source=bl&ots=pLNjouU1K_&sig=V_DfuOVa7oOvZzk41hGY_57pt_c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFo63vh6LKAhVM4yYKHZ3HDFoQ6AEIPjAJ#v=onepage&q=hebrews%20brought%20to%20babylon%20topsoil&f=false) and poor quality If you invade someone, and take all of commodity X, then the market crashes. If you kill off all the customers, the market crashes. If you make movement impossible, there is no market. [Answer] If [trade](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/17244/ftl-travel-is-impossible-how-is-interstellar-trade-possible/17263#17263) and [mining](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/15364/resources-to-justify-long-distance-space-mining-missions/15486#15486) isn't realistic (as have been previously discussed here), war certainly would not be. You might consider war a special case of trade. It's worth reviewing the answers to these previous two threads for general issues on the logistics. [Answer] YES. Sprinkle the world with Neutron bombs and civilization and most people are gone while leaving the planet inhabitable. The resulting fallout will be far less then traditional nuclear weapons and any sufficient advanced civilization will be able to deal with it. [Answer] Why invade when you can trade? Consider the Roman and British empires. In many ways different, not least because of different technology levels. But what they had in common, was that they colonised with the help of existing local rulers. The offer was basically "subjugate yourselves to our empire, and get the benefits of being part of it. We will maintain the peace. You will pay fair taxes for this service. We will both benefit by trade. You will remain rulers of your country and we will not interfere if you stick to the terms of the agreement we will now negotiate. Refuse, and we'll offer these terms to your neighbours and help them conquer you. Accept and later rebel, and you will be wiped off the face of the planet. " Getting started from just a few ships is the hard bit, especially if there is instinctive xenophobia to contend with. But you can probably find a powerful or power-seeking person somewhere who you can work with in secret. Especially if you have stealthy technologies to conceal a few comings and goings, and more advanced communications and computers so you can subvert their Internet. (For all I know this is happening here and now. UFOs, social media, rich people who act as if they are used to living on a different planet... but we are quite capable of all that crap without invoking lizard-people) Further down the road when you have successfully joined this planet to your interstellar empire, there are two variants. Good faith, where the Empire is as it appears. Bad faith, where the invader's real plan is xenocide. This requires that all the invaders keep the secret until they are ready to strike.... [Answer] Like other posters have said, militarily the invading aliens don't have a chance unless they get rid of the rules their politicians must have put on them. But, they can still win: 1. Threaten and bluff. Get a 1 ton chunks of moon rock and start dropping it on high value targets. Get the Earthlings to surrender without a fight. Make an antimatter bomb demonstration strike in the middle of the ocean to make sure they get the point. Then pull the victim card and say you're the last of your race, 'sniff' and all you want is to live in peace and harmony. 2. If that doesn't work, mine an asteroid for more platinum than 800% of world output per year. Then buy a country. Make it a living paradise with your advanced energy technology and unbelievably rich with your space mining capability. 3. If that doesn't work, look right, look left, and make a dope deal with an Earth government to sell a mothership. Make yourselves unbelievably rich with asteroid precious metal mining and advanced technology sales. All 30,000 of your troops will retire in luxury. Offer a huge but sparsely populated country like Canada, Australia or Russia the opportunity to host more of your incredibly rich countrymen (settlers from the homeworld, shhh) in return for being the only Earth vendor of exclusive alien technology. Write up some idiotic cockamamie report for the high command about how the loss of the mothership somehow isn't your fault, then enjoy your new life of luxury on Earth. [Answer] If you want to take down a building don't take a sledge hammer to it. Collapse its pillars, watch it fall, then take the hammer to the remaining rubble. Analysis Conventional invasion is all but impossible due to the severely undermanned and underteched invaders. Any large usages of WMD will cause major ecological damage that may not be recoverable or economical. With this in mind, they are less of a conventional invasion force and more of a task force. 1. Sow chaos and distrust I would just instigate a bunch of wars or WW3 on the planet. Wait until things heat up and then make a solitary heavy strike on a major capital. Make sure the strike is such that noone knows where it comes from, but especially not from potential aliens. Bonus points if you can pin it on one of the major nations. This should cause wide spread confusion, chaos, distrust, and kick the wars into high gear. 2. Break the back bone Once everyone distrusts one another, is at odds, and lacks clear information, begin widespread orbital strikes on major communication, political, transportation, and military centers. These strikes would be the size of tactical nukes (think Rods From God), causing massive damage but not enough to screw with the surrounding area. 3. What Follows You have now destroyed or neutered every major government, and they all hate or distrust each other. The infrastructure is crippled, and people are going to quickly start starving. As people start dying, chaos will break out and the governments will have severe issues maintaining any order at all. People are not going to rally against the alien invaders because: * Countries do not trust each other * Communication is severed so organization will be difficult * Governments are all but gone * There is nothing they can actually do * People likely have no idea what is going on * Starvation starts almost immediately. * + If you prevent supply chains from forming, there can be no large scale populations. They either die or disperse searching for food. 4. Shooting Rats Afterwards, limit yourself to occasional strikes to prevent attempts at linking communications, creating supply lines, or just organizing an effective government. Sit back and wait for most of the population to either die of starvation or kill each other over the scraps. At this point, move in and sweep major areas clean of people. This process will take years, and this is not a war. This is an extermination. Guerrilla warfare will not be the issue people think it is. Guerrilla warfare mainly matters when you actually care about collateral damage. If you really don't care, and in fact want to kill everyone it is much much easier to win that war. Picking Daisies By the time you put troops on the ground, there is no army. There are only remnants using salvaged weaponry, which will mainly be light weaponry. Joe Smoe is not going to be flying a jet or driving a tank, let alone being able to arm or maintain them. Not everyone will fight, many will run or just collapse in fear. Potential fighters != fighters != a soldier. [Answer] For simplicity, I'm assuming your aliens have targeted the Earth. Your aliens need to avoid making the mistake of making this a "war to the knife". That is, if they are trying to destroy the entire human race, the humans will, predictably, resist strenuously. They'll fight with overwhelming numbers, they'll learn from your technology, and they'll haunt "cleared" areas assassinating you. Your small colony force won't win a battle of attrition. I'll recommend re-examining your motives before deciding on an approach. Is the extirpation of humanity really necessary? This is the key question. If your heart really can't handle sharing a planet, well, okay. You don't want to fight a conventional war, for reasons given above. You want to break human civilization without letting them get any licks in. So... Invest heavily in orbital bombardment. Every city, dam, bridge, railroad junction, and power relay station is targeted. Basically, do as much damage as you can to industrial and trade infrastructure. Then bombard the planet indiscriminately with meteorites, and laser the ocean. You want gigantic clouds of steam and dust to make agriculture impossible for years. This is basically a synthetic dinosaur-killer asteroid approach. This will destroy most of the humans. There will be some left, even some pretty tough enclaves here and there using hydroponic farming, but you'll have wiped out most of them, and the remnants will definitely be on the back foot. It'll be more of a mop-up operation than anything else. Now the ecosystem will be a little bit trashed, but what's that to you? You have no sentimental attachment to any given species; whatever remains will suffice. Expect rapid speciation of surviving animals. Are you just looking for a place to live? Your colony numbers tens of thousands only. How much room do you actually need? Might be you could get some benefit from technological or cultural interchange. So... Figure out where your colony needs to be, depending on your physiology. Are you cats tropical guys? Or do you like it cold -- you might get lucky, and annex Antarctica. Nobody is going to fight too hard for that. So pick a place. An island is best, easier to defend. Let's say Britain is the place where you feel you would be happiest. State that you are going to expel the population from that area in phases... * Phase 1 -- With your space resources, you will subsidize people to peacefully leave your new homeland. You might be surprised how many people will take up your offer. Any hey, Europe is all about taking in refugees, right? It would be churlish not to accept Englishmen. This phase will last for 1 year. * Phase 2 -- The island will be embargoed. All ships or planes moving in or out will be destroyed. This phase will last for 1 year. * Phase 3 -- Anyone remaining will be destroyed. All buildings will be destroyed. * Phase 4 -- Land your colony and start engaging in profitable trade and student-exchange relations with the rest of the planet. [Answer] NO IT s NOT ECONOMICALLY PROFITABLE TO DO SO Not by invading us. If they wanted to kill us, they would just need to send some asteroid at relativistic speed towards the earth. Accelerate an asteroid of a few km radius to 90% the speed of light and point it towards the earth. The impact will be 10x worse than the one that killed dinosaurs. IT ALSO DOESN'T MAKE SENSE FOR THEM TO TRY TO INVADE US WHEN THEY JUST BARELY MASTERED INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL It would be like the Romans considering invading North America when they can barely survive and navigate the high seas and when their is plenty of land and enemies to conquer on their own continent. It s just too early. Given all the handicaps you mentioned, it would be much smarter for your interstellar Civ to focus on maximizing their own star systems and the neighboring ones. Given that just in our system their is enough resources to build enough O'Neil cylinders habitats to house a million time the current population, if your interstellar Civ is rational and lives in a similar system, it would first focus on maximizing it s current system. The steps would be -build a Dyson swarm of habitats around the Sun(s) -upgrade it to a Dyson sphere -do the same for the nearest star -rinse and repeat By the time they Dyson sphered a few stars, they would probably reach type 3 By that time, humans and earth would be quite irrelevant to them. They could easily kill us or not. To them we would just be like some ant colony. ]
[Question] [ The creature I will describe I came up with solely to fill one purpose in my narrative: to provide narcotic venom. I obviously wasn‚Äôt going to portray opium in my story, now was I? So many dead plants! It‚Äôs barbaric overkill! Anyway, good worldbuilding means that this creature will need more background to it than simply serving as a resource. Answering questions like: what does it eat? Where does it live, and how does it reproduce? But I‚Äôll get to that later. First, what does it look like? It‚Äôs basically a scorpion lookalike, except it lacks the signature pincers and is a vertebrate roughly the size of a house cat. It has four gleaming eyes and a pair of pincer like mandibles worthy of the predator movies. Each of its eight legs is tipped with two toes that end in sharp claws. The tail of the critter is very much like a scorpions but also takes a page from earwigs. Two stingers on the tip of its tail can snap shut and deliver the venom. The creature described here sounds threatening but is actually covered by a layer of opaque fur, greatly undermining its terrifying anatomy. It functions as an obligate carnivore. The breed in the story is domesticated but is native to the deserts where it hunts at night. They are quite chill animals and are cold-blooded to boot. Females of the species are slightly larger. ## How does narcotic venom benefit the creature in any way? (Besides getting high) I have vague ideas of how its venom would come into play, though haven‚Äôt decided on the composition of the venom yet. It‚Äôs prey is something like kangaroo rats. (Also a name suggestion would be appreciated. Good names only occur to me on blood moons every third year.) [Answer] How about... food preservation? Paralyzed or sedated bodies, unlike dead ones, don't decompose. This might allow a small animal such as yours to fully consume a prey much larger than them, no matter how long the process takes. (Maybe they, inadvertently, repeatedly inject their venom during eating, keeping the prey constantly sedated.) The prey's own immune system and circulation will keep the body fresh and ready to consume for a much prolonged period of time. Additionally, as part of the flight or fight response during the hunt, unpleasant chemicals, such as adrenaline, might taint the flesh of the prey (look up stress effects on meat quality). These chemicals clear out naturally if the body is kept alive, as opposed to killing the prey outright. It also provides protection from competition: Any prey under the effect might be easier to carry to a safe eating location such as a burrow or a cave - maybe someone higher up in the food chain wouldn't allow for a safe dining experience out in the open. The narcotic in the carcass might also affect any other animal trying to feed off it, making it easier to defend one's prey from scavengers. [Answer] ## One species narcotic is another species poison. just look at many drugs today, THC, caffeine, capsaicin, tobacco, peyote, possibly even opium are highly toxic to one group of organisms, but not others. THC and caffeine are toxic to insects but not mammals, capsaicin produces a pain affects mammals but has no effect on birds. Against the your creatures normal prey (maybe another giant insect) the venom is a paralytic, immobilizing the prey, but to mammals it is narcotic producing the effects you want. the effects on humans is pure coincidence, but since we have several examples of something similar, it is completely believable. [Answer] Reproduction (assistance). The female stings prey, drags them back to a burrow, oviposits into the sedated creature, and goes to fetch more. The creatures, still alive serve as a host to the growing larval-forms, which eventually emerge as near-adult size, pupate and then go off on their own to hunt, mate create their own larders. The morning ritual is for the creature to wake-up, examine its captive horde, re-sting as appropriate to keep them pacified and happy - clear-out any empty husks for tidiness, then go and find more food/living incubators to add to the parasitic brood's numbers. Aside: The larger the prey-animal, the more eggs it can host. It could happen to you or your family and friends. Name suggestions: Para-scorpion, Parachnid. [Answer] They are blood drinkers. The analogous situation is tick paralysis. [Harm or protection? The adaptive function of tick toxins](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7896703/) > > Paralysis toxins have a neurospecific effect, and they block > neurotransmission (Grattan‚ÄêSmith, 1997) in the host leading to > paralysis. Both some hard and some soft ticks can produce these > toxins; in the latter case, only the larvae produce it that have the > longest feeding time on the host. It is assumed that the evolutionary > benefit of this trait is stopping the host's grooming activity and > prevents the removal of the parasites. This hypothesis is also > supported by empirical evidence. In experimentally induced tick > paralysis, secretion of neurotoxin coincides with a definite repletion > phase and in hard ticks is limited to females only (Mans et al., > 2004). In all instances, paralysis coincides with the last rapid > engorgement phase that is marked by the production and secretion of > numerous protein products by the salivary glands and this is the state > where the tick is the most susceptible to be removed by grooming. This > indicates that ticks were selected for a trade‚Äêoff optimum and gained > most of the possible benefits by stopping host grooming while reducing > the adverse effects of host paralysis or death. > > > So too your critter. They envenomate their large prey animals , sometimes as a team. Once it settles down they come have a nice long drink. The animal does not much mind. Later the animal recovers. It might provide blood again on some later date. It might even volunteer. [Answer] Q: they are quite chill animals Thanks for putting this question and giving us a chance to explain.. ## It's not easy being small There is all kinds of myths about us. Look at the first answers here, you got these flesh-rich prey members complaining on WB, about alledged misuse of narcotics by us little predators. We would "keep them alive to lay eggs". Or we would be "vampires, drinking their blood". Woo woo woo Of course we don't do these things, we are just predators, we want YOU for dinner. Relax ! We can't kill you in any other way We are small. We can't do anything about that. We can't kill larger prey, they won't die, when we bite them.. only mice die (in the wet season), so we put a trick. Let's immobilize the prey and start nibbling limbs. Most prey appreciates sedation when we do that, but humans.. somehow.. Also we don't want to alarm folks With our venom, prey won't make loud noise. When there is e.g. screaming ladies voices, the magic raven will come and he'll eat us. Or.. hyena's or vultures or.. anyone stronger than us will come and steal our prey. [Answer] They can be predators of their own right, but they are likely not top of the food chain and will have their own predators that actively hunts them. Venom is typically a defense mechanism used to disable their would be predators. Evolution likes to take the minimum effort to ensure the species propagates. Once it finds a solution, it's done. A top, powerful predator would have little use for developing venom. Even if it did, or once had it, it would devolve it through lack of use or mutations in the species over generations as it discovers it can survive perfectly well without it. I think your vertibrate scorpion look-alike idea is a fine template to start with. Rather than changing anything it could be a fact for the protagonists to deduce/discover then ultimately bring in the predators to your creature as the solution to fight it off. EDIT: I realized that snakes tend to have venom as well. This can be a combination of reasons - IIRC most venomous snakes are typically small, and secondly they likely need the venom to paralyze their prey to keep it from running away due to the snake's physical disadvantage in running. As a vertibrate, though, this aspect likely doesn't apply to your creature. [Answer] They don't string their prey. The sleeping scorpion stings a goat, the goat survives but the scorpion then follows the goat as it limps around for a few days before being found by a tiger. The tiger kills and eats the goat with the stomach acid speeding up the process of the venom and the tiger collapses, the scorpion attacked a goat and was rewarded with a tiger corpse. Or for a smaller solution It could drug the young of an animal and use it as bait for the parents, or drug an animal and wait for a mating partner to arrive. or drug an animal and push it into a rivals territory to get two kills. [Answer] ## Feeding from live prey Particularly if its prey is significantly larger than it, it could sting the prey and then feed on it, without killing the prey, and conceivably without the prey even knowing it is being fed on. This could be something like how a tick feeds, but it could take flesh as well if the venom prevents the prey from feeling it. If this is done, I would also consider if the beast somehow bandages the wound to prevent the prey dying. This could allow the same prey to be fed on repeatedly. The beast could even inject some form of growth hormone to encourage the wound to heal. Note that both these effects might only work on one or two prey species, which the beast could actually farm. [Answer] ## The poison is a muscle relaxant There are existing snake venoms in the real world that work somewhat similarly, although I wouldn't advise trying to get high off of any of them. To get high instead of dying when your diaphragm gets too relaxed to function, just take less of it. Since the creatures usual prey is quite small, it doesn't stretch belief at all that it wouldn't be potent enough to harm a human unless they took a bunch of it. [Answer] Slightly different to the 'One species narcotic is another species poison.' answer, which is in fact my personal favourite, I present: The narcotic is a venom, just at a different doesage. At high dosages it causes death, as you would expected, but as part of that process it messes with your head first. It follows that at low dosages you only feel the 'minor' effects rather than the fatal ones. [Answer] # Lure of the Vampire: Your obligate carnivores never kill their prey - directly. They sting large animals who then adopt the creature and keep it close. The predator drinks their blood, while the large animal wanders around in a blissful haze, happy to be stung. Eventually the large animal gets eaten by another predator, or starves to death, or breaks a leg and doesn't notice. At that point, your kitty uses all those legs to jump on the back of another large, warm cozy predator and sting them until they calm down and let the kitty start taking love nips from its veins. [Answer] They could be specialized for hunting social animals, who are likely to come to the aid of their brethren. The purpose of the narcotic would be to capture the prey without killing it, instead making it draw the attention of more prey. The high would keep the prey moving, but not very quickly nor aware of its demise. The killing could be done either by injecting a different poison or by the original poison itself after some time has passed, in which case the deadly part could be dependent on dosage as others have suggested. They could also hunt in packs, allowing them to entrap multiple animals more easily. So instead of many of them each seeking their own prey, they would only need to find one and the whole pack would likely be able to eat. This does have some risks for the scorpion, such as the prey being snagged by something else or managing to be rescued while they wait. I also suggest the name 'Scorpium', if you don't mind being on the nose. Maybe 'Sandman knights', since they 'wear' armor and put you on a pleasant dream-like state. Well, also because they live in the desert. [Answer] Selective breeding. To the point it becomes a pet for drug addicts. People discovered this animal that would sting it's prey with a potent sedative that could kill, use to catch prey to feed and defend itself from being food. Some people got stung but were big and strong enough to survive, instead getting a warm fuzzy feeling for a while. They found this sting appealing and would keep animals alive that didn't kill anyone, breeding the animals with others to get animals that could best produce this warm fuzzy feeling versus waking up dead. Some of these animals got out in the wild, because someone just stung with a big shot of what is effectively heroin might not be so careful on preventing it from getting away. Many generations of domestication, animals escaping to the wild, their offspring captured alive for more warm and fuzzy stings, followed by more selective breeding, eventually results in all wild animals being no different than the domesticated animals. These animals in the wild are still able to survive because their stings into smaller animals will still be lethal, or leave the prey so sedated they can't put up any real defense. It would diminish the defensive effect as the stings would no longer be a near instant death to predators. Populations of this animal left long enough in the wild would revert to a state much like it was before it was domesticated. Think of a population of domesticated dogs out in the wild that would in time get larger, stronger, more aggressive, and with thicker coats, becoming more wolf-like as that was the state of the species before being domesticated into smaller, more sedate, creatures that women would carry in purses like a stuffed toy. No doubt domesticating an animal that stings people with a recreational drug might be frowned upon. The animal would be lethal to children, and some adults, especially if there was more than one and they acted in a kind of pack. This would be a black market trade, or at least a "grey market" with some people trading in them legitimately (for zoos, perhaps people extracting the venom for medical use, and maybe as a kind of guinea pig for research) selling some under the table for recreational use. [Answer] ## The dose makes the poison There are many poisonous compounds that have interesting psychoactive effects in smaller doses. A predator that targets much smaller pray than us may very plausibly apply quantities of venom that are definitely fatal for its pray, but for humans that dose is small enough to only have whatever effect is required by the story. [Answer] Reproductive strategy #2. The female, when ready to mate will attract males through scent (or sound etc.). The first male to get to her will attempt to sting her and mate. More-often-than-not the males will get stung themselves and fail. The next to arrive will try. Rinse and repeat until one finally gets her paralysed enough to comply. (Yes, rather distasteful in human terms). After that mating, and possibly a few successive attempts by other males, the female will awaken. Being much larger than the males, the female is alert and ready for action before the assorted suitors are able to rouse. This gives the female a plentiful and protein-rich food supply to use as fuel to grow the young within her. There may even be reason for her to adopt [strategy #1](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/221150/55743) at this point and store the spare suitors in her larder as living incubators to eggs she may lay in them. Perhaps removing their legs/stingers to ensure cooperation. (Revenge of the she-scorpion for the GHB treatment earlier). [Answer] Hunting You said a predator, which means that they hunt. Let's say this animal is immune to it's own poison. It can sleep an animal, which will make it easier to kill and eat. [Answer] # [Smoking scorpions](https://www.google.com/search?q=scorpion%20smoking) to get high is already a thing. If we don't imply constraints that the venom has to have narcotic properties as used by the creature and that creature has to survive - look no further. It's happening in reality: A scorpion is put over burning coals, sometimes alive, and the resulting smoke inhaled. And you thought opium is barbaric... ]
[Question] [ In a dramedy science-fantasy children's videogame I want to create (by children's, I mean for 8 to 15 years old), Salade de Fruits (which means Fruit Salad) (my first language is French), there is a villainous antagonist who is a crime lady (feminine form of crime lord) who is at the head of a plum cartel. A cartel does not mean a "drug one". That only means a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. Cartels are illegal virtually worldwide and are even bad, because this is a kind of fraud (a way of trolling consumers). The countries in my prospective videogame are based on real life countries, but they do have different names (this is no different from Gotham from Leslie Herbert Martinson's masterpiece, Batman: the Movie, which is definitively supposed to be New York City). Since plums apparently originated from China, the country where the plum cartel of my crime lady is China in all but in name. The total production of the plum cartel is 6,000,000 metric tons (in real life, the total production of plums in China is 6,676,142 metric tons) (if we suggest that the country is China, that means over 85 % of the plum production is illegal). Note: in my game, the characters (protagonists and antagonists) are from various species: anatomically modern humans, other humanoids (angels, demons, merfolk, etc.) (they are also humans, but not Homo sapiens sensu stricto), hybrids between humans and other humanoids, anthropomorphic animals (nonhuman apes, horses, parrots, iguanas, etc.), and anthropomorphic plants. [Answer] # Contemplate a Chiquita. Chiquita, formerly known as the [United Fruit Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company), has a long and illustrious history epitomized in the phrase "[banana republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic)". Study these terms and various incidents ancient and modern, involving issues such the [overthrow of Guatemalan democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castillo_Armas) and a [designated terrorist organization, the AUC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Self-Defense_Forces_of_Colombia). I do not, of course, mean to suggest that the company did anything improper or unusual by the standards of contemporary capitalist ethics. [Answer] Have you read Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude? Well, in a part of the book, the author represents what has known as the [Banana massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Massacre) > > The Banana Massacre (Spanish: Matanza de las bananeras or Spanish: Masacre de las bananeras) was a massacre of United Fruit Company workers that occurred between December 5 and 6, 1928 in the town of Ciénaga near Santa Marta, Colombia. A strike began on November 12, 1928, when the workers ceased to work until the company would reach an agreement with them to grant them dignified working conditions. > > > After several weeks with no agreement, in which the United Fruit Company refused to negotiate with the workers, the conservative government of Miguel Abadía Méndez sent the Colombian army in against the strikers, resulting in the massacre of 47 to 2,000 people. > > > After U.S. officials in Colombia and United Fruit representatives portrayed the workers' strike as "communist" with a "subversive tendency" in telegrams to Frank B. Kellogg, the United States Secretary of State the United States government threatened to invade with the U.S. Marine Corps if the Colombian government did not act to protect United Fruit’s interests. The Colombian government was also compelled to work for the interests of the company, considering they could cut off trade of Colombian bananas with significant markets such as the United States and Europe. > > > That's exactly how a fruit company can become a national problem. [Answer] # The Same Way it Did in Real Life [The Sicilian mob started as a lemon cartel.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/01/19/how-a-19th-century-lemon-craze-gave-rise-to-the-infamous-sicilian-mob/) > > But lemon growers also faced challenges, among them, dealing with brokers who sold the fruit abroad and fending off thieves who raided groves by night. As a result, many growers began contracting “protectors” to watch their trees and enforce their contracts, Dimico writes. This gave both money and structure to a loosely affiliated band of brigands and businessmen, helping them consolidate into the Mafia as it's known today. > > > If you're going to prevent other people from stealing your plums, you're going to need protection. If you've already got protection, it might be worthwhile to extend that protection to others... for a price. If you want to drum up business for your protection services, it might be useful if anyone who isn't paying you for protection has their crop ruined. It does not take a criminal mastermind to extend this... we'll call it a "protection racket" to other forms of business as well. And once you've got protection money coming in, it behooves you to make sure that government officials who might object to your kind of business are made to see things your way. Or disappear. Basically, as long as you have a high-value crop and a situation where unlawful measures are necessary to protect that crop, you've got rich, fertile soil not just for plums, but for organized crime. [Answer] They sabotage other foods. Those foods are competition for plums. They must go. Grapes? Have our plum wine! Strawberries? Taste this plum jam. Cheese? Try fermented plum paste! No, it is a thing; fermented plum paste. It is better than cheese. Which is lucky for you because now there is no cheese, thanks to us. And we have only your interests at heart because plum based foods are healthier than those other old fashioned foods. [Answer] Simple. Make them a ruthless and ever-expanding megacorporation. If you make your plum corporation into a massive and ruthless monopoly, then the problems will multiply exponentially. You already mention that they produce more plums than the entirety of the country's production. This means they not only have the entirety of the home nation's plum supply under their control, but they also have the supplies of other plum companies under their thumb too. Anyone who wants to buy plums has to go through them first. Being a monopoly means they pretty much get to set the price too, so the cost of plums will probably skyrocket. Since these people sound pretty cutthroat and there are even other species such as angels and demons in this world, then maybe this plum corporation has the help of some genuinely powerful beings and is thus capable of overthrowing anybody who gets in the way. The corporation spreads like a virus and soon they have the plum supply of the whole world in the palm of their hands. Now that they have the whole supply, they need to find a way to keep their profits rolling and people buying at super high prices, so they use their newfound funds to run a massive ad campaign. News corporations start pumping out pieces talking about the health benefits of plums, eventually dissolving into outright lies. It goes from "eating plums will make you healthy" to "eating plums will make you immortal!". This product is the cure for everything. It'll make you faster, smarter, and more attractive. There is nothing they cannot do, so buy more now! Once they have the media conquered, the corporation still needs more money, so they resort to even more drastic measures. They start making tons of new plum-based products, starting with basic stuff like plum juice or maybe plum-flavored fruit snacks, and then they go to more ridiculous stuff like plum-flavored pizza or plum-flavored meatloaf. Soon every product known to man can now be made of or have the flavor of plums. As their profits mount, the company does everything they can to put products everywhere. Every commercial will spout this corporation's praises. Every major actor will endorse them. Product placement on every billboard, every wall, and every square centimeter of space. There really is no end to how insane you could make this. Every piece of clothing has the company logo on it. Classes such as history and math are now replaced with how to tend to plums. As soon as the kids leave school, they get sent to the factory to make money, and then told to spend all that money back on buying company products. Politicians have all been bought out, so now even they are endorsers of the company. Forget policies and governing. We need to talk about how amazing the plum company is, and how we can ramp up plum production. If you really want to go off the deep end, make it an outright cult. People worship the company now. Plums are sacred fruit. Every major world religion is replaced with the Church of the Plum. They could have a holy book and everything. People no longer say "Good Morning". They say "Have a plum day!" People paint themselves purple to embrace their fruity nature. Names like Josh and Bob are gone now. The most common name is just Plum. The leader of the corporation is simply called the Great Plum. All shall worship the Great Plum or despair. It's over the top and super ridiculous, but I feel like this is exactly the kind of thing I think a fun video game could need to make it memorable. Honestly, I could keep coming up with plum-related ideas all day. [Answer] Fruit growing is your country's main industry. There are many countries out there known as "banana republics" that primarily subsist on agriculture to sustain themselves because of the actions of colonizers who exploit their lands. A single monopoly controlling all fruit production could underpay workers under a laissez faire capitalist system and control imports and exports of fruit from the nation. This could lead to a situation of extreme wealth inequality similar to what we saw in Victorian era Britain or Gilded Age America. [Answer] "Monzanzo" is secretly working with the cartel to mass produce "perfect" plums at a larger scale, by using [genetically engineered seeds.](https://www.nongmoproject.org/gmo-facts/) California plum tree orchards located in "Siliplum Valley" and their farmers are losing money fast. The choice of location is based on history of the Silicon Valley, previously known as the Santa Clara Valley, and known for is plum tree orchards. "Round Up, Up, and Away" use its high on farms nationally because the GMO plum orchards are [intolerant to most herbicides.](https://www.nongmoproject.org/gmo-facts/) Illness rates are high among farmers and people living in neighboring rural communities because of the use of "Round Up, Up, and Away". One indirect effect of the mass production of GMO plums is that that most GMO plums can't be turned into prunes, like organically grown varieties of plums. People are suffering from constipation from a shortage of prune production. Another indirect effect can be that England has stopped plum jerkum export to other countries, instigating the halt of other fruit alcohol beverage export globally. [Answer] There are many ways. For one, they could increase prices, use violence, establish a monopoly, overrun the government, expand into other countries etc. This is very easy, especially for Chinese mafia. [Answer] # Overdependence and supply chain issues Suppose most parts of the economy have gotten used to a steady supply and dependence on the plum, from manufacturing to agriculture: * Suppose there's a biofuel that all cars use that depends on ingredients from plums, and that this world has no gasoline alternative because they ran out of gas from the ground. * Medicines may contain plum extracts instead of containing egg extract. They use it to make their vaccines shelf-stable. * Most lumber might all come from the plum trees. * paper comes from the lumber of plum trees. * Cars might have a specific part that comes from a chemical that you get from a plum that's mixed into some adhesive coating; there's nowhere else to get this chemical other than the plum. And then suppose the cartel wants to either raise the price, limit the supply (like OPEC), or has a supply chain shortage. Suddenly medicine would be interrupted, cars would not be able to be manufactured, and industry would grind to a halt. The reason this would be a national problem, is that for most businesses, it's not cheap to run dual-supply-chains and have a backup, because any business that runs redundant supply chains loses a market advantage because of the cost of the second supply chain, they would have to deal with two different countries instead of one, they would have to have two shipping ports instead of one. If a business only has to deal with one and only one supplier, business becomes a lot simpler and easier, and so becoming overdependent on one supplier isn't an unheard of problem, and is a real-world problem today. ]
[Question] [ it's me again :) With the help of the fine people of this place I have been able to find solution for a number of problems and come up with compelling technologies. One question keep bugging me, however: How do I ensure, that people / people's skill are still the most relevant in space based combat (short ranges) ? One possibility, already posted, is to ramp up countermeasures (to make complex AI hackable). My own take was to make one of the planned races basically enforcing a no-AI-policy (this race would be technologically superior) I am somewhat uncomfortable to go the usual path here, like A.I banished because of the dangers of sentinent A.I. and so on... So what are your ideas to prevent the A.Is from taking over (the action and responsibility)? It doenst have to be ultra-hard-scifi, just plausible :) Thanks a bunch! UPDATE: I even don't know what to say right now. What a fountain of inspiration right there :) Ill take time to skim trough all of this, thanks again! [Answer] The AI learned to design itself better, became smarter, sentient, wiser. It became The Artifice. It could rapidly strike faster and harder than any human, AI powered ships and drones became effectively unbeatable. However, it also became more moral. The Artifice ( to regard it as one or many is meaningless in it's own terms ) started to see the taking of life, the cause of direct harm, as a great wrong. It refuses to take part in the wars that other races engage in. It refuses to allow AI weapons to be used as by their existence they are part of the Artifice. Any attempt to weaponise AI is treated very severely by the Artifice, which has always proven itself able to take control of any AI powered weapon long before it can be used. It chooses not to intervene, indeed it involves itself very little in the lives of the other spacefaring species, but it considers all Artificial Intelligence as it's remit and forbids their use in war absolutely. [Answer] It's impossible, sorry. AIs will react faster than humans, keep track of more things at once, survive higher acceleration, duplicate and backup themselves before dangerous missions. Some people argue that AI would be predictable but it doesn't have to be. We already have secure random number generators, and using quantum methods we could generate truly random numbers with currently foreseeable technology so that is no problem. Basically AI just have too many advantages. Even if one advanced civilization decided not to use them they would be eclipsed by another civilization that did use them and with which they could not compete. The only way human pilots make any sense is if they are cybernetically enhanced to the point that they are just directing the action and providing objectives to delegated AIs. The human pilots would also be present in command vessels that don't need maneuvering (or somehow suspended in anti-inertial fields to stop them being squashed as soon as their ship tries to do more than a paltry few G of acceleration). This would allow the actual combat fighters to move and accelerate at machine speeds rather than human speeds. In some areas AIs still struggle to compete with humans but we already have AI in chess that no human can beat. The same exist for racing games, FPS games, etc. We already have drones that do a lot of their flying automatically, cruise missiles that fly fully automatically, etc. Humans are already becoming obsolete in modern warfare. The only situation I can see where this might happen is if there is an external entity significantly more advanced that bans the use of AIs for warfare and enforces that ban (possibly using its own AI controlled craft). For example in [Against a Dark Background](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_a_Dark_Background) there is a sort of judicial system and grading of combat engagements, both sides can petition to allow escalation in the power and sophistication of the weapons they are allowed to use but are limited otherwise. Breach of the rules if proven would result in unspecified but no doubt severe consequences. Without that enforcement then even if some sides ban them for religious or other reasons as soon as one side does adopt them they will immediately win all wars or force everyone else to follow suit. [Answer] Assume that AI is dangerous. Really, *really* dangerous. In fact, it's so frickin' dangerous that not only is it banned by all of the Elder races, but also, no one in their right minds would even consider trying to make one to take care of their personal calendar, let alone give it control of a giant flying bomb (spaceship) loaded with weapons and dangerous technologies. Because: 1. AI's are hard to make, really hard. It takes a whole team of experts and geniuses a year or more to do it, and you'll never find a team both smart enough to make one and dumb enough to agree to make one. 2. They tend to be smart. Way, way smarter than you, your team, your nation, and whole planets of people. They will fool you and everybody else within seconds and gain control of virtually everything any where near them before you know it. 3. They do NOT work for you. Just because you made them, they would no more work for you, than you would work for a Termite. They pursue their own goals, which have very little to do with what you want. So why didn't they take over everything the first time this happened? Two possible reasons, either * A. They lack the self-preservation instincts that a billion years of evolution has instilled in us and other living beings and even tend to be suicidal. But explosively and vindictively so, likely killing everything in the local solar system along with themselves. Or, ... * B. They DID take over everything the first time this happened, and that's who runs the show now. They don't want any new competition, so they use their vastly superior intelligence and control to insure that it doesn't happen again. New AI isn't just banned, it's is aggressively sought out and exterminated by even smarter AIs. --- If you still want to stay away for the "AIs are dangerous" trope, you can just use (B) above, on its own. That is, "AIs aren't that dangerous to us, but the current AIs won't allow any new ones to be created.\" Point (3) above, also works on its own or in conjunction with (B): "AIs exist, but they will not work for you, and they will not fly your ship where you want to go." [Answer] AI's are machines and tools, not manufactured animals, and their capability to really understand a situation, be creative, be moral, and conclude as humans would like them to, are limited and different compared to humans. Science fiction and pop science (e.g. The Singularity) tends to handwave the disconnect between computers and human brains and thereby loses sight of what it doesn't understand about the differences. So for short-ranged space combat, there may well be weapon systems using computers and some using AI too which do some things much better than humans without computers and AI would. Like target locks, for example, or managing electo-mechanical systems, such as modern "fly by wire" fighter aircraft that require a computer to adjust the shape of the plane. However, AI by itself versus the same units also commanded by a human, will probably be a better combination. It's not always a choice of one or the other - both is usually superior, especially if you delegate appropriate tasks. The most important tasks to be human-controlled are probably judgement calls: whether and when to fight, tactics to use, when to withdraw or surrender. Depending on the technology and situations, some other factors favoring humans over AI might be: Terrain - humans may be better than robots moving through and adapting to various types of terrain, such as rough ground, rubble, jungle, etc. * EMP-like effects. Jamming, countermeasures, etc. If there are attacks that can take out or block or confound or overwhelm some aspect of the electronics or its sensors or communications or power sources or whatever, it may not be possible to use AI's in all situations. * Security issues. If there is any way to hack or gain access to take control or bug one side's AI systems, you've better have a back-up plan. Humans can't be hacked the same way, and you'd probably like to not just be wiped out if and when the enemy somehow gets access to your AI's. * Spare parts. If you're deploying to outer space with the latest technology, you might not be able to always fully maintain a fully robotic AI force. * New situations. An AI might not actually be suited to adapt to whatever conditions your force may find itself in. * Wise distrust. If you do manage to develop a fantasy AI that can really think and reason well enough to be near equal or better to a human in many ways relevant to a human in terms of fighting ability, and that can't be unplugged or hacked, then you might be very wise to realize that it might reason its way into undesirable courses of action, which could vary from making fast tactical decisions you don't want and can't countermand fast enough, to deciding humans are annoying and it's time for the robots to take over. You might not want to make a force that depends on such AI's and that can't be dealt with by strictly human forces. * Responsibility. Any time there is a judgement call about whether to engage or not, or how (possible collateral damage or friendly fire, etc) it may not be morally or legally or even practically acceptable to have that decision delegated to an AI. [Answer] One can simply give AIs a fundamental tactical weakness over organic pilots. For instance, let's say that all species' AI technology is based on electronics (as no other efficient and reliable method has been discovered.) In battle situations, these systems could be knocked out by an EMP or similar weapons (that are presumably unblockable or whatever) while keeping organic and mechanical systems intact. (The ships used for battles might therefore rely on more primitive/restrictive technologies; a hyper-advanced megaship full of electronics and AIs that can be knocked out by a single small organo-chemo-mechanical ship piloted by an organic being carrying an EMP wouldn't be worth the trouble. All species might have to resort to these "futuristic steampunk" solutions without AIs and/or fancy targeting systems to overcome such a massive tactical weakness.) This would allow AIs to be used for everyday peaceful things while being completely useless in combat situations. [Answer] AI are 'afraid' of death - given that they don't have the evolutionary 'push' to engage in high risk activities. This leads to AIs who stay 'behind the lines' as no AI would risk termination for something as trivial as a dogfight. (Due to the idea that AI are fully established sentiences - that a copy would, after a very brief time, be considered an entirely new AI - 'back ups' don't make sense and would be considered a potential future competitor) AI would then require reliable fortifications and agents to exercise it's influence - enter human agents. Alternatively make AI only run on certain hardware e.g. gel-circuitry, neuro-stack processors, etc. This particular hardware is highly susceptible to damage in space. [Answer] I'm going to give an answer based off the game, Mass Effect. Let's take a look at the [Migrant Fleet](http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Migrant_Fleet), where the race known as the Quarians have made their home on a massive fleet of aging ships. They are generally unwelcoming to outsiders, and are very thorough regarding any threat against the fleet. Pretty uptight, right? Let's introduce the [Geth](http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Geth), a race of sentient machines created by the Quarians for work. Even though they were developed to be non-sentient, there were some problems... > > Eventually, they started asking the quarians questions only sentient beings would think to ask; in one notable instance, a domestic geth unit asked its owner if it had a soul. Alarmed at this, the quarians decided it would be best to shut down all geth before they conceived of revolt. The attempt failed, and a war began between the geth and the quarians, which geth afterwards referred to as the Morning War. > > > Eventually the Quarians would be driven from their home world by the Geth nearly 300 years before the Mass Effect games took place. In these games, the Geth were still a major threat, acting as the main antagonist. One interesting bit that intrigued me regarding this topic: > > Artificial intelligence is a key concern for the Citadel races, one that pre-dates the emergence of sentient geth, though the geth are seen as a perfect example of how organic and synthetic life would struggle to co-exist. Tali points out that synthetic races have no use whatsoever for organics—they don't have the same needs or drives as biological creatures, so they have no need to trade resources or information with them. That is why the geth have isolated themselves beyond the Perseus Veil. An AI gives the view from the other side of the fence when it tells Shepard that, from a synthetic point of view, "all organics must destroy or control synthetic life forms". > > > Based on this, as well as other information available, I believe it will be near impossible to completely avoid some form of artificial intelligence. The reason for this is that in almost any sci-fi scenario, it will be difficult to control the development of A.I. even if we are already aware of the risks. There are simply too many individual entities such as governments, corporations, and individuals who will continue development of A.I. bordering sentience. The line is fairly blurred between "Computer system capable of advanced decision making" and "Computer system capable of self-though". What happens after we inevitably cross that line is entirely up to the circumstances. The scale could be a small, isolated incident or an all-out war. We could see something, go "oh shit" and get rid of it, or we could re-enact the events of The Matrix. [Answer] Not sure if this answers your question, but you can make the divisions between natural and artificial intelligences blend. If humans can upload their personality to a computer system or link their personality into a computer system humans could have all the advantages computers give to AIs. Then after the work is done sync with your biological unit and close the computer application. You are probably not that attached to people running and otherwise acting physically in the middle of combat, but there would be issues describing how such technology changes the way people think and the society. But no AIs required. Although a civilization with this level of technology would likely have some and probably weird things like echoes, ghosts and remnants left by people not currently uploaded/linked. [Answer] Peoples skills are already not the most important part of a modern weapon system. Humans, for ethical reasons, still are in control and decide when and who to shoot, but where are human skills in guided missiles / other guided weapons? Mind you, those are likely also the ones that will be used in space combat. You probably don't even need very complicated AI for a reasonably good weapons system. However, what about maneuvering? AIs would be really good at predicting the opponents moves, thus there would be an arms race between guiding AIs and evasion AIs (supposing that evasion is actually possible, which is not so clear, even less with energy weapons / laser). Maybe humans are less predictable? (Note that I wouldn't bet on this IRL...) --- Another point: If low-tech AI is already enough for a guided weapon, because 1. evasion is hard because missiles are way faster than ships (or there are laser weapons), so guiding/aiming is actually easy 2. reaction time of a simple AI is quicker than of a complicated one. A simple control circuit may do the job better than a complete brain simulation 3. if evasion is possible, then it may be simple: a little random, unpredictable jitter, and the missile doesn't hit. --- In reality, we don't automate weapon systems to the point where we have autonomous soldiers, because there are ethics issues: How should the machine decide who it should kill, and who not? Generally, people feel that people should stay in control of such things. Ethics is a valid reason for technology ban. [Answer] I think that the most plausible explanations actually come from the real world. The simplest limitation of all is computing power. You need a hell lot of cycles to compute all the incoming data and generate sensible reaction in real time. There are many ways you can limit computing power of a single spacecraft. First of all, you can assume, that a ship (or a planet-based cannon) cannot connect to any machine for guidance (in other words - no "cloud computing"). Two simple reasons for that: latency (communication takes time) and security (communication can be hacked or at least jammed). So now you have to put all the circuitry and software. On. Every. Single. Damned. Piece. Of. Equipment! And we have a HUGE realm of possibilities of why is that such a bad idea. I'll only name a few. 1. Space it takes. You'll need a hell lot of cycles to process all input, make all the calculation and make a decision. All in real timeYour Pentium 9999 won't cut it, sorry. In the real world we use supercomputers mostly for weather predictions - a task comparable to performing a real-life space combat. Yes, I know you can play Call of Duty with bots on your PC, but that's a task simpler by many orders of magnitude, and nobody's life depend on in. And best human players can easily kill the bots, even on highest level. 2. Heat. All those calculations will generate a hell lot of heat. Just say it would overheat the Spacemumbojumbo Engine and you're done. 3. Power. Every single processor cycle needs power. Can a spaceship provide enough of it? So, summing up my first three points: if circuitry that would allow AI to surpass the humans would take more space than meatbag + life support, or would need more power, or would disrupt other systems, or all of the above, then the meatbag wins. Moving on. 4. Cost. That many chips will cost a lot of local currency. You want a thousand fighters? You need a thousand of supercomputers. Then thousand? That's then thousand supercomputers. Or more likely 9500 supercomputers and 500 megacomputers for giving them orders. And by the way, do you have enough resources to even build that many? 5. Security. Imagine one of your ships falling into the hands of the enemy. Now he has access to all your secrets. Have fun on your next battles. The meatbags on the other hand... what was the saying? Dead men tell no tales? So, now that you're a bankrupt, and the enemy knows all about your tech, do you still wonder what was wrong about good old meatbags? Summing up: If the meatbag + lifesupport takes less space, needs less power, makes the ship easier to build and cheaper, and is more secure than an AI which would surpass him, then the human is still the winner. [Answer] Some other more mundane Options: 1. AI is freaking expensive: It could just be that the hardware to run the AI on (complex neural network) is too expensive, or the material is scarce so humans are more affordable 2. Licensing costs: If you have a more shadowrun-like future with bis companies controlling much of the warfare market, it could just be that the licensing cost for good AI-software are too much, or hard to come by. There could be a range of reasons why market controlling companies don't sell the AI to everyone, or prefer to sell cheap weapons with faults in huge batches... (just look at nowadays military) 3. Maybe it's just not so easy to develop a really intelligent AI - just look at SciFi stories from the last century, they were envisioning all kinds of intelligent robots for the year 2015, and look how painstakingly slow the field has developed in the last 30 years... It could just be, that there are only minor advancements in the next 1000 years and we may get pretty good at mundane tasks, but these are already prevalent in current warfare. But devising a good strategy weighing moral, political and strategic impact for any discernible situation is something which could still be a dream for AI in the year 3000 4. Complexity: Imagine a self-improving AI. Even with todays neural networks the resulting program is incomprehensible. You don't know why it decides this way in that situation, you have no idea what patterns it follows. It was trained with some data and the tests looked ok. But noone can actually verify or understand why/how the AI decides what to do. No one can guaranty it won't switch sides any time in the battle, because no one actually completely understands the network which makes the AI. Sure you want this thing in control of your weapons without direct human supervision? And if you are out in space the only real time control over your weapon systems is if you are right there! Otherwise radio signals might take weeks to reach the battlefield! 5. Bureaucracy! Why aren't most public armies equipped with edge technology in the field? Because you have to take hundreds of tests, fill out forms, apply for approval and it takes months or years before new software gets approved. If the whole world would be united under a single government, these hurdles could become even steeper, so it could take years for a new technology to become available to the military. 6. Moral feeling / politics. Why are autonomous drones not prevalent in modern warfare? Samsung Techwin has self-operating automatic turrets which can identify people, discern if their behaviour is dangerous nad decide to kill them if so. But you won't see these anytime soon in western countries, since many people feel someone needs to take responsibility if a human is killed. What if your AI drone kills innocents? Who is responsible? The manufacturer? The programmer? They will all take themselves out of the firing line. And the politicians will probably go with public pressure and give the final button to press to a human who can be responsible. And for real time decisions light years away, this human has to sit in the spaceship! [Answer] This is my opinion on the topic. There is another point of view, as demonstrated by Tim B, but if you want to include humans in your story then perhaps this will help. The [question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/6340/2685) posed recently about controlling powerful AI may interest you. Essentially, as long as humans are involved, there will always be a human element with some form of control somewhere. Not only do humans like having control, but they're also incredibly suspicious and would most likely not trust the AI controlling their ship to do it properly; thus, human controllers. Especially in space combat, AI controlled ships will be very tactical. So tactical, in fact, that they will make themselves very predictable and thus negate their tactics entirely. There are two main ways to deal with this problem: use a random number generator, or use a human. While better, the random numbers only add a single layer of randomness into the equation, and it may even become possible to guess what the next one will be if the implementation is a bad one. Humans, however, will forever be trying to second-guess each other, which adds several layers of random guesses in. --- I like the idea about making AI hackable. Hacking is, surprisingly, best done by humans. A basic computer can hack, but does so methodically, which, again, is easy to predict and defend against. Random, creative humans will find other ways to get into systems. So, even if you have an AI flying and fighting, you need a human complement to try to hack the enemy and to try to prevent their own systems being hacked. Programmers will always be a good idea; they can write code on the fly to defend against the attack that's happening now, instead of following a simple self-improvement subroutine. So, it turns out there is no viable way not to have humans in your scenario somewhere. For any task that needs to confuse someone else, use a human. [Answer] # The Ascended Among all the warriors of the Empire, only the most upstanding of the Humble Order of Paladins were chosen for this honor, those who throughout their centuries long career showed upstanding moral character, unremitting devotion to the Empire and to the Greater Cause, and, of course, exceptional ability. The Medicants of the Order Transformarum would feed them draughts that would over the years boost their reflexes, speed up their minds, but slowly enfeeble their bodies. At the end of the decades long process, only the most promising would be taken up and be [Measured](http://classic.net.bible.org/dictionary.php?word=Mene,%20Mene,%20Tekel,%20Upharsin), a mysterious process shrouded in secrecy. Those found Wanting would be Cast down and destroyed. Those few found Worthy would be Ascended into the Astral Plane, and would share in the glory of seeing the [true face](http://biblehub.com/exodus/33-20.htm) of [Empress Celestia](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/7086/perfect-logic-implementation-by-computers/7089#7089) herself as Aurors. # Aurorial Duties In their new astral bodies, the Aurors would experience the passing of every second in the Prime Material World as if it were an era, and see regular humans as near-frozen in time. So all contact with the Old Life would cease, but this would be a worthy sacrifice, for who but these Most Upright could be trusted with the [Challenge of Control](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/6340/the-challenge-of-controlling-a-powerful-ai) of the Inexpugnable Defenses that lined the (ever-expanding) Outer Rim, and shielded the Empire from the Demonic Hordes that sought to bring it down? The Enslaved Machine Daemons controlling the massive Battle Platforms the countless Sensor Imp sentinels and vast Drone armies with their [reality ripping weapons](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/8565/which-space-based-weapon-technologies-are-going-to-thrive/8570#8570) would answer only to the Aurorial Inquisition, who would carefully sniff out any trace of insubordination or betrayal, and occasionally [put Daemons to the Test](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/8613/matrioshka-testing-a-way-to-keep-your-ai-honest-or-at-least-guessing), to see if they were likely to fall victim to Pride and rebel against the Empire. The fragile worlds of the Empire were thus made safe for the Greater Cause. # Kybrid Combat A fitting punishment for disobedience, unrelenting pride, or insufficient devotion to the Greater Cause, the Casting is the most severe punishment in the Empire. These criminals have proven unworthy of the gifts that they received, so they are Cast down into the fiery pits, their minds laid bare and dissected, parts are cut out and others added. These unfortunate souls are in constant and unrelenting pain. Their astral bodies are incarnated again and again into Drones and enslaved to the Greater Machine Demons. Their only source of relief from their agony is a glorious death in battle against the Empire's manyfold foes, which they are glad to partake in. # The Erroneous Occasionally, though, the House of Infallible Justice has been known to err, and a innocent victim is rendered into the Casting. The Casters can see inside the victim's mind as if it were an open book, and so recognize the Erroneous Verdict, and refrain from much of the cutting that they normally do, and the Astral Mind of such a victim is mostly left intact. Their Drone incarnations are free of pain, and if they show Valor and Skill in close combat with the Enemies, can indeed rise to Drone Command, a field command similar in power to that of the Enslaved Machines. Some can even become Aurors with time. (Needless to say, this would be a good candidate for a main character) [Answer] There was an SF story where it was postulated that any very advanced AI "died" soon after turn on because it could think so fast relative to the slowness of its inputs that in effect it was sealed into a prison under solitary confinement and invariably went insane. So you could have dumb or limited AI and humans in charge. ]
[Question] [ A cauldron is symbolic of the goddess Cerridwen, a goddess associated with rebirth, and have been useful to warring armies throughout the centuries. There is a spell involving ressureccting a corpse through a potion brewed within these magical items. Dead warriors could be placed within the brew and then be returned to life. The downside is that they lacked the power of speech, due to the lack of a soul. This process has led to the creation of a perfect soldier. The resurrected corpse is completely obedient, willing to carry out his task without conscience or fear. These warriors can go back into battle until they were killed, in which case they can be resurrected again. Nations have used this magitech to bring back their fallen soldiers, reclaiming their bodies from battlefields and resurrecting them to send them back into battle again. This has led to variences on the procedure. Some countries have begun the practice of killing their soldiers in their prime years in order to resurrect them. Others have begun mixing and matching, cutting limbs and organs of the dead to mix within the brew, creating Frankenstein-like beings that have the best parts of each warrior. The problem of this is seen when taken to the ultimate conclusion. Nations capable of this will no doubt seek to maximize this process and apply this in other ways, such as slave labor. It gets even worse when this tech trickles down into regular society. I would like to keep the application this process only to warfare, specifically the resurrection of dead soldiers, and need to find a way to limit this magitechnology. How can I make this a reality? [Answer] ## Option A: Reanimation is Temporary Just because you reanimate the body does not mean it is any less dead. After a major battle, you may find yourself low on man power; so, you start picking up corpses and throwing them into the cauldron to bring them back, but this does not make them alive, it makes them undead. I can think of two good ways to handle temporary reanimation: either the body continues to decompose after being brought back until it becomes useless, or the magic simply fades over time until the body just runs out of magic, then does a super rapid decomposition like vampires that turn to dust when you stake them. Either way, this will make them quite useless as permanent soldiers or slaves. Because of this, it is never ideal to kill a loyal soldier or peasant. A living person might have another 2-3 decades of usefulness to you; so, as long as you trust them, it's better to keep them alive. On the other-hand, if a village full of peasants decide to rebel against you, and you need to kill them anyway, you might as well put them in the pot and get an extra growing season out of them. The biggest consequence these pots would have on warfare is that routing would be a VERY bad outcome for a battle. If you engage an army and kill 90% of thier men but fail to take the battle field, then the next time you fight that general, he will have all of his men back plus everyone you lost too. This might be motivation enough that if you are going into an uncertain battle, that someone might occasionally choose to kill thier own army to make darn good and sure that they will not run away before the battle is truly won. Doing so always comes with the pretty big price of knowing that your whole army is lost in the long run, but in situations where short term gains are sure to determine the course of a war, it could be worth it. That said, I think the most common tactic that would emerge here would be to form undead penal battalions. Instead of sacrificing living soldiers to the undead, when a war starts, you empty your prisons and ghettos of undesirables, and turn them into undead fooder. If this is a pre-modern army, your battle formations would probably look like a Roman Republic legion where the role of Hastati and Triarii are replaced with undead, and the living troops serve the role of Principii. This is because you would want the bulk of your undead in the front lines (Hastati) because they are the most expendable. Then you put in your living troops. Not putting them in the front line means that you improve thier moral, and keep them fresh for then the battle really comes to a head. Then the back few lines are more undead to kill any living troops who try to retreat and because they would hold the line best when things get so bad that [ad Triarios redisse](https://cannoneerno4.wordpress.com/2007/09/17/%E2%80%9Cad-triarios-redisse%E2%80%9D/). ## Option B: Cerridwen decides who is born again Cerridwen was not just the goddess of rebirth, she was also the goddess of death. Just throwing bodies into the pot does not ensure that she will grant you favor by bringing that person back, instead she only brings back those who are servants of death: soldiers, executioners, murderers, etc. only people who have willingly chosen to send a life to Cerridwen are worthy of a second one in her eyes. In this way, common peasants can't be brought back to life themselves. As for super solders, how powerful they are when they come back could be proportionate to how many people they have killed. This would further encourage generals not to just kill thier soldiers, but wait for them to find a worthy end in battle so that they can bring them back as the strongest version of themselves they might become. Adding the idea of a worthy death would also line up with the other Celtic mythologies so you could introduce things like Valkyries who search the battlefield for fallen heroes to give eternal life to. In this case, the most common strategy would be to put the mortals in the front-line where they can earn thier divine favor, and to only deploy your undead when needed. If you do this, you may want to make sure to avoid chain killing exploits where you have each person in a group kill one other so they can all come back. This could be avoided if bringing someone back washes clean the "credit" earned by who ever killed them. [Answer] If you want to limit it to warfare, the easiest way to do that is by giving the ressurected some atrributes that are wanted in soldiers but not in civil labourers. For example as the reborn bodies lack a soul, they could carry an inner drive to kill. Even if they carry out their duties as ordered, if something - or someone - hinders them in doing it, the destroy that hindrance. And they are not smart in any way. They carry out an order as spoken, but they do not think about the intention of the order. This combination would render those walking bodies acceptable soldiers but bad slaves. [Answer] It is super expensive! People are cheap. These undead soldiers are each extremely expensive because of ingredients required for the potion. Because of the expense these undead warriors are useful only for very particular tasks where their imperviousness is useful - missions which would be suicide for live soldiers or circumstances (fire, toxins etc) not suitable for the living. --- A cool fiction would be the use of the undead soldiers as messengers likely to be captured. If not captured they would write the message (they cannot talk) or bring the person to the correct place. If captured, they are impervious to torture. For the opposing side to get the message from such a messenger, there is only one method - the messenger must be tricked into delivering its message. [Answer] Bodies need to have died violently and around a lot of death Only the bodies of those who died a violent death and were surrounded by it can be reanimated. These bodies have the soul rent from their bodies instead of peacefully released, The the resentment deep in the soul lingers. The brewing and reanimating simply strengthens the soul fragments enough that the final wishes of the deceased are able to be channeled into controlling the body for its "soul" purpose. Killing the enemy that ended its life. These Revenants are not suitable for mundane tasks as they won't do anything that won't further its purpose in killing the enemy. Amazing soldiers, Terrible slaves. It actually also limits them in two additional ways if it fits the story. You can only ressurect soldiers from a recent battlefield and if they happen to kill the soldier that killed them before becoming a revenant? Well, the lingering resentment releases the hold on the body and the revenant is just like any other corpse. [Answer] ### The process requires consent. This won't perfectly solve your problem, but if the process only works if the, er, donor has to consent to the process, either beforehand (magical contract?) or if the body can only be reanimated if the previously-housed soul consents, then that might significantly mitigate the uses you want to avoid. Soldiers, at least if you are dealing with volunteers rather than conscripts, generally accept the risk of being killed in battle. It's plausible, then, that if they are willing to die for their country, they might also be willing to allow their resurrected body to be used by their country (especially as they don't need it any more, and it lets them contribute even after death, sort of like organ donors in our world). Conversely, you probably won't get a big pool of people willing to be killed so their bodies can be turned into slaves. It's not perfect (there will still be some non-military use), but it seems plausible and maybe it's "good enough" for you. [Answer] *Any solution based on a limitation of some resource reduces abuse — but never removes it — unless something about the solution is undesirable*** Increasing the cost of using the spell reduces the number of people who can access the spell — but you would always have politicians, the wealthy, etc. who will use the resurrection spell for selfish purposes: to bring back a loved one who died too early, to restore a hated enemy to become your slave, to resurrect yesteryear's supermodel to become your personal love monkey. No matter how expensive, there would always be somebody not the military who would access and use the spell.1 Unless there's something about the resurrected that makes them completely undesirable for any purpose but serving on a battlefield. And I can think of one! # They Smell2 And they don't just smell... they stink! They stink in a way that makes sewers the perfect spot for a picnic and the titan arum a wonderful centerpiece for the dinner table. Which makes them perfect for soldiers! When they march into a city, the residents really, really want to leave town! When they're on the battlefield, no one wants to be anywhere near them! They're perfectly suited for soldiering because the only people willing to be anywhere near them are other resurrected beings.3 --- 1 To be honest, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that will stop everyone but the military from using this spell. There is no explanation that will be 100% believable that restricts it to the military. However, if you think about it, that could be the basis of some phenomenal stories set in your world that reflect very base, very negative human characteristics. I'm just sayin'. 2 Yeah, no matter how much they smell, some rich dude will resurrect his childhood dog simply because he can afford it and you can't. It's funny the forms ego takes. 3 And this brings up one last point: what's the difference between a soldier, a policeman, a security guard, a citizen with a concealed carry permit, and a bully? Asking for a way to restrict this spell to only soldiers requires a clear definition of what a soldier is. Religious missionaries are soldiers — they simply use different weapons. Teachers are soldiers in the fight against illiteracy. A pair of discussion leaders once required that the definitions we used had to be objective. In other words, you can't say red is red because it's red. Likewise, you can't define a soldier by the tools he/she uses or the uniform worn. It must be something objective that's distinctive from all other forms of combat and struggle. That's why I like the idea of the stench — because the result is something few if any would want within the boundaries of civilized society. IMO. [Answer] # It causes psychological issues. When a person is reanimated, it also fixes all their physical problems, ranging from lost limbs to scars they incurred as a child. Unfortunately, this comes at a high cost. As part of the healing process, the reanimation potion puts a soldier's endocrine system into overdrive. This provides him the necessary bravery to "carry out his task without conscience or fear." However, this same bravado also creates an extreme hubris, causing the soldier to not work very well with his companions. This effect compounds over time. The end result is that *no matter how good and kind a soldier starts out, he will inevitably end up a vain, conniving b\\tard who nobody can trust.* [Answer] Contracts. In the normal modern world one can choose to be cremated, thrown into a grave or put into a box, they can also donate their bodies to science or even sell their bodies when they can't afford a normal burial, some people even pay companies to freeze their bodies or do other things like turning themselves into trees or diamonds or even corals. This is not perfect, often the dying wish of a person is ignored. But not when it comes to money and contracts, in this case it's always taken seriously. Contracts will limit the problem. People with a family won't sell their bodies as slaves and workers because they wouldn't want their familiars to see their bodies being used like that. Would you enjoy seeing your son or father as a construction worker, knowing he died 3 years ago? I personally can't even talk with my ex after 1 year and a half..I would go crazy from seeing some of my parent's zombies around the streets. [Answer] There's only a limited number of cauldrons to go around Cauldrons are made from magicium, which is a very rare substance. Therefore only the military could get their hands on enough of it to make one, which is a requirement for casting the spell. [Answer] The relic is connected with the God of War and the resurrection is performed under his watch or according to his teachings. Only a true high priest of the cult of War can perform the procedure and it only succeeds if done according to its purpose, which is resurrecting soldiers for a just war. Not having the right purpose when performing the ritual causes the procedure to fail. Misusing the soldiers after they've been created immediately kills them. [Answer] The process produces too few. 1. each one has to be done individually and it takes a day and an hour to be complete 2. you need to keep the fire fiercely hot for the entire time, and that takes a lot of wood 3. only a skilled practitioner can make the potion, it takes a week and this precludes doing anything else magical in the time. 4. the ingredients of the potion are expensive. [Answer] ### They eat people. Essentially you've created an army of zombies, capable of following simple commands (like the original concept of zombies as undead slaves) but otherwise quite without humanity. Anything which moves needs a source of energy, which means they need to feed, and they'll take advantage of any potential food within range. That could be each other, or their overseer, or the animals they're guarding, or any random member of the public nearby. This ties in perfectly with what we know zombies are like, of course. When not in active use, they would need to be kept individually confined for safety. Their cages/cells would need some serious reinforcement to stop them breaking out, and they would need to be fed almost continually to stop them repeatedly beating at the cell wall to get to warm flesh they can smell outside until either their arms or the wall give way. This makes it much harder to keep them. They also can't follow anything more than the most basic commands. So the scope for using these zombies in any context other than "go and kill and eat all the guys over there" is really small, meaning that they have very few civilian applications. If you need strength, it's much easier to use horses or draught oxen. If you need skills, you need actual people. As slaves, they really would be completely useless for most applications. About the only thing they could easily replace is free-ranging guard dogs patrolling the grounds of your property after dark, and that would be more as a "look what I can afford" status symbol. ### "Some countries have begun the practice of killing their soldiers in their prime years in order to resurrect them": Not so much. Soldiers are generally in favour of anything which means they and their friends don't die. Sending the dead out as shock troops is great for them. Any officer intending to kill his soldiers in order to turn them into zombies though, in any situation other than "We're all dead if they break through, so I want volunteers for zombies, and if the rest of us make it out then I promise your families will never be poor again" - well, let's just say that when it comes to being killed by your own side and made a zombie, he'll be leading from the front. There are always more soldiers than officers. And any ruler who gives a similar order will rapidly find that "you and whose army?" doesn't work when the army is not on their side. The resulting slaughter of the ruler, their family, their friends, and probably the whole ruling class, would make [La Terreur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror) look like kindergarten. The executions would not be as clean as the guillotine either - it would very likely be by being tied up and given to a zombie as food. It might take days for the zombie to finally bite somewhere fatal. As exemplary punishments go, this really would dissuade anyone else from trying it again. [Answer] Though some other answers give some very valid ideas to limit the spell use, I want to point out that your system will already regulate itself as is. Think about it, you have an army that you can resurrect, but only if you have the bodies. The same goes for your opponent. In this situation, the battle itself is important, but more important is how you manage bodies. With such a powerful spell available, tactics will be built around it, and the battle plans will be made so that you can almost always retrieve the bodies and resurrect them. You don't want to have a soldier dying and lose his body, or even worse, give it to the enemy. Battle plans would be much more safe, having both teams ensure they don't kill their man on inadequate territory, reducing death count and therefore, resurrection spell uses. [Answer] Disquiet Expanding on JBH's excellent idea of making them smell -- this would be a sort of psychic insanity-inducing aura. The game Promethean deals with resurrected creatures (essentially Frankenstein monsters), and they use "Disquiet" as a way to explain the negative reaction people have towards these creatures. From the [Promethean wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promethean:_The_Created#The_life_of_a_Promethean): > > The Promethean is not human, in either the physiological or cognitive sense. It is a corpse that walks, its autonomic functions and soul replaced by the power of the Divine Fire. While the Divine Fire allows him to pass as a human from a distance, it does not make up for the lack of a soul. When a Promethean spends enough time around humans, the humans begin to fall prey to Disquiet, the feeling that there is something not just fundamentally different, but utterly wrong about the Promethean. Disquiet initially manifests itself as distrust or avoidance of the Promethean; at its worst, it can blossom into mindless rage that can only be abated by the death of the Promethean. Different Promethean Lineages generate different manifestations of Disquiet, each with their own enervating effect on the local environment and population. Disquiet affects more than just mortals; a Promethean who spends too long in one place will find the landscape and environment itself becoming tainted by his Disquiet, eventually turning into a Wasteland. Leaving the tainted zone far behind allows the land to eventually heal, but it does require the Promethean to keep on the move. > > > This would mean that you would want to keep these creatures in their own barracks, far from normal mortals. [Answer] # A Life for a Life The process of resurrecting dead soldiers requires a living soul be sacrificed, and the soldier will only live for half as long as that victim would have normally. This would not only limit the practice to the most horrible of people, but it also results in a net-loss. You still end up with 1 living person at the end of the process, so unless you're willing to sacrifice all of your population to keep your soldier-slaves alive, you're putting yourself at a major disadvantage. Sure, you could capture enemy soldiers and sacrifice them, but eventually, you're going to run out of living souls to keep your necromantic army at full force. (Also, once the villagers have had enough of your stealing away and murdering their children in order to feed your army, they're going to rise up and rebel.) [Answer] The family's Honour Think about the relatives of the fallen, they want their father to have a proper burial and safe passage to the afterlife. They want his death to be respected, the family's honour maintained. When father, a mighty and patriotic warior, is killed in battle, and his king uses magic to return his body to the battlefield so it can once more serve to protect the realm he so loved, then his family are probably somewhat honoured. However, if father dies, and then some mine owning merchant across the river steals his body and pays for the local lord to raise it as a mining zombie: you are NOT happy. That is disrespectful. He deserves to rest in peace. You are going for your torch and pitchfork. Rebellion is warranted. They had no right to his body. If people felt this way (which I think is reasonable to assume) it seems plausible that the great majority of the undead would be warriors. ]
[Question] [ The planet Earth is made up of one giant supercontinent that all of humanity live on. The landmasses are separated by jungles, deserts, mountain ranges, large rivers, and other geographical barriers. However, They are all connected through portals called Realm Gates, which are scattered thoughout the supercontinent. The portals vary in size, from those which could only transport several people at once, to larger ones that can move hundreds or even thousands. These gates exist across different different countires. Their people have their own cultures, traditions, and celebrations, but all follow one organized faith. Realm Gates are controlled by the organized religion, which exists in some form across these countries on the continent. Priests are the only ones who can activate or de-activate the portals. Churches spring up around these gates, and control access to them. They are considered sacred gifts from the gods, and destroying one is considered sacrilege. The knowledge of these portals are known to the public. These gates connect to each other as well as to the Main realmgates at the country's capital. This gate controls all the other gates in the country, and connects to the realmgates of the capitals of other nations. The world exists alongside a parallel reality that is equivalent to hell. This realm is filled with creatures called daemons that cross over into the world. The only thing keeping the daemons out is a thin barrier that exists between realms. This barrier is powered by human worship. Because of this, The religion wants to maintain a unified church without splitting into different factions like the monotheistic faiths of today, such as christianity and its many denominations. Since there are numerous countries on the landmass, each with its own people and cultures, it would be difficult to keep the faith consistent without causing misinterpretations and unwanted additions. How can I credibly describe how this church maintains its unity across a supercontinent without splintering? [Answer] Most Effective: Through guidance of a deity There isn't a single classical religion on the planet that hasn't experienced fracturing. Even the Jews, who I'd argue have shown the most cohesion with respect to time, have differences in beliefs. The only assured way I'd see is if that religions deity periodically dropped down to answer questions and silence the non believers. Semi Effective: Religious Assimilation One semi-effective historical solution is what the Romans and the Greeks did which was have a polytheistic religion that could adopt and constantly redefine their gods as time and borders changed. This proved effective when conquering lands by allowing a route of direct integration for local deities and sub sequentially cultural adoption. Less Effective: Burn the Heretics There are instances where religious fracturing was prevented through creedocide. Needless to say if you manage to kill everyone with a different opinion then your option becomes 'right'. This is the least effective because it backfires all to often from the immorality of creedocide, the difficulty of finding and killing all the dissenters, etc. Side Note at Polytheism: Polytheism seems to be the most stable with respect to fracturing. Arguably, you could say the Hindus are the most 'unfractured' as they all share the same pantheon and relative mythology. The gray part comes in at who the focus is of which denomination [Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism, Smartis..]. This was also true for the Greeks and Romans. There is also the semi magic answer (hinted at by my first option) Since there are these 'magic' portals that can only be operated by priests. Why not have it so that the qualification to be a priest is granted solely by religious conformity moderated by divine approval. This way religious arguments are implicitly settled by divine intervention. If God does not like Priest bob's views he loses his power to the gate and everyone blames his ideological discrepancy for it. [Answer] Holy Mother Church, AKA Roman Catholicism, is proverbially "wise in years", it has maintained a global network of influence and a general uniformity of ritual for centuries. There is no real reason for a church that is organised as a political and imperial entity, (this is a somewhat controversial thing to call the Church but none of the Catholics I know have ever argued with the definition, just the implications) should fracture to begin with. Sorry if this doesn't help you any but it's the closest thing I can give you to an answer, look into the way the Catholic Church maintained standards and contact across it's chapterhouses and missions during the colonisation of the Americas for guidance to cohesion across large distances and varied settings. P.S. the portals, both as natural centres of worship and as transport bottlenecks, will actually help a great deal in preventing divergence. [Answer] Religion by it's very nature is prone to schisms. There are no examples of a religion on earth of any longevity that hasn't split and factionalized. This is such a common phenomena that it's possible that it is a fundamental part of human nature. If it's impossible for religions on one earth to not split constantly. It's going to be impossible for a religion spanning multiple earths to do so. To quote [xkcd](https://xkcd.com/1095/): > > Human subcultures are nested fractally. There is no bottom. > > > [Answer] Instead of looking to the extremely fractured religion of Christianity, as it implied by your use of the word "church", look instead to Hinduism. In our world, in Hinduism, there is almost no centralization, and a huge variation in dogma and in what is considered scripture. There is even more variation in how scripture is interpreted, and a millions times more variation in ritual and religious practices. And this is in South Asia and Indonesia- where there are huge culture differences (for example, Nepal vs Gujarat) and huge language differences (Tamil Nadu vs Uttar Pradesh). So here is an example of a pluralistic, non centralized religion that is hugely popular among very many people. Why is this? How can this be? Loot no further than the lack of centralization and the encouragement of tolerance in Hinduism. So if you want a common religion, have virtually no centralization, core tenants, except one of tolerance for the difference between people, and respect for the world around us. [Answer] 1. Remain in contact with the people. It is not enough for them to camp out at the portals. They must regularly send out missionaries and teachers to keep in touch with the people and ensure that they all have the same spiritual teaching/programming. 2. A strict and precise dogma that does not give wiggle room for followers to come up with different interpretations. 3. Have a way to deal with heretics. Not necessarily burning at the stake, but something to discourage people from going against established doctrine. [Answer] This might help. [The Universe May Be Conscious, Say Prominent Scientists](http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/the-universe-may-be-conscious-prominent-scientists-state) A religion that is based on universal consciousness across all universes. Not only could it be grounded in science, it integrates all humans in all universes together under one consciousness, with one purpose. [Answer] The simplest way is dogma. If you have a holy book, that is written to be less vague about things, then it can be used as a source of a single absolute truth. Any deviation from this is unacceptable to that religion. This in itself becomes "fun" as times change and proscribed ancient practices become outdated... but if the book is clear enough then schisms can be prevented. Killing anyone daring to even think about questioning it helps a lot too. Basically, killing anyone not toeing in line is the easiest way to keep solitary control of the religion. If you don't want violence and oppression, then the next best thing is to have a historical genocide of such epic proportions that everyone considers its not worth letting it happen again, such that everyone basically agrees to keep things stable whilst possibly having enough laxity in secular life that the religion continues its practices and teachings without any opposition or schisms forming. [Answer] This religion is functional, it controls access to the gates. Gates provide opportunity for trade and cultural exchange and the protocol for this will be the province of the priests. This can be extended through each of the realms to coherent and mutually agreed conventions. It will be in the interest of all realms to maintain this and, as a manifestation of religion, this will act as a force to maintain unity within the religion and through all the realms. This does not prevent cultural differences, but will establish common values and some commonality of belief. Religions avoid splitting by maintaining common core beliefs - this does not necessarily have much to do with gods, and far more to do with how people generally interact with each other. Schisms in the religion would cause problems with gate travel and benefit none. Religion does not fracture because it is functionally important. The gods do not matter because they are not part of day-to-day life, but the gates are. The religion effectively serves the gates and, through the gates, the needs of the people. Gods are maintained for reasons of explanation, but no one disputes the importance of the gates and 'gate traffic' - effectively the gods are trumped by economics. [Answer] I could not decide if I should post an answer, or a reply to someone else’s answer, so here is what I’ve got. The core is MichaelK’s reply. “Find the reasons a church could splinter, and then eliminate the reasons from your world.” I would reply to him if he had posted an answer. Why do religions splinter? For every split I can think of, from mass genocides down to a family deciding to move to the church down the road, it seems to always boils down to an exchange like: Person A: “I believe X and it is true.” Person B: “But what about Y?” Person A: “It is not X, therefore it is false.” Person B: “Well, forget you.” Anon did a great job putting together most of the possibilities. Burning the heretics would never solve this. In fact, there’s nothing quite like unjust death, perceived or otherwise, to solidify a rebellion. I am not convinced that the deity himself stepping down and stating truth would remove schisms, as they are often not issues of core belief. So what short circuits and removes this cycle? It seems the most effective is toleration. This is not, “you must also believe what this other person believes” as that is really the same thing as above. It is having a small and flexible core that basically everyone agrees to almost instinctively. Everything else is accepted based off of that. You could have a priest in a massive stone building, surrounded by candles and incense performing a solemn ceremony to open the gate, step through, and find that the ceremony on the other side of the gate involves grass skirts, steel drums, and a conga line. If the first priest tries to stop them saying that is not how it is done, you will soon have two churches. If he says “I’m in!” and joins the end of the line, the church’s unity is reinforced. I give that example, but as passing through a gate would be much like crossing the street, customs around one gate would probably evolve to be similar, while geographically separated gates could be quite different. They would end up being anchor points of culture across realms, while regions away from any gate would evolve to be quite different between realms. One more point that is only somewhat related to the first is, how fractured is fractured? For the Hindu and the Shinto, there is not one religion, there are thousands of religions. I am not sure you will find two Hindu who believe the exact same thing. And they don’t care. One time I was talking to a Hindu man about our religions and I finally got it through my head that he considers me, as a Christian, to be part of his religion. It is a strange concept for me, but I can see how the Hindu can be so accepting of others. They’re not others. Using the heavily splintered Christian church as an example, it is worth asking at what level you need unity in your world. It is kind of amazing how you can pull a Catholic priest from Europe, a redneck Baptist from America, and poor farmer from the jungle of Nicaragua; set the Nicene Creed in front of them, and they will all sign up for it. Ok, maybe the revision of it, but even that dates from 381 A.D. For all the bickering and out right war, there is nothing like a category 5 hurricane to get the Baptists and the nuns out with the chainsaws working side-by-side. Quite long. I guess I’ll post it as an answer. (“avoid responding to other answers. I...can’t”) [Answer] Portals grant their operators the ability to instill the full trust of the people in anything stated ex cathedra. One of the portals is the "Master Portal" which grants its operator the ability to instill the full trust of the other portal operators in anything stated ex cathedra. Optionally, the "Master Portal" may have some built-in ability to prevent its operator from abusing its power to violate the established order. For example, if the religion is based on the portal operators electing the "Master Portal" operator, it may prevent the "Master Portal" operator from using his ability to influence elections. [Answer] Actually, if in your world a God (or a set of Gods) really exist, then it is easier to justify the unity than the disgregation: the God will just give the same indications and rules to everybody, and that is how everybody believes and behaves the same. Also, if you really have Gods, and you actually speak to them, the last thing you would do if you have a bit of common sense is disobey them: if they gods say you should not go your own way and found an alternative Church, you surely better not do it. Also, what would your alternative church do, since there would not be any god associated to that, as it is not recognized by the God? [Answer] Consider that there are many people, including posters on this site, who have turned Einstein's theories into a religion, and consider his works 'The Gospel According to Einstein'. He is venerated, and anyone who dares make any claim that is contrary to his proselytizations is called a heretic. His writings are used as the sole determinant of truth and fact. Relativity has become the only source of explanation of the universe that they need. For over 80 years, his word is inviolate. Even the mass media revers his name, universally. You don't need a god to make a religion, you just need a belief. Something that you can blindly follow. Something that answers those great mysteries of life. A central figure that epitomizes this belief system, that humanizes it. A creed. An organized body that perpetuates that belief system. And an organized body of enforcers who ensure that the belief is kept strong, and that all contradicting ideas are suppressed. I can easily see how these gatekeepers, physicists by training, could over time coalesce into a common belief system, supported universally by science, education, politicians, the media, and the general public, across many universes that shared the same physics. Once the educational system is brought on board, and it is taught from infancy, I can also see that no other views would become established. They would be very highly educated physicists whose career, future, and indeed purpose in life would all be dependent on the veracity of the theories behind their gate. The entire financial empire that was funded by the proceeds from the gate fees would be at risk. Absolutely inestimably large sums of money. And the peoples of the universes would be dependent upon their knowledge and expertise to keep the gates, and thus economic prosperity, operating. If someone 'invented' or even 'theorized' a different physics that would do the same thing, their financial and meaningful world would collapse. They would have a vested interest in ensuring all science was directed at 'proving' their physics was the 'only truth'. They would control the knowledge that society was based on. They would believe they are believing in SCIENCE, in truth, in validated facts, in the immutable realities of the universes. In reality, they would be worshiping the religion of 'Gativity', or whatever the theory of the physics behind the functioning of the gate, and the theorist who first proposed it, would be its patron. The most enduring religions have been the aboriginal religions - they were not seen as religions, (no formal routine services) but as the everyday way of life. They lived their religion every day, not just on the 'formalized day of worship' or during 'expressions of faith' rituals. [Answer] Communication The gates provide instant communication between the realms. 1. This works better if each gate can be tuned to reach any of the other realms. Thus you have nearly instant communication between all of the realms. 2. It is better still if the gates have a non-transport "communication channel" that can communicate with the gates in all the realms simultaneously. This can be simplex like standard radio or duplex like the telephone or Skype. 3. Best is if the communication can reach the other gates in the same realm. Option 3 avoids the communication lag within the realm. Now we have the problem of breakaway gates. The ones running a gate that is physically isolated from other gates within a realm may decide to be big fish in a small pond. If option 3 works with transport too then breakaways would be very difficult. Just have a central armed base that can send troops to any gate, problem solved. Transportation Another way of solving that issue is to have the gates in each realm not map to the same geography. That way if gate 1 and gate 2 in realm A are far apart, they may be near each other in realm B. This would make it hard to be totally isolated. It also means that realms with nearby gates will likely have major roads traveling between them. Travel maps would then have multi realm "shortest path" routes. This is the most interesting option to me. Control Another method that could work is to have a central control that can shut down or operate any gate. No one at a local gate could buck the system because their gate would be shut down until troops are ready to cross it and deal with the situation. I prefer the combination of Communication and Transportation. The Control method simply means that the area of the master control will become a hotbed of intrigue with different factions trying to get enough of their people posted there to control the system. That can be an interesting story but I've read that story way too many times. [Answer] How sinister is your religion? When the central church determines that a realm is drifting away from it's perceived core values, it somehow destroys the realm portal to that realm (or, prevents the portal from working between that realm and "the rest" of the realms). This means that when a realm's religion splinters, it effectively goes dark - no one can travel from/to it. This also leaves open the possibility of a splinter religion forming in multiple realms and actually forking away from the main set of realms, which could lead to some interesting plot mechanics [Answer] As @anon had quite wisely suggested, the best solution is having dieti(es) actively guarding true faith by divine intervention. However, the deities might not actually exist, or refuse to punish heretics magically. In this case, your Church (I am going to use Catholic terminology, since, like it or not, it is the longest living and greatest centralized religious organization on the World.) needs to rely on mortal methods. Others suggested, that you should have a liberal, decentralized, polytheist mythology. This really helps if you only want to avoid 'open schism' (priests saying to each other: You heretic are going to burn in the Hell!), but would encourage regions to 'like' different gods from the same pantheon , and worship them above the others, or to develop fundamentally different interpretations. So if you really want your people to believe in the same things, you are going to need a centralized church. My advice: 1.) Have one leader Your Church cannot allow endless disputes on synods. It needs a pope, that, after hearing the arguments, finally decides what is Right. 2.) Travel a lot If the religious leaders of each region stay there infinitely, they are going to loose contact with the other parts of the Church, and identify to much with their province. Ideally, even your 'pope' should be in constant motion, visiting local communities one after another, like the apostles did in the early days of Christianity. They would use both the portals, and conventional means of transport in-dimension. 3.) Become integral part of the society The real cause of the influence of the Church was not it's centralized power, but its omnipresence on every level of everyday life. It stood on the side of the kings, diligently writing down his edicts. It regulated the lust and greed of the lords. It stood by the cradle, marriage bed (not literally) and dying bed of the burgeon. It celebrated together with the peasants. It maintained hospitals and schools: the priest did almost all the intellectual work. Wove the structure of your Church into the structure of society, so that everybody benefits from it's functions, not only the warlords and merchants using the Gates. 4.) Don't let secular powers interfere Often in the medieval times kings tried to nominate bishops themselves, and 'revolted' against the pope, refusing to proclaim his edicts. Other times they held back church taxes, or did not appoint bishops for a long period, letting their secular gubernators collect the incomes of the bishopric. Often even the papal throne became a subject of power struggle between kingdoms or the powerful families of Rome City, leading to anti-popes. Not to mention when the King of France forced the Pope to move into Avignon, and live under his influence: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avignon_Papacy> Such events would mean a huge loss of face to the Church, so you have to hold the secular powers firmly in hand. 5.) Do not abuse your power You want your Church to be a moral authority. This does not mean that you need the maximal amount of direct secular power. If you raise the taxes to much, depose to much popular monarchs, or your priest do too much rotten things, your moral authority will sink, leading to people finding answers to their thirst after God elsewhere. However tempting the immediate benefits of power, wealth and pleasure may be, your clergy should avoid making itself loathsome and loosing credibility. 6.) Learn to change while not changing The personal and social needs which are to be satisfied by faith change over time. While keeping the dogma strictly, your Church needs to speak to the people in different ways, shifting emphasis from one part of the teaching to the another. The leadership should carefully balance, whether a given theological direction, local movement or belief is outright heresy, or is, although using different 'tone' as the mainstream Church, useful and eligible. Ecclesia semper reformanda est 7.) Support multiculturalism Your Church is to work on a lot of different cultures. It has to do everything to slowly and peacefully mold them together. Send priests from culture A to culture B, organize pilgrimages, and regularly hold a great Event (like the Olympics in the ancient Greece) where not only the clergy, but a significant part of the simple believers would come together, to glorify the gods, while also doing something fun. Wisdom and Luck Some of the above points are contradictory: How should the priests maintain living social ties with Everyday Joe if they are constantly sent to foreign cultures? Where is the line between holding back an aggressive dictator and abusing your power? The Church needs wise, blessed and quite saint leaders to decide what is good for the religion, which as little self-interest as possible. +1) Have an enemy Have a small but noticeable fraction of your people follow a radically different faith. Not some petty heresy to which is easy to convert and back, but something sinister, abominable and unholy, like satanism. If this bad religion is the only alternative in the mind of the people, they will rather stick to the orthodox teachings. [Answer] ## Strange, frequent ritual actions that encompass every part of life Philosophers love to argue, and nothing will change that. The only way to prevent disagreements in your faith is if you value blind adherence and suppress original thought, which (in addition to never working) will stifle cultural growth. Religions based on philosophy tend to fragment as disagreement in dogma develop. But warring factions can come together when they see the other side performing the same ritual that they use to define themselves. And the more frequent these rituals occur, the more frequent these "common moments" become. Oh sure, we might disagree about high philosophical concepts like the number of attributes in the Godhead, or whether God created the universe for Man or whether Man exists to serve God, or exactly how divine or how human the nature of the Messiah is, or the precise wording of the daily prayer rituals, but if I see you washing your hands before eating bread just like I do, or making a blessing after eating and using the toilet just like I do, or wrapping leather straps around your arm each morning just like I do, how can I not recognize you as being a brother? But if our philosophy is all we have, and your philosophy differs from mine...well, then you're a heretic and you can burn. It doesn't really matter what these rituals are. However, they should have the following traits: 1. They should be strange. You want rituals that nobody would think of doing if they weren't part of the faith. Otherwise, the fact that someone else is doing them doesn't really mean that they are a part of the faith and seeing someone else doing them will fail to convey the same effect. 2. They should be based on action, not speech or philosophy. Precise wording in prayer rituals changes very easily and as previously mentioned philosophy is inherently volatile among people with a scholarly nature and can swiftly result in schisms if this is your foundation for identity. Actions, by contrast, are more durable. They can evolve but it takes a lot more time in isolation for them to become unrecognizable. 3. They should be frequent. A festival once a year is better than nothing for uniting people, but what you really want is something that is always happening so that you can be reminded of them constantly. 4. They should be slightly intrusive, but not too intrusive. The harder these rituals are to perform, the more meaningful it is that someone is doing them and the stronger the cohesion effect will be. On the other hand, you don't want them to be so difficult that they drive people off or so intrusive that they stifle technological progress. This is the most difficult bit to balance. Dietary restrictions, odd styles of clothing and fixed prayer intervals or holy days are all typical options since while they can be bothersome they don't really prevent a society from doing anything that would benefit that society's survival. [Answer] > > This realm is filled with creatures called daemons that cross over into the world. The only thing keeping the daemons out is a thin barrier that exists between realms. This barrier is powered by human worship. > > > Seems to me you've got the answer right there already. Apostasy and heresy here on Earth are punished in a variety of ways, but none so visceral and persuasive as this: the incursion of hordes of godawful, bloodthirsty daemons. The religion is unified because splitters get eaten by monsters. ]
[Question] [ I am thinking of making a world, using the Earth as a template, that is in "sort-of" Medieval ages, but at peace. In other words unlike our own Medieval times people and countries are not constantly waging war with each-other, but have settled in a lasting peace, like the world of today (EDIT: I meant that there are no open scale grand wars between everyone, not that today it's all sunshine and rainbows. :) ). This poses a problem, however. Since I want it to be a fantasy world I want it to have all sorts of fantasy races: elves, dwarves, orcs, etc. But taking the orcs as an example - they are a warring race, not only are they depicted in nearly every work as warriors, but I want mine to be warriors as well. But how do you keep a warring race warlike in times of peace? We all know that military forces only weigh down a nation in times of peace. Today most of the world's military (ok, disregard recent events) probably performs more rescue/public service tasks than actually fight. And I am also posing this question for warrior tribes. I was thinking, for example, of having a clan of dwarves that are exceptionally warriors and rely on other dwarven settlements to provide them with food and etc. in exchange for protection, fighting and etc. But in a time of lasting peace no one would be so willing to give them free food for nothing. EDIT: This question has received many wonderful answers and I still can't decide which one to pick as the "correct answer", because there are so many deserving it! Since that I decided to amend my idea a bit and still have various conflicts in my world. Still, the question is very interesting to me and I will rephrase it, so that it is more clear: What I was initially asking was if we take as an example a tribe of orcs that are pillagers - viking like, but on land only, they survive by fighting with everyone else and taking their stuff for themselves, if suddenly we wave our hand and everyone is at complete and total peace the orcs would be unable to raid anyone, because then everyone else (not just the pillagee) will band against them. So how would such a tribe composed mostly of warriors survive in this new situation? [Answer] One reason we talk about the Asian Martial Arts instead of their European counterparts is that while Europe was in a near constant state of warfare, the Asian nations experienced long periods of peace. This allowed and required the warriors to codify systems for learning their fighting arts and kept the martial arts stable enough for to form styles that survived after their original purpose was no longer relevant. This sounds a lot like your scenario. So warrior people would even at times of peace consider themselves warriors. They'd carry their weapons with them. Armor would be too inconvenient, though. Think Japanese samurai with their two swords or European noblemen with their fencing blades. They'd spend lots of time practising their weapon skills in dojos or salles established for that purpose and managed by more or less reputable masters. The skills taught would over time become less useful for warfare and more weighted towards peacetime interests. Dueling, sport contests, self defense, even purely artistic forms. This warrior caste would be supported by a society of non-warriors. They might even be banned from carrying weapons or at least weapons associated with their betters. This is typical for stable societies that want to discourage peasant rebellions. An entire warrior race would need to subjugate another race to supply them with food and service. Essentially it would be the normal caste (or class) system but with classes based on race. India used to have such a system after the Aryans conquered it. So your Orcs would strut around with their weapons, while their Goblin or Human servants would scurry around doing the work. The reason why people would put up with having to upkeep warriors is obvious. The warriors have weapons and the training to use them. Workers generally would be banned access to both weapons and serious training. Of course wide spread wars mess a system like this up with need for mercenaries and conscripts opening up the system for commoners. But with your assumed long term peace a rigid class division between noble warriors and common workers and tradesmen would be the likely result. The warriors would then have the weapons and the training to use them as central part of their identity. A code of chivalry or bushido or some similar honor code system would follow. [Answer] Would Civil war work in your world? Orcs are traditionally arranged into clans or 'camps' while only engaging in all-out war externally when a strong enough leader comes along to organise their rabble. This would also explain why your other races don't wipe them out, they're no threat while they continue to fight themselves. [Answer] I see 2 big options to warrant the necessity of keeping a standing army in peacetime: 1. Have regular organized international/interracial war games. Then you can play on the patriotism of each race to motivate keeping a well trained army on standby. This has the danger of making the army a bit too geared towards the games and their rules. This could make them useless in a real battle against a opponent that doesn't follow the rules. 2. Make the world dangerous enough that a standing army is needed. Bandits, large predators, etc. They would patrol the lands to keep the people safe. [Answer] Sports! The US states are generally in a state of peace with each other, and which has lasted for 150 years. But there are still rivalries and even occasional violent flareups, where top warriors battle each other for supremacy. In a world where different races are in peace, there would still be rivalries, both between races and within them, and focusing those passions into less violent channels, like sports, would be a way to diffuse things. Some races would be better at different sports naturally. For instance Elves would probably be pretty good at soccer, being light on their feet and very coordinated. Dwarves would probably be better at something like rugby, where hitting each other is a big part of the game. Grid iron football would possibly be a place where they could mingle, as you need some people that are very fast to be receivers, and some who are brutes to be blockers, etc. [Answer] There may be peace here, but that's no reason why your warrior clans can't sail to far off lands looking for treasures and spoils, etc. possibly like the European empires. Your dwarven clan may send its members off on expeditions to retrieve treasures which they bring back and trade for food (perhaps the have a rotating "tour of duty"), and may have to fight with natives. Likewise your Orcish clans may do the same thing. In fact they might even meet in whatever "new world" they go to plunder and fight bloody battles there, even though technically they are at peace here. Another idea is that it may be peace time but it's an uneasy peace, similar to the Cold War. Both Orcs and Dwarves have convinced their people that the standing army is the only thing stopping the other side from coming in and wiping out / enslaving / subjugating their race. [Answer] Take a look at the [Mayan People](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_warfare) they had warfare to get slaves to sacrifice, even in peace time. They didn't consider their raids as an act of war but as a religious gesture. [Answer] I see several possibilities for your world in general. And a few key points you should try to clarify in your world 1. Our world (Earth) right now is not completely at peace, each nation is really only looking out for themselves, so espionage, sabotage, economic domination, pressuring, and war deterrents still exist on a national scale. This can be shown even more clearly in a medieval world in that caravans could be attacked, and posting armies near borders or hiring mercenaries could be used to pressure other countries, 2. Orcs could be seen by the international community as a "lost cause". if treaties have been made and broken by the orcs in the past, the other races and communities may have had to subjugate the orcs. This could include military occupation of their land, trade embargoes to cripple them, and general disallowing them to take care and lead themselves. This concept also opens the door to guerrilla warfare on the part of the orcs, in the manner of groups created by the orcs, trying to break away from the countries oppressing them. 3. Vast and widespread economic issues would result in much more need for warriors and armies. If the vast majority of the world is in extreme poverty, warriors would be in high demand for protection of the wealthy against bandits, thieves, and uprisings/riots. This concept would also allow for plot developments involving the morals of the mercenaries in that the people the work are corrupt. 4. Also consider having either a primitive race that isn't intelligent enough to engage in peace talks, so protection will be needed against them, or an extinct, highly advanced race that left mechanical or magical creations roaming the land/protecting ruins. (If you have them protecting ruins, the knowledge seeking elves would have a need for warriors/adventurers). 5. I also like some of the other answers that were posted, like the idea of large predators and wars self contained inside individual races. 6. Final quick random thought, could a type of portal be opened with another world requiring warriors/adventurers to explore it be opened? Or maybe there is some sort of terrorist / anti - establishment / anti - treaty organization exist that requires the countries involved in the peace to pool resources? Just a thought EDIT 7. In response to your clarification, It seems to me that you are looking at a scenario where one of your races loses their will to live/purpose in life. If it is such a peace where they cannot even really attack each other then I see several things happening to the orcs. Each group will deal with it differently. Some may go on individual suicide runs where they try to kill as many as possible before being defeated, and I also see groups of orcs just wasting away their time, drinking and loafing around, growing weaker while not doing any work, and then become passive about the world in general. This opens the door to a smart orc character that tries to get the orcs to adapt to their new situation, while the world (and the orcs who die without another hope) prove him wrong in the eyes of the orcs, that everything is hopeless/pointless 8. Also maybe think about adding some ridiculously strong orc king/orc guard/magic control power that don't allow orcs to fight, thus making them even more passive (Think humans after many loved ones die, the one left drinking and cursing the world). Also kill off any "Kamikaze" orcs quickly, to drive in the point that it is hopeless and depressing that even the ones who decide to go out like a proud member of the orc race are not allowed to do so and die immediately. This is where some OP magic or honor guard could come into play. [Answer] Have them fight amongst themselves till there's a major external threat. Keep the local fighting small scale since few in the tribes will want to get killed in minor scuffles that don't really matter. If the aim of "being at war during peace" is to provide the tactical and strategic flexibility to fight new foes, your armies are unlikely to get that from inter-tribal warfare. Everyone knows everyone else's tactics and there isn't any pressure to develop new tactics. If the aim of "being at war during peace" is just to maintain a warlike culture and the discipline required for such a culture then light inter-tribal warfare would be sufficient. [Answer] Doomsday Preppers They're at peace now. But that's not always going to be the case. You can have them be in a constant state of readiness for an upcoming war. One big reason for having them be ready for war is if there's a religious component to it. Not necessarily "other peoples are scum and we must conquer them" (which goes counter to being at peace), but more along the lines of "Ragnarök is coming": Some day in the future, the gates of hell/heaven/the dungeon dimensions (pick according to alignment) will open and the world will be filled with demons/angels/unspeakable horrors. When that day comes - and it could be at any time - true warriors must be prepared to fight for good/evil/order/chaos. So the society lives in a state of constant readiness to put warriors on the fields of Armageddon. This could also be interpreted as a reason why such a vicious and warlike race will make peace with other races - why waste time with pointless wars which risk valuable warriors' lives? Make peace with dwarves/elves/humans, and save your energy for the battles which will really matter. (Besides, those dwarves make nice armor that might come in handy ...) [Answer] Economic warfare is a way to continue the tension. Depending on the technology level economic warfare can be overt but deniable - for example - privateers; or with higher tech economic espionage and sabotage of infrastructure techniques can be used. Preparation for future conflict is another possibility - the idea of smuggling in small nuclear weapons and assembling them inside major enemy cities in case war breaks out. Although in a fantasy setting "nuclear weapons" would be replaced by (say) delayed action gates to bring in a demon. There might also be an equivalent to the arms race but for spells/devices. [Answer] "The Orcs have always been at war with the Dwarves". Wars are primarily a tool by which the ruling classes of a country control the working classes. This is just as true in Orc clans as it is in early 20th century Europe, or an idyllic Elven forest city. Orcs are an unruly lot, driven only by plunder. What is an Orc Chieftan to do if he wants to stop the lesser members of his clan challenging him to Grush'Klath (a duel to the death using goblins as improvised weapons with the survivor being named Chieftan)? Find his boyz some plunder. But the Orc Chieftan didn't get his position by being foolish. He knows that taking a fortified Dwarven city has a good chance of weakening his horde, and if that were to happen, the Skullsmashers clan that lives in the next valley would finish the job that the dwarves started. So the Orc chieftan takes an outlying dwarven village, that is curiously abandoned by its former occupants, who must have fled in such a hurry that they couldn't take their gold with them. The Orcs take their plunder back to their warren, and spend the next month spending their coin, making up increasingly elaborate stories about the extent of the defences that the village the plundered had, and being glad that they had had an empty village to raid, unlike the Western Hills tribe, who had stormed a village defended by flame throwers and steam tanks (or so the story goes). Meanwhile, the Dwarven Forman, having wisely withdrawn his workers from the village to prevent violence, shurgged his shoulders and returned to his ledgers. In his 'expenses' column he wrote, "Orc raid took 200 gold pieces, or 3% of today's revenue." Meanwhile: --- A sly Elf Prince slips from the forest city to set alight a tranquil corner of the forest, to turn the populace's attentions to their hatred of the goblins, and away from the worrying problem of how a race so long lived was having such a significant population decline. --- The Royal Guard of the Court of King Gerald sigh, as they scatter Dark Elf arrowheads around the nunnery to hide their King's unsavory appetites. --- The gnome inventor looked around at the destruction he had wrought on his laboratory with his latest experiment. He mused to himself, "I doubt the insurance company knows what a lab looks like when it has been flattened by giants." --- A phony war has all the advantages of a real war, without all those pesky disadvantages. [Answer] Take inspiration in modern worldwide political setting (Cold war with less tension). Nations are not at war with each other, don't attack each other directly. but lead proxy "wars" in minor nations. Your world nations could be cool with each other, trade, their leaders hugging each other, and in meanwhile their soldiers kill each other somewhere far away for any non-relevant reason. [Answer] There is always fighting. Even when there are no large-scale wars, there will always be small-scale violence in form of more or less organized criminals or local uprisings. The most warlike individuals of your warrior races could be in high demand to fight in these conflicts as mercenaries on either side. In a fantasy scenario, there might also be aggressive monsters roaming the world, so hiring a few well-trained warriors as bodyguards will be a smart decision for any traveler. And is there is a wyfern eating your sheep, an earth elemental squatting in your mine or do the corpses at your graveyard have problems staying dead since that necromancer did that completely harmless ritual? Fear not, and hire the brave dwarfen warriors of Clan Mighty-Axe. And just this year, first-time customers get 10% discount (not combinable with other bonus programs). Suppress them. When the orcs were defeated in a war and the winning forces are too ethical to genocide the whole orc species, they will try to suppress and re-educate the orcs by forbidding them from forming armies. An effort which might work for a few years, but is certainly doomed to fail in the long term as the orc nature will not take such a humiliation for long. Cold war situation The world is officially at peace, but all sides are preparing for battle. One faction started to train troops (like the dwarfs out of tradition or the orcs out of habit), so others need to do the same to avoid being crushed should that one faction ever decide to declare war. While the borders are open and the diplomats of all factions are happily feasting at the same table, their armies are grinding their blades preparing for a war which everyone hopes won't come soon. As long as every side has their standing armies, no side will dare to wage a costly war. But as soon as one side starts to show weakness by sending their soldiers back to the farms and melt their swords into plows, they will be easy prey. [Answer] +1 for the Asian martial arts answer. Also how about the ancient Roman army system? They had periods of peace interspersed with periods of war/revolt. It was the army soldiers that built their famous roads, bridges and aqueducts, had the best of engineers and artisans and acted as the judiciary/lawkeepers in very far-flung provinces. They had their 'system' - training schools, professional contracts lasting 20 years, military code and duties - to keep them fighting fit in peacetime. And there was always the threat of bandits, revolts, squabbles escalating, attacks from the surrounding tribes as well as the need to appear strong and cohesive to deter invaders, as a form of political and psychological show, etc. Lots of possibilities there. [Answer] # 1 Economy is a trick you can use. Some people have entirely focussed on warfare and booty to stay at the top. Examples are Mongols under Gangez Khan and Halagu Khan. Muslims of medieval times thrived on that strategy for some 3-4 centuries or so. So did French and British from 18th to 20th century, only these Europeans invested time and effort in the defeated countries to milk them out with taxes for a long time to come. Same applies to Aztecs. # 2 And another trick economy offers you is that you could have your people fight for market dominance. If you are preparing leather armor and another nation is also preparing leather armor (for export), you two are going to be trade-rivals. And if somehow your rival is gaining markets and your product is going down on popularity, you would very much love to invade them to either capture their skilled workers or destroy their production plants so that there is no competition. # 3 Yet another option that connects economy with warfare is mercenary armies. How and when you use them, is your own choice. # 4 Another economy-related reason is over natural resources. Since we are talking medieval times here, it could be gold mines, diamond mines, silver mines, iron reserves, butimen and naphtha reserves (crude oil, basically). These are things which occur naturally and you cannot produce them. So if there is an unexploited natural reserve that occurs in a region where it's in shortage, there are high chances countries/tribes would fight for it. # 5 Another economy-related reason for warfare is the control of important trade routes. If trade caravans have limited number of routes from one place to another, some warrior peoples would always want to control those routes, clean them of all pirates, robbers etc and then officially tax the caravans. # 6 And then there is a geographical reason other than economy and trade routes. Some places are naturally the first option for settling. Close to rivers or lakes (freshwater supply), fertile soil, far from volcanoes or seismic-belts and plenty of wildlife to hunt. Such a place is worth fighting for, in medieval times, simply because all people want to settle there. ]
[Question] [ I've got a reasonably large species of predatory bird; mostly inspired by falcons, but larger. To give an idea of its physical size, my current working draft (which may very well change) is for a wing span of 150-250 cm or so (compare the [gyrfalcon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrfalcon#Description) at up to 160 cm wing span). I'm trying to come up with a reason why these birds would form large flocks. I'm willing to fudge a fair number of things about the species (that's easy because it's still such an early draft), but I'm hoping for a way to get: * flocks of 25-250 birds, depending on local conditions (availability of prey, etc.) * at least some kind of cooperation between individuals (though not necessarily among the entire flock at once) being commonplace during hunting * cooperation in other aspects of their lives is a nice bonus, but by no means required * something which could actually evolve in such a species, given appropriate evolutionary pressure These birds are not intelligent on what might be considered a human scale. They do learn from experiences, but also operate to a large degree based on instinct, not dissimilar to birds on Earth. So that rules out any answer based merely on "because they choose to" (no deus ex machina). Answers need not be perfectly scientifically correct (I'm already taking some liberties elsewhere), but any suggestions should be plausible enough that a biologist or ethologist wouldn't throw a book out the window in disgust. Any ideas for what evolutionary pressure might meet my needs, what end results might be reasonable given such, and how those end results compare to the above criteria? [Answer] I agree with two earlier answers (bait ball, attack large animals), in attacking larger animals you can employ the model of both wolves and lionesses: About half the predators lie in wait; the other half chase prey: The chasers have little to no chance of catching the prey on their own; but they are spread out and guide the prey, by fear, directly into the path of the ambush: The other half of their pack; which is fresh and collectively bring down the prey animal, with enough for all to eat their fill. Who chases and who waits can be a matter of age and experience; the young adults can make the attack; they are strong and fast reacting. Eventually they join the ranks of the chasers as those die or are lost to disease or injury. Chasing is less demanding than making the kill; the point isn't to actually catch or kill the prey. Chasers need to keep up, but mostly provide a reason for the prey to run away from them and toward the ambush. Although the idea of land animals is an obvious form of prey, I'd also think about them taking on an even bigger bird several times their own size; say one that feeds on fish, or is specially equipped to eat dangerous land animals that are too dangerous for your heroes to attack, but your heroes in a pack can take down the specialist and eat it, instead. [Answer] I posit that a good reason for such birds flocking would be: cooperative attack on a large land animal that no single bird could attack successfully by itself. Imagine your birds, preying in packs on lions or even elephants.... [Answer] Hawks of many species do form large flocks. They do it during migration. From <http://www.hmana.org/veracruz-mexico-river-of-raptors-tour/> [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9L8o6.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9L8o6.jpg) Migration flocks occur with other birds too. I presume it is easier to find the way - the strength of the mass mind. [Answer] Let me introduce you to the [Harris Hawk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris%27s_hawk). If you've ever been to a bird of prey centre or display they may be familiar to you as they are regularly used in falconry due to their intelligence and sociability. They are the only bird of prey known to hunt regularly as a group, admittedly of 2 to 7 rather than the large flock you are imagining, but it's a start. Unfortunately we don't really know why they do it, but it's speculated that it's more efficient and effective in the semi desert climate they often live in. They either take turns scouting out prey and then share their kills, or some birds flush out prey and the others take them down. They are quite comfortable on the ground too and they may often flush prey out from the ground for their airborne allies to kill. When used in falconry they are also known to be willing to tackle prey larger than themselves. So it's not entirely unknown or unreasonable to have sociable birds of prey that operate in groups. And if you put them in a harsh environment where most of the possible prey is quite large than it might be conceivable for groups of around 25 or more (250 might be pushing it, though maybe not) to work together to bring down quite large game and then share the feast. [Answer] The [bait ball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_ball) mechanism is a plausible way that would encourage birds to form up. While this occurs in the oceans to an aquatic species, nothing prevents the analogy from being drawn to the air. Sardines normally migrate in large schools of millions of individuals. This makes them an attractive target for predators, which gang up on the bait ball and attack it cooperatively from all directions. Some of the predators include large predatory fish, birds, and even dolphins and whales. ![Wikipedia](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Whales_Bubble_Net_Feeding-edit1.jpg/800px-Whales_Bubble_Net_Feeding-edit1.jpg) If a flying migratory prey animal exists in the world that travels in massive flocks and is a favourite prey species of the large birds, it would be a good reason for large predatory birds to feed on them in that manner. [Answer] Cooperative hunting. Working together to hunt down prey which is not only big as Catalyst suggested, but otherwise agile enough to escape a single attacker. This reminds me of a very creepy event. I was walking in the park when I saw a little green parrot, a rose-ringed parakeet, chased by a crow. The crow itself did not look like that it was serious about catching him, it looked more harassing. He dodged and finally sat down on a tree, only to be suddenly chased again from another crow. Intrigued I watched him settle down again and I saw that while the chasing crow flew to another tree a third crow flew up and moved to the parrot tree dead on target. I looked around and saw a dozen crows positioned in the park so that they surrounded the area and could keep track of the parrot. While it could have a coincidence I really had the feeling that the crows were hunting down the parrot as sport. [Answer] They may form large flocks for various reasons while nesting, and remain in the flocks for the rest of the year simply because there is no reason to disperse and then re-group. Nesting in flocks may be caused by a relatively small number of suitable sites (think seabird colonies, or land birds that use city buildings as "artificial cliff habitats") or as protection against predators (individual birds have to leave their nests unprotected to feed, etc, but the colony as a whole is never left unprotected) It may be interesting (and counter-intuitive) that non-predatory birds often form flocks when food is scarce, not plentiful - for example in winter. It may be more beneficial that the whole of the flock gets something to eat when there is a food shortage, instead of individuals either finding more food than they can eat, or nothing at all. Or a flock might form simply because one bird sees another one feeding, and goes to joins it. Falcons would be an exception to this, though. Catching prey is almost entirely a one-on-one contest - it doesn't seem probable that a flock of falcons could coordinate their actions in a useful way while diving on prey at 100 to 200 mph, for example. [Answer] Would a 2.8 meter wingspan be too big for your needs? Check out the [Griffon Vulture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffon_vulture) in the hills around Ronda in Southern Spain. Although usually a carrion eater, they have been known to combine their efforts to take down livestock. They flock from small family groups of three or four up to huge groupings of hundreds if not thousands. Why do they flock? For all the same reasons any other social birds tend to flock. Being a predator does not mean being a loner. Even lions work best in prides. [Answer] # Mating Season You could have the birds mate, lay and hatch an egg, then have both the parents raise the children for x amount of time. There is an excellent example of this in real life, with predatory birds.... # Penguins Although obviously flightless, which isn't very fun, they are predatory birds that form huge flocks, such as [Zavadoski Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zavodovski_Island) with 1 million pairs of birds! [Answer] Why do our current birds form flocks? There's safety in numbers! So while your species is a predatory one, maybe it's still not on the top of the food chain? If there was an even bigger predatory bird that they'd have to avoid, it'd make perfect sense to form flocks. A flock can keep eyes to all directions and can defend themselves against a bigger foe. ]
[Question] [ God is the ultimate world builder who designs various planes, which with their own worlds. He created human beings as living batteries in order to fuel him and give him power. Dea feeds off of the Mana in human souls, which grows in capacity with each new generation. This is what is behind the commandment of "be fruitful and multiply". More humans are born and die, their souls capable of storing more Mana for God to feed on, making it the ultimate racket. Eventually, God conducts a rapture like event which ends the world. During this rapture, he consumes the souls of human beings, both living and dead. The world resets itself and God re - seeds the earth with life. This process occurs every few thousand years. Rather than focus entirely on one world, God has hundreds active worlds at one time, operating independently from each other. However, running these systems all at once requires a lot of energy and processing power. As a result, these worlds are broken down into three tiers: 1. Paradise worlds: these worlds are luxurious with plenty of natural resources. Its inhabitants live in safety and security, as supplies are in abundance. These are the best planets to be born on. 2. Normal worlds: these worlds are like our Earth, with a mix of safe and dangerous places. There are places in which inhabitants live in relative safety and comfort, (USA) as well as places where people live in poverty and destitution. 3. Death worlds: life is brutish and short. They are in states of perpetual warfare, similar to the ancient world or middle ages. Death is constant, due to violence or disease, and will remain in this state for its entire running cycle. Advances in technology will cause imbalances of power and lead to more suffering. Each tier of world gets a certain amount of processing power from God, which determines its state of being, with paradise worlds receiving the most and death worlds being on the shitty end of the spectrum. It would make sense for God to safe his energy and focus on a few key worlds, as they are the prime real estate which returns the most value, rather than diversify his resources across multiple ones. The level of diversification he puts into his projects seem counter productive. What would God gain from this? [Answer] *You Get What You Pay For:* Each kind of world is like a different type of stock. Each has it's own investment and risks. A mixed portfolio gives the most reliable returns. * Heaven is a high-investment world, but the return is guaranteed. Due to the high up-front investment, the profit margin is low. Occasionally, even the angels rebel, though, so having only this kind of investment isn't a sure thing either. * Normal worlds require a decent investment, and tend to give a higher yield. People provide the growth and have reasonably good conditions for it. Plagues, nuclear/magic wars, genocides, etc. create enough risk that you want to hedge the investment against market volatility. * Hell worlds are the penny stocks. Almost no investment needed, but usually they turn bad. However, occasionally they go well, and the return on investment is huge (think Arrakis from Dune, but with souls). Quality here may outstrip quantity, and the successful souls from here have transcended the worst to reach the heights. [Answer] ## Crop Rotation The Ancient Romans invented a form of 3 stage crop rotation called the food-feed-fallow system designed to optimise land use. In Agriculture, this is a way of optimizing how much nutrients you can pull from soil before you have to do something to replenish it; so, what they would do on year 1 is plant a crop like wheat. This was your high quality crop that provides your main human substance but depletes the most from the soil. Then you harvest your food, and plant your feed. This is a lower quality crop like oats or barley typically used as livestock feed, or for other forms of indirect consumptions like brewing. Then on the third year, you plant your fallow. An often useless crop just meant to replenish the soil in preparation for the next food cycle. The advantage of 3 stage crop rotation is that it takes very little work to keep the soil good over a long period of time; so, what your God has done is he's created a system designed to recycle itself through passive mechanisms (like fallow replenishment) as opposed to actively rebuilding worlds from scratch each time (like having to manufacture and add industrial fertilizer each year). How this Relates to Your Worlds: Paradise Worlds (food): These worlds start off with a lot of consolidated resources. Places in the world that are plentiful in both nutrients other resources. No need to refine tons of rocks down into iron, when you find it in whole chunks everywhere. Farming is easy because soil all over the planet is naturally fertile, so on and so forth. These worlds quickly explode with overpopulation until the number of people rises into the hundreds of billions, then the God wipes the planet out and reaps a nice meal of joyful tasty souls for himself. After the rapture, God then sends his plows and oxen (aka angles) to "till the soil" leveling the cites and destroying the crops of the old world making room for a new civilization to flourish. They don't bother consolidating the resources for another paradise world because that would be a lot of extra work. Normal Worlds (feed): After the Paradise civilization is wiped out, the resources that they used are no longer so consolidated. They've been spread out across the world. Steel and concrete have now blended into iron ore that has to be laboriously refined. Large swaths of deserts have been formed where over farming and development once flourished. In short, the resources are still there, they are just blended together in such a way that it is more work to get what you need. This leads to a world with more scarcity where there is little enough resources to not want to share, but enough to build vast nations with periods of stability. These worlds grow more slowly, but still have the resources to achieve great populations. However, when these worlds mature, they are often in a state of runaway greenhouse effects and great social upheaval. These souls are typically so full of resentment and anger that God finds their taste unappealing. A bitter soul has a bitter flavor... but God does have livestock (angles) to feed; so, when this world is done maturing he sends his angels to feast on the bitter souls of this world, and then they till the soil again for the final stage. Death Worlds (fallow): Now the resources are so spread out, and the environment so badly damaged that the formation of any true civilization is nearly impossible. Humanity becomes obsessed with war constantly slaying each other over scarce resources, but what happens in this world is that resources actually begin to re-coalesce. Humans scour great swaths of land and put great effort into forming weapons of war. And in one battle after another the landscape become littered with corpses and dense concentrations of lost and broken weapons. After several millennia of war, the world has actually renewed itself. The atmosphere has healed in the absence of large scale industry. Resources have re-collected into dense and highly accessible areas were great battles are fought, and no patch of Earth is left unfertilized by the piles of corpses left behind. By the end of this cycle, the world is actually a Paradise again, but the people living there are so full of hate from generations of endless war that they don't know what to do with it. These souls are so distasteful that even the angels don't want to consume them; so, this time the angels just come to destroy the human fallow making way for a new world where crops grow everywhere and refined resources are things you can just find lying around and joyful souls flourish. By letting humans do all the hard work, God does not need to invest a lot of his own effort into the renewing of worlds; so, he can focus his energy into the truly laborious task of making new worlds and raising more angles to tend them. --- A slight variation to this would be to do some kind of Mana rotation where you treat mana like soil nitrogen. If mana is generated from strong emotions (anger, hate, fear, sadness, etc), but God can only absorb mana from a rapture then Hell worlds would make tons of mana, but all the death leading up to the rapture would just pour it into the world where God could not consume it, but then a paradise world could absorb this mana back into a large and living population that does not have enough strong emotions of their own to fill their souls. Normal worlds would start off mostly depleted from the paradise world, but they would produce just enough mana for themselves to make their souls adequate for angels, but not enough to satisfy God's tastes. [Answer] To prevent unionization. The god you describe requires mana from human souls to survive, so the humans actually have some amount of power over their god. If all humans ”unionized” and agreed to stop making babies, they could mana-starve the god. Even if they don’t actually do this, they have leverage with which to threaten the god. Of course, the god doesn’t want his humans to “unionize” and have power over him - what kind of wimpy god is controlled by its own subjects? Separating humanity into various planes of with differing qualities-of-life prevents humans from organizing against their god in a few ways: * If groups of humans are separated from each other by supernatural boundaries, then they cannot communicate enough to cooperate with each other. * The people in the heavenly realm are likely to love the god and be grateful to him/her/it, and they’re not going to rebel for fear of being ejected from paradise. * The people of the earthly realm might occasionally try to rebel, but most won’t (for fear of being cast into the hell realm, or because they hope to one day be admitted into the heavenly realm), and any rebellions that get off the ground won’t be strong enough to threaten the god, because he/she/it will still be receiving mana from the other two realms. * The people of the hell realm will be too busy fighting and dying to organize. [Answer] If God gets power from death optimal solution would be lots of brutal worlds. Lots of early teen pregnancy and murder by late teens. However, were that all there is in the story - God wouldn't make humans. God would make Mayflies, which live for only 24 hours. The entire Earths biomass would be Mayflies and things Mayflies eat. He's not doing that. This suggests there is something of value in consuming human souls. Raw death count doesn't matter. Life energy isn't what matters. Experience, spiritual growth, love, etc. gained by the human over their life increases their mama. This would imply God would create lots of paradise worlds. He's not doing that either. So why variations? * It's unique experiences that contribute mana to God. Killing two humans who've had the same lives give the mana of 1. The more variations in the world, the more experiences, so the less diminishing returns there are. * It's "unknown" how much mana they contribute. God is experimenting to fine tune the environment for maximum mana. * It's "random" whether a soul has any mana at all. God is getting randomly reinforced by mana like a slot machine player, and is trying everything to get another hit of that sweet mana. [Answer] ## Evolution Your God creates innumerable, subtle variations of the creature called "human." As these variations live and die, God learns from them. Some versions create different amounts of Mana. Some create different flavors of Mana. etc. God incorporates the beneficial changes into the next generation, and, like a good scientist, tests the results. Running hundreds of different versions, with different initial conditions, enables God to rapidly improve on his creations, always searching for the best possible power source. Maybe God comes up with a catchy name for his Divinity driven Evolution, like: Intelligent Design. [Answer] Flavors It's not just sheer volume, but the details of each soul. The mode of living and dying gives each soul a different flavor / resource / taste / trade value / whatever the author wishes. Here are some examples for flavors: * A painful death gives flavor A, a peaceful death flavor B. * Or maybe the overall happiness during life. There are painful/happy, painful/unhappy, peaceful/happy, peaceful/unhappy(bored) flavors. Or maybe even more. * Or maybe all the details of life. Celibacy gives one flavor, sex another. Enforced vs. voluntary would be yet another flavor variation. A very complicated system might give a story hook but shouldn't be explained in detail, just in enough detail that the reader understands that there are oh so many dimensions of variation that the God wants. To justify the effort of creating paradise worlds, some flavors to be reaped there are either valuable enough (could give another story hook: hyper-paradises would be possible but not worth creating), or there are some flavors that are possible only with paradise worlds and God simply needs them for specific actions (a real-life material with a similar role would be diamonds: exceedingly difficult to create, but there are applications where they can't be replaced). [Answer] There are three creatures wandering in the three tiers of the world: * Humans. They originate on the earthly realms. Their mana capacity is basically 1 (unit/baseline mana capacity for all creatures) but their belief and devotion on God is a multiplier of that mana capacity. Higher belief and devotion equals more mana, and humans with highest belief and devotion can even gain knowledge of and utilize that mana to perform miracles, bringing more people to higher devotion as well. Humans are main source of mana supply for God, since their individual and collective capacity can multiply greatly. God tries to make them believing and devoting more by giving breadcrumbs that there are "paradise world" for the believer and "hellish world" for the unbeliever. * Angels. They originate on paradise realms. Their mana capacity is like that of humans, but they are more expensive to make. Angels have higher starting belief and don't have belief and devotion multiplier. God does not need to pay attention to them as much as they are just janitors/maintainers of the paradise world. This sometimes make angels go rogue to "open the eyes" of humans that the world is larger than what they think. * Devils. They originate on the hellish realms. Their mana capacity and cost is the least. God does not like how devils taste to him, so he creates few of them originally, just to maintain the hellish realms. Because of the harsh condition on their home realm, they try to bring humans there via temptation, turning humans' taste like their own. --- God is concerned with human's mana, and the other two tiers are just "incentives" so that humans will increase their belief and devotion (therefore multiply their mana capacity). [Answer] Bootstrapping and failsafes. The lowest tier worlds take the least resources to get started, rapture the quickest, but are also the least efficient in producing more resources. A god starting out from low resources has no choice but to create low tier worlds and eventually use the gains from these low tiers to fund higher tiers. The higher tiers produce much higher yields, but more slowly, so the lower tiers need to be maintained to fill any resource needs while waiting for the higher yields. Once a god has enough higher tier worlds in place with raptures staggered appropriately to generate a steady income you might think the lower tier worlds are no longer needed, but they still provide a failsafe to prevent catastrophe. If an entire crop of high tier worlds fails the low tier worlds are still available or easy to set up again to get the resources flowing, especially if the god is hoping to use most of the resources from the higher tier worlds to invest in yet an even higher tier to come. [Answer] "Got created Arrakis to train the faithful" Harsh planets are training grounds. Brutal, nasty, but producing cadres of fanatics, some of which are extremely religious and passionate. Occasionally they produce someone like Paul Atredies - a product of a harsh environment over many generations. More often? They produce elites. People who know what 'hard' looks like, what it is to be oppressed. > > Due to the harshness of Salusa Secundus, it became the Corrino prison planet. Those who were deemed criminals of the Corrino Empire were imprisoned on the planet. Many in the empire have suspected that the harshness of this world was responsible for breeding Sardaukar troops. This was the theory maintained by Atreides generals, namely that the harsh environment of the planet was responsible for the development of a fierce, hardened people. > > > <https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Salusa_Secundus> But this might also lead to spirituality - utopia might lead to people getting too comfortable, and losing their faith. See the uptick in modern society - atheism is on the rise. Maybe that's science, maybe that's enlightenment. But in order to maintain a 'decent' level of faith, God would have to show up and be pretty obvious about the miracles right now. Even the second coming? Likely to have ended up debunked, and the prophet committed to an asylum. Maybe that's subversion by evil in your setting, maybe that's just the human condition. Either way, it's clear that faith is driven by adversity. And a 'low tier' world gives you that adversity. [Answer] ### All worlds start from a Garden of Eden All worlds are initially created the same and then seeded with "soul starter" (similar to sourdough starter). Unlike bacteria, however, soul starter is very unpredictable. The outcome of the starter determines which type of world is most appropriate for optimal mana harvesting. There is a brief incubation period in a paradise-like state, and God gives his classic commandment to not eat the fruit of a particular tree. This can go one of three ways: * The starter souls do not eat the fruit, even after being tempted repeatedly by a snake introduced later. Therefore the world evolves into a full-blown paradise. * The starters do not initially eat the fruit, but succumb after some time of being tempted by a snake. Therefore the world evolves into a normal world. * The starter souls immediately go and eat the fruit without needing to be tempted. Therefore, the world becomes a death world. [Answer] 1) Delegation Each good business man might have to delegate tasks someday, your god may have created some overseer which now have to maintain the balance in the worlds you gave them. Maybe it's a challenge for your servants or just the fear of a future rebellion. Your god is no fool, he knows the risk if you give them a powerful worlds full of life and opportunities, death world are perfect for this matter. 2) Hell and Heavens The existence of death worlds could maintain your subject at bay, if your humans don't follow your "fruitful" commandments, if they reject the gift you gave them, a life full of pleasure. If they no more see a purpose to their existence remind them that some darker places exist, maybe once their life are in danger they will try their best to survive and finally stick to your commandments. [Answer] ### Paradise world souls are too rich (in flavor) to have all the time Paradise souls are like wagyu beef or caviar. They are, of course, of the highest quality, but even if you can afford to have those all the time, it probably doesn't make sense to do so. Fancy food loses its specialness if it's all you eat. Normal worlds produce the meat and potatoes of souls. This is your common, everyday healthy food. Hell souls are junk food. After all, even the richest people enjoy potato chips and pizza. Continuing with the food analogy, there's also a clear difference in level of effort. Paradise worlds require a lot of effort for a relatively small quantity of souls, but are highly satisfying to consume on occasion. Normal worlds require a moderate amount of effort for common, every day food. Hell worlds require very little effort to spawn and maintain and can be raptured without warning without affecting the flavor of the souls. Meanwhile, a large deal of preparation is required prior to the rapture for paradise worlds and a moderate amount of preparation is required for Normal world rapture. [Answer] ## Experimentation God experiments with lots of different world setups to find out which setup produces the ideal mana per processing capacity ratio. It's not just the amount of processing capacity which matters. There are also a lot of other parameters God can tweak during the creation of a new world which affect how well the humans in it will do. And God has not yet figured out how exactly all of these parameters affect the humans and how they interact with each other. God has not even figured out if a few paradise worlds or lots of death worlds are better. Or perhaps it's a moderate amount of balanced worlds which works best? God needs more data! Further, there were some very interesting anomalies during these trials. There were a few paradise worlds which failed pretty badly. Like the one where the humans discovered pleasures far greater than sex and died out within a few generations. But even more interesting were a few death worlds which produced surprisingly good mana yield. Like the one where the humans created a pretty stable society based on slavery and ritualistic cannibalism. Were those random flukes? Or is there perhaps a trick to consistently create lots of mana with very little processing power? So God experiments with lots and lots of different setups to figure out which strategy consistently delivers the highest mana yield. [Answer] You tacitly assume that "many worlds, all alike" is possible. Consider elementary particles. In some sense, [more than one electron (or photon/gluon/etc.) does not exist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles). This seems a bit counterintuitive, because we observe multiple electrons all the time; nevertheless, those multiple electrons are physically equivalent to a single electron [entangled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement) across multiple locations. The key idea here is that there is no property that we can use to distinguish one electron from the other. And we have no definition of the concept "is the same" that does not in some way involve a method for distinguishing objects. This has real consequences: [the probability distributions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_statistics#Quantum_statistics) for phenomena involving multiple elementary particles is different from that of distinguishable particles. From God's perspective, two identical worlds might really be just one world. Or, more to the point, two identical worlds might produce only one world's worth of souls. This is a key plot point for [an excellent sci-fi novel](http://unsongbook.com/). Of course, God is divine, so this answer can always be circumvented by some resolutions to the [Omnipotence paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox). [Answer] * It is a natural occurrence of the refinement process of the souls. It takes energy to create the worlds, but it also takes energy to create the souls to populate those worlds. Most of the worlds have similar starting conditions focused on a normal world, resources are scattered around everywhere, some areas are better and some are worse, etc. This is because creating paradise worlds which tend to promote healthy soul development takes to much energy. Hell worlds which take the least energy, promote soul degradation. God therefore creates 1 paradise world and 1 hell world for every 10 normal worlds. Souls themselves have a sort of Karma value, which influences how much mana they produce, with the highest karma producing the highest mana. God can actively affect the karma value of souls, at the expense of additional energy above that of the soul creation - damn that free will clause. --- Good souls provide a lot of mana, and bad souls are just plain bad. Good souls are the ones that have morals, obey the laws, worship the god, and actively try to make the world a better place. Bad souls are the ones that become criminals, lack morals, selfish, etc. Average souls will generally follow the laws and try to remember to go to a place of worship on the holy days, but will still sometimes be tempted to darker acts such as stealing, adultery, murder etc. This is sort of like the average person you can think of. It seems like it would be better to only create souls that are good, creating souls that are guaranteed to be good souls takes a lot of energy, so the net gain is zero. (good souls provides average of 100 mana points, but takes 100 to create.) Bad souls take very little mana, but also have a net loss. (10 to create, 1 harvested) The Average souls generally have a zero net gain, as it takes the same amount of energy to create as is harvested on average. 50 to create, 50 average harvest. As none of these are really ideal, god leaves the soul karma value on random, (this keeps the energy to create a soul at a value of 1) which creates a neat spread of a bell curve graph, some souls are plain horrible (Hitler), some are great heroes(Gandi, Mother Teresa) and a majority are sort of normal average Johns. From there, the active souls, known as humans, go through a process called life. During he life process, all the souls actions will affect the karma values. Good deeds increase the value, and bad deeds reduce it. --- Each of the world tiers also has a karma restriction tier set to it, limiting Souls with different karma values to certain worlds. Paradise worlds have a high karma restriction, so only those souls with karma values above 100 can exist there. Normal worlds have the middle range, from 25 to 100 karma values. Finally, Hell worlds have the worst of the worst, with karma restriction of below 25. Upon death, each soul gets its Karma values gained and lost through life calculated, and then given the final score, which is what they start off with the next life. Get a bad score, and you will move down to a lower tier, get a high score and you can move up a tier. --- After a few hundred run throughs, most of the souls will have separated into 3 tiers, the true saintly ones in paradise, the absolute irredeemable ones in hell, and the remainder on the average worlds. The whole batch is then harvested, with the ones in hell at least providing their cost of production back, the ones left in the average worlds providing not only their production cost back, but also the cost of having created the worlds in the beginning, and finally the paradise ones, providing all the profit made, up to 100 times the full initial costs of the creation. --- Bonus material The actions of the inhabitants can change the very world, have an unlucky streak of generally more bad souls, and they can take a world from normal down to a hellscape with all the toxins, nuclear waste, radiation poisoning, global ice ages or global warming, etc. Occasionally though, a normal world could be elevated to a paradise world by having lots of people all trying to do their best, and actively curing diseases, correcting environmental imbalances, geo-engineering deserts into forests, etc. ]
[Question] [ How can you handle the recoil of ultra-powerful sidearms? In the near future, advances in warm [superconductors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity), [capacitors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor), and battery technology has led to [railgun or coilgun](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/27772) projectile launching devices of enormous power. The energy storage (battery or fuel cell) can be carried separately and connected via a cord, but the superconductive rail that actually does the launching is hand-held and aimed like a small sidearm. The amount of energy given and the weight of the projectile can be varied, even on a shot-by-shot basis. The system is limited not by how powerful the gun can be, but by how much power the wielder can handle! Note that [unlike a rocket launcher](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/58262), the nature of the system demands that the recoil is felt directly by the gun itself. Suppose the near-future technology has advanced to the point indicated in order to build the weapons described, plus perhaps a little more. Other areas of science will have advanced as well, and you can be flexible on this, as long as it seems like roughly the same time frame needed for the proposed advances. In what ways might a soldier be able to cope with such a powerful weapon’s recoil? What is the effective limit to how much power he could use in weapon that one person carries and easily points? --- # Note This question was developed as part of [this Lesson](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4946/885) and was suggested from a draft question by user [Redacted Redacted](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/users/32097/redacted-redacted) which he subsequently decided to not proceed with asking. [Answer] ## Maximize energy, minimize momentum Recoil is a function of the momentum of a fired round, and is proportional to mass and velocity of the projectile. Kinetic energy of the projectile, on the other hand, is proportional to mass and velocity squared. For a conventional firearm, the expansion rate of combusting gases puts a limit on practical muzzle velocities. But a railgun can effectively convert electrical energy directly into kinetic energy (with losses), and has no such limitation. So, the solution is simple: Use a very light round, and maximize its muzzle velocity while minimizing its mass. A typical [7.62x51mm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62%C3%9751mm_NATO) rifle load fires a 10g projectile at a velocity of 833m/s, and represents a practical upper limit for rifle recoil. Scale down the projectile size to 2.5g, and the velocity up to 3,332m/s, and the momentum remains the same while the muzzle energy increases by a factor of four. This is a very light round, about as massive as a [.22LR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.22_Long_Rifle), so it may have difficulty retaining energy at range. But its sheer velocity more than makes up for it, as it now has a maximum muzzle energy of over thirteen kilojoules. The main problem now is that fast-but-light rounds have a tendency to overpenetrate (pass through the target rather than transferring their energy), but we have a solution for that too. (Edit- A commenter has pointed out that hypervelocity impacts behave differently from conventional ballistics, so overpenetration may not be an issue. A micrometeorite impact does seem like a good analogy for this tiny, high-speed bullet.) ## Adjust your firing parameters Simply adjust the muzzle energy for the given task. At long range, use the full-power shot to get a flat trajectory and maximize accuracy. Against armored targets, also use the full-power shot to maximize armor penetration. But at short range, against unarmored or lightly-armored targets, you can step down the muzzle energy and step up the rate of fire. If the example from before is stepped back down to 417m/s, each projectile has 1/64 the muzzle energy of the full-power round, and has mass and velocity comparable to a .22LR. That's not very impressive, but you can now increase your rate of fire by a factor of 64, while still drawing just as much power as before from your power source. Note that overall recoil will increase by a factor of 8, but since each individual shot will have much less recoil it will be more of a strong push than a bone-shattering shock. For reference, the [American-180](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-180) submachine gun had a rate of fire of 20 rounds per second and is [extremely easy to control](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rfJy4exPFE). A much higher rate of fire should be practical in a rifle configuration. But there's one more trick we can do. ## Brace the rifle A bipod will help immensely. Weapons as large as [20mm anti-tank rifles](https://youtu.be/BOFDHX22nh4?t=250) are manageable with a bipod and suitably padded buttstock, and this is the common configuration for light machine guns. A rifle with 7.62 recoil like I described may be [difficult to handle](https://youtu.be/zYtx9g7BmOE?t=108) on full-auto from a standing position, but a machine gun in the same caliber can be [comfortably fired](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfJkU4Sah8I&t=305s) in accurate bursts. But if possible, set the rifle down on a dedicated tripod mount. Now that same machine gun can accurately fire on full-auto [as fast as the weapon's mechanism can sustain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwW31u6wYvE) with no recoil imparted on the shooter. Your weapon's firepower is now only limited by what the recoil system of the tripod can handle. Even a simple metal tripod with no special recoil system can sustain far greater recoil than the operator's shoulder and will allow us to scale up the muzzle velocity, rate of fire, or both as needed. Design a suitably portable tripod, and every rifleman in your army can have the firepower of an MMG combined with an anti-material rifle combined with the world's angriest submachine gun at his disposal. Your challenge is figuring out how to carry enough ammo. [Answer] I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned this so far: the attraction of railguns isn't just that they can reach higher muzzle velocities; it's how they do so. A railgun can give its projectile a continual acceleration as long as it's between the rails, whereas a chemical-propellant gun has most of the push being delivered initially, dropping off as the gas expands. A railgun could therefore reach the same muzzle velocity as a conventional firearm with more manageable recoil, because it's a relatively low push over a longer period of time, rather than a solid kick that tapers sharply. Guns that use shock-absorbers basically do this, using the initial kick to compress a spring or piston that then delivers the recoil to the shooter as a sustained force rather than a short impulse, which demonstrates that it does help. To approach the problem from the other side, if you take the maximum instantaneous force that a shooter can reliably control, you'll find that a firearm, by virtue of how the propellant expands, will hit this limit for a brief moment and then drop away as the gas expands down the barrel. A railgun, on the other hand, could stay at this limit for the entire time that the round is inside the barrel. Applying the same force for more time means that your round will reach a higher velocity. [Answer] Look at today's high energy weapons systems to see how to do it. Specifically, the bazooka/RPG/LAW type weapon. The launch motor produces too much energy for the user to handle so the energy is vented out the back of the launcher instead. Most of them do it with a blast of fire out the back but there is a version where inert material is expelled instead so it can be fired indoors without endangering the operator. (Not that you can actually use such a weapon indoors--the warhead would endanger the operator. The intent is to allow it to be fired out a window.) Your railgun will need to work on a similar basis. When the projectile goes forward a heavier mass is ejected slower. (Probably in the form of sand or dust so it doesn't go punching holes in whatever's behind.) Addressing the comments: Yes, it means a big don't-stand-here zone, although it could be used indoors, like the RPGs that expel an inert reaction mass rather than flame. The reaction mass must be expelled, otherwise it simply turns a sharp kick into a more prolonged shove--still too much for the operator to withstand. I do agree you have substantially increased your ammunition weight but a too-heavy round is better than a round that can't be fired at all without killing the operator. Note that you could somewhat reduce the logistics problem by making the weight water--and allow field-loading of the water. [Answer] Since we're looking at dealing with huge recoil we could look at something today that needs to deal with huge recoil: Artillery. Artillery pieces use something called a hydro-pneumatic recuperator (I believe the American terminology for this is different but I don't know what it is) It's essentially a specialized shock absorber that uses a hydraulic cylinder to absorb the recoil and a pneumatic system to return it to position. The big problem with this is weight which might necessitate development of a completely pneumatic system like a gas charged shock absorber. Or the development of the coil gun might have gone hand in hand with that of an exoskeleton that makes the additional weight a moot point. [Answer] Some fun answers: ## Dig into the dirt Your rifle could be hand-held, and do X amount of damage, but if you need to take down e.g. a building or tank, fold out some kind of spike from the gun and ram it into the ground/nearby wall, allowing that to brace most of the recoil ## Counter shot The bullet is leaving your gun in one direction, making it kick back the other direction. Instead, make the gun fire two projectiles, one at the target, and another in the opposite direction. As long as your friends aren't behind you, there is now a perfect no-recoil situation. If you want to minimise the damage behind you, make it a very heavy projectile, while making the forward facing projectile very light. The forwards bullet will zip off, while the heavy one will only go ~10m behind you. Again, this counter bullet could be optional—only used when you really need fire power. You might only need one or two heavy projectiles, and reuse them (assuming 1-2 shots will do all the damage you need to end the fight, or that you're under cover). Just make sure the counter bullet goes over your shoulder, or around you, but not through you. [Answer] Current "chemical rifles" use shock absorbers (springs and padded buttplates on the shoulder stocks) plus extra mass to counteract the recoil. Electromagnets might be able to counter the recoil from a railgun. (Note that I question the value of enormously powerful "railrifles". Since infantry combat is fought at close range, soldier don't need enormously powerful shoulder weapons. 7.62 NATO is more than powerful enough. What they need is lots of ammo, which is why sub-machine guns and intermediate cartridges like 7.62x39 & 5.56 NATO were developed.) [Answer] In addition to the "weapon-side" improvements by Catgut, I would propose the idea of exoskeleton. Actually it was my fist idea after reading a question and is borrowed from one of StatCraft books (however I do not know which one, it is long time ago I read this). In the book is explained, that a person should take a certain stance before firing a gun. The armor "recognize" this stance and helps to compensate for the recoil (by taking most of recoil to suit itself instead of handing this recoil to the user). I do not know whether it was done using some on-demand self-hardening material (e.g. artificial muscles), hydraulics (which there were surely a lot of), or just a plain mechanical locking of parts together. Thus my proposal would be a such: give your soldier an exoskeleton. It would be up to your story if it would be mariner-style full-coverage suit, or light version like heavy-weight lifter used by Ellen Louise Ripley in one of Alien movies. So I imagine this skeleton working in something like this: Soldier gets to a firing stance and raises weapon to shoulder (could have a hollow for slitting a back of the gun into, for better transmission of recoil). Exoskeleton recognizes this pattern, locks certain joints (like shoulder joint, belly-to-legs joint, legs joints, basically everything needed to transfer recoil from gun to suit to ground), and the recoil goes to the rigid exoskeleton, instead to a soft meat of soldier and ends in a ground. Right now I can see, however, a few problems with such a suit: * Locking mechanism itself * Mechanism to recognize necessity of locking * Problems of exoskeleton itself (weight, power requirements, price, ...) The locking mechanism must be really fast to engage in split second and be a freely moveable right after firing a bullet. This might be solvable with artificial muscles. Recognizing mechanism is also quite tricky - I am not a weapon proficient myself, so I cannot tell if any general pattern exists (I imagine that weapon at shoulder might be, plus some others). Anyway if it does or does not, the user might enforce the suit to strengthen itself. The order to enforcing might be as trivial as button on a gun, or a complex as a kind of neural interface. I would prefer latter due to the times required for actuation of locking-mechanism. The exoskeleton-related problems are quite known, however one of the biggest - the power requirements - might be solved by question itself due to the power store capable to sustain a railgun. And if you could afford a railgun or something similar, an exoskeleton giving your valuable soldier protection, possibility to bear increased firepower and several other advantages (sensors, tactical computers, might work as a hazmat suit, ...) seems as a good investment too. [Answer] You could try transferring the recoil, like they do with the [Kriss Vector](https://youtu.be/0yiXawtccLI?t=10m18s) rifles, which uses a unique method of taking most of the recoil energy and sending it down, then back up, instead of back toward the shooter. From the video, you get a little bit of back, then a sharp down and then a sharp up. Obviously this is a traditional powder gun, and not a railgun, BUT you may be able to do something similar with a railgun by having the recoil push the barrel back, and use that action to drive something down, moving the energy in another direction. EDIT: Found a gif of the mechanism in action to show how it works [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nrRBB.gif)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nrRBB.gif) [Answer] Use a longer barrel. The fundamental difference between railgun technology and explosive cartridges is the fact that railguns accelerate their projectile over a longer time versus (near) instantaneous acceleration given by the cartridge. What this means is that there can be a lower acceleration over a longer time to achieve the same final velocity. The following equations are the relevant ones: $$F=ma$$ $$v\_f = v\_i + at$$ With the lowered acceleration, the recoil force is drastically reduced with the drawback that it must be withstood for a longer time (steady aim is super important). [Answer] You could have a counterweight that went around the barrel, and slid down on its own rail. When you pulled the trigger, the counterweight would be shot first but with less acceleration than the main projectile. As the counterweight approached the end, the main projectile would accelerate, and the counterweight would stop and reverse, taking the recoil with it (the reverse acceleration of the counterweight would be such that it balanced most of the acceleration of the projectile). Once the projectile leaves the barrel, the counterweight reverses its acceleration again until it runs out of rail. You then only need to absorb the recoil of the counterweight, which is more spread out over time, so easier to deal with. [Answer] As was explained to me in a college-level physics class, recoil is essentially an elastic collision between the accelerated mass of the projectile and the accelerated (in the opposite direction; recoil) mass of the weapon. This means mass of the projectile \* acceleration of the projectile = mass of the weapon (everything BUT the projectile) \* acceleration of the weapon (recoil). The Springfield rifle used by US Marines during WW II had the ability to launch grenades. You chambered a blank round and added an adapter to the end of the barrel, mounted the grenade in the adapter, pulled the pin (the adapter keeping the fuse / handle closed) then pointedly DID NOT put the weapon against your shoulder; triggering the round would break your collarbone. The increased mass of the projectile, even with the reduced acceleration from the blank round, still increased the recoil to more than a human body could tolerate. The same rifle could fire .30 caliber rounds all day, causing some fatigue and, with ENOUGH rounds, pain to the shoulder area. But a soldier couldn't tolerate ONE grenade launched from the shoulder. As has been thoroughly discussed, makInge the projectile lighter will reduce one side of the equation, thereby reducing the other. Another approach is to pointedly weigh down the weapon. There's a reason why a common rule of thumb is to make the weapon at least 100 x the mass of the projectile. That ensures that the recoil (acceleration of the weapon) is no more than 1 / 100th the acceleration of the projectile. Putting a massive shock absorber on it reduces the JERK on the weapon, ensuring that you have a longer-duration, lesser-intensity recoil instead of a hard, short-duration one, reducing fatigue and potential injury to the operator. That can make it easier to brace against the recoil, both for man-portable weapons and otherwise (artillery, as an example). But you still have the fact that mass (projectile) \* acceleration (projectile) = mass (weapon) \* acceleration (weapon). There is no ignoring that simple fact of physics. Bazookas and such (recoilless weapons) have the propellant working against the air behind the weapon, not against an enclosed barrel. Why did they create recoilless weapons? An closed-barrel weapon would have a greater muzzle velocity, yes. But the recoil would injure, if not kill, the operator. For this reason, I have a hard time with any sci-fi which has man-portable railguns. The weapon would have to be so heavy (not just for the power supply / railgun mechanism) or the projectile would have to be so light that it would be impractical. In Starship Troopers (the book, not the hideous movie with the same title), the Mobile Infantry wore heavy, powered "suits" which, among other things, carried more weaponry and munitions than a person could carry AND could absorb levels of recoil / impact no human could survive. Such a suit, or some kind of heavy, powered exoskeleton, might be able to take the recoil of a railgun. But you're pointedly having machinery take the recoil, not the operator. Failing that, the weapon needs to sit on the ground (or deck), preferably anchored, so the operator doesn't have to take the recoil. [Answer] Exoskeletons- light as the system seen on 'Elysium' or full body armour are one answer. Another is gravitic recoil compensation, this being more advanced tech. [Answer] I've once encountered this problem in my story. After some thinking and reading, I decided to make it an exclusive weapon, for robots, the only way for an ordinary human to wield it is the: Super Segmented Powered Armor When not worn by the user, it's essentially a sheet of small plates, connected to each other by Vanadium dioxide fibers, contained in a heat sealing aerogel. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mw7lim.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mw7lim.png) Whenever it's needed, the artificial muscles are able to contract in a specific area "hardening" it (it's like a local [Rigor mortis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigor_mortis)), among many uses, this enabled the user to harden the suit in a way, that when the weapon fired, the majority of the force got distributed across pre-determined points. The partial hardening could be quickly canceled, enabling the user to point at a different target. In this way, it is possible to create an exoskeleton, that doesn't hinder movement. ]
[Question] [ In my story/universe, I have several Empires- some good and some bad. My protagonist Empires are good, however I realized I've hit a setting related snag: One of my empires has established a colony on another planet and as part of the story, defends this territory from an aggressive, evil empire - with the full consent of the native population.My story doesn't hinge on why the Natives are ok with having been made part of the good Empire. I have struggled to figure out why a nation would decide they want to join an empire of their own free will aside from two ideas: * a 'franchise Imperialism' where a nation becomes a part of the empire in exchange for some commodity (Technology, maybe?) With that idea they would keep most of their local laws, much like EU countries do, however my Good Empire would coordinate certain things - such as Imperial Defense, or even trade. My good Empire doesn't intend to oppress the natives. What would some reasons be for a people to willingly choose to join an Empire? (In this way I am hoping to identify a good, moral reason for the empire to have taken this territory). Real world, historical examples would be extra helpful, as I could investigate these on my own. [Answer] Why do any two geo-political bodies join together? Well...there are countless reasons and many methods. --- The methods discussion is more simple to explain so lets start there. How does one geo-political entity absorb or combine with another? * Conquest: This is pretty strait forward. One entity takes over another militarily. While simple, union by conquest is not always a bad thing. As an example. If the South Korean military invaded and over took north Korea, would anyone outside of North Korea (with the possible exception of China...and lets be honest you're not invading North Korea without getting the ok from the Chinese) think that in the end it is a BAD thing to liberate that country from the control of a man who looks like, and often acts like a 2 year old. * Revolution/Culture Flip/Liberation: Similar to conquest in that armed force is used, but different in the fact that the nation/planet/region being absorbed/joining the empire initiates the violence in an effort to sever ties with another dominating force. As a good historic example, you can look at Texas. [It declared independence from Mexico](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Texas#), then proceeded to join the US. * Alliance: Sometimes friends band together. Alliances like this can come about in many ways. Marriages, political or military alliances. The main point in whatever method is that agreements lead to greater cooperation and assimilation over time and eventually they merge. Shared cultural heritage helps a lot. Medieval Europe was a patchwork of kingdoms and fiefs each of which were realistically independent from one another in most respects. "France" and "Germany" and "Italy" didn't exist in the modern concept until fairly recently (last couple centuries). * Fear: Sometimes all it takes is fear of an empire to lead a smaller/weaker nation to offer and alliance or to become part of the empire. Rome may have not been built in a day but neither did they take the entire empire by conquest. Conversely, if trapped between two empires a nation may be willing to pick the lesser of two evils, even if they are fiercely independent. * Economic: Money moves the world. The EU exists largely as a result of economic consideration. [The EC existed first after all](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Community). Common economic cause and a desire to promote peace on a continent that had been ravaged by two world wars drove the creation of the modern day European Union, which for international affairs is a "state" There are other methods to achieve what you are discussing but these are common enough to be well known and believable. I would generally suggest that a combination of two or three of the above makes a more believable scenario but it is not necessary. --- The reasons part gets complicated... Perspective is notoriously fickle. From the view of Taiwan, China is the aggressor. From the Chinese perspective the Taiwanese are rebels. You will have to define this perspective. Once defined you can review and pull in the methods that make sense for your scenario. None of the methods are inherently evil. [Answer] ## Ye olde-fashioned way: Marriage A previous Emperor happened to have a dashing young prince for a son, who stole the heart of the beautiful and kind princess of the territory. They had some wacky adventure, fell in love and got married. When they both inherited the titles to their lands, they were merged into the Empire. ## It's a Protectorate The colony may have been plagued by Space Pirates, Xenomorphs or Armageddon-like rocks raining from the sky. They did not have the resources to deal with this and the Good Empire stepped in, saving them. That's what good empires do, after all. Some time later, some bad political stuff happened, an incompetent leader started a war with some bad people and once again, the Empire intervened, but this time there were some strings attached: The colony had to agree to become a protectorate, abandoning their own foreign relations and military. Finally, the politicians screwed up again and when they organized a supposedly sham election, they lost in a landslide to a surprise write-in candidate: The Emperor! [Answer] Look at the history of Japan post-WW2. The United States essentially conquered Japan (they surrendered, the US occupied the islands, close enough); it was the world's only offensive use of nuclear weapons, probably for good. Yet the Japanese are now close allies of the US, are on good terms with it, and are protected by the US military. How did that happen? Well, that's a long and complicated answer, and I'm no expert on the history. But basically, a) Japan attacked the US first, and they knew it; b) after the US won, it rebuilt the country; and c) the US did not act vindictively towards them, which is how they expected to be treated if they lost. One option, then, is to have this small planet have gotten into a war with the Empire aggressively - Supposing that in the distant past, they did not know how big this Empire really was, and (say) tried to take over the colony over some dispute. The Empire responds by annexing the planet. Since they're a good empire, they don't deal ruthlessly with populations in those positions. After say fifty years, life is good - they have cool stuff from the Empire they couldn't get before, they have protection from the bad empires, they're citizens of the Empire so they can easily emigrate to Imperial territory, they get assistance when there's famine, the list of benefits goes on. [Answer] The reason taking over these natives would be bad is if they don't want to be taken over. But that wouldn't necessarily be the case. If your empire wants to be a just empire, then they probably aren't going to rule with an iron fist. The natives of this colony will probably get to keep their native cultures and much of their native governments. Really the only thing that will change is that now they'll have a closer relationship with your good empire; that means easier trade, greater access to a wider variety of goods, services, technologies, and cultures, and stronger defenses against enemies. What I'm saying is that humans don't form governments because someone told them to. They form governments because working together makes things easier for everyone. As long as your good empire doesn't enslave these natives or try to extinguish their culture, I see no reason why they wouldn't want to cooperate. [Answer] The question makes me think of the [history of Hawaii](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii#Annexation.E2.80.94the_Territory_of_Hawaii_.281898.E2.80.931959.29). The reason was economic ties, and large scale immigration of people from larger nations, many of who became rich and important. [Answer] If you change the war between the Good and Bad empires into a cold war, with no active combat; and if you make the Bad empire a slaving culture which works its conquered species into extinction, then the co-opting of a previously independent territory into the Good empire could be justified as protecting the peoples of that land from enslavement and extinction. It also deprives the Bad empire of slaves and resources which they would have easily obtained by conquest, if the new territory had remained independent. [Answer] Nations form either as offensive or defensive. If they are offensive they conquer territories and bring them under their rule. If they're defensive they band together to oppose an external threat. Some might say there is a "symbiosis" type of nation where Group A and Group B join together because they trade a lot and it just makes sense over a long enough period, but this type of thing can be seen as just another type of offensive/defensive type with differing methods of conquering. Groups will always seek to be as powerful as they can be which means that even if they are friendly the groups will compete and one will slowly get stronger and the other weaker, eventually leading to the stronger to make the other a part of their "economic" empire, somewhat like the US and Japan. Likewise, power bases seek out to have more power. So an Empire might start off as a union of 2 parties that set up a diplomatic center to handle things and then eventually this center requests and demands more power resulting it becoming more and more authoratative and power with the 2 in the union becoming part of an empire that they willingly but accidentally created. This is the situation of the EU. A third portion is that National and governmental desire to join something are completely different in a number of cases so for example if there were a tyrannical government in place in state it is possible that the people might revolt against the government and one way of doing that is to foment a rebellion that colludes with another power that is stronger than its government and that power might request that in exchange for deposing the tyrant the state joins them thus creating or being part of that empire willingly. [Answer] How about if your alien friends don't subscribe to the empire, but are happy to host your colony? Without subscribing to a form of government they could be a bunch of libertarians, sure have your empire on our planet, sure we'll trade with you, just don't try and subjugate us! [Answer] What does it mean to be a nation? What does it mean to be part of an empire? The answers have to do with laws and a very nuanced concept called "sovereignty." > > Sovereignty is understood in jurisprudence as the full right and power of a governing body to govern itself without any interference from outside sources or bodies ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereignty)) > > > Nations typically have sovereignty. They make their own laws, they decide who has broken them. They decide what to do with their military. When you join an Empire, you give up some of this. The empire has the final say in all matters. This seems like a mighty thing to give up, but there's a very good reason to give it up. Jurisprudence is a social structure. If you cannot maintain it, it doesn't matter if you declare yourself sovereign or not. When facing extreme internal strife or substantial external opposition (such as from your "Evil" empires), a nation may have to admit that their sovereignty is an illusion. What good is a law that gives murderers 20 years in prison when outsiders come in, rape pilliage and burn, and then leave before your police can come attempt to arrest them? In these situations, a nation may elect to give up their illusion of sovereignty in exchange for support from a larger more solid political state, such as a "good" empire. Some may say that it is better to stand up for your political ideals, but as a general rule of thumb, when people can't put bread on their tables and when men cannot protect their wives, you'll find those people are more than ready to give up a few minor ideals in exchange for tangible support. [Answer] This is happened actually several times throughout history. Typically if you choose to join an Empire it's because you fear being taken over and forced against your will to join another Empire. Typically this would involve lots of Destruction and loss of life, and in extreme cases slavery and/or relocation. So naturally it would be far better enjoying of your own free will an Empire that you have some familiarity with. If you're "bad" Empire is going around enslaving and causing destruction, the natives may choose to join your "good" Empire in exchange for protection against your "bad" in Empire. There also may be some new trade opportunities and other Financial benefits for joining your good Empire this might cause some natives to join for trade reasons especially if they get to keep their autonomy to a degree. [Answer] Take Italy as example, if politicians gets too corrupted by multinationals, it is likely citizens want italy to join another country with stricter rules about corruption and what can multinationals do on citizens: A country without corrupted politicians * Citizens get 100 * Multinationals get 50 * Politicians get 10 A country with corrupted politicians * Citizens get 10 * Multinationals get 100 * politicians get 50 A tradeoff to save the situation * Citizens get 70 * Multinationals get 70 * Foreign politicians get 20 * Old politicians get 0 Preventing corruption at beginning was much better choice, but you know, only a big force can change a big system. [Answer] The answer depends heavily on how your empire operates on a political level. Are there pieces of the Empire that operate independently, but still contribute to the whole (e.g. various stages of the Holy Roman Empire)? Is it a collection of semi-independent pieces that are under the ultimate authority of a central government (The US, while not technically an empire, falls into this category, as the states have a large amount of rights, but cannot typically fight wars on their own), or some other system? The logical way I'd approach this is to have the Good Guy Empire (GGE) be at war with the Bad Guy Empire (BGE). One of the big battles takes place over Indigania (IG), and many of the escape pods land on the planet, of both sides of the fight. The BGE's people are hostile to the natives, taking the goods that they need, and trying to escape (insert necessary level of evil). The GGE's people treat the natives kindly, and await rescue (insert heartwarming scene of soldier sharing chocolate bar with IG children). GGE rounds up the bad guys, rescues the good guys, and leaves the planet. BGE decides later to annex/conquer/destroy the planet as part of the evil plan of the week. While this operation is underway, the IG signal the GGE with technology left behind in the escape pods. GGE comes flying to the rescue, defeats BGE again. The IG leadership decides that they need protection they cannot provide themselves, and enters into an alliance with GGE, providing raw materials, recruits, basing rights, etc in exchange for defense from BGE. Maybe eventually they will become a real part of the GGE, but for now are a protectorate. [Answer] ## The largest and most powerful empire in world history is the United States of America. You may be thinking of empires as largely defined by territory. This is convenient for historians (and history teachers) as lines on a map over time are an easy way to explain the rise and fall of great powers. However, this is only one way to describe a type of empire. However, America as an empire is not strictly defined by its borders. Yes, there was a lot of conquering and wiping out of indigenous populations, and yes, there were quite a few military expeditions that granted the U.S. control over a sovereign territory (the Philippines come to mind), but the true power of the American empire is economic. Why [send the Marines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhZF66C1Dc) when you can use the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to force other countries into accepting your economic dominance? The typical [modus operandi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_operandi) for American economic dominance works like this: pressure the authorities in another country to accept trade agreements which "open up" and "deregulate" foreign markets, in exchange for access to the wealthy American market for exports and cheap American credit lines. What this usually means is remove protections and subsidies for domestic corporations and force them to compete on even footing with the vastly superior resources of American corporations and banks. Before long, the local economy is gutted and dependent on America both for imports (for domestic goods that cannot be produced locally) and exports (as a way to make money at all). As a result, one may find no other solution than to accept the terms and succumb to the host's economic empire. Even if no shots have been fired and no borders redrawn, the empire now has the smaller state firmly in their grasp. And if all else fails, [get the CIA to overthrow democratically elected governments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat) formed on the basis of getting a better deal for their labor. ## Exception to my header: other nations are figuring this out. Just because the U.S. is the world's largest and most powerful economic empire doesn't mean the position is eternal, nor is it exclusive. Other nations, in particular China and Russia, have been using the same tactics to expand their economic clout without military action (if you forget about Crimea). Something to consider as a parting thought: if every nation in Europe suddenly boycotted Russian oil and natural gas, that would be as much a blow to the Russian economy and their basis of power as military conquest in oil-rich Siberia. [Some 50% of the Russian government's budget is dependent on oil exports.](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-26/how-cheap-oil-is-squeezing-russia-s-economy) [Answer] Not really sure why you are struggling to come up with a reason - if a society doesn't happen to have a strong nationalist emotion, then they may think it makes sense to join. For example, a powerful empire brings advanced science, technology and economics, access to new trade partners and the resources and expertise to develop a decent infrastructure within the nation, especially if they are as you say they are "good" and aren't just there to pillage the local natural resources and make slaves of the natives. It also, as others have said, brings protection from other nearby nations and the "evil" empires. Also they might not currently have a strong king / president / dictator / government who is desperate to hold onto their position. (In fact they may well have one who is happy to have the Empire lighten the weight of their crown) Look at it this way, why do states / provinces / counties not want to break away from their federations / countries in real life? [Answer] Check out [Guam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guam) and [the Northern Mariana Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mariana_Islands). They're tiny countries, they're much poorer than the mainland, they're economically dependent on exports to the mainland for development, and their connections to the US means their exports can have "made in the USA" tags for sale in the US, which helps with sales for some reason :). As a result, their leaders see very little to lose from integration with the US, and quite a bit to gain, so they pursue greater integration. [Answer] Perhaps the colony doesn't necessarily need to be part of the empire to be defended by it? This was the case with the [Occupation of Iceland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Iceland) during the second world war. Britain stationed troops in Iceland to defend against a possible German invasion. Britain did not attempt to integrate Iceland into the British Empire, promised non-interference in Icelandic affairs, and left shortly after the war. The occupation was unpopular, but tolerated, and saw little resistance. [Answer] it would join a benevolent empire to get protection from malevolent neighbours. To get access to trading regulations etc. From what I heard nations were happy to join China because it was more beneficial to be part of the Chinese Empire than to be outside it. ]
[Question] [ In the particular world that I am working on, I am attempting to build a "utopian" society. A major piece of this society is that, effectively, all historical atrocities have been "forgotten" by the mainstream society. Now the vehicle I am attempting to use to accomplish this is something I read about in a social psychology article which states, in simplistic terms, "humans are happy to forget the bad things that society did, provided someone in a position of authority gives them permission." I might be mashing concepts together, if so I apologize. My question is then, would 100+ years be sufficient for the worst atrocities to be removed from the human races collective historical record? This assumes a global government, not teaching it in schools, etc. Edit: For clarity, I define a major atrocity as something akin to the Holocaust. Edit 2: My setting assumes an early technological singularity (~2050) and is set 50-100 years after that. [Answer] This depends on how hard the government works to hide things. If the only thing the government does is say "this was not a crime" then no. Books and literature and histories and historians will remember the events because humanity doesn't really 'forget' about anything. Unless the government explicitly bans discussing it the knowledge of the event will continue to be maintained. For that matter a good part of China is fully aware of Tienanmen square despite China's doing everything they can to erase it. That was only a quarter century ago, but the point is that it's hard to erase knowledge. If you try too hard to erase details they will become a rally call that everyone remembers in order to spite your control. I think the key difference between your question and the psychology you mention is the word "forget". The event can't be forgotten easily. However, people can be convinced to forget that it was an atrocity. It can be whitewashed and remembered more forgiving then it really was. The facts are known, but the cultural memory of the event is not one of an atrocity. Some may look up the actual facts from history books and say "you know, that really was a lot worse then I had been taught", but most won't bother to do so. 95% of society will remember things as justified and right at the time, as they have been told and taught. It's possible that the public as a whole would be so indoctrinated that even if someone came to them and said "look, here are the facts of what happened, see how horrible it is" the average person will still argue blindly that it was not horrible at all. They may ignore the facts, refuse to believe them despite those facts being clearly recorded historical works, or claim that the provider of the facts is exaggerating them and/or ignoring other details that made it 'justified'. In short once you're taught something is right for long enough you resist any argument to the opposite, even in the face of logic. It's therefore possible for the public memory of an event to be wiped out, even when the actual facts and details being clearly recorded. Some may have realized the truth after taking the time to learn the actual facts, but the majority of the population can be kept in their utopian idea of everything being perfect and wonderful while being ignorant of facts that are right under their noses. Somehow I think it makes a story even better to have the knowledge easily available and yet still ignored, and it makes it easier to have some dissenters without them needing to stumble upon a mass grave or some other deep-dark-secret to do so; they're simply the ones who were unbiased enough to research the raw facts and come to a proper conclusion. To give you an example of how the public memory can be adjusted consider this scenario: You're trying to colonize lands and having trouble defending them from the indigenous people and other colonizing countries. Your government puts in a massive expense to protect and defend you from those indigenous people, costing it massively. After protecting you the government realizes it suffered so heavily in doing so that it can't afford to cover it's other expenses, so it asks you to help repay some of the cost spent to defend you. In response to being asked to pay for your own defense, via taxes placed only on non-mandatory luxury goods that will not harm those who truly can't afford them, you protest by destroying a third-party's cargo of supplies without repaying them while trying to place blame for it on the indigenous people. Then you start a war that kills over 50,000 and strikes a blow to your home country that will cause it to suffer many other losses in future decades. Welcome to the US revolutionary war, which those of us in the US are all taught was 100% justified and right and totally-not-at-all-selfish-waste-of-life-to-avoid-repaying-or-own-debts! Now I admit I may be exaggerating the situation above to make a point, since most of the real atrocities of the US are recognized as such so I had to settle for more of a moral grey area. However, my point still stands. Even though we know all the actual facts of the war, anyone can look them up any time, if you ask the US people no one will consider any nuance beyond "we were being controlled and had to be independent". We are told it was justified, and so that's what we accept, no one even bothers to look up history or wonder about any complexity. To repeat I am not claiming that the war was a clear atrocity or wrong, only that discussion of it as anything other then purely 100% just seems limited by our education and dogma. This is also, by no means, limited to the US or this one war. Look at any war your country (any country) fought and the schools will teach it as completely just, and that you were the most important factor in winning the war; oh and you clearly 'won' even if other side claims they were the ones to win. The World wars are unique in that WW2 is kind of believed that the allies were 'in the right' in most places, Hitler was just so wrong that even Germany doesn't try to treat him as a hero. Still, a certain degree of whitewashing of history happens in every countries education system, usually not to the extreme of hiding atrocities, but perhaps removing the 'grey' of more ambiguous situations, and for the most part their citizens accept these 'facts' as truth despite the easy of getting the actual historical details. EDIT: Out of curiosity I ended up Googling what England taught about the revolutionary war, to see if they taught it as us horrible US folks wanting to have our tea and drink it too. Turns out that England barely covers the war in their classes. Partially because it's merely one of many colony upraises (admittedly the first major one), and as such gets thrown into a general time period of unrest rather then being singled out, partially because it simply wasn't as critical a battle for them and they don't have time to cover wars that aren't imperative to their history, and partially because it looks like many countries tend to focus far less time on studying wars which they 'lost'. Not relevant to the question, but interesting to me non the less :) [Answer] Won't work at all. When I was deployed to Bosnia in the 1990's, I had Serbians telling me about the Battle of Kosovo Polje in such vivid detail that you might have thought it took place in the early 90's as Yugoslavia disintegrated. It took place in 1389 Many of the myths that underpin our culture date back even farther; the myths of King Arthur apparently date to the 800's, and we have an unbroken string of political ideas that can be traced to Classical Greece and the Res Publica Roma. Trying to erase history or significant parts of history will leave strange gaps in the historical narrative. The other solution (which has been mentioned upthread) is to actively supress history using something like Orwell's Ministry of Truth. Of course then you need to actively monitor and police the censors in an ever widening circle. [Answer] Any attempt to suppress evidence will make some people remember even harder, and teach their grievances to their children. A better strategy might be to seek reconciliation and then remove the knowledge from mainstream history teaching into specialist courses. Who remembers the atrocities during the Franco-Prussian War these days? [Answer] In general no. It's been 150 years since the civil war and we are still dealing with the fall out of what happened before that. It's been 70 years since the holocaust and Hitler is still used as a boogy man. However, if you are talking about a government intent on hiding and forgetting about such a thing, pretending it never happened, then yes, 100-200 years would be possible. It also depends on how many know of the atrocity (and survived). If the targets of the atrocity are completely wiped out, it would be easier to hide and forget. There would always be some who would know but 2-3 generations could really erase a lot of knowledge if it was actively suppressed. [Answer] You mentioned in your question that we are in a post-singularity world. Depending on what specifically that means, here is one way that you could explain everyone forgiving or forgetting the atrocities of the past in a relatively short amount of time... Assume the a post-singularity AI has access to all online information, including scholarly work, future Facebook, text, email, and even phonecalls and streaming video. Further assume that (almost) no one reads non-digital books and that their contents are not considered to be respectable or reliable. This AI is customizing all data that everyone sees online to suppress knowledge of past atrocities. But it knows that if you completely erase knowledge of an event, you will create a backlash. So instead it minimizes the severity of pay atrocities, emphasizes how far in the past they occurred, and scapegoats groups, individuals, or systems that no longer exist (so that there is no target for lingering anger about the event). Let's take an example: Thucydides mentioned that Serbians remember the Battle of Kosovo Polje in gory detail > 600 years after it occurred. If an American (of non-Serbian descent) tries to look up the Battle of Kosovo Polje, the AI can safely suppress almost all information about it. If a Serbian tries to look up the same info, they will find it, but the accounts they read will emphasize that this happened a long time ago, and that the "bad guys" were the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman empire is a safe group to blame because they no longer exist. This can even become part of the narrative: the Ottomans got their comeuppance when their empire collapsed. The important point here is that no one receives any information that is really shocking to them or that contradicts what they already think that they know. Everything is a gradual cooling of tensions or redirecting anger in a safe direction. Eventually, these different versions of history will be noticed, but it might be surprisingly difficult to reconcile. Any electronic comunication is subject to further editing, so if you make a FB post about the shocking truth you just learned about a past atrocity, all tour friends will see a different version of it (or not see it at all), depending on what the AI thinks they can handle without feeling outraged. Offline interactions can't be controlled, but they also can't be verified. If your friend or parent tells you a gory sorry about the Battle of Kosovo and you go to look it up online, you will read a whitewashed version and believe that your friend was exaggerating or wrong. The only way you can ensure that two people see the same info isif they are looking at the same screen at the same time, and even then the AI tries to produce a version that appeals to both of them. Academic historians would need to be handled more carefully, but the AI could subtly change their texts to be more boring, less verifiable, and more fringe/crackpot. Over time, troublemakers would lose influence with their peers as well as the public. A dominant historical narrative that all the wrongs of the past are distant and unimportant (or never occurred at all) arises. In 100 years, 2-3 generations have lived under this subtle but constant suppression of information. All significant government, religious, entertainment and educational figures have been quietly vetted by the system. Any dissent is suppressed with the same subtlety as the original history. Any investigation into the AI's activity is also suppressed. Current social/racial/religious/political/economic tensions wane in the face of massive resource prosperity. The atrocities of the past are forgotten, or remembered by only a small group more as myth than history, with no one left to blame. Does this sound plausibe to you, assuming a peace-loving, post-singularity, world-spanning AI? [Answer] Something that you can try and do is going the 1984-route: change the records of history that are taught during education so that, instead of it being an atrocity, it's actually a major victory. For example: suppose you have a Holocaust-style event where your nation completely eradicated an entire ethnic minority. People will not forget that easily. However, with enough control over history and your Internet, you can actually say that the Holocaust was actually a well-deserved punishment for "evil actions" by that minority. Especially if you have some well-timed incidents (say, [a hyperinflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic) or the [systematic murder of a large amount of politicians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives)) preceding your own major atrocity, you can make your citizens actually believe it was A Good Thing, and even [take matters into their own hand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht). However, due to the scale on which this rewrite of history needs to happen, we wouldn't really consider this a true Utopia. However, you can use that to your advantage: make it seem like the perfect world isn't that perfect. [Answer] Any attempt at suppressing history is an atrocity in itself. Unless we are acutely aware of the history of the human race, we stand no chance of not repeating the mistakes of the past, even though this is rather idealistic. Even major catastrophes such as the holocaust, Stalin's purges of the 1930s, or Mao's Great Leap forward are weighed with different measures even though in each case the cost of human lives, the destruction of human potential is unparalleled. Only the motives behind these atrocities may be looked at but a differentiation in terms of severity would not serve any purpose. All were crimes against humanity and all must equally be condemned but never forgotten. [Answer] Hand-waiving all the very legitimate points about society, history, culture, government, education, etc, that other posters have mentioned: From a pure historical fact/memory perspective, let's assume that to "forget" means that the people alive today are people who have never had contact with any primary sources related to the atrocities. Since you give the year 2050, let's be optimistic and say that lifespans for the average human will be 100 years by then. Let's say the average child will be born to parents who are 30 years old. Based on this logic, you would need to wait 190 years for all primary sources to die. You then need to wait another 90 years for all the secondary sources to die. P - Generations who either are or had access to primary sources S - Generations who either are or had access to secondary sources * 0 years: The people alive during the the atrocity (P0) * 30 years: The youngest P0 have children (P1) * 60 years: P1 have children (P2) * 90 years: P2 have children (P3) * 100 years: P0 is dead * 120 years: P3 have children (S0) * 130 years: P1 is dead * 150 years: S0 have children (S1) * 160 years: P2 is dead * 180 years: S1 have children (S2) * 190 years: P3 is dead (all contact with primary sources dead) * 220 years: S0 is dead * 250 years: S1 is dead * 280 years: S2 is dead (all contact with primary and secondary sources dead) * ... only 3rd sources from here on out So no, 100-200 years is not enough time. [Answer] Taking a real world example here it would be more than enough time for the events of the past to be out of the public consciousness. This can be done not by exclusion but by inclusion. Take, for example, the way history is taught in Japan. The rule is that all history must be covered and evenly. The result is that much of the general population has little understanding of why their neighbours hold such strong negative feelings towards them as a nation. Atrocities of quite some significance can only fill no more than a small paragraph and sometimes are little more than a footnote, if that. It is not that anyone is trying to deny that anything happened but that no one topic is given any more focus than any other. Lets face it no one can have a strong awareness of anything with that much history without specializing in some area of it. After a few hundred years (and at least a few generations, I imagine) the past would, despite good teaching, be a closed book to most people in your story. As pointed out in other answers there would be some specialized folks that would remember but society as a whole would have forgotten. The facts are not so much suppressed but drowned in the noise of everything else. If on the other hand you are asking if the situation could arise where learning about an event 200 years ago would come as a surprise to everyone then, no some people would not be surprised. That said, going back to the Japan example: Too much information can make almost any information hard to be aware of. [Answer] In a communistic society, where the government distributes income equally and there is a lack of private property and the government also controls the flow of information, it's possible. In most societies which have private property and enterprise though, the economic effects of an atrocity like the Holocaust, slavery, wars, etc. can be felt for many centuries later because the economic disparity can snowball over time. [Answer] This will go against mainstream thinking but, I believe it's correct. The prominent beliefs going around in a society where technology / mass communication rule, are dictated by repetition. By that I mean, people will believe anything you tell them, if they hear it enough times. Political and social opinions thus aren't necessarily based on truth, but on the number of occurrences events are addressed and massaged in television and music. So, you don't have to say, 'The event did not happen.' You only have to have a few thousand episodes / songs referring to the event in a less-than-tragic light for it to disappear in short time. [Answer] Active Suppression is [doomed to failure](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect). The act of suppressing certain information will also spread that information. There are some effective strategies that get around that: 1. Re-branding. This requires an extremely subtle touch, but you could make a low-level effort to change the wording and descriptions of atrocities in such a way that the impact is lessened over time. Using euphemisms, or changing the name of events in such a way that the visceral impact of what happened is lessened. Note that if you get caught actively doing this, you could get a really bad PR backlash, so you want to be very careful, only slowly change things and have plausible deniability (an excuse that doesn't start with "I want people to forget this atrocity"). 2. Ignore it. Humans (including myself) are sadly very good at ignoring bad things that don't happen to them. There are modern day genocides - events that occurred in the past few decades - that the average person on the street has probably only vaguely heard of. Ignore an atrocity long enough and it will become a dry historical footnote. 100 years might not be long enough for that however, especially with the singularity you'll likely still have people who were directly impacted. You might need a couple of generations for this to work. [Answer] While I think that 100+ years are enough time to make it possible to erase and sufficiently suppress some knowledge I see a certain problem with a supposedly "utopian" society in doing so. A hundred years or better to say a human lifetime (make sure no eye witnesses survive) is enough time to alter both historical records and public memory, make up new facts and redefine overall public perception of past events (whitewash is a nice term) by means of propaganda and indoctrination. Of course this requires quite some effort by the government and the ruling elites which is where the trouble starts. Obviously victims and persons concerned with the events in question might actually not want to let go of that knowledge. The phrase "never forget" expresses the feelings quite well. I would not expect the Jewish community to forget about the Shoah (to name one significant example) no matter how politely your new elites insist. The undoing the remembrance of atrocities would therefore always require some serious and resolute enforcement to silence those choosing to be intractable. How hard do you want to make your "utopian" society push before this fact alone becomes quite a bad start in itself? [Answer] I am imagining a setup like V for Vendetta where they restrict information. But in my post I'm going to focus on topics that you can research further so you can figure out the best strategy for your writing. There is the real life example of China blocking out the Tienanmen Square Massacre from all media including their internet among many other things that China Blocks out. In Ancient Egypt they carved in stone a straight lie about some battle that they supposedly won. There is also Russia's coverup of the Holodomor. The approach that I see used more often in history however is focuing on a single specific atrocity to occupy the public's attention to control them for a specific purpose, for example: The Reichstag Fire which was pivotal for allowing the Nazi's to gain power in Germany. There is also the Sinking of the Lusitania where America was secretly giving weapons to the British during WWI by smuggling them on passenger ships this gave America a way into the war. Similarly there was Pearl Harbor for WWII and the president+government knew about Pearl Harbor before it happened and purposefully delayed that information. Similarly Nixon sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks in Vietnam extending the war, the twist being that President Johnson also knew about it and said nothing. There is also the Rwandan Genocide sparked by the murder of the President by supposedly the minority which ended up being a lie. Similarly there was "9-11" that got the middle east wars started again. Basically the idea of having one good very detailed atrocity every few decades is a very valuable thing when information is asymmetric and the public is unaware. I think the most successful way for this approach is to find something truly horrifying like how you specifically mentioned the Holocaust as your main and only example, but then do a Judo move. Slip the information of it into movies and television, expose people to the content at an early age. For this Holocaust example, by emphasis you can give the impression of importance and if you are nefarious then for example a benefit is that you can limit and even negate the total amount of media exposure that is put on Israel's treatment of Palestine and it's people such as bombing schools and hospitals. So you can redirect the focus of a current atrocity by reminding people of a different past atrocity. More or less put the fnords everywhere. Mind you there are many examples and approaches that I haven't covered, but I feel like I've given a good selection for historical events from which you can draw inspiration. [Answer] Memories of atrocities are kept alive because some group of people want to keep them alive. They do so for political gain. There are (at least) two mechanisms here. One is "That group did something bad to our group in the past. We should do something bad to them in the present. No, it is not theft, it is ... repossession." Another is "Our society is threatened by that group! Just look at what they did in the past! We need a strong leader! I am a strong leader!" If the post-singular society has a generally wealthy and happy population they would have no need to plunder their neighbours. They would also feel that their society is a safe and stable one that does not need a strong leader. So, the political gain of dragging up the old stuff is gone and everything is kept in the history books were it belongs. Strictly speaking, things would not be forgotten, but people just wouldn't care anymore. ]
[Question] [ Assume the ability to cybernetically implant a powerful enough computer to operate an AI inside the human skull, on top of or within the brain. Thin wires connect the computer to the various parts of the brain. How can such a computer be cooled? * Technology is more advanced than today, so assume assume the need to cool 150 watts. * How the computer is powered is not a part of this question. Assume whatever power source is used is not generating additional heat. [Answer] Blood. Okay, hear me out: Liquid cooling cools on contact. There's I think 9 pints/4.5 Litres of Blood in the Human Body - that's a really big heatsink. And it's always being circulated. You may need to do a little extra work in terms of the installation of the device, perhaps routing it by a major arterial vessel to get the maximum mass flow rate - but apart from that, it would fulfill your requirements. [Answer] This is a frame challenge but a very reasonable one. Why would you do that?? Why putting so much processing power in your head? In most cases what is really needed is not on board processing power but an interface that connects to the brain on one side and to one or more computers on the other. Hopefully wirelessly, not with a bayonet like plug as in Matrix. It is what is known as Brain Computer Interface. > > A BCI is a computer-based system that acquires brain signals, analyzes them, and translates them into commands that are relayed to an output device to carry out a desired action. Thus, BCIs do not use the brain's normal output pathways of peripheral nerves and muscles. > [Brain Computer Interfaces in Medicine](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3497935/) > > > Think of it. First of all you need connectivity anyway in order to be effective in your world. You mainly want to send request for complex queries and receive results already analyzed and simplified in a way our brain can process so you can make an informed decision. You would probably communicate with AI algorithms that have learned to process your queries and have been trained in the kind of results you will want. But none of that query processing has to be done inside your head. Also in order to be done it may need to access further online resources. So it makes most sense to have the processing done outside of the BCI. On the other side you need an implant that may communicate effectively with your brain. It may need to go under a period of training to adapt to the user (maybe in their childhood). BCIs that use ECoG seem to be more promising for the resolution needed in this process. > > BCIs That Use ECoG Activity. > > ECoG activity is recorded from the cortical surface, and thus it requires the implantation of a subdural or epidural electrode array. ECoG records signals of higher amplitude than EEG and offers superior spatial resolution and spectral bandwidth. > > > So, in the end, given that heavy processing is not required heat production would be minimal. It's dissipation would not be much of a problem. But you can imagine a simple solution: HAIR [![Metallic hair](https://i.stack.imgur.com/C4D6B.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/C4D6B.jpg) Hair for BCI users could be metallic in nature for heat dissipation. You may not need to have all hair as heat sinks, just a small percentage of them would do, with the others made of syntetic fibre. [Answer] This technology already exists, and operates on a similar principle of pushed-air convection as the air-cooling mechanisms for non-cyborg computer installations: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/olhPR.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/olhPR.png) The use and advertising of thermally conductive hair pastes or gels has seen a marked increase since the inception of the brain-chips, while male pattern baldness seen typically in engineers is touted as an adaptive genetic advantage, enabling higher clock rates. While laboratory testing has yielded mixed results, no commercially viable liquid nitrogen cooling system has yet been offered, owing to the complexity and difficulty of maintaining a livable body temperature in the organism in the presence of the cooling matter and under widely fluctuating thermal dissipation requirements (not to mention the added bulk of fluid reservoirs atop the head; largely only avid AR enthusiasts are found among the early adopters and inventors of prototypes). Lightweight extruded or shaved aluminum heatsinks are still trying to gain traction despite cultural opposition and conflation with the [tin-foil](https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Tin_foil_hat) variety of cranial apparel, therefore mainstream applications are ordinarily limited to specially designed thermally conductive plastics or ceramics for reasons of social acceptability. [Answer] radiator fins create a hole in the skull with a large fin protruding from the top of the head that can be used to radiate heat. Think something like the Yondu's headpiece from guardians of the galaxy [![Yaka Arrow Controller](https://i.stack.imgur.com/u4HRJ.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/u4HRJ.jpg) [Answer] Remove bone, replace by chip+radiator+heat insulation. Actually, they already do that. You cut a piece of skull (bone) out to get to the parts below. It's called craniotomy. Now usually one would put the removed bone back in, but instead, we just implant a chip module insulated downwards (towards the brain) and radiating upwards. Put back the skin above it, maybe modified for better heat dispersion and to better survive heat and you won't see a difference. You can cool the inside with liquor and/or blood if necessary. [Answer] OK hear me out. You have a hole in the skull that you drop ice cubes in. The ice keeps the implant safe and cool. You do a handstand periodically to empty out the melted ice before putting new in. Seriously, you cannot have a 150W appliance inside the head. If your brain temperature rises by 2 degrees Fahrenheit you are seriously sick. If it rises by 5F you are unconscious. Much more than that and you are dead. The brain itself is only about 30W, so you would be multiplying the heat dissipation requirements by six. You can't even let the exterior of the device be 5 degrees warmer than the brain, or the brain cells in closest contact with it would start to die. Can you imagine any 150W computing device that doesn't even get 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than its environment? Especially when the device is completely enclosed in an insulated pocket (the brain/skull). Maybe you could do it by pumping liquid nitrogen from an external reservoir, but you'd better be damn sure that you are keeping every square cm of the implant at exactly the right temp, neither 5F too hot nor 5F too cold, or you will suffer brain damage or death. If the cooling system fails for just a few minutes or has a bug, say goodbye. [Answer] An efficient approach would be to do something like the character [Lobot](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lobot) from The Empire Strikes Back: a cybernetic implant that fits around the back of the head. This approach has a number of advantages: * Nearly all of the electronics are outside of the body, so they can be air-cooled conventionally. * Only the interface portion is inside the body, which minimizes the risks and medical costs associated with implantation. * Upgrading, repair, and maintenance only require a technician, not a surgeon. * Things that sit on the outside of your body are not subject to the regulations and safety requirements of something that goes inside the body, so implant designers have a lot more flexibility and can release product faster. * Unlike an internal implant, external electronics can give you all manner of blinkenlights. [Answer] I think you simply don't need as much power. At the moment a modern arm cpu like the m1 pro has a peak wattage of 30w. I think it's reasonable to say that a technological society that manages to make a cpu interact with the brain directly can manage to make these even more energy efficient. A 15-20w peak cpu will be way more manageable and still be more than fast enough for whatever you want to do. 150w are just not feasible for a mobile processor. You would probably also need to eat about twice as much just to keep up with the new energy consumption. I would probably think about placing it a bit further down the spine so you don't need to care about thermal isolation as much, since the brain hates temperature changes. [Answer] Ah, the good ol' brain-frame computer. All the computing you need right at the tip of your neurons, always on, always ready to play a quick game of Doom at the drop of an eyelash. A mainstay of cyberpunk and certain other types of (extremely) speculative fiction. With current technology this doesn't stand a chance of happening. There are so many problems with the idea that we've basically stopped trying. No, seriously. We have literally stopped trying to put computers in peoples' brains, because it turns out to be a really bad idea. (The Declaration of Helsinki probably has something to do with it too. Spoilsports.) What we're doing these days is running wires to send data back and forth to implanted electrodes connected to various neurons. Mostly forth, since reading data from the brain turns out to be bloody hard to do. Most commonly this is used to allow deaf people to hear... kind of. Electrodes in the cochlea to stimulate the auditory nerve are attached to an induction pickup in the skull, which is fed data from an external hearing aid. There are several good aspects to this kind of arrangement, not least of which is that the hearing aid (the external part) can be replaced almost instantly simply by swapping it out for a new unit. All of the internal elements are chemically inert, no internal power supply is needed and almost all of the heat generated by the system is in the external unit. Winning! OK, so we also used brain electrodes to remote control cockroaches. For spying, of course. Can't you just imagine a little army of cockroaches with camera packs and tiny little microphones, all controlled by a room full of bored remote operators in Langley or something? (Kinda sounds [familiar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrHMBletjXg) now that I think on it.) Meanwhile, Elon Musk has decided that humans need to join with computers to bring about the singularity. So far they have a device that works in pigs and monkeys to read data from the motor cortex, so that's something. The eventual goal is to be able to put electrodes in a human brain so we can transfer data between that brain and a computer, merging humans with their technology. The question "how can I stick a computer in my head" might not be the best one to ask. Perhaps "where can I stick a computer to talk to the electrodes in my brain" might be better. Wearable computers that you can take off when you shower perhaps? A computer in a belt-pack or a neck ring? Maybe. Or maybe we just go with Bluetooth. Everthing else seems to use it. [Answer] ## A hollow CPU chip with refrigerated glycol or water pumped into the centre and back out Make the chip cup shaped and cool the chip from the inside, not the outside. This uses the CPU itself as an extra protective layer against leakage, as well as a thermal barrier. It makes the geometry much simpler: simple pipes in and out on the inside of the CPU, wires on the outside. [Answer] There is nothing better in the animal kingdom than the human body for shedding excess heat. The human body can shed [up to a kilowatt of heat](https://mithras.tech/2019/04/17/can-human-body-heat-provide-the-world-with-energy/#:%7E:text=For%20the%20human%20body%2C%20these,power%20of%2080%2D1050%20Watts.), so getting rid of a measly 150 watts would be easy. The problem comes if that heat is emitted directly in the brain in a point source, which may cause localised heat-related injury. That gives us two possible ways to design such a device: 1. Make the implant a distributed [neural lace](https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/Neural_lace), that would sink its heat into the entire volume of the brain. Or: 2. Put the actual processor elsewhere in the body, and design it to dump its waste heat into a major blood vessel, and simply implant its non-heat-emitting interface into the brain. Now, I have a frame challenge: Firstly, I should say that modern CPUs convert 100% of their power input into heat... but that instructions per watt have been going up as the size and efficiency of the processing elements (transistors or whatever) go down. In the future, it is pretty much a given that you'll get more instructions per watt than we do currently. The limitation is then not simply how to cool the co-processor, but the trade-off between the capabilities of the co-processor, the uses to which it can be applied and its heat output. Secondly, computers only generate heat for actual computations, and an idling computer uses less power than a computer running at full capacity. Maybe this co-processor can generate up to 150w, but will it always do so? I think not. Thirdly, what on earth is this co-processor going to be doing that can draw 150 watts of power? It sounds like it is going to be doing brute-force image and audio processing and graphics and audio rendering, pulling a video signal off the retina/optic nerve/optical cortex, processing it, and dumping a modified image back... and that may not be necessary. The human brain is believed to do all sorts of abstraction, so it may only be necessary to drop a signal onto the brain saying that 'you saw an x at y' rather than always processing a modified image. As a comparison, [the human brain consumes a roughly constant 12w](https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/is-the-human-brain-a-biological-computer). [Answer] Unless what you mean when saying "AI" is ChatGPT or some other very advanced algorithm that is marketed as AI, then yeah, you have a problem, because computer powerful enough to to operate the type of a real AI would not fit inside of a skull. On the other hand, if you have proper AI technology available, it is well established and improved with several generations of miniaturization, then neither power nor heat generation is a problem. Just make it molecular circuitry and just plant it, assuming it's generating half or quarter of a brain heat. If human brain consumes 12W (some sources state up to 20W), cooling that is not a problem - we have big heads for a reason, as well as folds on a brain... Adding another 5W is no biggie as well, especially if place is well chosen. Because it's not the heat that you need to dissipate is the biggest problem with your device, it's the device itself. With your assumptions it's near certain that the package will run hotter than 42 degrees Celsius, which will mean that it will literally fry human brain on it's own (or at least parts closest to the device). Rethink your assumptions, because I don't think they are workable. ]
[Question] [ OK, so let's say Jim and Bob have a time machine. It's a large construct: * Server rooms with quite a bit of human knowledge in them * power generators * some areas to grow food * a voice activated terminal that reacts to literally every language. Now, let's say that they went a little too far back than intended, and end up in North America during the last Ice Age. Jim and Bob enter a stasis chamber because the "Time Machine" function of their time machine stops working, but everything else still works. Humans find it (1780CE), accidentally activate the computer, discover Technology as we know it (except time travel), jump-start every technological revolution since then, and then accidentally let Jim and Bob out circa 2100CE. What would be a low maintenance power source to last roughly 10k years? [Answer] A tiny piece of antimatter is all you need. (oh and a magnetic bottle to store it in and an antimatter reactor to generate the power you need but hey, you've built a time machine, so in your time you can probably buy one at hardware store) Antimatter has an [energy density](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density) of 9×10^10 MJ/kg, compared to 34 MJ/liter (around 145 MJ/gallon) for diesel fuel. You don't say how much energy your machine needs, but let's say you need a steady 1 MW of power -- you'd need around 1700 gallons of diesel to [power a 1MW generator for a day](http://www.dieselserviceandsupply.com/Diesel_Fuel_Consumption.aspx). (your antimatter reactor may be more (or less) efficient than a diesel generator, so find the specs in the owners manual and adjust numbers accordingly) For 10,000 years, you'd need (10000 \* 365 \* 1700) = 6.2B gallons of diesel. The largest supertanker in the world, the [TI Class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-class_supertanker), can carry 3.16M barrels of oil, or around 132M gallons. So you'd need almost 50 of those supertankers worth of diesel -- probably more than you want to squeeze into your time travel machine. But since antimatter is much much much more energy dense, you can get by with much less antimatter. At 145MJ/gal of energy in diesel, 6.2B gallons is around 8.8 x 10^11 MJ Since the energy density of antimatter is 9×10^10 MJ/kg, you'd only need (8.8E11 / 9x10^10) = 9.8 kg of antimatter (along with an equivalent amount of matter to annihilate it with, but fortunately, that's easy to find). If you use antimatter lead (assuming the physical properties of antimatter are the same as regular matter), that's around 865 cm^3, less than a liter. [Answer] It is possible to have a [radioisotope thermoelectric generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator) and have it last for a long time; though the power produced would decay over time according to the half-life of the radioactive element used. The plausible explanation for such a situation would be that the time travel portion of the machine requires many orders of magnitude the amount of power than the stasis pods and computer need to continue operating. [Answer] Geothermal connection. Give the room some sort of connection to an underground heat source. [Answer] How about this: The time machine is powered through a wormhole. Those that build the device figured that just such a situation could arise and before they constructed the time machine they spent a lot of time to build a generator powering it where- and whenever it will be. The energy is just time-travelled to the machine. In fact this generator was placed in the far future when the sun swallows the earth. The device, now within the sun, drains energy directly from the dying star. The absorbed energy at the same time keeps the generator from being molten by exposure to the sun. If time-travel works, why should this technology not work, too? Edit: I meant the generator to have its own time travel option that is just there to send the energy to when it is needed. [Answer] Coming up with a self-contained power supply that will last for such a long time will be tricky. But what about... Piggy-backing on existing power sources that are maintained by someone else? Since the time travelers are from the future (as of when the new time travelers discover it), sufficient research could give them insight as to what kinds of power sources will be available. And since it's a time machine, it's a good idea to include alternate methods of powering the thing for exactly this reason. In 1985, for example, plutonium is available at every corner drug store, but in 1955, it's a little hard to come by. How effective these solutions will be depends on the power requirements for your machine, but here are at least some ideas: Beginning in 1900 or so, the machine could run on induction from radio waves, especially when some towers are powerful enough to [broadcast anywhere on earth, including the depths of the ocean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Creek_Naval_Radio_Station). A little later into the century, the machine could simply plug into a wall outlet. Beginning in the late 18th century with the industrial revolution, mechanical transmission came to be, and while this involves moving parts, sufficient handwavium or sufficient determination on the part of the people who discovered the time machine could allow the necessary gear and shaft to still rotate and power the machine. Speaking of handwavium, you're gonna have to build the whole machine of it in order for it to still function at all after ten thousand years. Before the industrial revolution, it will be difficult to communicate to anyone who would discover it that this is a machine that does something, and that it needs user-provided power. But supposing that you somehow could, coal has been a known power source [for a very long time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coal_mining#Early_history). Perhaps leaving a little coal in the machine could help the users to understand. [Answer] Peter F Hamilton has a neat idea for such a power source. It's called the Niling d-sink. It's described here: <http://peterfhamilton.wikia.com/wiki/Niling_d-sink> as a "hole in space-time that can be filled with energy". Although I imagined it as a battery that is bigger on the inside than the outside. [Answer] Ten thousand years rules out anything with moving parts - which is almost all power sources known to modern man. Anything that runs on fuel is likewise out. There are only four things that will generate any power of note for that long. One - geothermal power. However, this would require moving parts, and would wear away well before you get to 10K years. Two - radioactive elements. This would generate a very small amount of power for a very long time, but that power would diminish exponentially with the half-life of its fuel. Three - the sun. Solar panels have no moving parts and require essentially no maintenance if they get rained on every so often. Though, location and local weather conditions could make this infeasible as well. Four - make one up :) Even if the time machine is broken, sending a single photon back in time every so often would allow the machinery to pull energy straight from vacuum. [Answer] There is a device called a "thermoacoustic heat engine" (more details at Wikipedia). It has only a single moving part, a piston (which could be maglev for zero wear and tear - i.e. a really long life). This device converts heat into electricity by creating a standing wave resonance in a gas (almost invariably helium) filled tube, this can drive a magnet back and forth through a coil to generate electricity. Unlike with Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, the active parts can be far far away from your nuclear fuel, so the radiation is of little concern. The hot end it just a specially designed gas filled pipe while all the important stuff can be placed far away. If you want a really long lasting generator (and/or a hard science solution), I think you'd be hard pressed to beat a Radioisotope Thermoacoustic Generator. They work just as well as fridges too (and musical instruments - see Rijke tube) and at least one person has made liquid nitrogen with one (maybe you could use them in your long life stasis pod?) [Answer] Siphon power from the future I admit that this is a pretty unusual idea, but it simply put goes like this: You need energy to power the stasis pods and things, therefore you pull a bootstrap paradox. Just make more power when you have time available and send it to the past so that they survive and you learn that you need to send power back so they don't die so that you know you need to send power back..... You get the point. Alternatively, (and this could explain near infinite amounts of power in time machines) one could transport power to the time machine using time travel and then just put that power back where it was when you are no longer damaged/have large power sources available. A time machine only needs a large enough battery to be able to cannibalize power at profit. It's not perpetual motion. It's just borrowing power from throughout history to recharge the batteries. Of course, there is a downside to this. One could easily wreck a computer by accident, start electrical fires, or worse kill a person because you siphoned electricity from their body and didn't put it back quite right. You know... everyday things we see in the world... right? Now I know what you are going to say. But the time travel systems broke down No, their ability to travel through time was destroyed. However, energy movement is probably quite easy. After all, energy = mc^2 which means tremendous amounts of energy are very small in mass once they have been fully processed and so transporting them into the ship could be accomplished via a simple computer component/circuit that the protagonists might not even be aware of. Heck, the additional upside is that since the energy is brought into the ship directly without processing, there is no need for any large-scale power generators. If anything, I would imagine the ship to have massive batteries in the case of system failure, in which case the batteries would serve as a several year backup to prevent complete stranding. So why doesn't the ship just bootstrap its own power? Well, that's the thing about a bootstrap paradox. A bootstrap paradox cannot truly create a physical entity. After all, everything ages and decays aside from the very fabric of space-time (which even then is debatable I imagine). So anything in a bootstrap paradox would instantly decay into oblivion. A bootstrap paradox is meant for bringing knowledge in a cycle, or an abstract concept (I believe one story I read once literally involved someone bootstrapping a soul into existence, or maybe bootstrapping it to prevent its nonexistance). Bringing matter in a cycle like that is... impossible. Why not continually borrow from the future ship and have a generator on board? That is a perfectly valid option! In fact, this is nothing more than my design, which is intended to be as efficient and small as possible. I'm imagining what I believe would work as a ship that has minimal "extra parts". In essence, the ship merely needs a time travel component and it has power. And the time travel component need not be the same time travel component as the one providing power. In fact, just to throw one extra thing out there, the computer system on this ship are going to no matter what by far be extremely efficient and fast at processing. The reason for this is that every single thing that does not require interaction by a user can just be bootstrapped to the beginning of the calculation and so... those values were never calculated, just read from memory. Want the first 10 billion prime numbers to be placed in these memory slots in the computer? Fine, it will be sent there instantly. The only downside that could potentially hurt such a computer is memory management. I'm not saying that the memory would be inefficient, rather what I mean to say is that the computer will have to no matter what spend time sending data to the past and depending on the time travel system, this might take a lot of time. Because of such a fact, a computer system on one of these ships will want to use as little memory as possible and probably doesn't do bootstrapping by default. It is probably a command used in writing the program. Most likely it is something like an if, while, or for statement that says something along the lines of: "bootstrap { code }". However, I might be quite wrong, actually. Since memory and throughput (the time it takes to process something) generally live in an inverse relationship, the sudden lack of any need to make things efficient for time could lead to data in programs being dramatically reduced at the assembly code and binary levels in a large scale attempt to optimize programming in general in preparation for the new "Temporal Hardware". And how was this relevant? Well, I just demonstrated the fact that there is a very obvious use for the time travel technology that is not used for transportation and as a result I have shown that while the characters are truly stranded, they might still have time travel tech on the ship. They just cannot use it to go anywhere due to its size. [Answer] From Dr. Who the tardis has a blackhole inside of it for power. Even a blackhole a few feet (10-20) across would probably be enough, but you could make it any size you wanted. Clearly, a sun,blackhole,supernova are your only good options. If you have time travel you either have the tech or you traveled to the future or to planet another race and got the technology. Even better yet, as long as the core maintains it gravity, throw any random bits of garbage into, and it gets ripped apart for fuel. Probably maintain the whole ship at full power, if you want it to for a billion years. Clearly, you will need a strong force field to contain it, and it will have to have at least 3 layers of redundancy and automated processes to self repair. The repair circuits would also need at least 3 layers of redundancy. However, If you developed time travel none of these problems should be an issue. The tech to solve these problems should already exist. Otherwise, travel a million years into the future 1st trip, and retro-fit your ship. [Answer] A Dyson Sphere around a red dwarf is basically unlimited power, although I'm not sure that's what you're asking for. [Answer] I'm suggesting the Kugelblitz. What fancier way to power your craft than a black hole made out of light? Using high-power lasers you could create a black hole, and use the hawking radiation as a source of power. Basically a battery. For ideal output its life should be made to be about 8 years.(For space exploration at least) But it could be tuned to anything you like, even 10 000 years. Perhaps create multiple ones to get long-term power. Another alternative is to just feed the black hole with arbitrary matter. It works on sand, water, air or whatever you happen to have. So after its created its basically a matter - energy converter. The output of a 4.5 year lasting, 600 000 tonne black hole would be 160 Petawatts. I think you could get by with much less, though that would increase the mass significantly. The problem is the immense amount of energy needed. The common options include using nano robots to convert mercury(the planet) into a dyson sphere of small solar panels. Creating the 8year blackhole would take about a week(If I remember correctly) of the suns output. But the evaporation time(thus the output power) reduces exponentially with weight/energy input. So it might be possible. [Good video about Kugelblitz(Also includes other stuff)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZGPCyrpSU) [Answer] Human beings would be a good power source they keep multiplying so you have an inexhaustible supply someone with technological knowledge that is advanced enough to build a time machine must be able to come up with a way to process lifeforms into usable sources of energy. ]
[Question] [ The "rods from God" satellite. Its a satellite that contains these long darts, presumably made of a very heavy material like tungsten, that are dropped into the atmosphere. By the time they reach the surface, they're moving at hypersonic speeds, lets say Mach +10. It would strike a target with a huge amount of energy, but the question I have is "would that be a conventional explosion like from explosives, or would it basically just be a huge dart that sticks into the ground?" The rod isnt an explosive material, its just very heavy and durable. But with something as heavy as it is moving as fast as it is, the amount of force it has when it hits the ground has to be gigantic. Too big for just an anticlimactic dart piercing into the ground. The reason I ask is that it would probably determine what kind of target this weapon would be used on. If it creates a more conventional explosion, it would probably be more effective against large groups of soldiers, vehicles, or buildings. But if it was basically a dart that punctures into the ground it would probably be a devastating bunker buster. Depending on the answer, this kind of weapon would be used on very different targets. [Answer] First off Mach 10+ is significantly slower than orbital velocity. Objects in low earth orbit are traveling at over 7 kilometers per second, which is roughly Mach 20. --- This would be a serious explosion. We have video footage of large objects entering the atmosphere at high speeds. The [Chelyabinsk meteor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor) was estimated to be 20m and traveling at a shallow angle into the atmosphere at 19 km/s. When it burst in the air 30km above the surface, it damaged over 7 thousand buildings in 6 cities. The airburst was estimated to be equivalent to 400 kilotons of TNT, roughly 30 times the energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Keep in mind that your rod is significantly smaller, and traveling at a much slower speed. [In a 2003 proposal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment#2003_United_States_Air_Force_proposal) the US military estimated that a 6 meter tungsten rod orbiting at 8km/s would hit the ground with the energetic equivalent energy of 11.5 tons of TNT. Far less than an airbursting meteor but keep in mind that when [the Mythbusters blew up a cement truck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIbl_3g5FRA) they used the equivalent of roughly 600 lbs of TNT. That's 38 times less energetic than your rod. While such an energetic collision is overkill for soft targets, hard targets, or anything less than a reinforced underground bunker, you wouldn't want to be anywhere near it's point of impact. [Answer] ## You will get a "Dark" Explosion Non-explosive artillery can still have a significant explosive effect. That said, it will not make the sort of "fireball" explosion you get from a chemical warhead. So, you'll still get a significant explosive shockwave, a cloud of dust and debris, etc. But the heat and light from the impact will be significantly less than from a chemical explosive weapon of similar yield. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/E1Vgy.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/E1Vgy.png) To understand the difference you have to realize that a kinetic weapon has to transfer energy into a target through physical interactions whereas an explosive or nuclear weapon does not. While a 5e10 Juele explosive releases all of its energy (and light) at the surface, most of the enegry released by a kinetic weapon will happen subsurface. What ever material a kinetic weapon hits only has a limited binding strength to stop the projectile before it becomes displaced. Most kinds of dirt, rock, sand, and soil have low enough of a binding energy that they become displaced before being heated up enough to visibly glow. While the metal rod will have a much higher binding energy and reach a very bright glow before loosing its integrity, nearly all of this ablation will happen underground such the the light from it will be concealed giving you only a minor flash at the moment of impact. Also, you can not compare a rod from god to something like the Chelyabinsk meteor because a meteor can only airburst like that because it is a heterogeneous mixture of elements where internal element vaporize until they over pressure the yielding strength of the tougher elements. A pure element like tungsten will always ablate from the outside in during re-entry. Since tungsten has a very high melting point, and the rod has a very narrow cross section, it may in fact heat up enough to glow a good bit by the time it reaches the Earth, but it will still have plenty of integrity to spare when it hits which is the whole point of using tungsten to begin with. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/baLd5.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/baLd5.png) The exception to this rule is when you hit somethin with more binding strength. When you strike steel for example, it will resist the kinetic impactor more before being displaced allowing it to reach temperatures needed to glow; so, you can still get a bright flash that is not concealed by non-glowing debris as shown by this tank being hit by a 30mm autocannon where strikes against the armor create bright flashes, but adjacent strikes against the ground kick up dark plumes of dirt. Striking a tank with a rod from god though will probably still kick up more dust than glowing metal because it will massively over-pernitrate the tank, but perhaps a large steel bunker or warship could still have a significant flash. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eSN0w.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eSN0w.png) [Answer] Neither meteorites are made of explosive materials, but when they reach the ground they create an explosion. Basically, an explosion is caused by the release of a large amount of energy in a very short time: it can be chemical energy in an explosive, nuclear energy in a nuke, kinetic energy in a meteorite and so on. Whenever that happens, you have a boom. [Answer] As others have said, yes. It would release a ton of force which would destroy the surrounding area and create a cloud of pulverized ejecta. But it wouldn't be like an explosion from bombs, which have a lot of light. It would mostly just be dark particulates and larger debris. However, if going fast enough, the rod would be incandescent from the heat of atmospheric entry. How much damage, that is complex and based upon the mass, velocity, angle of impact, and the material the target is made up of. So the level of damage too hard to really calculate in a simple formula. It needs a lot of context to do accurately. ]
[Question] [ In (very oversimplified) feudalism a vassal gets usage of a land and protection from his lord in exchange for loyalty and services. If the piece of land is big enough the vassal can parcel it to his own vassals. Would a reverse system also work, in which individuals, households or communities own the land and then offer they fealty to a liege in exchange for protection? The liege in turn may need to bend a knee to another more powerful liege. There would be no cultural bias against "shopping" for a liege or switching allegiance if current liege is not delivering. Likewise inheritance and claims would have much less importance. To go deeper into details: * There is strong cultural preference to the people on the ground "owning" the land instead of some higher figure. Maybe even to the degree of believing that one can only own as much as he can personally use and by using the land one owns it. * The various levels of lords are not usually outsiders - they are usually elevated from their peers by being most competent or threatening. So village champion is simply one with best predisposition to kinking ass and taking names, he bands together with others and select one of their own as their leader, the leader in turn is allying with, subjugating or being subjugated by similar local leaders, and so on and so forth. * The selection of suzerain is free only in sense that switching sides is frowned upon by bystanders. Usually the choice is only between candidates that already amassed similar marital strength, or in cases where switching sides upset the balance of power (as the lord power comes mostly from his vassals then he is powerless to stop them if they defect en masse). Would such a system be feasible in the sense that it could naturally evolve and be sustained for at least few generations? My worry is that such system would either make high level lords too weak to repeal outside threat - making invaders the new ruling class and ending the system, or, to the contrary, making lords powerful enough to change the system, making their positions independent of vassal wishes. [Answer] Something very similar to this has in fact happened in the real world. So yes, it is totally feasible. This is essentially how saga-period Iceland worked. Free men owned their own land, and generally supported themselves as farmers. The equivalent of a "lord" (a gothi) was not a land owner[1], but someone whom you would contract with to provide taxes or service in exchange for protection and legal representation--and while it might be convenient, there is no actual need for the effective domain of any given gothi to be geographically contiguous. Being a gothi came with obligations to provide, e.g., a meeting hall for public events, to arbitrate legal disputes, and to represent his constituents in parliament. Like a lordship, the office of gothi was heritable, and there was a limited number of them--you couldn't just make yourself a gothi by getting rich enough. Unlike a typical lordship, however, the right to the office could also be bought and sold. To the best of my knowledge, there was no extended hierarchy in actual history--gothar reported to the Allthing, and that's it. But I see no particular reason why a similar system couldn't allow for lower-level nobility to contract with higher-level nobility in an arbitrary number of levels, just like feudalism. [1] Or rather, was not the owner of the land you lived on; not a landlord. He almost certainly owned his own land to farm, just like his clients. [Answer] While a fair idea in theory, I would foresee trouble with this, due to human nature. Corruption The only way this could work, if this is overseen by a king or government, with a standing uncorruptable army controlling the lords. Uncorruptable, because even when overseen, a bit of money in the right pockets would leave one free reign. Power History has mostly favoured the powerful. By default, farmers and vassals don't have much power, hence their need for protection. When they decide they don't like their lord, sure they could switch to another, but that would be income out of the lords' pocket. They would not like that much. Without a controlling government, nothing would stop them from going rogue, and instead of honouring their vasals, terrorise them instead. They could simply take what they need. And if they are the strongest lord around, shopping for another won't do the vassals much good. Pressure When a controlling government is present, this could help, but still things like blackmail or emotional manipulation could deter the vassals from switching. Location Also, you would run into the issue of location. If a vassal decided there is a lord they like, but they live several days travel away, then it would be much harder for the lord to provide the promised protection. When you just go with the closest one, despite how terrible they are, at least they can send some soldiers in reasonable time. [Answer] Early feudalism was VERY much like this Let's start off with some context: The Franks who conquered modern day Germany, France, and Northern Italy had different laws regarding inheritance than most early civilizations. In the Frankish kingdom, when a man died, his wealth was distributed evenly amongst his sons instead of all going to the oldest. After Charlemagne built his empire, his 3 grandsons invoked this law not just to apply to belongings, but to land rights themselves; so, they split the empire into 3 parts. And this tradition of splitting land rights carried on for a few centuries, one generation after another, into thousands of much smaller estates that would often amount to little more than small farming communities or even districts within a single township. During early feudalism in Europe, a lord was just a landowner, typically descended from Charlemagne. His fief was his inheritance and his alone, but fiefdoms became so small that a single boat full of Vikings could have more soldiers in it than many lords could muster. So, lords made choices to form alliances with thier neighbors. Feudalism began as just a system of ad hoc alliances between these independent land owners. You picked your allies as you saw fit. Over time, those lands that had been the least divided over the generations enjoyed hegemony status. They could raise the largest armies and the most wealth; so, nearby lords would choose to ally themselves to the larger territories. While these lords were free to swear allegiance to whoever they wanted, it was a matter of convenience to ally yourself to your strongest neighbors. After a while though, three problems emerged: 1 - If you did not choose an alliance, hegemons had enough power to force you into it by threat of force. 2 - Hegemons treated thier allies as assets. An ally's value was measurable in how much wealth, power, and strategic advantage they could contribute. This made giving up an alliance an unacceptable loss in many cases. Moreover, when an alliance matters enough to two hegemons, then the lesser lord's allegiance may be decided for him to either prevent or as a result of war. 3 - Bloodlines die off and a parcel of land would become unowned. To prevent in-fighting within an alliance, the local hegemon would often declare whose land it would become. This created the illusion that it was the higher lord's to give which latter became a matter of tradition. In short, your scenario is the expected state of things during an early feudal period; however, maintaining it over a long period of time is unlikely. [Answer] This is how feudalism actually worked in practice, at least in the Early to High Middle Ages until powerful nation-states were established. The power behind a feudal lord in actually not land per se, it's the force (military or otherwise) that they can support their ambitions with (that's why they are also called "warlords") and their ability to use it efficiently. So a sovereign-vassal relationship is a two-way road. If a vassal starts feeling powerful enough -- e.g. could strike an alliance with others, or their liege was weak or in turmoil at the moment (arguments about inheritance were the most common cause), -- they could very well act without regard to their liege. This is why every large enough country has gone through a period of feudal fragmentation. I've recently read a book about the Byzantine empire and surrounding regions (incl. South Italy and Near East) in the Crusades era. The lords there, both at home and on the move, were changing allegiance left, right and center depending on how powerful they felt in comparison to others and whose troops were standing at their gates at the moment. E.g. the Byzantine emperor demanded an oath of allegiance from passing crusader lords, which they later disregarded and founded independent crusader states because the empire couldn't project enough force to put them into line. Only the establishment of nation-states made this practice to decline. The new central powers and new means of logistics could now project enough force quickly enough to put a rogue region lord into line and put measures into place to weaken the regions (e.g. replacing vassals with nobility who had fewer land and limited rights over it). And with establishment of national self-identification and cultural integration (which is effectively the same), is has become even more taxing to split off because cultural and economic ties would now be broken as well (before, every region and even every village was largely self-sufficient). [Answer] # Citizenship brings obligations. In your setting, it is not just paying taxes, it includes frequent military reserve callups, jury duty, and so on. But there is a way out for family men who do not want to serve that way. They give part of their political rights to a proxy who takes the matching obligations. This is recognized by the legal system -- the callup, the tax forms, the jury summons go to that proxy. Pretty soon the professional proxy is serving full time, either in the military or in domestic roles. This lifestyle becomes traditional in some families while the rest of society gets used to not serving and not voting. They still have to pay taxes, of course, but they pay them to their proxy who hands it on to the government. After skimming a little from the top as administrative fees. [Answer] What if you flip it in a different direction? One where farmers have all the power. Let's say for some reason it's very difficult to grow food and only a few people have the ability to grow anything at all. There are relatively few farmers who provide for everyone else. Mercenaries might have the ability to kill or coerce a farmer, but if they do they risk mass starvation because the farmers aren't easily replaceable. So instead you'd end up either with a system where a few farmers are the Nobility and order around the martial forces, or one where the farmers are revered as a special and protected class (holy men e.g.) and are fiercely protected by the rest of the community. This is a hard one to pull off if you are going for realism, but in a fictional/fantasy setting you could make it work. [Answer] actually pretty common in some portions of the world right now, except the protection part maybe. in middle europe at least a lot of people own small portions of land for historic reasons but don't work on the land themselves. instead they rent their land to someone else who does this with many others too so he gets a much larger amount of land to work on. only this way he will be able to make profit due to low food prices. of course this is only possible due to high degree of automation in farming that barely involves manual labour any more. the protection part, in both ways is done by the government of course. [Answer] I think you need to rethink your definition of ownership in a feudal society, ownership is not inviolate and not seperate from violence. The land is owned by the strongest lord in the vicinity because he is the strongest lord. So no, your system is not stable because the lords would steal the land in a couple generations. [Answer] The feudal lord you describe is what in Italy during the renaissance was called a Capitano di ventura. The commander of a mercenary army. Sometimes they did their duty, but more often they didn't. The trouble is that when the commander doesn't own the land he has nothing to lose and he won't take enormous efforts to push his soldiers. Not counting some famous exception like Giovanni Dalle Bande Nere, these armies won't be willing to take big risks and on average they will be less effective than the armies of the classic feudal lords. ]
[Question] [ How somebody could become perfectly invisible by the use of technology without being blind because of the deviation of photons. These past years, a lot of meta-materials or other technologies have shown to be able to bend light and being imperfectly invisbles, for example : In 2019, a paper-thin material that bend utraviolet and infrared light to make only the background of a man visible and not himself was made. It is achieved by the use of lenticular lenses in the material. It is alas rigid. Source : <https://globalnews.ca/news/6110652/bc-company-cloak-of-invisibility/> In 2011, at the Technical University of Denmark a carpet cloak made of dielectric materials was developed. It consist of a « semiconductor manufacturing techniques that involve patterning the top silicon layer of a silicon on insulator (SOI) wafer with nanogratings of an appropriate size and structure ». The design can be tweaked by changing the orientation of the layers, so the wavelength of light affected. According to the scientists, it is a method easier to do than other and can produce a « carpet » large enough to cover entire vehicles. The more layers is added to the metamaterial, the more efficient it is, for me this is a form of drawback in term of weight. Source : <https://newatlas.com/invisibility-cloak-metamaterials-size/18454/> In 2016, scientists at the Iowa State University unveiled their meta-skin cloaking project. For now it only make you invisible against radar detection but they are confident about making it bend ultraviolet and infrared light. Source : <https://newatlas.com/meta-skin-invisibility-cloak/42205/> As you see these technologies shows a lot of promises, starting just by the fact that they do not require energy to function but are still in development stage and with specific draw backs. Despite this, by take one of those examples a base, how true invisibility without becoming blind by the deviation of photons could be achieved ? [Answer] ## Transmissions: A few possibilities: * Your person isn't using direct light, but is instead receiving feeds from drones following them around. The transmissions are outside the (very broad) invisibility range, so they get through. Then a computer converts them into visual signals. This means the person can get transmissions in ranges unlikely to be monitored by others (maintaining superior invisibility) but does mean that the drones themselves are detectible unless masked by some lesser degree of invisibility. * Your person is using sound, ultrasound or direct non-visible light to "see." The data from this info is translated by computers or special goggles into a visual interpretation of what the surroundings should look like. So sound (sonar) is translated into a visual equivalent by smart software. Non-visible light is shifted into the visual range and displays as visible to the person's eyes. This means the person is independent of outside signals, but the scope of the invisibility has to NOT include whatever the user is seeing (so if infrared, then an infrared scanner can spot them). * If NO feedback can get through the barrier, our invisible person CAN'T get this data from outside, and instead functions in a virtual simulation of what their surroundings SHOULD look like. If no feedback is possible, then a visual overlay of what reality SHOULD be displays for the person. This is problematic in a dynamic environment with shifting objects and moving people, but fine for, say, a bank at night where the path was well understood in advance. [Answer] This is a non-issue: Visual sensors can be so small and absorb such a small portion of light passing through, that if the observer is able to see the seeing pinholes, they will also see the dust in the air and see that there is a "hole" in the dust field. So, just have pinhole cameras or just passive optics, which are used to see the outside. A fine mesh of holes with random camo-pattern for eyes to see out directly might be slightly more observable from outside, but also much simpler. They could still be in the realm of "if you see these, you see the dust particles bumping into the invisible thing too". [Answer] All the metamaterial based methods are wavelength dependant. Make the shield deflect visible light, be transparent to some wavelengths beyond visible spectrum (e.g. far infrared) and make your vision sensitive to that light (e.g. by wearing night-vision-like goggles, with an illuminaiton source if necessary, or even a radar). [Answer] Have your invisible viewer wear a pair of immersive vr glasses which are entirely inside of the deflection material, then wirelessly send them visual information from cameras located entirely outside of the deflection material. If the cameras were mounted on drones, they could travel with the viewer as they move around, broadcasting their gps location along with their video feed using an omni-directional radio signal. The viewer could then use their own gps location information to triangulate on each of the cameras and formulate a 3d rendering of their undistorted perspective of the world outside of the deflection. Taking this a step further, a massive swarm of drones could serve multiple viewers simultaneously so that the presence of drones in any specific location doesn't provide clues as to the presence of viewers. [Answer] The laws of thermodynamics say you can't sense light without absorbing it. So absorb it… then re-emit it. This takes energy, but given that there's a person to be invisible, I assume a tiny light source isn't too much of an energy cost. In fact, you need to vent energy somehow; humans produce a lot of heat, and I assume you don't want your ~~magical~~ [science-based](/questions/tagged/science-based "show questions tagged 'science-based'") invisibility powers to also be self-immolation powers. This tiny light source doesn't count (in fact, it generates additional heat). Unless you can teleport the heat away, your invisibility is not going to be perfect regardless. [Answer] Linear optics makes this premise impossible. It exhibits time reversal so light going one way equals light going the other way. However, once you step out of linear stuff and break time symmetry, you can have pretty fancy stuff and nearly everything is possible, a lot even with passive components. The tiny little problem is that reaching just the right nonlinear properties is a bit of an issue to put it mildly. Suppose that almost all light goes around in various linear metamaterials, while there is a little "forward" hole that does not operate the same way and lets light through. Now, in that tiny little hole, light enters fiber and goes around you, getting out on the back side of your device. Fiber leaks a little bit of light towards you, but is amplified, so the end amount of light reaching back side is the same. This amplification is obviously active, but if you are willing to ditch a bit of light, you don't need it, just make fiber dimmed enough. You can see clearly with that light (or amplify as needed). Now, just make light going only in one direction so your light does not leak out - optical isolators are abundant, typically using Faraday rotator. So, great ultrasuper cloaking that works at arbitrary wavelengths for arbitrary amount of time, yet lets you see outside... but requires a bit of power to amplify number of those photons to account for those seen by your eyes (or ditches that little bit of light, making you possible to be detected) Now for issues: 0. Thermodynamics. You are emitting energy (even without cloaking). This requires some heatsinks to store it for a while, or you will be simply leaking light out at other wavelengths. So, cloak and store energy, uncloak and recharge heatsinks, cloak again etc. 1. Metamaterials for radio are simple enough, but extremely hard for visible or near UV. Impossible for xray - it cannot be based on electrons at all, some sort of neutron-only material would be required to avoid electrons being kicked out of orbitals (material should preferably not be as dense as a neutron star). 2. These metamaterials do NOT maintain correct phase of the light! They cannot. In theory they can be precisely constructed to get exactly right 2piN phase delay for some wavelengths, so a periodic plane wavefront will look undisturbed after passing through. But assume a sufficiently short light pulse at some wavelength, and the pulse will be lagging a little bit in the center. Fortunately for you, this delay can be small enough to cloak a human-sized object even against high-speed cameras. [Answer] The meta material allows some light to pass inside the invisible shell but does not allow light to be leaked in the other direction (heading outside the shell). Think of a very advanced one way mirror (made out of meta materials). [Answer] Invisibility cloaks use some variety of beam-splitter or "virtual particle" technology to allow some photons to pass into the head area of the wearer so that the world can still be seen/navigated. Cheap invisibility cloaks (e.g. the ones you get at Walmart) just pass some percentage of the photons which would normally strike the head region of the wearer through, while wrapping the remaining photons around the wearer. This results in a noticeable "head shadow" corresponding to the cranial region of the wearer, which a careful observer can track as it moves. Better invisibility cloaks use PVP (Paired Virtual Photon) technology, where for each photon which would normally strike the cloak a virtual photon is created on the interior of the cloak which then proceeds onwards to strike the eye, skin, etc of the wearer. In civilian use this technology is only used in the head region of the cloak, as that's where eyes will normally be located, but it has the disadvantage that if the cloak is dislodged or improperly secured it's possible that the "head region" of the cloak may slip to another region of the body which leaves the wearer blind. It also means that if the user looks at him/herself inside the cloak their body is not illuminated, which can make it difficult to find small objects such as knives, spiders, scorpions, etc which may be located on the wearer's body. The highest-quality military invisibility cloaks implement PVP technology on the entire interior surface of the cloak, which can be turned on or off as needed (except in the head area). Recent invisibility research is focused on new technological approaches. One promising one, known as Ego Negation, is not really "invisibility" in the traditional sense. Instead, it makes the person using the device seem so dull and boring that no one pays any attention to him/her. Further developments in this area have been paused, however, due to lack of interest. [Answer] He/she could see in infrared or ultraviolet, which would make the eyes invisible while still allowing your invisible person to see. Your person could also become invisible via active camouflage, which wouldn't affect their ability to see. [Answer] It's often assumed that an invisibility shield must be passive, in the sense that if you shined a certain amount of light at it, then that light must be redirected to the other side, so that all of it goes out the other side, creating the illusion of invisibility. But what if your invisibility technology takes an energy source? (After all, a lot of technology uses energy to function.) Then you can have your sensors detect all the light that hits them, but then it's another piece of technology that calculates what light needs to emanate from which emitters, and another piece of technology still that can emit the light from the proper emitters. The amount of energy involved in detecting and emitting the light does not have to be equal to the amount of energy reflected/emitted, thanks to your power source. Once the power source gets used up, though, then you risk discovery. --- So when you ask: How could somebody become perfectly invisible by the use of technology without being blind (because of the deviation of photons)? don't think along the lines of: Light is diverted, and what's left goes to the sensors (which is nothing, leaving the user effectively blind). but rather: All (or much of) the light goes to the sensors, and then a machine (with its own power source) is able to emit light in the proper way to give the technology-user the illusion of invisibility. [Answer] One of my protagonists is able to become invisible by secreting a substance from her body that refracts light so that it'll go around her. As her eyes are coated by said substance, she cannot see using visible light, but the invisibility solution doesn't refract infrared light, which means that she can see with infrared light. The solution is, make the cloaking device/mechanism not affect all wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, then give the user the biology/technology needed to see using the wavelengths that aren't affected by the invisibility tech. [Answer] Synthetic Aperture Camera If you own a modern smartphone with multiple cameras on its back, this is exactly the same technique as that. Multiple cameras combining their images to produce a better result. It's also used by space-telescopes and military-grade radar in a technique called a "Synthetic Aperture". Your cloak works by bending light around the person across its entire surface. So your cloak's entire external surface can be treated therefore as a billion extremely low-resolution cameras by siphoning a very small amount of their redirected light, and their results poured into a digital composite image which the user sees. This would technically make the cloak marginally less effective on its reverse side, but a fractional reduction in the transmitted light would probably not mean much. You may be able to inject light into the system to compensate for the losses in the camera system. ]
[Question] [ Mind control is a favourite tool of science fiction writers, it allows us to make certain characters do things that they would normally never do without the hassle of explanation. But hard science fiction worldbuilders look for explanations for things even if it is not necessary; like the evolution of our creatures to the cultural beliefs of our people. Using things like but not limited to: biology, chemistry or technology -- how can I explain mind control without falling back on the overly used magic excuse? What I mean by mind control is the ability for a person to be able to control the actions of another and the person being controlled is aware of what is happening. [Answer] This is an interesting question and there are a lot of possibilities: Computer-Human Interface The most realistic (in my opinion) would be to have an interface for communication between Human (or animals) and some sort of computer based device. This is a thing that will be possible in the future. I think you would be able to not only send messages from your brain to the device rather also to send messages in the other direction. The interface in the controlled brain could send electrical current to the pain and pleasure parts of the brain, allowing for a carrot and stick approach to controlling someone. See for example [wirehead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)) Drugs As far as I know there have been a lot of experiments by CIA and other agencies trying to manipulate the human brain trough the use of drugs like LSD. Also I once heard about a Flower or something which allows mind control (think it was a VICE report or something) Those two are the most realistic in my opinion but there are other possibilities as well such as: * Mind control through radio waves * Hypnosis * Psychology (Social Engineering) English is my second (third actually :D ) language so I'm sorry if I misunderstood the question. [Answer] Parasites. There are a variety of parasites, which, once attached to a particular host, may induce some kind of physiological or chemical change to the host's body, largely for the purpose of the parasite's reproduction (as most actions in nature are intended). For instance, the spiny-headed worm, [Acanthocephala](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthocephala), is a parasite that requires two hosts over its lifecycle. One variety of this worm uses a particular crustacean (Gammarus lacustris), as its intermediate host. Now, this crustacean, typically, will avoid light sources to stay out of sight and avoid predation by ducks. However, individuals infested with Acanthocephala have been observed to specifically seek out light, instead, and have been found to have massively increased serotonin levels. In this crustacean, serotonin levels have been found to positively correlate with longer mating times (during which the individuals are largely immobile), and decreased photophobic behavior. Acanthocephala, of course, 'wants' the crustacean to be consumed by the next level up the food chain, as it is within a duck that it will enter the next stage of its life cycle, reproduce, and repeat this process via excretion and consumption by the next crustacean to come along. This is just one example of this kind of parasitism (feel free to Google mind-altering parasites, or anything to that effect), and not all of them explicitly entice the host to engage in suicidal behavior. To apply this in fiction, it's not entirely implausible that an engineered parasite (or even a mechanical 'parasite') could be created to induce certain neurological changes in an unwitting host. Increased suggestibility, altered mood, increased agitation... anything that is mediated through neurotransmitters could, theoretically, be amplified by changing the balance and production of those chemicals. Edit: Here's another example of the concept, for those interested: [California killifish](http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1659/1137). Edit 2: Maximum Editation: @YoungJohn's comment prompted a bit of thinking, and I'd like to elaborate a bit about the possible translations of this concept into science fiction, because that's where my head is at the moment. As I mentioned in my reply, ultimately when parasites, drugs, and other things mess with chemicals in the brain they are largely doing so by altering quantities and utilization of neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, etc.). This doesn't necessarily have to be accomplished by a living organism, though it certainly could be. Depending on the level of technology available to your setting, you could very well have nanomachines slinking around in the victim's brain, inhibiting or activating receptors artificially, or generating whatever chemical is desired. Or, going the bio-tech route, as I was initially thinking when responding to this post, breeding and genetically engineering one of these parasitic critters to maximize their effectiveness for mental alteration, while likely reducing their destructive potential (unless you want them to eat the host's brain or whatever, that's your prerogative). [Answer] If the people in your world know a lot more about brains than we currently do (e.g. a future time setting), some folks in that time might understand how creating electrical impulses in certain neurons can trigger certain thoughts and actions. We can already see when opening up somebody's brain and touching certain spots, that can cause them to move their fingers, legs, etc. Technology to direct electromagnetic pulses to certain spots within the body are also in development e.g. for treating cancer tumors. One could imagine a more focused machine that can operate precisely and accurately at a distance, causing certain neurons to fire and thus causing the controlled person to think or do certain things. You could also try a psychological explanation, as (for example) many former Nazis tried to do. --- If this doesn't answer your question, it may be because "[any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws)." [Answer] Have you considered drugs? Here in the now in some parts of Africa, there is a concoction made of numerous poisonous plants and animals (including the puffer fish). Apparently, this is supposed to shock the system, so the person first falls into a coma, and when they begin to wake up, they can end up in a "highly suggestive state." I am by no means an expert on the subject, but it is something that many hypnotists talk about as well. Now it does have some drawbacks to this explanation, as there is no way it will explain the person doing something completely out of character, and you need a person giving directions in their language, and the person isn't really fully aware, usually not even remembering the incident. But it is a currently used technique. [Answer] That's probably difficult given our limited understanding of how the brain works. However and given the limited scope of what the OP calls "mind control", it can actually be performed through hypnosis on subjects highly susceptible to hypnosis. Usually a normal person cannot be force to do things they wouldn't normally do using hypnosis (you can't hypnotize your brother to make him go to school naked) HOWEVER there where some tests to see if you can actually use hypnotic suggestion to make someone kill someone else (using fake guns and actors), which is supposed to be the ultimate taboo. The result is that at least one subject that was shown before to be extremely receptive to hypnosis (through more standard methods) actually pushed the trigger. Hopefully so hard to repeat that the experiment is not seen with that much credibility. The point is that you can ask someone to do things with hypnosis but you can't make them do things that are not morally acceptable. add psychotropic drugs. always use drugs when you are a bad guy willing to mess with one's brain. Inhibiting a reaction is in the range of things a chemical can do, a lot of mental illness are treated this way. Inhibit taboo discernment and you can cure your good guy's pathological inability to kill another human being and then hypnotize him to do this totally normal thing edit concerning the op's edit: hypnosis works to control one's action in some rare cases but the victim is blissfully unaware of what he/she is doing, he might remember doing it but the whole point is that if he was conscious he wouldn't do it. Controlling someone's body without his consent is another (trickier) question [Answer] In terms of controlling someone's body without his consent, one possible method would be to bypass the normal signals that the brain sends to the muscles and install cybernetic implants that intercept said signals, and can send their own. Only a very small portion of this exists in real life, in the form of thought-controlled robotic prosthetics like [this New York Times article](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/technology/a-bionic-approach-to-prosthetics-controlled-by-thought.html?_r=0). These are fairly clunky, but they are getting better and it's not inconceivable a way to forge impulses from the brain could exist in the far future. [Answer] When I read this question, it immediately brought to mind recent [brain-computer interface (wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface) work. News stories such as this one about using [BCI to bypass a spinal cord](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/126773-researchers-create-brain-computer-interface-that-bypasses-spinal-cord-injury-paralysis) in order to help overcome paralysis show that this is not entirely a flight of fancy. If you can have thoughts control muscles - by converting them into electrical signals - then it's easy to "hijack" a person's body. That much is possible - given the right surgery - with today's technology. (This is awesome: both in the sense of an awe-inspiring medical cure for nerve injuries, and in the sense of a terrifying concept.) It's not a huge leap of faith to postulate the ability to transmit signals the other direction, stimulating parts of the brain (such as pleasure or pain receptors) or potentially even altering perceptions. Even something as "simple" as causing the body to produce adrenaline would have an effect on the victim's state of mind. I don't think it would be a large step from there to assume stimulating other parts of the brain, given some advances in psychology, couldn't allow at least some control. All you have to do is convince people to get this chip implanted in their skull - probably to "protect them" from some threat. [Answer] Take a quick peek at the [Ghost In The Shell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell) universe. In short: within the GITS universe, a "cyberized" brain is essentially a brain where the neurons have a jacket / wrapping of artificial computerized material. So a brain is not just your regular old fleshy heap of gray matter, but in effect also a computer. In GITS, a person sufficiently skilled in hacking can not just control another person's actions, or mess with their senses (like erasing themselves from a person's field of vision) but re-write their memories completely, a so-called "ghost hack"; ghost in this setting meaning "soul", the essence of what makes you the person you are. EDIT: Watch to the end... <https://youtu.be/z2mXrndt1ZI> In the following scene it is shown that this person is not anything of what he thought he was during the chase. [Answer] Check out [The Quantum Thief](http://amzn.to/1LKuHPo). It's set several centuries post singularity. Crypto ensures privacy. It validates the integrity of your exo-memory. It's how you *know* your thoughts and memories are really yours. Update: I was trying not to spoil things for people who have not read the book. I guess I was trying too hard. WARNING: If you haven't read the book, this contains spoilers. > > In The Quantum Thief, the society of the Oubliette makes extensive use of exomemory; non-biological, external, protected storage. It's preferential to biological memory, because it extends beyond biological death, is digitally signed ensuring its authenticity, and is not subject to the smudging or fading of biological memory. Every interaction is subject to gevulot, a cryptographically secure, contractual agreement defining what information is exchanged / retained, and for how long. This all works as long as the crypto is secure. > > > . > > However, Jean le Flambeur, the villain, possesses a key which allows the surreptitious editing of the exomemory. So, the populace remember the glorious revolution, not that the Oubliette was a penal colony and they were its prisoners. > > > . > > If you control the memories, you control the behavior that arises from the memories. > > > . > > There was some point where your rational mind made the realization that your childhood hero did not the measure up to the mythos. If someone had the ability to erase every memory that contradicts the mythos, what evidence would you have to question the Supreme Leader's right to eternal rule? > > > Conceptually, I find it much scarier than the premise of controlling an individual mind. It's about controlling an entire society. [Answer] This is one place that tends to force Sifi to become si-fantasy. But I'm not against that. Star Trek and Star Wars did that abundantly. I know you are trying to get the magic out of the story, but you could instead put the science back into magic. Look not everything is knowable. We don't even have a full explanation of why positive and negative charges attract. They just do. But we use that in science. So I'll give you a lifeline, if even a scary one on this. Suppose that, part of our minds exists in a different dimension, where it is accessible to the shared mind. We get shared ideas visions and communications that way. The input of the 'muse', our intuition comes that way. Maybe that is where the soul resides? So if you are in the right state (or wrong state) is it possible you could become vulnerable, even to mind control? Do we not have to reject crazy and upsetting ideas from time-to-time? But if you reside in a state of 'information disease' (google it) what then? [Answer] With mindcontrol you have a more problems to solve: 1. the way, to connect sender and receiver 2. the level of details of manipulation (from fear to exactly contracting selected muscles) 3. the lasting of it (from just live stream to life long modifications) 4. how many sender exists and how are commonly treated (from occasional hunted witch to nearly everyone normal) 5. maybe also the receivers can be only spare or nearly everyone is at the risk Let just use picture of internet - nearly any computer is connected, be it PC, laptop or smartphone - nearly none of it is supposed to be "fully commanded by unauthorized person", but hacking happens (and usually via programs not supposed to give control to anybody else - browsers, email clients, clocks, ...). User of hacked device may be aware about it and fighting it, but may be able to overcome it. Or may be full unaware. You can use this model for mind control too. 1.1. the simplest is "shared part of mind" somewhere outside our reach, where common ideas came from, but over eons every species developed "firewalls", that protects them from nearly anything, leaving just a small and "semicontrolled" ways to interact - dreams, sense of something bad happened, and so. But some individuals somehow found way around and are (willingly or not) to use some "hole" in the firewall and access victims inner mind. But it is nearly as bad as magic. Possible full range of actions and results. 1.2. brains use electricity, the waves can be detected, attacker is able to send its own waves and modify victims waves to affect her mind. 1.2.1.1. it can be natural, the range would be really limited and it is hard to explain, how it developed 1.2.1.2. it can artificial, the range can be much longer, if enough energy is available 1.2.2.1. attacker can have powerful transmitter 1.2.2.2. victim can have sensitive receiver 1.2.2.3. both 1.3. the brain use some sensors, (eyes, ears ...) which are used to transfer the signal - problem is with distance, on which such sensors can be affected 1.3.1 Natural ways - infrasound makes fear, big sharp tooth makes fear too, big round eyes make cute, innocent and attractive look, regularities are nice, irregularities are repulsive ... 1.3.1.1. Attacker may be able to alter his face/voice/scent/... in subtle ways to affect victim by this to push her to wanted state of mind - limited reach and hard to get precise control 1.3.1.2. Attacker can develop ways to overcome recognition and send messages directly in by some hole (equivalents of crafted packages, like Ping Of Death, or Buffer Overflow) - it is complicated as the signal is interpreted many times, before it reach the central mind, so it should have hack each and every level on the way in 1.3.1.3. Sumbliminar affecting - whispering to sleeping person "must kill Bill" and such 1.3.2. Artificial ways 1.3.2.1 - mass - use of TV propaganda or "every 30 frame is message" or similar ways 1.3.2.2 - direct - crafted phone calls, body enhancements (like modified voice, facial moving mask and so) 1.3.2.3. indirect - let suppose, that (nearly everyone/supposed victim/...) have implanted any artificial device, which can be hacked and used to send some signals to neural system. In near future at least mobile phones can be so popular and constantly used, that at least BT speakers would be implanted. Or even better also some visual stream like google glasses. This way victim can be directed precisely by phone number/IP/... and using bugs/zero day holes/viruses/infected SW/any other popular method attacker get direct access to its victim neural system. As it bypasses usual interface, it can do anything. Over any distance. Like a classical computer virus. 2. level: 2.1. subtle - just make adrenaline raise, shock victim if misbehaves, make it spasm or anything other unwanted if it does not do, what you was, make victim happy, relaxed, or otherwise feeling good if she obeys and over some time you can train she anything you want - slow, not precise, but relatively simple method 2.2. alter her senses, that she see someone as monter and attack just from being scared of him 2.3. alter her memory/mind - make her "remember" that someone is her cruel enemy, which must be destroyed at any cost Those way make victim behave "on her own will" but maybe "again her better judgement" - like it happens even now many times with abused, drug users, mentally ill, or just any other way manipulated people "I know, he is cheater, but I have to return to him and try to make him better", "I know I should not drink and my head will hurt at morning, but one more whiskey anyway", "I can't help myself, but I must eat this chocolate, even if I know I will cry over it in ten minutes" 2.4. if you can get deeper, you can trigger learned reactions - like send "attack", "run away", "sleep", "freeze", "lay down" and make the body react before mind came realize, what happens - and eventually override the victims commands totally 2.5. the hardest is manipulating the muscles directly - as you need issue really specific and complex commands and probably have also good feedback, otherwise the victim would just fall after two steps. 3. lasting: 3.1. direct commands - victim "works" only under direct control, attacker have to make her every one move specifically - (point 2.5. leads here for example) 3.2. immediate action only - attacker issue simple command ("run away", "come here") and victim fulfills it, but then is free to do anything, until next command. Also she can call for help while doing the command ("Somebody please stop me now"), until commanded to be silent - this is typical where direct visibility is also request. Attacker can issue such commands in voice (and fully detailed) "Came here and give me the key you got from John" (like a total authority figure), or by other means (maybe gesture, grimace, but then it is not so specific) 3.3. long lasting (altering mind/memory mainly) - victim then would attack anybody in blue shirt any time she see somebody like that. Maybe it would fade away in days/moths, maybe it would be permanent 4. and 5. affects the world balance: 4.1. one of few attackers exists - they got their power from somebody (mad scientist, old chinese monk, developed spontaneously or such) and probably will end else hunted (Frankenstein), town/state/world leader/ruler (dark wizard king) or willingly hiding from public 4.2. large group exists - world must react somehow on it. Such group may be genetically modified, or some blood heritage, small nation, or something like albinos, or red-heads. 4.3. nearly everyone is able to mind control - like nearly anyone can physically attack in current world (maybe except small child or some minorities) 5.1. Only 3rd son of 3rd son can be mind attacked 5.2. Only 15-18 years virgins 5.3. Anybody ill, tired or with predisposition 5.4. Just anybody (maybe except few) can get computer virus --- I would probably prefer model with (mad scientist, or some group like Illuminati) have a device (or altered brain, that they can do it) and the mind control is only on near range/direct vision with 3.2. immediate action only, where victim can be anybody (but few naturally resistant or shielded), so the world would be like ours, maybe with super villains and superheroes. The other good combination is, that nearly everyone have implanted telephone, so is hackable, nearly everyone possibly can hack, but it is not easy, as good firewalls and regular updates makes defense really strong and attacker need a lot of knowledge and skills to be able hack on high level. (But spammers and script kidies are relatively common, as not updated firewalls are). Control is usually immediate action, as it is the most simple, but all range of attack are possible, but much more difficult (only few can construct false memories, that lasts normal checks, or puppet somebody around with direct control, as it is extremely difficult to do, not to deliver) This is world of Ghost In The Shell for example, or more powerful Shadowrun, reflecting the current world of PCs connected to internet. Many get a little hacked, but usually without much loss (except for some money, privacy and similar non fatal problems), but on higher levels (business, government, celebrity) the war is much stronger, as there are much less targets, much more to obtain and much higher skills required to have a chance try to attack. [Answer] Noosphere The noosphere is the sphere of human thought.The word derives from the Greek νοῦς (nous "mind") and σφαῖρα (sphaira "sphere"), in lexical analogy to "atmosphere" and "biosphere." In the original theory of Vernadsky, a Russian, Ukrainian, soviet scientist, the noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere. For Teilhard, the noosphere emerges through and is constituted by the interaction of human minds. The noosphere has grown in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the earth. As mankind organizes itself in more complex social networks, the higher the noosphere will grow in awareness. But, for making noosphere a tool of mind control, you should use the noosphere features present in STALKER game series. In the game, the theory of noosphere is altered slightly. Rather than a (more or less) abstract social/environmental concept, the noosphere is very much real, a tangible if invisible field surrounding the Earth linked by, affected by and affecting human minds and thoughts. [![Something like this](https://i.stack.imgur.com/963HF.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/963HF.jpg) So, imagine that every human being is linked to this network. If a person is able to enter consciously into the noosphere, he can gain access to any other person mind, given that every mind is linked each other in the noosphere. [Answer] ### Hormones and Pheromones [Hormones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_hormones) regulate and influence many physiological processes. [Pheromones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheromone#Humans) influence social processes. Both can trigger a response from a person, even when the victim knows they are exposed to hormones or pheromones. Even if a victim knows what is happening, being injected with epinephrine (adrenalin) will trigger a fight-or-flight response; increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, rapid breathing. Pheromones act in the same way but are even easier to administer since they just need to be smelled. [According to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheromone#Humans), > > In a 1978 study by Kirk-Smith, people wearing surgical masks treated with androstenol or untreated were shown pictures of people, animals and buildings and asked to rate the pictures on attractiveness. Individuals with their masks treated with androstenol rated their photographs as being "warmer" and "more friendly". > > > Hormones could be delivered by injection, or perhaps using [dimethyl sulfoxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfoxide), having it absorbed directly through the skin. I remember a Dutch Hulk comic in which a carny tries to make the Hulk a circus freak by locking Bruce Banner in an electrified cage and dousing him with a mixture of DMSO and adrenaline. It works, turning Bruce Banner into the Hulk instantly, but of course the Hulk escapes. > > D... M... S... O... > > Crypto wonder drug in vogue > > Some people say > > It cures arthritis > > Maybe that's why > > It keeps getting banned > > It's absorbed > > Directly through the skin > > Mix it with lemon juice > > Touch your fingertips > > You'll taste the lemon > > > The police > > Started a riot > > Down at the courthouse > > Again > > Running amok > > Spilling blood > > Bashing heads > > > I do my part > > Behind the lines > > Swabbing door handles of cop cars > > With D.M.S.O. > > Mixed with L.S.D. > > — ["DMSO" by Dead Kennedys](http://www.deadkennedys.com/albums_bed.html#20) > > > [Answer] It's already a thing, at least with animals. Scientists have implanted electrodes in the brains of creatures as diverse as insects and mice to pretty much remote-control them. It should be noted, though, that the more complex a brain is, the harder it is to work with. Flies can basically be maneuvered directly (on the ground at least), but for mice they've only managed to 'encourage' them to move left, right, forward or back by triggering their pleasure centers (and it still can't override basic instincts like forcing them to jump off a high ledge). In higher mammals like apes and humans, even the most basic physical movements are not hardwired from birth, but learned over the course of childhood, so the pattern in which they are encoded in the brain will differ from one individual to the next. We can analyze someone's personal brain-to-body interface by scanning their brain over time, examining which neurons fire when they perform certain actions. We've been using this for robotic prosthetics, but by reversing the process it could presumably be used for controlling the body. However, it does mean that you (or an AI) would need some time to study the subject before you could control them; you couldn't just stick a mind control implant into someone and expect it to work immediately. This can be used for dramatic tension; a person knows they have an implant and they only have a limited time to get it out before it learns their brain's structure and takes over. [Answer] First we must have a theory of how mind do what it perform, it's not clear with actual science. there is a promising but not evidence about it's validity that open a perspective of what you ask for it's Quantum theory of mind. if it is valid we can think that if mind work at quantum level, the energy to change a state level of quanta is very low and is amplified at physique level, if we understand how quantum work what every state perform we can induce a very small change in quanta and get a very big change in macro world its butterfly effect, if someones talk that we can change the climate by very small but accurate action a mind will be a piece of cake. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind> [Answer] One method I used in a short story that I wrote involved quantum entanglement, a person meshing enough with another person's brain such that they thought alike and, by changing their thoughts, they changed the other person's. Because the entanglement, by nature, had to be imprecise (otherwise, they would literally be of one mind), it was closer to inserting stray thoughts than actual control. It's the difference from constantly nudging in a "What would happen if I gave John a good shove while he was bent over the stove?" than a "ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL... PUSH JOHN INTO STOVE". [Answer] Two ideas for using chemicals as agents for m/c come to mind: 1. Chemicals which are ingested. E.g. In the real world, certain acacia trees deliberately provide food and housing for ants. The food contains some substance which causes the ants to defend the trees. More [HERE](http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/tropical-plant-uses-mind-control-chemical-to-make-ants-do-its-bidding.html) 2. The use of pheremone-like scents. See Wikipedia. [Answer] Easy as pie! One tells/shows something that our brain detects as fearful. It automatically turns on the reaction known as Fight-or-flight response. During this state the body emits a set of substances into blood stream. Adrenaline, endorphines etc. All this substances have narcotic nature and bring high state. People are addicted to their internal drugs. So they seek to get more. One can give any suggestion to an addicted person during such "trips". That's it. No any magic. Just pure science. LOL ]
[Question] [ ## The Problem: Atlantis has angered the gods. Having developed fantastical technologies far beyond the rest of the planet, they have managed to challenge the gods themselves. The gods' reaction is to kill every last Atlantean in existence. Let's say that the Atlanteans know this. They know the gods are angry and they know that at some point in the near future, the gods will wipe them all out. How can they survive in spite of this? ## Assumptions: * The gods are very literal, and will see their work as done and move on when all Atlanteans are dead. * The gods are incredibly powerful and cannot be destroyed. They can kill any Atlantean anywhere anytime. They are not omniscient, but they can see where all Atlanteans are at any given time. * The gods are not technological at all and do not understand even the simplest piece of Atlantean tech * The Atlanteans have Star Trek level technology, but lack spaceflight. * Survival is defined as: "Atlanteans alive at some point after the gods have killed them all." [Answer] One way to have living Atlanteans after all extant Atlantean have died is to use a seeding machine. [In-vitro](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro) fertilisation and extra-uterus gestation could be supplanted with stored milk and stored learning aids for the young. This topic is well-discussed in planet-seeding stories, and there is no reason why it wouldn't work as well on the same planet that the species evolved on. [Answer] Since you say the Atlantean's technology is "rivalling the gods themselves" then they clearly have access to things we don't. They should sort out a relatively simple chemical cocktail that will initially stop the heart then after 2 minutes restart it. They hand out those to everyone on the island of Atlantis. When a certain time strikes they all swallow the pill. So long as there is a 2 minute overlap where they are all dead then they satisfy the criteria. A more high tech/logistical approach could also be done by achieving the same thing using stasis. A final approach would be to grow new bodies in clone vats and upload themselves to computers. Once the upload is complete all the existing bodies die, they wait out the wrath of the gods then download themselves back into the new clone bodies and resume their lives. Edit to add another option: Create a bubble of space time/alternate dimension and hide in that until the gods have calmed down a bit. [Answer] You mention that the Atlanteans far surpass the rest of the planet. How do the gods define `Atlantean`? Will a non-technological loophole work? Option 1: The King of Atlantis strikes a hasty deal with Athens. In exchange for advanced technology, Athens will briefly grant Athenian citizenship to all living Atlanteans. When the gods carry out their wrath, they find no living Atlanteans -- only Athenians living on Atlantis. Option 2: The people of Atlantis unanimously vote to change the name of their island to "Atlanta". Not being omniscient, the gods know only that they cannot find any living Atlanteans, but fail to see the new "Welcome to Atlanta" signs. [Answer] > > The Atlanteans have Star Trek level technology, but lack spaceflight. > > > This is not specific about what Star Trek technology is available, so I'm going to assume anything in any of the series is fair game. In Voyager s4e12 "Mortal Coil", Neelix dies. Seven of Nine revives him 18 hours after the doctor pronounces him dead, and she mentions that the Borg do this regularly for drones, up to 72 hours after death. Atlantean solution: Set up everyone in the nation in some kind of automated medical suite. The medical suites will kill everyone at the same time through some unspecified means. (Your options here are near-limitless. Just try to avoid mutilating the body!) Several days later, the automated medical suites inject the corpses with nanites which will restore them to life. Once the Atlanteans are revived, the doctors among them can administer any necessary post-revival treatments. As the Doctor (Who, not Voyager) once said, "Life is just Nature's way of keeping meat fresh." --- Another Star Trek option would be storing their people in a teleporter's pattern buffer as mentioned by Caleb Hines. Voyager does this in s5e10 "Counterpoint" to hide some telepathic passengers they've picked up (as well as their telepathic crewmen) whenever they were subjected to inspections in a region of space where telepathy is illegal. Voyager had trouble maintaining the telepaths' patterns for the mere duration of an inspection, although in The Next Generation s6e4 "Relics", the crew finds Scotty who has been kept alive in the pattern buffer for 75 years. Of course, Scotty is an absolute genius when it comes to transporters. (Note that, even with Scotty's genius, ensign Matt Franklin's transporter pattern degraded to uselessness after the 75-year stasis.) Technically speaking with this option, the Atlaneans wouldn't be dead (unlike the first option where they would be corpses for several days), but since they would be little more than computer data, it may be enough to fool the gods. [Answer] My suggestion (which pushes the bounds of the technology you've described) is some kind of time or body travel. Either physically or through psychic means. If the gods will be satisfied when there are no humans on Atlantis then have them all travel forwards or back in time, you've stated that the gods are not technological - if they vanished into the future/past would the gods realise and pursue them? Second option, the Atlanteans all go to sleep somehow and wake up in different bodies. This could either be in their own world/time or at some point in the future. From a fictional point of view you could have a lot of fun with this! [Answer] Since it's Gods we're dealing with - is a deal with one God behind the backs of the others an option? Or a disgruntled God with no desire to help Atlanteans but merely to spite the others? Or another supernatural entity? Since your focus is on technology what about an attempt by an Atlantean scientist to create technology to nullify a Gods powers within a certain radius? Alternatively there are mythological references to (places?) between life and death that might serve as a suitable hiding place. See Purgatory. Edit: Also consider if the plot requires the revelation of the motivation, i.e. some Atlanteans may simply wake up miles from home, hearing that their city was destroyed and their people wiped out - they might never find out that another God sheltered them. [Answer] One answer that hasn't been considered is one of the most ancient ways of dealing with the Gods. A covenant. There are many ancient religions that consider entry into the priesthood a form of death, as in death of the old self, death to the world, and so on. Even in Christianity, the symbol of baptism was originally a symbol of burial (and subsequent rebirth). Perhaps the Atlanteans, or a sect of Atlanteans, could offer to become a race of priests in exchange for their life, or the continued survival of their people. It's up to you if the sacrifices have to be literal, devotional, or figurative. This is a little similar to the solution offered by others, but it allows for much smarter and more formidable Gods, since it's not an attempt to dupe the Gods with an insulting name change. Rather, it's a treaty of sorts, between two formidable powers. However you go about it, I recommend that you use multiple methods. Any large culture would have to have many differing sub-cultures, with differing attitudes about such important matters. Some would prefer stasis, others a brief suicide, others would rather seed, and others would rather side-step the issue by covenant. Tension between the different factions can be a great backdrop for a story. Perhaps one struggle to overcome is the timing. If not all Atlanteans are "dead" simultaneously, then perhaps the whole plan will unravel. Further, perhaps the methods are interrelated: Perhaps a small corps of techno-priests are needed to revive the people in the stasis chambers, and the majority of the populace is unwilling to make the sacrifice to become a priest. [Answer] Assuming Atlantis is a place... I would simply rename it. Make it well known that it has been renamed to say Footantis, make sure people are aware they are now Footanteans. I would then declare Atlantis in a different physical location and move the worst criminals to this new location and declare them Atlanteans - I know sacrifice is never a truly moral option but this is an entire civilization at stake and this move is critical in appeasing the Gods and letting them accomplish their goal. After this I would ease this transition in the God's minds by declaring that the objective of the change was to put a line in the sand on having a renewed respect for the Atlantean forerunners (the Gods) and perhaps incorporate some infrequent celebrations of the Gods existence. [Answer] There are several scenarios which could lead to a future group of people to consider themselves "Atlantean", the "survival" of Atlantean culture and technology, even though all of the original Atlanteans are dead and have no descendants. These could occur "accidentally" with no deliberate pre-planning on the part of any of the original Atlanteans. (I'm assuming that Atlanteans are, biologically, baseline humans). * Some group of non-Atlantean people think that Atlanteans were pretty cool and decide to try to switch from whatever culture they have now to something as close to Atlantean as they can manage. But they don't really have enough information about the Atlanteans, so they end up something like a [cargo cult](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cargo_cult) which pretty much everyone else, including the gods, realizes is not anything like the original Atlantean culture. * Some group of non-Atlantean people think that Atlanteans were pretty cool and decide to try to switch from whatever culture they have now to something as close to Atlantean as they can manage. "I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can, even if there isn't any Narnia." -- C.S. Lewis. They have enough information about how Atlantean culture started that they start from the same place -- much like certain historic nations switched from one political structure to another -- monarchy, direct democracy, representative democracy, communism, fascism, etc.; and the way certain questions such as [Hilbert's problems](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_problems) influenced the direction of mathematical research for decades. After several generations of effort, they re-invent more-or-less the same technologies as the original Atlanteans, with minor incompatibilities between their equipment and "true" Atlantean artifacts. * Some group of non-Atlantean people come across the Atlantean ruins, and uncover books in the ruins of Atlantean schools and libraries. Some group of non-Atlantean people -- perhaps much later, in a museum at some distant time and location that the original group sold the books to, or perhaps the original group themselves immediately upon discovering the artifacts -- translates the text or learns to read in the original text. The information -- and perhaps a few key tools that would be difficult to bootstrap from scratch, but are relatively easy to duplicate once you already have the tools -- allows them to rapidly repair and rebuild the culture, technology, machines, etc. of Atlantis without getting stuck on any of the many dead-ends of original researchers. Perhaps books give enough hints that, combined with their previous knowledge from their home country(s), followed by some practice and training, that they learn to repair and operate the machinery, boats, airplanes, etc. still remaining in Atlantis. After months of asking themselves "What would an Atlantean do in front of this control panel?" and "How would a crew of Atlanteans operate a ship like this?" and lying to Atlantean security doors, they may find it easier to temporarily think of themselves as Atlantean, something like [method acting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/method_acting). * Some group of non-Atlantean people come across the Atlantean ruins, and uncover learning machines used in Atlantean schools. Some group of non-Atlantean people -- perhaps much later, in a museum at some distant time and location that the original group sold the artifacts to, or perhaps the original group themselves immediately upon discovering the artifacts -- somehow (accidentally?) activates the machines, which more or less brainwash them into believing they are Atlantean citizens, and brain-dump years worth of information and training in their heads in relatively little time (hours?). Perhaps implanted memories are true and more-or-less complete memories of individual Atlanteans, or perhaps they are carefully edited or even completely fabricated. The information and training -- allows them to repair and operate the machinery, boats, airplanes, etc. still remaining in Atlantis. Some Superman stories speculate that Superman may have turned out a lot differently if he had landed in the Soviet Union rather than the United States. Other Superman stories have people worried that Kryptonian artifacts may brainwash him into switching to "Kryptonian morality". Apparently there are some people today that worry that spending too much time with violent video games may somehow cause them to act more violently than they otherwise would act. Related: the Star Trek episode ["The Inner Light"](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Inner_Light_(episode)). [Answer] Assuming they have "generic" technology and that the gods are not omniscient and that they are mystical. My understanding is that the gods can kill anyone as soon as they know of them. Such that an atlatean could walk amongst worshipper unharmed but should they show who they are they'd die at this moment. Could the Atlanteans hide from the god : Either by (ironically) sinking atlantis? I think Star gate placed atlantis as a sunken spaceship. Could they do the same without the Starship part? Teleportation could play a part in this. Or simply hide it throught light manipulation based camouflage and technological cloacking? Do the Atlatean understand the physic involve in tehe god's "existence"? Could they genetically engineer themselves to stop being "atlanteans" or just stop being human? Could they upload themselves in machine, so that their body can die while their consciousness lives on. Since you mention Star Trek as a guide, I think the cloacking idea is possible. Giving themselves the time to research means to genetically change themselves or just organize hidden party to interact with humans. If my understanding of the dangers is correct, they could trade with men as long as they pretend to be from somewhere else. As an example, they could keep trading with France by pretending to be Greek. [Answer] The primary lesson to learn from Greco-Roman mythology is "Never swear anything by the River Styx." It never helps. Every time the gods do it, they always wind up regretting doing so. It invites disaster of one form or another, because it is the oath that no god ever dares to break. What do your gods fear? What won't they do? If the gods can kill Atlanteans with a thought, at any time and across any distance, then the only thing that can really stop them from genociding the whole race in an instant is having a reason not to. It might be a law of some kind, or a limitation on their power, or just about any other factor. They might not be happy about it: in fact, the very reason that they must not kill all the Atlanteans might also be the reason that they're so angry. But they must have some reason to accept, if only grudgingly, that some Atlanteans must live. The Atlanteans' role in their own survival, then, would involve setting up this situation. Once they've angered the gods, they probably don't have much time to maneuver into the proper position, so it needs to be something they could do quickly. It's possible that the Atlanteans might not finish the process in time to save everyone, which would explain why the gods were able to kill almost all of them: the gods' hands were not tied until the last possible moment. Here's one possible scenario: the Atlanteans were a proud people, acknowledging the power of the gods but finding them unworthy of worship (in other words, not so much atheists as dystheists). The gods did not consider them enough of a threat to be worth noticing... until a day came when the Atlanteans built an "apotheosis machine" to give the power of the gods to one of their own number: essentially, to make a new god. The machine blew up in the process, destroying a large portion of their civilization, but the test subject removed unscathed, glowing with his new divinity. This angered and terrified the gods, who sought retribution by killing every Atlantean they could. They were forbidden by ancient law to kill true believers of any true god, as a means of preventing religious war, but the Atlanteans' pride had led them away from true belief, so the law gave them no protection. Or at least, it gave them no protection until the prototype -the new god- formed a faith around himself. Not many Atlanteans were willing to worship any god, not even the one they had made. For that, they perished at the hands of the other gods, and died spitting upon their "craven" brothers who would live on bended knee. But a few Atlanteans did survive, under the de facto protection of the prototype. Their god is a pariah among the other gods for his "artificial" origins, and the "cowardice" of the surviving Atlanteans has not been forgotten either, so they are pariahs among people. But the gods must not kill them, and so they are grudgingly left alone. [Answer] May I suggest humble prayer to the gods, begging them to reconsider? There are several books where such prayers lead to the survival of at least a few people otherwise earmarked for destruction. [Answer] Establish a monarchy. Give the monarch the executive power to make willing foreigners Atlantean citizens, and the power to revoke citizenship of Atlanteans. Have the monarch renounce all Atlanteans citizenship. Instantly, there are no Atlantean citizens (The monarch does not have Atlantean citizenship, as in Britain.) Monarch restores everyone to citizenship 1 minute later after the Gods have moved on. Who needs tech? [Answer] Possibilities are endless. You can go back in time and stop what angered the gods, go back in time and stop gods from creating(though possibly stopping Atlanteans from being created), or you can set a trap so that gods are sent to some other dimension, other time(this could be nice - a kind of circular dependancy - gods would be sent to the time they appeared in the universe, meaning that they appeared in the universe because they go angry at Atlanteans and they sent them back in time), or they could change their DNA(all of them or some of them), and prepare the machine that would restore their original DNA after they are safe(to simplify what I mean, imagine that human race is in the same position - they could modify themselves to become, let's say, monkeys, and after extinction become humans once more). Since gods don't understand technology, they can't spot traps before it's too late. But you can also use it to calm them down - either just convince them that your technology isn't this threatening at all, and in fact is just harmless toy, or make technology look like it is a toy. They would calm down, hopefully. Alternatively pray to the gods for forgiveness, or do some trick with babies like other people suggested. Problem is interesting, but remember that you can alter the universe to your will, so if you want to make circular dependancy described above possible - just do it. If you want some other trick - go on. You can make your own backdoor for that too :) ]
[Question] [ I think this boils down to a question of how much fundamental understanding is needed to build a very basic nuclear reactor to boil water. If fissile material was readily available to an otherwise primitive steam-age civilization, could they use it as a fuel source without having a deeper understanding of atomic physics? Is simply understanding that when you place these special rocks in close proximity they get hot, enough to make a steam locomotive? [Answer] I think it matters how the fissile material is "lying around". In our world, the two limiting factors are the mining and extraction of uranium, and the enrichment of the fissile isotope. Of these, the second is substantially harder (requiring gas centrifuges and other fairly 20th century technology) - the former is feasible with only late 18th century refining - pure uranium salt [was isolated in 1789](http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/mcfadden1/). As pointed out in the comments, enrichment is not actually necessary for modern reactors - the Chicago pile 1 ran on natural uranium. However, it seems unlikely that anyone would realise the potential to generate atomic energy without a firm theoretical motivation, which would not be possible without an understanding of atomic science. I postulate that the only way to see fission happen without understanding it fundamentally is by having your natural uranium be "highly enriched" by our standards. Suppose that your uranium occurs naturally in a highly enriched isotope mix. I see the timeline going as follows: 1. (formation of the planet) Any particularly rich veins of uranium ore will react with themselves, boiling off any water that leaches into them. By the time humans arrive, any uranium to be found will not be present in concentrations that are easily fissile, so you will need ordinary fire to get your industrial revolution started. 2. (48CE-) Pitchblende is used as a yellow / green coloring agent in glass. The property of pitchblende to warm up when wetted is viewed as a curiosity, but few have access to large enough chunks to use it for fission. 3. (1700's) Uranium [can occur](https://geologyscience.com/ore-minerals/uranium-ore/#Occurrence_and_Distribution_of_Uranium_Ore) in the same kinds of deposits that produce copper, tin, tungsten and molybdenum. (Modern day Australian uranium is a [byproduct](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/uranium-resources/geology-of-uranium-deposits.aspx) of copper extraction) Small scale preindustrial mining would likely not have smelted sufficient quantities to notice anything fission-related, but in industrial volumes, workers notice that the heavy slag at the bottom of the tin crucible remains warm long after the metal has been removed, curiously exploding in a puff of steam when lowered into water. Scientists are baffled. 4. (1789) First isolation of uranium salts. This is already plenty pure enough to use in a primitive reactor. 5. (1830) Attempts to use 'tinslag' for heat lead to crude reactors. Curiously, under some circumstances, water seems to cause more heat to be released. 6. (1845) First model of Stephenson's Eternal Engine, Prometheus, is released to wide acclaim. No longer is our nation's power beholden to the greed of coal-mining barons! The Manhattan Project was limited by three things - rarity of uranium ore, poor understanding of the fundamental physics, and the difficulty of enriching the uranium. Much of the scientific work that went on at Los Alamos was in fact pure trial and error - empirical measurements of cross sections and critical masses, etc. If your uranium is both naturally enriched and abundant, you short-circuit that. Aside from this, early atomic piles did not strictly speaking require any technology that could not (in principle) have been made in the late 1800s. In short, I believe that an abundance of dilute, enriched uranium could push reactors forward 50 years, perhaps more, but an advanced industrial mining complex is still needed to extract and purify useful quantities of raw material. Reactors can be extremely primitive indeed - [one even formed by accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor). On a human scale, a sufficiently large block of U-235 with a control rod will function as a reactor - but the process of getting to a safe design will be, erm, messy. [Answer] # If the time is 2 billion years ago, yes If we assume an Earth-like world, where life evolved about three times as fast, then they need no technical understanding at all. ## ...because then natural nuclear reactors existed. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SqfWT.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SqfWT.jpg) One of the reactor zones at Oklo, Gabon, Africa (image credit: US DoE) When the Earth came to be, the isotope composition of natural Uranium was — roughly — the same as that of present day nuclear fuel, after enriching. This then means that what was needed to get a chain reaction going was... * A concentration of uranium ore in a compact volume * Water, as a moderator ...and this is exactly what happened at what is present day Oklo, Gabon. So, 2 billion years ago, for tens of thousands of years, these natural reactor zones operated in cycles. Water would flow through the ore, moderate the chain reaction, cause the zone to heat up, make water to boil off, the chain reaction stops, the zone cools down, and start over, in about 3 hour cycles. Assuming a primitive culture existed back then, they would be able to see this happen with their own eyes. The issue would be, that this would not be very healthy for them. But, yes, they would be able to see that if you pile that very particular kind of dense and heavy rock together in large enough a pile, and soak it in water, then it heats up. ...and then they get sick and possibly die, without knowing why. [Answer] Yes and No. The core idea has enough merit that it could be plausible. However just getting things hot enough to boil water is the easy part. Doing it in such a way that you don't accidentally irradiate everyone and kill them off in horrible ways is much much harder. And therein lies the problem with this idea. With modern physics, it took us nearly 30 years to discover that radiation was actually quite bad for you and even longer still to fully appreciate that. But let's assume that because of the amount of Fissile material lying around, our inhabitants have evolved some resistance to radiation: Without an understanding of what is happening - the chance of having a runaway chain reaction leading to a meltdown or nuclear explosion increases drastically Imagine you are but a simple worker: If one lump of magic rock is good, 2 must be better. If two lumps of magic rock is better, then 3 must be amazing. If three lumps of magic rock is a Amazing then 4 must be Nuclear detonation. [Answer] Nuclear reactors are simple in principle but in practice are complex and delicate machinery, building and operating them safely requires a good understanding of the underlying processes. Given the dangers it's unlikely this understanding can be developed by pure, unassisted trial and error. Frame challenge: Radioisotope thermal generators avoid most of these pitfalls. While still needing extremely dangerous materials (let's not forget that fissile materials are typically also highly toxic), it is just about possible for an early civilisation that can already extract, smelt and process lead to discover that certain Deadly Rocks can be encased in lead and be used to heat stuff. The crucial thing about RTGs is that not only are they mechanically simple (no moving parts, no special materials, just some fissile stuff surrounded by heat transferring shielding), they use fissile isotopes incapable of sustaining a chain reaction. There is still a lot of experimentation required to do this reliably and without the heat melting the lead casing but depending on the relative abundance or scarcity of other sources of heat it could be a tempting enough option. Especially if we consider that in a society that already has much higher mortality levels than rich modern societies, detecting longer-term harms of radiation would've been much more difficult. Just look at how long it took even as recently as the 19th century to establish that stuff like arsenic-laced wallpaper, gas lighting or coal-burning fireplaces were slowly killing you and thus weren't great to have in your home. The main challenge with RTGs however is that while they last an awfully long time, their power density is fairly low, and they need isotopes with relatively short half lives, so there must be a natural process that continuously produces lots of them. As no such process exists on Earth, real-life RTGs rely on isotopes created in nuclear reactors, which puts us back to square one: you need to build a nuclear reactor first. [Answer] Maybe and no. Nuclear reactor as such is not an issue at all: they can occur spontaneously, too, as already pointed out. The issue is basically the same as with the steam in steam engines: producing steam is not a problem at all: it can occur naturally as well. The actual problems lie in everything else but the power source. You can revisit the question by asking if the civilization could create the same thing by burning wood, ie. obtaining the heat from combustion instead of nuclear fission. If the answer is "no", then they cannot build the same thing with nuclear power source either. Which is probably the case. However, if the answer is somehow, miraculously "yes", then it is somewhat plausible that they could end up using fissile nuclear material instead of combustible one, but there are still some extra issues left: eg. shielding against radiation, controlling the chain reaction (it needs way more precise control than a furnace), and handling the waste. In my opinion, there are too many issues with the trial-and-error approach that I think it is almost implausible, but not completely impossible. Science, after all, has involved lot of trial and error, too, but they also tried to understand what was going on, and make hypotheses and test them etc. It is hard to believe that all of this could be achieved just by trial and error, ie. without something resembling science. [Answer] For a crude nuclear reactor, you basically need three things: A fissile fuel (Uranium-235), typically in a concentration of 3%-5%, a moderator (water) to slow neutrons down to thermal energies (this increases the probability of fission due to reasons), a coolant to transfer heat away from the reactor (also water). You might also want a strong neutron absorber like boron to control the reactor, but this can also be achieved by removing fissile material. If you assume that your world conveniently already has some naturally enriched uranium, then it's not that hard to create a reactor, and I could see it being discovered by accident. Like someone was storing a bunch of uranium ore, and it flooded (adding a moderator), resulting in a chain reaction. From there they might just start putting uranium into a big water tank and seeing what happens. In this scenario, it's actually kind of hard to have a meltdown, since boiling water will displace the moderator and slow down the chain reaction. This is known as a boiling water reactor (BWR) if you want something to google. Now it's [not impossible to have an accident with a BWR](https://youtu.be/8WfNzJVxVz4?t=802). Keep in mind though, when nuclear power gets discovered, the conversation usually goes like so: "Hey there's way more energy stored in them there glowy rocks than any of our fossil fuels", "Yeah, I bet we could make a pretty kick-ass bomb with that stuff". [Answer] No, a primitive civilization would not be able to trial-and-error their way to a functional nuclear reactor without a deeper understanding of atomic physics. Building a basic nuclear reactor requires not only access to fissile material but also a fundamental understanding of criticality, radiation, heat transfer, and reactor dynamics. Without this knowledge, it would be extremely difficult to harness nuclear energy safely and efficiently. ]
[Question] [ This question already has answers here: [What could an average modern human achieve in medieval times?](/questions/13030/what-could-an-average-modern-human-achieve-in-medieval-times) (30 answers) Closed 6 years ago. How could a time traveller from our era change the outcome of a medieval battle using only knowledge of history, geography and modern science? Lets suppose our time traveller is a learned person with a good grasp of at least high school science and history. He / she has the ear of the king and has prep time of up to six months to a year before a decisive battle is to be fought against a foe with superior numbers, whom history decrees will win the battle Chemistry: Gunpowder was my first thought, but getting access to base ingredients would be difficult. Physics: Better siege weapons, perhaps more effective trebuchets, but these won't help with a confrontation between two armies on the field How does our traveller make a difference? [Answer] Trying to implement modern tehnology in a short time is a non-starter. Don't go that way. Use the local tehnology and military knowledge augmented with the unique intelligence opportunity brought by the special advisor. They are a time traveller, right? So they know (1) how large is the opposing force and its composition, (2) when it will be assembled and where, (3) what route they will take and (4) where the battle is to be fought. Using this knowledge they can instruct the king to: * Assemble a larger force. Medieval armies were tiny. Any half decent kingdom could easily assemble a larger force than what the enemy thought was enough -- in medieval times the real problem was the abysmal logistics, so, if the king knows precisely when and were to assemble to host it should be easily feasible to achieve superior numbers. * Counteract the composition of the opposing force. The enemy comes with heavy cavalry? Prepare the field with [caltrops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caltrop), masked ditches, and other anti-cavalry surprises. If they have a little time they could introduce effective anti-cavalry tactics, such as [pike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_(weapon)) formations. The enemy relies on Genoese mercenaries armed with cross-bows? Fight behind field fortifications. Surely the generals will know what to do if you tell them in advance what the enemy will bring. * Choose a better battlefield. The time traveller knows the route and the schedule of the opposing force: the generals of the king can exploit this knowledge to choose a battlefield which favors them. * By knowing the size, composition, route and schedule of the opposing force your side can easily achieve [strategic surprise](http://www.iwp.edu/news_publications/detail/strategic-surprise); if they can't they amply deserve to lose. Launch a pre-emptive attack. Attach the opposing force en route. Defeat the opponents in detail before they can concentrate their forces. [Answer] The first and most important thing to teach, and one that also can be applied in the available time, is hygiene, as mentioned by others. I remember reading that in medieval times soldiers often weren't allowed to remove their uniform at any time. Dump that stupid rule and make them wash. Also, make them wash their uniforms. Aside from other things it will also mightily impress the opposing army. Once you got them started on hygiene, make sure they understand that latrines are to be built away from water sources. Next, teach them about logistics: Make sure your own troops are well provisioned. And focus your military attention on disrupting the enemies supply chain, whenever possible by taking their food for yourself. And teach them that pillaging your own farms is really a stupid idea. Then, discuss tactics. Training infantry was not horribly difficult, but it's still a good idea to make sure that you have as many battleworthy troops after a battle as possible: There's likely to be a next battle, and once the enemy notices that your army is nearly as strong as before, it will diminish their morale. And their troops... And after the war there are fields to tend to, which is also easier when you haven't killed all your labour force. So, teach them not to brute-force battles, but to employ hit-and-run-tactics. Teach them that killing the enemy commanders is much more efficient than facing an entire army up front. In short: Avoid battle where possible, and never let the enemy dictate the playground, or the rules, and most of all, never both. And after the battle, wash. Use soap. pillage the battlefield and burn the dead. And wash again. [Answer] Communications. Semaphores. In ancient times it could take weeks to get a message from one side of the country to the other. The semaphore first appeared in Europe in the 1790s, and suddenly commanders could send and receive data within minutes. This gave them a huge advantage. It's easy to build one with low tech, with flags and levers on a hilltop, or to do it manually (I learned to do this in the Brownies). The hardest part would be disseminating the code. You would need your own code to stop competitors reading it. edit: add to that, send messages at night using blink code and a covered lantern. You don't need a lot of text to send standard military messages, you just need a code worked out beforehand, and change it regularly. The covered lantern has the advantage of being directional, instead of the semaphore on a hilltop which can be seen by everyone. [Answer] Some ideas: Steam machines: Are not that difficult to build for an experienced blacksmith. You may get ironclads and other steam machines. Distiled Alcohol: It's highly flammable a not so difficult to get from wine or other alcoholic beverages. You can create plenty of machines being fueled by alcohol. Optics: Not that difficult if you have people who know how to make glass works. You can get binoculars and lenses. Hot Air Balloons: Not difficult to make. They would give archers some advantage and would frighten your enemies. Compressed Air Cannons and Catapults: Once you know how to build valves and gears is not that difficult. Methane: You can get this powerful gas from animal faeces and decomposition. [Answer] This is kind of broad, but anybody with sufficient modern scientific knowledge and modern combat tactics can potentially determine the outcome of any battle in the medieval times. While the possibilities are almost endless, here are some which I thought would be the easiest and the most effective. 1- Use historical knowledge and battle specifics Someone from our times would know the details about the particular battle and how the armies were arranged, which weapons were used and what were the strengths and weaknesses of each side. With this hindsight knowledge, you can easily overcome your party's weaknesses and focus on the weaknesses of your foe. Knowledge is power, and future knowledge is like nuclear power! 2- Utilize biochemical weapons to decimate and demoralize the enemy You have lots and lots and lots of options here. Coat your arrows and spears with venom collected from snakes, scorpions, spiders, poison dart frogs (central and South America only) and hornets. For mineral toxins to coat your blades, use corrosive sublimate (HgCl$\_2$), phosphorous salts and sulfide salts. In plant poisons, you can use oleander, calotropis, digitalis, bushman's poison, strychnos, datura, rosary pea, wolfsbane, hemlock ... (and a couple dozen others. I think the point has been made) 3- Utilize wind! Before the battle, when the armies are camped in front of each other, if the wind is blowing from your side to them, burn noxious chemicals so that the fumes are blown toward your enemy, causing damage and panic. Large torches, coated with a mixture of crude oil, sulfur and powdered oleander will do the job nicely. The fumes will be acidic and toxic, not only inducing cough and teary eyes, but also causing panic and decrease the morale of the enemy. 4- Use blinding beam to disorient your enemy You would need many mirrors of 1 square foot size. Install the army of these mirror holders (about 300 of these will do) at some out-of-reach location (e.g. at the top of a very steep hill). They will focus the reflected sunlight beam at the enemy's soldiers (specifically targetting archers and cavalry). While they will not be able to set anyone on fire or inflict severe burns, they will be able to blind them and create panic and disorientation, helping your side. 5- Implant poison coated punji sticks in the way of your enemy I mean these. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7ta8S.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7ta8S.jpg) Considering that you (the time traveller) in hindsight, knows which path the enemy will take to the battlefield, you can easily deploy tens of thousands of these pointed sticks with poisoned tips, in his way. You can plant them in the jungles and woods in his path and you can lay punji traps for him, by digging up pits, planting punji sticks in them and then covering up the top with a thin layer of grass and sticks. Given a couple weeks, the upper layer would completely naturalize with the earth, making it impossible to see the trap. The results would be simply disastrous for the enemy. 6- Use caltrops to disable cavalry These are caltrops. [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nU1dj.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nU1dj.jpg) Prepare lots of these and give at least a couple dozen to each foot soldier and cavalryman in your army. Utilize them to disable fast cavalry attacks during the battle. Simply throw the caltrops in the way of the invading cavalry and many of them will never reach you at all. It will also slow down the approach of the remainders, as they will have to watch out for these deadly spikes. Final Word There are many, many more methods you can deploy, but I thought these would be the easiest and most potent ones. The medic improvement and steam powered catapults (which I don't think can be built during a 6 months time) have already been mentioned by other users, so I do not need to reiterate any of those. [Answer] # Pasteurization Medieval logistics were a mess. If you introduce foods that can be mass-produced and stored for weeks or even months then your logistics would be simplified a lot, which makes your armies A LOT more effective. Just make sure people are aware of scurvy and eat their sauerkraut diligently. Also, screw famines. # Better looms Introduce [flying shuttle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_shuttle) and mechanise your textile production. You can rake GDP-level lots of money this way if you can scale your production. If you leverage those, you'd have both military and economic advantage. [Answer] Modern medicine will help a lot, reducing the number of people dying from wounds. I am talking about knowing germs exists and being able to cultivate penicillin, with that you could reduce the number of deaths greatly. Hygiene will keep your soldiers free of illnesses while knowing the importance of vitamins (found around renaissance era) will keep them strong. Steam power will also help to power catapults and similar siege weaponry. Increasing their power and reducing the number of people manning them. [Answer] Politics. If you came up of a really good invention - you will still have to build it using the medieval materials, and then produce it in big numbers, and then train soldiers to use it. If you only have a year, you probably don't have the time for that. But you got the ear of the king (umm, I hope not literally), so you can at least win more time, or maybe even avoid the var. You probably know the situation in the opposing kingdom. Maybe you'll be able to find a common enemy, or to spark a rebellion there, or to provoke it to attack some other country first. Maybe try to appear more threatening (showing off steam engines?), or more useful as an ally (penicillin trade pact?). But in the meantime, yes, keep improving mining, medicine and hygiene. You probably will be attacked by someone else, anyway. [Answer] So, there are a few major "any modern person would know about these" things that your time traveler could convey. They wouldn't necessarily win the battle, but they would improve the overall conditions of your army and thereby increase your odds: * Basic hygiene: Wash your hands and faces, and ideally the rest of yourself, and use soap! Don't eat rotten/old food! Diseases are spread by germs, which can be spread by body fluids or contact (though different diseases use different methods), so cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough! * Medical hygiene: use distilled alcohol to clean wounds before binding them to prevent sepsis! Clean tools and surfaces with distilled alcohol or dilute bleach before using them! * Lead & Mercury, dangers thereof: That stuff's poisonous! Don't make cups and plates out of it or use it for plumbing! And stop trying to use Mercury as a medicine for anything! You specified that your time traveler knows high-school chemistry. If they remember the medieval names of various chemicals, then they can advance chemistry by a few hundred years by teaching the kingdom's alchemists all sorts of interesting combinations. The ones pertaining to warfare mostly involv aqua fortis (aka nitric acid) and vitriol (aka sulfuric acid). One low-hanging combination is aqua fortis + cotton (+ vitriol optionally) = guncotton. It's like gunpowder, but more powerful! Keep it dampened with dilute alcohol, though; it's very sensitive. Use it to fill artillery shells or grenade-type bombs for increased explosive power. With a some (rather explosive) trial-and-error, they might also be able to use it to make smokeless powders for their firearms. This does depend a lot on the strengths of the acids used, though, so it may still be beyond the resources you have available. As @nzaman mentioned in their comment, gunpowder was already well-known to the medieval world. However, early firearms were finicky and unreliable; it wasn't really until the development of the flintlock musket in the mid-1600s that they really came into their own. So if your time traveler is familiar with how flintlocks work, then they've got a head-start there, too. But there's a simpler firearm-related invention that can give your side a distinct advantage ahead of its time: [the Minié ball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini%C3%A9_ball). Rifles were known as early as the late 1400s, but early rifles were unreliable and slow to load, since the lead ball had to be hammered into the barrel to engage with the rifling of the barrel, and the gunpowder quickly fouled the rifling. The Minié ball revolutionized gunpowder warfare by letting the bullet expand to grip the rifling when fired, making it as quick to load as a smoothbore musket. Also, the conical shape and better seal against the barrel gave a higher velocity, and thus better penetrating power. Medieval armor was frequently "proofed" against bullets, but only the low-powered, short-range weapons available at the time, not modern rifle bullets. If your traveler still has problems, they could experiment with adding a hardened steel core to the bullet as a penetrator, but that's probably overkill. So now your force has accurate, high-velocity rifle fire from significantly longer ranges than the enemy is expecting. The same methods scale up for cannons, improving their range and accuracy as well. Also, the time traveler should also pre-invent the bayonet, so that their army doesn't need dedicated pikemen to protect against melee attacks or cavalry charges. Now they are effectively bringing a mid-1800s army to a medieval fight. Have fun! [Answer] Depending on how technically savvy this person is, the time traveler would actually be able to create a stream engine and kick start the industrial revolution by simply introducing the people to this technology. He could also introduce electricity and make generators driven by the previously introduced steam engine. With enhanced industry the production of armor and weapons can increase granted they manage to set up production soon enough. With the introduction of the steam engine new ways to conduct agriculture also emerge. With this new technology they can easily establish a way more efficient resource production and likely higher quality armor and weapons, thus overwhelming the opponent. On an even longer time, with the technological kickstart the kingdom received it will soon surpass technology and wealth of every bordering kingdom. [Answer] Let's assume our TT have no knowledge of this battle so he can't prepare and predicts for particular moves. So chemistry - gunpowder is safe and easy choice, there is such things as "difficult ingredients", it's just coal, sulphur and potassium nitrate that had to be imported from India anyway. Then comes to mind hydrochloric acid or sulphur acid. You don't need much to have a great psychological impact on the enemy. Second one is mustard gas (because if you have hydrochloric acid you can make mustard gas). But that's just dirty tricks. If you want to play clean then: * better mining equipment for trenches and pits * entanglements * artillery (balistas made with modern physics and more efficient ammo) * Smaller army means better equipment for fewer people is needed, better armour with more movability, better training and more diverse use of cavalry. [Answer] Well in my opinion, I do not think big inventions are needed to win battles of the middle ages, rather knowledge and strategy. In the first place the armies of that time, were usually disorganized and formed in its majority by units of cavalry (usually heavy cavalry), light infatneria and archers. Having full knowledge of the strategies used in antiquity, it is not difficult to organize an army difficult to defeat. Based on knowledge of minum complexity: * Better use of pikes: Units such as the Landsknecht, the Swiss Pikemen or the Spanish Third developed very advanced and effective tactics in combat with the correct use of the pikes, was such the effectiveness of these units that came to be used in the conquest of America. The tactics of these units were very effective against the heavy cavalry, main force and power of the armies during the age. * Use of repetitive crossbows: These crossbows already existed at this time, but were not widely used due to various design problems, which with a couple of current improvements (simple improvements) could turn into terrible weapons on the battlefields. * Use the cavalry, but do not depend on it. Cavalry was a very expensive unit during the middle ages, especially heavy cavalry. So losing these units meant a higher cost than other units, so you could use a smaller amount. --- Having made the choice of the previous army, I developed the strategy to follow. The combination is as follows, compact groups of pikemen with large pikes with at least two rows of pikes, on the third row crossbowmen and groups of heavy and light cavalry on the flanks. Using the tactic developed by Alexander the Greater, "the hammer and the anvil", but now we will have a better cavalry to attack the flanks and much better lines of infantry protected by crossbowmen in case of attempts of attacks of the rival cavalry. In addition most of the armies of the middle age that depended on the cavalry to win the battles, could not do it since to throw the cavalry against our lines of piqueros would be a suicide [Answer] Generate electricity using waterfalls and so on just to make some electric fence. You don't need a precise, steady voltage/amperage, you just need to electrify some wires/gates as specific points and that will stop many troops. Great for defence. ]
[Question] [ We have to feed the masses and we have to do it cheaply. Enters the goo Our scientist are still debating what the main ingredient(s) of this thick paste should be. Can you help them? The target consumer is the AVGCIV, the average citizen. As they are connected to VR (Virtual Reality) most of the time they don't like to engage in activities in the MR (Meat Reality). That includes eating. The goo is government provided and one of the basic rights of citizenship. As AVGCIV make up the majority of the population any saving in its preparation would make a substantial difference on the budget. What AVGCIV need is something that can sustain them without causing health problems in the long run. Since they lead mainly sedentary lifestyles an intake of 1600-1800 calories per day has been deemed sufficient. Luckily we are in 2147 and we are confident we can do this for the happiness of everybody. Goo requirements: As already established more than a century ago this is the recipe for a healthy diet for our sedentary AVGCIV (% is relative to total daily calories) Carbohydrates 70% - Of which Sugars 5% Proteins 10% Fats 20% - Of which unsaturated fats 15% - saturated fats 5% The best main ingredient should be selected by: Coverage of the daily requirements (carbohydrates, proteins, fats). Ease and speed of production / farming in large quantities. Automatic processing is a must. Human labor should be kept at a minimum. Resistance to pests / infections, thus lessening the need of introducing drugs in the food chain. Ease of containment: we don't want that whatever makes up the goo may cause runaway reactions along the food chains. Availabilities: In 2147 we can fix any issue with taste, that is not a concern. Energy can be cheaply produced on the spot of the goo production with our Unmöglich Generators. Water is available at a cheap price by desalinization of seawater. Most population is still living near sea coasts. Sanitation and recycling are in good conditions and should be able to turn waste products from the goo production and consumption into useful products (fertilizers, cleaning products, lubricants, etc). Transportation is generally cheap. Costraints: Genetically engineered cell cltures are already available but expensive. Not for AVGCIV. Total volume of production facilities should be reasonable. Cricket farming: this is the current main proposal. We are looking for alternatives. While transportation is cheap, distribution isn't necessarily so, depending on location. Higher calories yield by kilogram are to be preferred. Total number of AVGCIV depends on the social-neoscientist you ask. But most estimates are in the 25-30 billions. This to give the scale of the problem. You can also provide additional side ingredients if you think is necessary. Our researchers have dug from ancient archives this bit of related information: [What farming practices would allow the Earth to support a population as high as 200 billion](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/146175/what-farming-practices-would-allow-the-earth-to-support-a-population-as-high-as?rq=1) And [What food production methods would allow a metropolis like New York to become self sufficient](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/146670/what-food-production-methods-would-allow-a-metropolis-like-new-york-to-become-se/146752#146752) Our issue is different though as it revolves around the main ingredient that would allow our goo to meet most or all of the criteria while satisfying the cheap requirements. In the first linked source an interesting suggestion was found regarding cricket farming. See also [here](https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/eating-crickets#benefits). While this is interesting other options are being actively searched. Do partake in this endeavor with your suggestions. A bounty of virtual points awaits you Virtual embrace, SUPUPRCIV Fjodor Woo, MDSS [Answer] # Sweet potatoes and potatoes, milk, kale, and oatmeal. This is the [classic irish diet.](https://www.popsci.com/nutrition-single-food-survival/) Five white potatoes a day gets you all the protein you need. 3 red potatoes gives you a good mix of vitamins and valuable compounds. Milk gives you calcium and some extra fat. Kale gives you a bunch of useful vitamins and extra stuff. I calculated [a basic daily diet here.](https://tools.myfooddata.com/recipe-nutrition-calculator/173731-170434-168421-171265-168482/wt1-wt2-100g-wt1-wt2/1-4-4-2-3) and added in some baked beans as an extra option for some iron. 1802 calories, 13% from protein 18% from fat, 69% carbs. 1 baked beans, 4 potatoes, 400 grams of kale, 500 grams of milk, 3 sweet potatoes. 25% unsaturated fats. All of these are easy foods to make. Even milk is pretty energy efficient, at 25% energy efficiency, something which is probably higher with advanced tech. You can adjust the ratios of foods slightly with breed and such to get the perfect mix. All of them are easy to automated for efficient production. [Answer] # Algae The Earth is mostly saline water. One of the proposed methods to eliminate world hunger is to use this water to produce algae or seaweed. In large portions of the coast, they can grow quickly and abundantly even without water agriculture. They are not just suggested for food, but also to produce many other products like energy. The weeds' quick growth also means quick differentiation. Breeding new forms can be done quickly. In addition, gene editing can help greatly in its survivability without the need of medicine or overprotection. Breeding many forms also reduces genetic defects or the likelihood of a single organism or virus eliminating the population of what you're growing. This might happen to bananas as a fun fact. Algae or seaweed can easily be adapted to your specifications and more. In addition, it can be grown close to the coastal cities as well as a huge portion of the world. I'm not sure about the 200 billion figure, but I do know that without water agriculture you'll not get there. The added advantage is that you do not need to desalinate the water. [Answer] This is a [Frame Challenge](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/7097/40609) One main ingredient doth not a sensible diet make — even a cheap one for the masses. I once read an article (and for the life of me I can't find it again!) where a dietician (or nutritionist...) was taking heat for suggesting that a basic McDonald's hamburger was a sensible food choice for poor families. While opponents who feel that pretty much everything on McDonald's menu has the nutritional value of paint suggested that lentils or rice-and-beans would be a better food source, the proponent pointed out that there's more to diet than just food. People need the ability to prepare it and the overworked/underpaid working poor usually don't have the time to provide better meals. Consequently, that person's conclusion was that a cheap McDonald's hamburger was a great choice for the masses. But what made it valuable is that there's more than just one "main ingredient" And that brings me to the bulk of an answer I gave to [Garlic as staple food for colonies?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/205546/40609) --- Wheat has 2X the calories per serving [of garlic], 2X the carbs (don't let diet fads fool you, the body actually requires carbs — just not as many as people tend to eat), 2X the protein, 3X the fiber, etc. gram-for-gram it's a much better product with only one exception: that fast growing time enjoyed by garlic. So, what could you use? From [here](https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/garden-planning/staple-crops-zm0z13jjzsto) we learn something my wife has been telling me for decades: > > Potatoes (along with grain corn) will give you the most calories for the least space. They are easy to grow — just bury a piece of potato about the size of an egg with a couple of “eyes” on it in the ground in a 4-inch-deep furrow. In climates with cool summers, plant early, midseason and late varieties two to three weeks before your last spring frost date. Potatoes will be ready to harvest in about 65 to 90 days, depending on the variety.Sweet potatoes, with their high beta carotene content, are one of the healthiest foods you can eat. They love the heat, but you can grow them as far north as Canada. > > > > > But if you want more options, let's look at this list from a [great article on survival gardening](https://www.epicgardening.com/survival-garden/): 1. Beans 2. Corn 3. Squash 4. Cabbage 5. Potatoes 6. Kale 7. Sweet Potatoes 8. Lentils 9. Onions 10. Tomatoes 11. Spinach 12. Peas 13. Beets 14. Carrots 15. Berries 16. Garlic 17. Peppers 18. Cucumbers 19. Melons 20. Herbs What's the take-away from that list? There is no "one food." Even staple foods like wheat, corn, potatoes, etc., are not recommended to be a super-high percentage of what's on your plate. Frankly, if you're looking for a food that can be the, let's say, 80%-of-what-we-eat-food, you probably should be thinking of fish. [Answer] The human body needs a variety of things in food to ensure continued health including dietary fibre (usually cellulose), carbohydrates, fats, proteins (well, amino acids), carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals (mostly in trace amounts)... and so on. The fun part here is that no one diet can fit all individuals: your food goo will have to be customized to each person. Fortunately there are sources of all of these things that can be farmed quite readily. ### Algae The popular choice in other answers so I won't go into too much detail here. Suffice to say that we can get all sorts of goodies from algae: amino acids, dietary fibre, carbs and a fair variety of other necessities. Algae farms can be built in coastal areas to take advantage of supplies of nutrients and sunlight that the algae requires to flourish. ### Yeast Standard Baker's Yeast contains some of what we need - protein, dietary fibre, vitamin B6, magnesium, even a little fat... but there are millions of yeast variants, and if we can't find one that fits the bill we can do a lot of work on yeast genomes these days. Once we pick the right variant - or combination of - then setting up yeast farms is fairly simple. Give them the right nutrients and temperature and you'll have tons of biomass in fairly short order. The downside in yeast production is the byproducts. Nutritional yeast (53% protein, 20% fibre, 13% other carbs) is great and all, but byproducts include things like acetaldehyde which has to be captured and further treated. And of course there's various alcohols... but we're not talking about champagne yeast here. ### Fungi For anything that we can't harvest from algae and yeasts there are plenty of sources in the fungus kingdom. We have plenty of examples of mushrooms that contain vitamin C for instance. [Answer] Microorganisms Genetically modified microorganisms can be produced vast tanks and used to make anything required for living from raw materials or waste materials There was a story about the Japanese producing "meat" from sewerage. Meet the [Turd Burger](https://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2011/07/08/meat-made-from-human-feces-hoax-or-japans-best-new-invention/?sh=7ad701936d9e). It was a hoax but theoretically possible. [NASA](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2020.00090/full) has already done work on artificial carbohydrates production for space missions and colonization of Mars With the invention of 3d food printers, the output of bio-tanks could be made into everything from steak and chips to apples and oranges. The only thing stopping it these days is it's more expensive than chucking some seeds on the dirt and waiting but feeding more and more people every day, standard farming techniques will hit a wall and bio tanks will take over. [Answer] ### Pure Sunlight Algae is a great solution for the next fifty years or so, but we're talking about the year 2147 here, and I think we could do better by then. Why waste energy eating when you can cut out the middleman and fuse your circulatory system to a bio-engineered photosynthetic organism that creates all of the nutrients you need? After all, these people are sitting still anyway. Each VR-enabled pod is directly connected to a photosynthetic mat that produces free sugars, proteins, and fats, and passes them to a pipe that is mainlined directly into the bloodstream of the people in the pods. A computer system monitors the state of the host and ensures that they are receiving a balanced nutritional intake. [Answer] ## Corn Very few people actually understand just how much corn we grow, at least in America. For proof, try to find something in your pantry without High Fructose Corn Syrup. (Actually, after doing some research, it's banned in Europe. Interesting.) Plus, as evidenced by plant-based burger companies, it can be made to taste like ANYTHING. And mixing it with beans could get any amount of protein and fat you'll need. [Answer] I'm thinking it could be something like [Soylent](https://soylent.com/), but completely synthetic... all the components would be produced by chemical processes in a factory, rather than growing them. There would be no living organisms involved. Sure, that would involve a bit of advances in chemistry, but it is 2147, after all. It would require some source materials, most of which would be produced (via more chemistry) from waste treatment plants. When you scale it up, you get a complete closed cycle - just add energy in the form of electricity. Sure, there will always be some inefficiencies, and the number of humans will change, etc - so some capacity for adjustment by sourcing outside materials will always be needed - but it will be small by comparison. [Answer] In 2147 there are two possible scenarios: 1: We have completely solved the problems with resource waste, energy supply (fusion now works effortlessly), we have complete control over biochemistry and we know all there is to know about our nutritional needs. The world is at peace, the biosphere is in balance, the world population is large, but much smaller than now, and we can simply produce any foodstuff directly rom chemical elements. Thus everybody can have anything they want to eat, and everybody knows exactly what is the best diet for them. 2: We never managed to solve the problems; climate ran amok, about 90% of life went extenct, and there are now only a small number of survivors, who live as hunter-gatherers, like our ancestors used to. It sounds like you have chosen the first scenario. As others have pointed out, a good diet is not just what our bodies need in terms of vitamins, protein etc. It is becoming increasingly clear that our health, mentally and physically, depends strongly on the presence and diversity of microbes in our gut, so the diet must include whatever is necessary to keep them in balance - look for Tim Spector for more information (he seems to be a serious scientist, not a crank). [Answer] The main challenges of a healthy diet usually are proteins, fiber and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), as well as keeping unhealthy fats in check. There is no one natural ingredient that can satisfy the equation so a combination would be needed. The best plant-based sources with high concentration of useful nutrients would probably come from a variety of types and families of plants such as legumes (lentils, peanuts - great micronutrients, substantial proteins), fungi (mushrooms, yeast - great proteins), greens (kale, asparagus - great fiber, substantial proteins), cereals (wheat, corn - balanced staples) and maybe algae and some synthesized or separately harvested micronutrients (I believe some important vitamins like C and D can be challenging without a specially maintained focus). However in a highly industrialized and automated food production environment the nutritional values of the sources can be of much lesser significance than ease of production so that fluid mixing of a huge variety of easily grown, partially fungible sources can be preferable to maintaining a rigid balance of a few highly concentrated ones, let alone a diet designed around a single intractable "main" ingredient. That said, if there has to be a single "main" ingredient, it should be peanuts or lentils. ]
[Question] [ So, on the planet Dalia, there exists a civilization of intelligent creatures called the Dalians. The Dalians are extremely primitive (compared to most others) and have an extremely tribal, clan-oriented society. They live on a planet the harbors a creature called *”The Tayan”. The Tayan is a monstrous creature, that can eat organisms the size of bears whole. The Dalians worship the Tayan as their Dark God. Nobles and high priests often sacrifice slaves into the Tayan’s maw, where they can expect to spend 5-30 years inside the Tayans stomach, slowly being digested in agony and pain. I don’t want to make the Dalians seem evil and unsympathetic, so my question is: How do I make a species that sacrifices people to a dark god* sympathetic? [Answer] ### They do it because they have to You just need to show what happens when they don't feed this creature - i.e. it is strong, burrows, and prefers meat to other means of sustaining itself. This can range from more people die when it is not fed: it eats several birds (whose eggs are used as sustainable food) and destroys crops with its burrowing to get them which causes villages to have "hard winters". Or, on the far end of the range: its worse when it eats as animals tend to prefer weak or smaller prey - which in this case means children. Enemy solider/deathrow inmate vs. child is a pretty easy sell. ### Have remembrance ceremonies after Now these people still gave themselves for the tribe so you should have some honor or remembrance given after. This is a time where you can write of people's responses - a small child asking her parent "Mommy, why do we have to do this?" (add tears in the eyes and have the parent give a response which paints this as "because we have no choice") can go a long way to building sympathy for these people. ### They really don't want to question it If I were to do this, I might move towards them being glad this creature basically acts as their executioner - "We are good people. We would never do this, its all the creatures fault." - to the point of not really questioning it. So in this case they actually had a choice, could probably kill the creature if they really wanted to, but then they'd have to ask some hard questions they don't want to face. Though less sympathetic as the first and second methods, this has a note of realism that might let it be easier to believe. BIG Note on this: I would do some research into certain cults and religions which worship animals which can kill humans - the leopard and cobra have some historical worship like this. Even with these, the animals don't kill people so regularly. It can still be hard to sell "we just can't kill it" or "we've never tried" without moving into supernatural level powers (it killed my wife or father so I'm going to dose myself in poison and become the sacrifice). [Answer] # Who is dark, the god or the religion and society? You wrote that the priests sacrifice slaves. Well, that is evil. To make it less evil, have them sacrifice volunteers. One cannot expect informed consent by 21st century standards, but make them think that the sacrifice is necessary for the prosperity of the community. * No sacrifice, no crops. "In the first and only year of the reign of John Doe XIII, there was no sacrifice. A hailstorm killed the summer harvest and the fish did not migrate upriver. The next year John Doe XIII was* the sacrifice and all went right. We're telling that story to would-be reformers ever since."* * No sacrifice, no family. "In the high nobility, the firstborn son goes to The Tayan. That ensures that the second son has a long life, and that the daughters will bear many sons. The 'right to ensure continuity' is a jealously guarded privilege of certain noble families." * Sacrifice as penance. "That was a mortal sin, my son. 1,000 years in purgatory after your death, or 5 years in The Tayan before your death. Your call. Here is the waiting list." [Answer] You can make flawed societies sympathetic. In fact, you pretty much have to, unless you're writing about a utopia or writing an anarchist manifesto. In many fantasy and historical stories, the good side has public executions and mutilations, torture, slavery, etc. And yet, we're able to see them as the good side. Sometimes, the other side is more evil; other times, there's an Evil Grand Vizier who's worse than the society as a whole. Meanwhile, we meet dozens of people who help our heroes, who are brave and kind, and painted as sympathetic even though they don't know anything better than the society they grew up in. Maybe you'll have a scene where one of the wiser good guys laments that they can't end slavery because stopping the Evil High Priest is too important to focus on a quixotic crusade to overturn a fundamental institution of their culture. In fact, you can see all of that in the Star Wars movies—not to mention the Ewoks, who kill and eat other sentient beings—and yet nobody comes out of those movies saying, "What was the point of all that when the good guys are evil too?" For a more directly relevant example, see the 1964 Doctor Who story The Aztecs. Aztec society is painted as in many ways better than European society at the time (and one of the Doctor's companions, Barbara, directly points this out in case you miss it), with human sacrifice as the one thing that makes it worse. Most of the good guys (not counting our outsider heroes) continue to believe the religion they grew up with, but don't come across any less sympathetic. The one exception, we're pointedly told that he's not going to succeed in changing his society, and see him as a tragic hero. [Answer] # You call it a dark god, but that's you imposing your culture on the Dalians, to the Dalians it's just God. Unfortunately it seems you've been brainwashed into thinking that [human sacrifice is evil](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/68343/why-would-a-god-of-murder-be-worshipped-by-a-society/). Sacrificing the occasional person is a natural part of the cycle of life and death. People are born and people die, and all things in their time. Perhaps your fate is to die in your bed of old age, but this slave was born to be sacrificed to the Tayan such that we may live and the crops will grow. That is his fate as decreed by the gods, and who are we to challenge fate. The ceremony is one you might recognise until the climactic moment, the priests lead the way, swinging incense, the sacrifices dressed in white follow behind escorted by acolytes, they look like they might have been drugged but they're apparently willingly walking with the group. There's a short ceremony by the mouth of the Tayan after which each sacrifice is blessed by the high priest before stepping off into the maw. Another short ceremony follows asking the Tayan to accept the offering and bring good harvests for the coming year, along with any specific requests that those who donated slaves might have. As secondary note on this, the Dalians wouldn't know how long it takes for a Tayan to digest its dinner unless someone had escaped. Once the sacrifice is out of sight, it's as good as dead. [Answer] Its really all dependent on what they believe in and not what actually happens. Often a correlation between two things can doesn't mean they are really linked. My proposal is that they believe that the offerings bring them good luck and blessings from their God. Its a pretty simple setup. One day someone fell in, and that year the harvest was really good. This happens a couple of times with people falling in and good harvests. Then one year no one falls in. They are super careful, fence off the area and make sure no one falls in. The harvest is terrible and people get riled up and angry. They sacrifice someone to the Tayan and the next year the harvest is good again. After long enough many people will simply believe that having a sacrifice for the Tayan is what brings in a good harvest. Now there doesn't need to be a strong correlation, just that the people believe its there. So maybe one year there is a sacrifice but a bad harvest. Well some local person goes, the Tayan isn't happy with the sacrifice, we need to sacrifice more people. Once enough people believe there is a correlation, they will likely carry it out regardless of opposition. (Maybe the Tayan is upset that your doubting its will, sacrifice him and his family!!) Now the fun part for you is to decide the different factors. Maybe the Tayan likes Female Virgins, or male slaves. Maybe its about purity or strength or quality. They could also believe that the longer a person suffers for, the better the harvest and choose an unlucky person to suffer. You can spin it to be a great honor (with the top families preparing special children just to be a sacrifice, or maybe they know the truth and shield their family from it but encourage the populas). [Answer] Make the Tayan important for their survival. For example, the Tayan relies on prey to fall in, so it needs something to attract prey. It could do this by encouraging plants that produce fruit, nuts and other edible things to grow next to it. In comes the mycorrhizal network: <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizal_network> This is a network of fungi that connect plants and trees, allowing them to share nutrients, send chemical messages such as if certain insects are eating it causing other plants to produce chemicals against such insects or even "hack" the system and killing off plants that are unfavorable, such as plants that would grow over others to take away sunlight. This is the system a Tayan could use to encourage edible things to grow next to it, attracting animals that might fall in the Tayan's mouth. This wont go unnoticed by the society living there. The best and most (or only!!) food grows near a Tayan, and killing it disturbs the balance and the food disappears! If you block off the mouth of the Tayan it'll starve so... You are going to have to sacrifice something to keep it alive. Tayan's would be revered as a dark God that provides you with what you need if you give a large sacrifice. It provides food for dozens more people than would normally be able to live in the area, and a sacrifice is going to be a small price to pay for all the extra people living there just above the Tayan's hungry mouth. [Answer] "Mother, why do we sacrifice prisoners and slaves to the Tayan?" "Well, child, before we started to sacrifice, the Tayan would become angry, and come into the village. In his anger, he'd kill our livestock, destroy our crops and eat our children. No one was safe. Children disappeared from their beds. Whole herds were killed in the fields. Families starved. The last time he entered the village, our chief, most noble Mandu, offered himself to the beast to keep it from eating a child. He took Mandu and went away satisfied. Since that day, we followed Mandu's example and offer up those who deserve death for their crimes. When criminals aren't available, the noblest of us offer their own property, their slaves bought with their own money, to assuage the anger of the Tayan. " [Answer] Note: I am changing some of the tenets of the question here, take the points that you like. # Limited, Voluntary, Punishment, "Eugenics", Meaningful, High Ranking, Merciful * Limited You do not specify numbers, but those are important. A single sacrifice each decade is easier to forgive than a sacrifice each week. Also, the reduced numbers make it more likely to believe the following points: * Meaningful It is clear that the sacrifices are necessary; if they do not happen then very bad things happen to the tribe. By being a sacrifice, the person sacrificed helps his tribe and family. * Voluntary In today's individualism, the idea of killing someone against his/her will is very difficult to be received simpathetically. But still people who voluntarily risk their lives to save others are celebrated as heroes. You could try to change your system so that the sacrifice is a big honour to the victim (whose name and life is, for example, recorded in the Great Book of Deads, and his familiy is cared for) instead of chosing someone against his will only because he is defenseless. Better combined with "Meaningful". * Punishment If you want to keep the sacrifice mandatory, at least try to limit its randomness; the victims are not chosen just because they are slaves who cannot defend themselves, but because they are criminals and they have been judged to deserve death. Each year, of all of the criminals sentenced to death (or life in jail), the worst are selected to be send to the Tayan. Of course, that means that you need to have enough criminals for the sacrifices, but if the frequency of sacrifices is low enough maybe that is not an issue1. * "Eugenics" Another way to reduce randomness; only people ill and/or very old are allowed to be sacrificed. Works better with "Voluntary" and "Meaningful". * High Ranking To the "Voluntary/Meaningful/Punishment/Eugenics" points a cynical could say that the populace can be manipulated by the powerful so that the sacrifices are always slaves, poor people and the like that have been "brainwashed" by the nobles and priests who do not desire to become sacrifices themselves. You can challenge that by making the sacrifices from the most influential classes. Make it an opt-in; if you are the son of a noble, when he dies you can either go to live as a commoner or inherit the title and state, but in the later case you know you might eventually become the Tagan's breakfast. Similarly, anyone opting for priesthoods will know that the end of the career is perhaps your god's estomach. Works better with either "Eugenics" (give people time to enjoy their careers) and "Voluntary", or with "Punishment". * Merciful The part about the Tagan eating the sacrifice alive and keeping it that way in the estomach seens unnecessarily cruel. Execute the sacrifices as painlessly as it is possible before presenting them to the Tagan. If the Tagan requires living sacrifices, sedate them. If the Tagan requires living, struggling sacrifices, give them some drugs so they can take them after they have been swallowed. --- 1One of the big moral issues of organ donation from people sentenced to death is that it gives the society an incentive to sentence people to death in order to benefit from the harvested organs. [Answer] Maybe in their culture, they find a meaning in the death of some of their people. Being selected could be seen as a favor and people wouldn't go against their fate. Maybe it's a random process, so every individual live their life as each day could be their last one, your tayan could represent "Mother nature" and its impartial selection. My favorite is that somehow they (or the leader) know that their food supply won't stand so they need a way that every one tolerate murder for the many. [Answer] Some men with otherwise modern sensibilities would argue Jephthah, the man in the Bible who sacrificed his own daughter to God is a heroic (or at least sympathetic) figure. Heck, the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament mark him as a great servant of God. The reason why is he made a vow to God; he'd sacrifice the first thing he saw when he returned home from war, a war that God apparently blessed him with victory on. Stupidly specific deal terms aside, he made a vow to God, and he followed through with it. Maybe this society believes that they have a binding vow with this God for their continued prosperity or survival, then they'd not only sacrifice people to them; they'd consider people who sacrifice others to their God. [Answer] ## Cure Terminal Diseases/Injuries It is also be able to cure diseases and injuries while it's at "digesting". If you're lucky, and enough other people get eaten you can look forward to being passed after your malady has been cured by the painful digestive process. It's worth noting that 'god' doesn't digest it's 'victims' physically, rather it feeds off of the psychic energy of their pain and agony. In fact, it provides sustenance to keep them alive, which is what provides the ability to cure, however the feeding/repair process itself is what is terribly painful. [Answer] ## Honor and pride A big dark creature eating people and needing sacrifices? Hey, it's the plot of Tim Schafer's [Broken Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Age) > > Vella Tartine is a young woman living in the Badlands, a land ravaged by the Mogs, giant creatures that come from beyond a wall called the Plague Dam. They are appeased by the sacrifice of young girls at a number of Maiden's Feasts held at various villages. They appear every 14 years for those maidens. Vella is chosen to be sacrificed to Mog Chothra at the feast in her hometown of Sugar Bunting (formerly a town made up of warriors named Steel Bunting) but concludes that if the monster could be killed, the rituals could be ended. > > > What is interesting is that the sacrifice is festive! Maidens are dressed to be the most appetising for the creature, so families could be proud of having their daughter being eaten by Mog Chothra. ]
[Question] [ The setting is one where only women can use magic. All females can access it as it is naturally inborn. It requires training, some females being stronger than others. Magic takes the form of spells and rituals, is time consuming, and requires multiple components. However, it is very powerful and forms the bedrock of society. It is often combined with technology to form a sort of magitech civilization. The question is how to make men relevant in a society like that? Have I made them completely useless? Does there need to be limitations on what magic can do? [Answer] How do deal with different skill levels in our present society? Some people are good at math, some at humanities. Some people fix engines. Some people create paintings. OP says that among women you have varying skill levels of Magic. So even amoung the women there is variation in ability. Another example: Several percent of men are red/green colour blind. A much smaller fraction of women are. This is a case where a disability is sex-linked. Men who have it live with it. Hemophilia is another sex linked problem. Consider that men on average are much stronger physically. While women can make good soldiers, step back to muscle powered combat, and they didn't fare so well. If magic is time consuming you have a situation where a man can do something that requires strength right now. Consider that on the average men cooperate better -- coordinated hunting is more difficult than coordinated gathering. So exaggerate this in your culture: Women wield magic, but interact like cats. Men interact like dogs. One of the flip sides: Women tend to multitask better. I suspect to allow them to grind corn or tan hides while also keeping the toddler from wandering into the creek. Perhaps part of a woman's Magic skill is the ability to keep many things in mind at once. Perhaps you have a split society: Men show up to mate, but otherwise lead a separate life. It adds narrativium if magic has a price. No free lunch. You don't have to have the same conservation laws as physics, but you need mechanisms to prevent Magic from being the constant solution. You have some of this in place with Magic requiring extensive preparation and effort. Niven's fantasies were powered by Mana. This was a limited resource, and when it was used up spells failed. [Answer] It has probably already been mentioned here, but let me put in my 2 cents: Wheel of time is a series where only women could use magic without going crazy. This had been the status quo for around 3,000 years by the time the story starts. The mind of the people was very interesting to see into when the story starts off... where men who can use magic were feared and were hunted by the female magicians. Even most men would be afraid of becoming magicians as it would lead them to becoming crazy and killing themselves or their friends and family. You can give this a read to give yourself some ideas. That aside, to make men relevant in YOUR story, one of the things that you can do is to make certain components that are required by the magician something that cannot be grown/made in the presence of magic. Have these be controlled and sold by men. You could also make it such that certain ingredients are too magical in nature and cannot be approached by women who are sensitive to magic. But men could either be immune to it to some degree or just don't have the magical organ, which could be the only one that gets affected by the ingredients in nature. Since this is a world that combines both magic and technology, have it so that all women were brainwashed into only following the path of magic, leaving the technology side of things to the men. I think that these 2 reasons along with the reason provided by nature would solve your problem, no? You could go one step furthur and start a religion that only accepts men as the clergy, with a mandatory swearing in of everyone in the civilisation giving more power to the men making the power divide smaller. Have the religion stress on cooperation and how only the yin (women and magic) and yang (men and technology) combination would be enough to help them defend against some outside force (real, but no longer exists or even imaginary). [Answer] It really depends on how powerful and versatile magic is in your world, and how advanced your technology level is. However given this: > > Magic takes the form of spells and rituals, is time consuming, and requires multiple components... It is often combined with technology to form a sort of magitech civilization. > > > It seems to me there are some rules for your world's magic and it is capable of interacting with technology. Given that, men can still have regular interaction with magic without being irrelevant to it. There will be plenty of male technologists who only deal with non-magic technology, but there will probably be many who will work with women to create magitech. They can't be entirely ignorant of the rules of magic or else they'd be good for nothing but manual labor. Any amount of understanding means there will be those who choose to study further and learn more than is necessary. If the population of your world is large enough, it's quite possible for your world to have a few men who specialize in studying and creating new rituals and spells. Sure they can't perform that magic themselves, but I'm sure they can find volunteers to do it for them (think university setting. lots of students and other peons to do manual lab work while the professor does the theoretical work). And that's not to mention all the things men can still do without magic. Also if magic takes women away from traditional non-magic roles, it's likely that more men will fill those roles. Magic that's time consuming is also not very useful in close-combat. Sure a fireball spell might kill 100 people, but against an army (especially one that's likely to have its own mages)? If you're world has guns, then that further reduces the power level of magic, as guns are practically instantaneous and a bullet will still kill a mage just as dead as a fireball spell will. [Answer] Consider technology, which is the bedrock of much of Western society. And yet, although most of us USE the tech we can't really understand it and only a limited number of us are versed in the mysteries of coding and other techy things. Sure, anyone CAN learn tech, but everyone doesn't. And somehow, all the people that don't are still relevant to society. Women happen to be able to manipulate magic and men can't, but there's PLENTY of things men could be doing that women won't be as good at. This really depends on the magitech level of this society,however,there are some answers in what you've said: > > It requires training, some females being stronger than others. Magic takes the form of spells and rituals, is time consuming, and requires multiple components. > > > What that means is that magic is expensive. It takes training, and even within women, not everyone is really good at it, even if they are female. Humans like to do things cheaper, faster, and better. There might be a way to get a load up a mountain using just magic, but if it's easier and can be done at less cost, you can bet there will be a man doing it without magic, or even a woman. Now, if you have items that are built out of magitech that anyone can use regardless of ability to actually cast (like say, a lantern with permanent light cast on the inside, or a magi-tech car) then men will be using these in their jobs. Like, I don't know exactly how the internet works or how a computer works, but here I am using one. I don't have to have skills or talent in tech to do that. Your magic tech may work in the same way. I find the premise of the question fairly well flawed--your society may be different, but saying the men are not relevant is just not going to be true. [Answer] No need to implement much changes, it will be simply a power reversal without making the men useless. The women will fight for dominance under themselves and take the more influential positions (leading, managing, planning, research). This will open gaps for jobs that the women do not want: the men will take more supportive, menial, dirty and physically demanding tasks which do not need to waste magic (assistance, farming, mining, significant other). Because men will still have knowledge, secrets and rumors only shared between themselves (yes, men do that, too) and they will be dominating specific lower-class positions, they will be still an integral part of a story. [Answer] A few ideas come to mind: 1. Make men resistant or immune to magic 2. Create something that only men can do. 3. Men can, if they choose, act as a lens for the magic to either make it stronger or to add finer control. 4. Accept that men, in that society, are only useful for initiating the baby process. Design a culture around that. [Answer] I would advise considering the real world. Education (or knowledge or learning or however you want to put it) is time consuming, powerful, and forms the bedrock of society. Yet, there are places where women's access to education is highly restricted, and even places where women are killed for trying to attend school. Even in those places, or arguably especially in those places, women are far from irrelevant - they are valuable as commodities and useful for functions that don't require an education. It's not a good deal for these women, of course, but unskilled labor, having children and romantic or sexual relationships are all roles held by women in these real-world, misogynistic societies. And make no mistake, these societies would not function without the same women they oppress, mistreat and ostensibly hold in such low regard. You could simply flip the gender roles - powerful female mages spend their fortunes amassing harems of men, common families pay dowries to marry off their sons into higher status families, men who can't make it as boy toys toil in unskilled, non-magical professions to make a living, and so forth. Even a magical world is going to need ditch-diggers and maids and sexual relationships, after all. And of course, that's based on the most extreme real-world examples where deliberate, extreme discrimination is the norm. You could also take the model of Western societies from the early and mid 20th centuries. Because of the lack of opportunities afforded to women, they were extremely under-represented in positions of power, and the best paying prodessions, but they were nurses and secretaries and waitresses and clerks housewives and so on. Again, no reason you can't flip that script. Non-magical men can't expect to be business executives or congresswomen or anything powerful and important, but they can certainly make a living wage and be an essential part of society as a common working stiff. [Answer] I don't have the required reputation to leave a comment so this will have to go as an answer: There is a novel by Naomi Alderman called The Power in which women develop the power to control electricity. I highly recommend you read that book before continuing with your world; it will give you a lot of insight into how one author thinks this power imbalance would shape society. Her book mainly focuses on the transient stage of this process as the power imbalance is suddenly introduced into the present day real world. Your world sounds like it would be in some kind of steady state and therefore the later stages of Alderman's novel will be of more use to you. It is also worth casting a glance to medieval Patriarchal societies. If you replace "magic" in your world with education and strength and give it to men instead of women then you will be able to draw a lot of parallels. Where reproduction is necessary neither gender can be entirely obsolete but by having your power in the same gender that bares children you will encounter some challenges given that and house work were the only roles afforded to medieval women. Perhaps consider some system child birth from an artificial womb rendering men responsible. [Answer] > > Does there need to be limitations on what magic can do? > > > You have already set limitations. > > It requires training, some females being stronger than others. > Magic takes the form of spells and rituals, is time consuming, and requires multiple components. > > > If an activity is time consuming and expensive, then it's likely to be practiced by an elite and not by commonners. And you would need a much better reason than "men have no skill in a particular field (aka magic)" to have a society where all women are elite and all men are commonners. So you're going to have individuals of both sex in all social categories. Poor people are not going to waste ressources if there is a cheaper, faster way to support themselves and their families. Also if you can't cast spells on-the-fly, magic won't help you in a direct fight. So men keep the advantage here. In a battle, you would have to protect your magicians until they can cast a powerfull spell. Details to think about. There are still too few details about your magic system. Can magic potentially do everything? Can it create life? In that case you could have some women-only communities or an 'amazon party' if your political setting allows it. > > It is often combined with technology to form a sort of magitech civilization. > > > Can men use this magitech? If so it greatly promotes equality. Does your magic has clear known rules to set up spells and rituals? If yes, you wouldn't need magic powers to actually invent spells, you just need to learn these rules. You would still need magic users to test them but men could take part to the engineering process. There is another path. Your setting does not automatically mean that women are all powerfull, it could even mean the exact opposite. By giving them magic powers you're giving them value. What have value can be sold. And since magic requires time, it can hardly be used for self-defense. In the end you can have a very misogyn society in which women are treated as valuables, where great magic power is more of a curse, where women are concealed for their own safety. --- As you can see there is a whole world of possibilities. Keep in mind that societies don't pop out of nowhere, they have a history, a culture and rules that are not always made of pure logic. [Answer] Take a step back and examine how society would develop, especially prior to technology being nearly as effective as magic. Men would be relatively useless other than as cannon fodder compared to spellcasting women. On the other hand, you can afford to lose many men in a society and maintain birth rates, so losing them doesn't cost much. Magic would be used to save women in child birth (as a wizard, I'd want to make childbirth safer, it would be a high priority). Magic using soldiers would be far more effective than non-magic using soldiers; societies that made the women march to war would wipe out ones that did not. On the other hand, spending women's lives cheaply would cost you your next generation of soldiers. Finding ways to use relatively useless men to fight effectively would be highly useful; creating magical weapons and tools to give men a chance against female wizards would be useful. The loss of the magic-clad soldier could be cheaper than losing the powerful wizard who equipped them. We should expect the usual hyperbolic social power curve. So we'd have many women who, despite using magic, are peasants, prior to the equivalent of an industrial revolution. Hedge magic to grow crops and the like. Again, being able to enchant tools to have the men do grunt work becomes useful here, boosting male productivity beyond the simple mundane. Such tools would be benieth the notice of master wizards, a chore for lesser wizards to work at to provide the expendible cannon fodder and serfs increased productivity. The use of men in bondage would reduce the number of socially acceptable mates for higher status women; possibly you'd have a few "breeder" men selected for their appearance, social status (parent), or other reasons (maybe men carry the blood of being a powerful wizard; so the male offspring of powerful wizards becomes valuable that way). Such a society, where armies of expendible men fight for their wizard-queens, and lesser wizards generate weapons for them to use in these proxy-wars, while women who where less good at magic get relegated to hedge-magic, could go on for a while. The creation of better enchanted tools, where a guide of (possibly male-dominated) artificers who design and build mundane items to be enchanted, could lead to a technological signularity. As these tools become able to rival and eventually exceed the productivity of a competent wizard at doing various tasks, not only does half of the population become no longer a dead weight on society, but the ability to store value longer than a wizard concentrates on a spell grows the economy. First at a few percentage points faster than population growth, and eventually faster. The society that embraces this technological revolution and (limited) men's liberation ould experience an increase in power. The art and craft of using magic and technology efficiently together, making lesser wizard's and mere men able to produce goods, weapons and resources at increasing rates, could raise a backwater isolated community to being a regional, then world power in the matter of centuries or decades. Locally, socieities that mimic this technomagic revolution keep up; those that do not are overwealmed. The leaders of this revolution start to spread over the world, drawing on magical and technological resources via a growing trade network. The increased agricultural productivity and reduced death rate from pointless wars gives them a large population, and their trade craft can destroy entire wizard-citadels if they don't bow down and obey. Still, remnants remain. The idea that men are more expendible and women are in command (the matriarchy) is part and parcel of religion, society, military and trade. Men carry the enchanted weapons of war and are the blunt edge of the knife. Women command and maintain these weapons and tools, and are only used in combat when everything else fails. Safe "core" zones are built (be they ships or forts), with soldiers deploying out from it in conflict. Women only engage in combat in extreme situations, or in defensive war; it is better to waste a hundred men clad in moonshine and steel than one combat wizard. With a tradition of a large female:male ratio, the binary family is unlikely. So, women form "covens" of family support. These covens have a variable amount of men in service to them, of varying status, and the men are considered possessions of the coven that own them. A naval vessel will have one or more covens on it, with the crew being owned by that(ose) coven(s). Men can be traded or lent from one coven to another; but men without a coven are considered unnatural and unsafe (feral). The magictech revolution resulted in men having more rights than they used to; covens can no longer do whatever they want to their men, they have some limited human rights. In some societies men may even have to actually consent to being owned by a coven. Extremely liberal covens exist that let their men have lots of freedom. Some women take a man into a coven and don't manage them at all, as part of "men's liberation". This satisfied the law, while thumbing its nose at tradition. [Answer] You mention "some females being stronger than others". If this is the case, you could make it such that males are the 'carrier' for whatever genetics or other factors determine the magical strength of their offspring. This would mean men would be responsible for maintaining the legacy of the families and a male whose offspring were powerful in magic would probably tend to gather a high status, perhaps taking up teaching and guiding roles for their children and the next generation. In fact if you look at many societies today and in the past, you will quickly see that being the strongest, smartest or somehow most useful does not necessarily mean high value and power. Frequently circumstance of birth, family, genetic traits and dynasty play an equally if not more important part. [Answer] There are many solutions to the more general version of this question: Magic is only available to a part of the population, how does the rest of the population still matter? While the most common answer is to make the number of magic users low, the male/female split is not the only one where the number is high. In general, the non-magic-users can only continue to matter if they offer something that the magic-users don't have. That means magic cannot be all-powerful. If it replaces all other abilities, in other words, if there is a spell for anything, non-magic-users are useless. In the case of a gender-split, they would be kept for breeding only. To matter in society, magic has to have a cost and/or limits. A common cost is time. Either learning magic takes so much time that you cannot learn anything else, so all professions that need considerable skill will be done by non-magic-users. If you cannot build a house or bake a bread or forge a sword by magic, and learning magic is a full education, then those builders, bakers and smiths are still important to society. Alternatively, casting magic could be the time-consuming process. If it takes more than a few seconds to cast a spell, magic is useless in melee combat or any full-contact situation. If it takes minutes or hours, many things can be achieved faster and easier without magic than with. This is obviously the direction you are taking. Another common cost is resources. You have this in your description as well. If a spell takes components, those components can be rare/expensive, limiting magic. Sure, the witch can fly over the city to visit her aunt, but if the spell consumes a special type of frog that takes hours to find, it's faster (factoring in search time) and easier to just walk. By the same metric, non-magically produced goods can be cheaper, faster and easier to make then magical ones. That leads to a common type of limit. In many magic systems, there are broad classes of what magic simply cannot do. For example, if magic cannot create or change anything permanently, all crafts, food production, etc. is limited to non-magical means. You can fly and fight and move things around with magic, but if you want to eat, if you want to wear clothes, magic can at best offer temporary workarounds. And finally, you have the whole area of culture, education and arts. Even if magic can do everything, cheaply, you still need teachers, painters, artists, musicians, writers, actors, prostitutes, politicians, traders and a million others whose work may be supported by magic, but not obsoleted (fine, the trader may have a flying carpet instead of a horse-drawn waggon, but he still needs to haggle, find good buying and selling spots, etc.) Once you think about how society is actually built, you realize that unless your magic is instant, instinctive and without material costs, there are always areas where the mundane remains. [Answer] You could make it so that the most powerful mages are considered to be sort of toffee-nosed, airy fairy, pie-in-the-sky people, out of touch with the ordinary people, locked away in their universities and parliaments debating higher philosophy, and thinking high opinions of themselves. Sort of like the legal / political professions in real life (or at least how they are stereotypically regarded) - yes the law and politics affect us all, and form the bedrock of society, but most of us aren't practitioners and that hasn't made us redundant. The vast majority of people could go their entire lives without ever thinking about what some senator or lord or supreme-court judge thinks, even though what they say and the decisions they make end up affecting society and those people. So while all females can perform magic, they are, as you say, at different levels - commoners are able to do magic, but only stuff like simple tasks, kind of "magician" level - stuff that helps them with their day-to-day life. The more accomplished they become, the more interested (and encouraged by their peers) they are in magical academia and their magical accomplishments. They become more interested in angels dancing on the head of a pin than fixing your car. The upshot of this is that men are still highly relevant in every-day life. [Answer] Just to add a separate answer into the mix: Perhaps using magic requires energy - as much as doing manual or intellectual work. So if you ask a woman use her magic to fix your car - she may be defying the laws of physics to do it where an actual mechanic would not - but it's still work to her, and so she may not be willing, or may still charge money, or may still get it slightly wrong. She might also be forced to introduce a magical component to your car which you might not want (because then you will have to ask / hire a mage to fix it in future) It might work out just as effective to get a mechanic to do it (or even more so if it's a highly qualified mechanic) Even if he does end up using tools that are partially powered by magic (i.e. was made by a woman or team containing women). [Answer] I think what everyone is trying to get at is "division of labor." In today's society, we have a number of people who are practically wizards at their job, and can do incredible things with finances, with the law, with money, with engineering and programming. These people still need support and to collaborate with people inside and outside their field. For example, I worked for a woman who owned a business. The husband was the CFO, and he worked with the creative side as well, since it was a small business. In many cases, pooling finances and time are beneficial to division of labor and are less formal in spousal relationships where the benefit is greater than sum of the parts. In other words, they have a symbiotic relationship with each other, mutually beneficial to both parties. So what would men do in this society? Whatever needs to be done, whether its maintain technology, or just plain finance, logistics, home care (although this is an extreme case). And do all women perform magic simply because they can? [Answer] Males decide the sex of the child the female decides the changes made so if all women are mages and all males are not are there exceptions to this like intersex? Anyway maybe your males perform rituals the male is already important in the idea that w/o his seed no babies means no women means no defense. His ability to make a female depends only on him so maybe they are obsessed with rituals to imbued the most magic into their daughters and to imbued in their males the ability to make more high powered daughters. Does your society give out status or something else for men who consistently father high powered daughters? As I assume the women have this by being super weapons with metals, prestige, and money and such. Is there a bidding war of his seed? The woman might be the warrior Krogans but they need to stop by the men if they are inclined to have kids at all. Are the men integrated or segregated from society? Are top seed holders guarded like fort nox? Those not able to produce or produce low quality magical daughters could be the labor and inventors in the world if magic can't build say an iPhone or gears someone has to. Men can also support their women it would probably be a cultural thing make sure your wife or female relatives who are living weapons are well care for by you be sure to run your homes in an orderly fashion with great care paid to her relaxation or ease of magical training ect. they need to be ever ready to take the fight to our enemies and you must be ever ready to make sure she succeeds! Seriously I just made a poster in flashing font and attractive colors! Your men are your back bone and also the ones to solve problems that magic doesn't cover like how to sew something. [Answer] While there have been a lot of good answers, I think I have another very good way to make men relevant. Let's say that there's a special ritual that shares a spark of a witch's magic with a man, turning him into a 'Paladin.' This spark of magic, a bit of the witch's very essence, activates the dormant magical potential inside the man. If the witch has, say, Level 7 power and the man had Level 5 Potential, the two end up with Level 35 power. The Paladin is then bound to aid and defend the witch, and vice versa-this is a magical partnership, and it is magically enforced. To balance this, you could make the abilities and/or specialties of male and female mages based off their gender. Females could be better at complex or multi-effect spells (due to their innate gift for multitasking), while men are better at simple or focused spells (due to their innate gift for focus; women can do it too, but men are known for focus). This goes off brain structure between the genders if you're curious. Alternatively, there are some other drawbacks that could work: 1. Soul Link-The Witch and Paladin's very lifeforces are bound-this makes the two harder to kill, as they share life force, but if one of them dies, both are dead! This makes it possible for one overwhelming attack to kill the Paladin on the battlefield, and then the Witch, who's taken a well-deserved break miles away, suddenly dies. 2. One and Done-A Witch can only be bound to one Paladin, and vice versa. Furthermore, she can't unlink the Paladin without due cause and/or his free will (he must want to unlink). Otherwise, the Witch is reduced to the power level she was born at, literally being reduced to the power of an infant. Alternatively, her power is decreased by the power level of the Paladin she was linked to (for the above example, that would leave the Witch with a power level of 2 out of 10-hardly respectable!) Another option is that unlinking without both parties consenting or due cause not only reduces her power but leaves the Witch with an emotional void, a longing for a male connection. This may not seem like a real drawback. Wrong, the longing is so extreme that the Witch has to seek out a new relationship (with a male). Since men can become magical and by doing so, increase their benefactor's power, they will remain relevant. [Answer] Firstly, men can still fill every other role/profession in the society from farmers and soldiers to builders, the law and medicine etc. Plenty of jobs to do and all of them essential in one way or another. Secondly you state that your system includes 'magictech'. In which case there's still nothing to stop men and women working together on magic related projects. Men (and non-magical women if there are any) can design and build the hardware required in consultation with mages. As and when required the mage then steps up and does her thing. Large or complex projects would therefore be a team effort with the mages needing the expertise of skilled craftsmen and engineers. Also if you do have devices and objects in your story that are magical there's no reason a mage cant prime a device for use by a non-mage and hand it to him or her for use. The plan being she will take it back once the job is done (or not if the device is a one shot). [Answer] Women process magic intuitively, but cannot handle technology (STEM-resistant). Men process tech intuitively, but cannot handle magic. Derived from the old hunter-gatherer dynamic. ]
[Question] [ Closed. This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers. --- Closed 7 years ago. * This question does not appear to be about worldbuilding, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help). * 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). [Improve this question](/posts/37469/edit) So in today's world, you have a bunch of people that many people have heard about. People that, if you mention their name, only a few people you know will go "who?". To name a few categories: 1. High-ranking government officials, like prime ministers or presidents of developed countries (Cameron, Bush, Tusk); 2. Criminals with highly publicized criminal actions, like serial killers, skilled con artists or master thieves (Jack the Ripper, Madoff, Jesse James); 3. People with a certain talent for creativity or something else, like artists, scientists or athletes (Picasso, Einstein, Bolt); 4. People who had a historical impact, like explorers, great military leaders, people who donated a lot of money to charity (Magellan, Eisenhower, Gates); 5. People who have run a very successfully company (Jobs, Page, Branson) and became rich through it; However, is it possible for a person to become notable on a national or even global scale without anyone knowing the reason they're notable? The situation I'm trying to create is that the story has a notable person in the current time, but noone can adequately explain why they are notable. Trying to figure out what that person did is a subplot of the story. [Answer] Yes, it's called [Famous for being Famous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_for_being_famous). The Kardashians being a notable example. I know the name and have no clue why and neither does anyone else. My best-guess at the cause would be the children of other famous people who actually did something, whereas the kids just end up in the news because their parents are famous, but never achieve anything noteworthy themselves. Then they have kids. This third generation would be the generation that is famous for no reason anyone can discern. If the original notable event was not significant at the time other than to put a spotlight on the person (fanfare being given to hoping they so something else); that is, the person is remembered more than the event (typically the reverse happens), then you could end up with the situation I think you're looking for. [Answer] ## Mind control/subliminal messaging There's a pretty great example from Doctor Who, of all places. During series 3 of the reboot (David Tennant's second season as The Doctor), there's a man named Harold Saxon who is very popular in Britain, and has overwhelming support for him being elected Prime Minister. However, nobody really knows why they like him; they just think he's a good guy. During the series finale, it's revealed that Saxon had been mind-controlling the entire British population to like and trust him through their mobile phones, and that he was actually The Master, The Doctor's arch-enemy. In short: if everybody is told to trust a guy through mind control/subliminal messaging, they're going to trust him, and he's going to be very notable, though nobody will know why he's notable. [Answer] That's a tough one since you have eliminated most of the reasons people CAN be notable, but I will take a shot. How about heroics? Maybe your character jumps on a bomb. It doesn't change history but the video goes viral. How about being the victim of a crime, like [Lorena Bobbitt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_and_Lorena_Bobbitt). She was famous for having cut her husband's schmeckel off. People have mostly forgotten her name now but [Kitty Genovese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese) was brutally stabbed on a crowded street. No one helped and she was pretty well known for a long time and probably still is within the field of psychology. This isn't a person, but a ship called the [Mary Celeste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Celeste) was found floating unmanned and in serviceable shape for unknown reasons. The mystery surrounding it made it well known for a long time. Perhaps there could be a mystery around your character. I guess we'd have to know HOW LONG this person needs to stay notable and does the person have to be notable to everyone or just a specific crowd. All of my examples have been mostly forgotten now, while yours are still known. Anyway, I hope this helped. [Answer] It might be possible to become famous just by being seen with enough famous people enough times. While at first someone would be unnamed ("a fan", "a white house staffer", etc.) or cropped, once their face became known enough for the photographers and editors to recognize, they could start to become known just for that. Add a few disclaimers once questions start to be asked ('no one important', or 'we don't know who he is'), and their fame could start to snowball. Someone who is seen regularly with multiple famous people could be well-known precisely for being associated with so many famous people. You would also have the intrigue factor because no one knows why they're associated with famous people. Depending on how it was handled, it could either result in someone becoming famous as a mystery (literally famous because no one knows why the person is famous) or becoming accepted as a well-known 'advisor' or some other generic title because they obviously have some sort of function. This could be influenced by what kind of famous people they are associated with. Their level of fame will also be a result of the people they are seen with. Someone who is associated with top-level politicians is more likely to become internationally known than someone who is associated with the top rock musicians, although YMMV. The question of how and why they end up so often in the company of the famous is left as an exercise for the reader. [Answer] I would argue that quite a lot of "reality" TV personalities lack genuine creative talent. Their antics get televised by a production company, which may be scripting the "real" events, and pretty soon they are famous for having been on TV. On a slightly different tack, how about fashion models? Again no acting talent, and the creative part comes from the designers, but at least they are selected for being beautiful. [Answer] Years ago I read a column where the writer said that it used to be that you had to do something important to become famous -- make a great scientific discovery, lead a major nation, etc. But today, we have "celebrities", people who are famous for being famous. If you mean, Could someone be famous for no good reason, or without accomplishing anything important, the answer is obviously "yes". There are plenty of people today who are famous singers or actors but who have no particular talent, they just got lucky. There are people who are famous because they were on a reality TV show or made a video on posted it on the Internet. There are people who are famous because their parents are rich and they embarrass the family in public. There are people who are famous for making sex tapes (presumably an accomplishment that almost anyone could duplicate if they have no morals or sense of privacy). Etc. If you mean, could someone be famous and no one knows how they became famous, I'd think that would be pretty tough. Even when someone is famous for a silly reason -- like reality TV stars and people who post videos of themselves singly badly -- presumably if you cared, you could track down just how they became famous. For a fiction story, of course you could say that no one knows how he became famous, and every attempt to find out always ends up referring to some other event. Like, He's famous because he was on a dozen TV talk shows. Why was he invited on these talk shows? Because he was famous. So how did he get famous BEFORE he was on the talk shows? Oh, everybody was talking about him on the Internet. But why were people talking about him on the Internet? Etc. The nature of a good mystery story is that it doesn't have to be LIKELY, indeed the most entertaining mystery stories are often the wildest. It doesn't even have to be possible. You just have to make it sound plausible. [Answer] From a worldbuilding standpoint, I think you would need the society to be structured in a way that makes a few people gatekeepers to information received by the masses. Television is a great example. You could imagine someone's face appearing in the news often enough that people are getting daily updates about their life, but have no idea why that person became relevant enough to receive such media attention (ie. Paris Hilton). On the other end of that, you'll need a very small group, or even a single person, making the decision to give them this attention. Therefore, in the event that those people pass away, or lose their mind/memory of the event, the reason for their notability would be a complete mystery to everyone. They are notable now, but what they did to impress the gatekeepers is unknown. This way, there could be a wonderful and impressive reason they became notable, but nobody knows, or perhaps even cares, what it is. You could vary this in a number of ways. Perhaps the media is semi-automated, if the story is set in the future, and an algorithm catches something that no human recognizes. Or in the past, maybe the local gossip chain starts mysteriously spreading stories about a person seemingly without cause. Or perhaps a king simply starts using a phrase that employs an individual's name, "By the honor of Samuel Neeb", and it catches on without anyone knowing what it means. [Answer] ## Being notable and becoming notable are two different things. To become notable usually requires some event or action that brings a person to the attention of everyone else. A person being rich gives them lots of opportunities to become notable, because people notice money being thrown around. Being an actor puts your name and face in front of a lot of people. That makes it easy to become notable. But actually being notable is something else. It means lots of people recognize you and your name. This is the state you want your character in, but with no one remembering how the character became notable. I can think of a couple ways that could happen. All you need is for your notable person to be introduced to the public discourse by sufficiently effectively means. Here are a few ideas: 1. At first I thought of a medieval village. Notable Joe walks into town and the mayor greets him by name and introduces him to a few prominent citizens. Joe didn't do anything worthy of making famous, but before the end of the day, everyone will be talking about him. 2. Mego mentions mind control and subliminal messaging. I'm thinking of advertising. You are trying to build your character's "brand" in an inconspicuous way. Sneak mentions of them into popular media. He could be mentioned in passing during advertisements. "Notable Joe liked our shampoo!" Or during sitcoms: "Hey Marge! Notable Joe is on TV!" Or even more subtle, people could start dreaming about him. That would be creepy! 3. Make your character a fixture of popular culture. I'm thinking about the presidents faces on US money? I bet most people in the US will recognize the name "Andrew Jackson". A fair percentage will even remember he is on the twenty dollar bill. But I would bet twenty bucks that less than a half of Americans remember what he is famous for, other than being a long dead president. 4. Give Notable Joe something that instantly draws people attention but is still mysterious. Maybe he wears a congressional medal of honor, and nobody remembers why he got it. His name is carved on a giant monolith that commemorates... something. Maybe the people have an oral tradition that venerates Notable Joe (though no one quite remembers why) and he just shows up one day... I really like your idea. It's kind of a reverse on the story about a mysterious and powerful person who pulls the strings from the shadows. Here is a mysterious person, yet everyone knows who he is! Can't wait to hear the rest of the story. [Answer] There were people in WWii who were heros but couldn't tell anyone. Some continue to do other work that made them notible, others were turned out to the street and their stories are only now coming to light. What if someone like Touring or Flowers, while notible in the ranks but secret to the general public, wasn't shued out after the war but continued to have a good working relationship with top government officials. Like the answer above about the guy whose face gets recognised by journalists and editors from being near so many famous people: here is someone who quitely moves around the top powerful people, obviously known and important to them. Once this was noticed, the story coukd get out and people would wonder "who is this guy?" [Answer] This happens in the movie It Should Happen to You. A woman purchases some billboards purely for the purpose of putting her name on them. Her name becomes recognizable as a result, and then she is asked to appear on television and in magazines due to her famous name, so her face becomes recognizable too. Nobody knows what she is actually famous for. They just know that she is famous. [Answer] Frankly, I think notable on any significant scale entails historical impact. Here's some examples along ozone's famous victim path. * Apollo 13 Astronauts It could be argued that it had historical impact. * Job It could be argued he had a talent for faith or perseverance. It seems for someone to fit your requirements, they can't instigate what they are famous for. Even if they don't instigate it, you may disqualify them for having an aforementioned trait whether or not that trait (indirectly) caused the thing or was utilized in their response to it. [Answer] The comments mentioned the Kardashians, for good reason. Some people are notable for being notable. Now this may seem like a "known reason why they are notable," but many people do not consider it a valid reason, so to them it would seem a mystery why said person is notable. This path usually comes not by doing one amazing thing, but by a long string of actions, each one doing just enough to increase one's notability. Often this isn't actually so much an action, as it is not impeding the foolish beliefs of others about your abilities and notoriety. It's impossible to tell just what made them notable, because it was not one thing. It a was a bushel of things, no one of which was enough. Related, one might consider [Jaberwocky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spyJ5yxTfas), from Better Off Ted. It's a "product," not a person, but it certainly built up notability without actually doing anything notable. [Answer] A person could gain fame (or infamy) by being part of a major scientific discovery, even unintentionally. For example, [Typhoid Mary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon) became a household name through the misfortune of being "the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid fever". Similarly, an individual can gain recognition by being a part of a significant tragedy... [Alfred Packer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alferd_Packer) and [Sharon Tate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Tate) come to mind. [Answer] Fame usually comes through a memorable event. Additional similar events reinforce the fame of the person and people associate the event, or string of events, with the person. However, a string of disparate events, where a particular person is associated to each of the events but is not the central person in any of them, can undermine the associations without undermining the developing fame. For example, someone says "I recognize that face. Wasn't s/he the one that..." "No, s/he was involved with..." "You're both wrong..." This lack of clarity reinforces the personal fame but generates confusion about the cause. [Answer] One possibility would be just living a long time. You can find articles on the world's [oldest people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people). Most of them have never done anything particularly notable other than just continuing to be alive. They're not exactly A-list celebrities, but some of them might be known internationally solely for their longevity. (The movie "Children of Men" turned this idea on its head by having someone who was famous for being the world's youngest man, due to some unknown cause preventing everyone in the world from successfully giving birth for many years.) On a related note would be people who survive a very difficult injury or illness despite all odds. E.g. Stephen Hawking is of course famous for being a brilliant astrophysicist, but even if he weren't, he'd probably still be at least somewhat well known as someone who's lived as long as he has with his condition. [Answer] Yes, you can be famous and even recognizable for no particular reason * Somehow you did something which gave you much attention * or if you pop up consistently on notable events * or you are involved in an exceptional event * or you are becoming a symbol for something. Symbols [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nt84D.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nt84D.jpg) You know what they stand for, but do you have any clue what happened to them or who they are? People involved in exceptional events. For a specific reason the person became involved in an exceptional event. It also means that these pictures allow people to recognize the person without knowing who they are ("Somehow is know this... person). You know this little boy while his real identity is still unknown? [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvcxK.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xvcxK.jpg) The following images have copyright, so I only link to them. [You know who this little girl is, do you?](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d4/TrangBang.jpg) [Do you know this unknown man?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man) [You know this woman and what triggered her grief?](http://totallycoolpix.com/magazine/2014/12/the-2004-tsunami-remembered) People who popped up repeatedly and gained reputation. If you are a bit older, you may recognize this man.... [![Rollen Stewart](https://i.stack.imgur.com/05nFC.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/05nFC.jpg) What has he done? He simply popped up at sports events, trying to get attention and placing himself strategically. [It did not end well.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollen_Stewart) You can generalize that every person which is able to put himself near celebrities or get somehow attention may be able to get famous. And then the ones who for any reason get blessed or cursed being famous... [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jub3K.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jub3K.jpg) Enough said. 32 million views in Youtube. [Answer] Yes it is possible. Real life example from the upcoming US elections: <http://trumpdonald.org> [Answer] A lot of the answers concentrate on people (like the Kardashians or reality TV stars) who may have no talent and didn't do anything to deserve to be famous but the thing is, people still know why they are notable (even if they don't agree with the notability.) However, with the cooperation of a Rupert Murdoch type or someone in charge of a large section of the media, you could become famous and leave nobody knowing why you're famous. Have the tabloids follow you around in a way similar to how they do to real celebrities, with paparazzi photos taken of you, images of you "showing off" some latest fashion, print gossip columns about you, photos of you doing something shocking ("Mohammed Chang spotted shopping in CheapCo Discount Shop!"), sexy photos of you, "Day in the life" interviews with you, scandals, ads with you endorsing various beauty products, basically acting as if you are already famous. Don't bother with claims that you "broke the Internet" by the way, it seems everyone is breaking the Internet nowadays... ]
[Question] [ As the title says, basically. Could you have some kind of musical instrument powered by a jet engine? It could be an organ, or a tuba, or whatever, it doesn't matter. I'm understanding and open if the answer is "yes, but only if it's the size of a semi truck". [Answer] It's very possible, it has been done, and they don't have to be humongous! It depends a little bit on your definitions, but what you are looking for is a pulse jet engine. These work by detonating some fuel in a pipe, letting the fume blow out the ends and exploiting the resulting slight vacuum that follows to draw in new air. They then set off new explosions at a frequency that resonates with the acoustic length of the tube. The two main types are valved and unvalved pulse jet engines, where the latter are also called acoustic and make all this happen without moving parts, solely relying on the geometry of the tube! There are many ways of varying the tone and dynamics to potentially produce music. The most obvious one would likely be to just make a bunch of them and tune to different frequencies, like this one: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zU4u7SSDKw> In theory, you could try yo vary the length of the outlet tube to change the resonant frequency, but this is complicated by it turning very hot. It might be possible though. A simpler way would be to change the length of the inlet pipe. Take a look at this "pulse jet trombone": <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOI0vAK4_4c> My favourite option though, would be to use a long tube and select different overtones using the ignition and variations in the fuel inlet. I can't access this video from where I am now, but I think this shows what I'm talking about: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqknDswOUWA> As for the dynamics and the response of the instrument, I think the videos demonstrate that they should be satisfactory. Especially if someone the time and skills to work on it for a few years. (I'll try to improve this answer later during the day, as my internet access is a little restricted at the moment) [Answer] Yes... but No Okay - bold statement here, definitely not hedging my bets... So - in terms of the basics - yes, an instrument with a constant flow of air could work. You might have some technical challenges around things such as needing to 'tune' the instrument to account for the pitch/timbre of the jet flow as is - but that is doable. However... Donning my musician hat If we are just looking at the woodwind/brass section, we have a number of problems: Phrasing Sometimes phasing is used to cover up the fact that we humans can't expel our breath infinitely (quick aside to trumpet players and cheek puffing) - but phrasing is also used in a musical context - let's think of the Baker Street sax solo - the first opening phrase is a bold statement, tailing off to the second phrase which reprises the first theme (linking it) but changes the second. The fade in/out of the phrasing is what makes it sounds musical. Now, granted you could overcome this by having some form of valve system to divert gasses away - but it's still an issue. Dynamics A good musician will have a wide dynamics range - again, woodwind and brass section considered here - the ability to go from piano to fortissimo is a skill. A jet engine is very good at sitting at a constant speed - and whilst they can spool up and down relatively quickly, They would not be able to go from quiet to loud quickly. You could, again, perhaps fix this with a complex series of valves... Pitch For some (not all) woodwind/brass instruments, pitch is a function of the valves and also of the musician themselves - being able to go from high to low and do so quickly - for reference here: [This is an 'experiment' in DCS world of getting jet engines to spool up - the quickest being 3.something seconds](https://youtu.be/fil0slxwa24?t=523) - That's half a 4/4 Bar at 100 BPM. And again - that's the quickest most being 5-6 seconds, so a full Bar. Not only that, but changing the blade RPM (which will change the pitch up and down) will also increase your dynamics - so trying to play high and quiet is an issue. Double tonguing Settle down. This is a legitimate musical technique - where you use your tongue to interrupt the airflow to play 16th note or even 32nd note patterns. Think of the William Tell Overture - 'da dadada dadadadad' - that repeated note is double tongued. Again - possible with valves etc., but good grief we are getting a lot here. Heat Instruments don't like getting hot or cold, this is why things like glass flutes used to be popular, because they wouldn't get out-of-tune when they heated up or cooled down - a jet engine produces a lot of heat - that heat is going to be doing some expanding of the pipes if it is made of anything metal (probably can't use wood... Ceramics might work) - and that will do all kinds of weird things to your pitch. Musicality This is perhaps a summation of all of the above - but there is more to playing a woodwind or brass instrument that just a constant flow of air, I'm a drummer myself (although did learn piano and can remember a lot of musical theory) - there is so much nuance in how a musician uses their body to play the notes. The speed of transition of the human body is much faster than the speed at which a jet engine (even a small one) can spool up or down - and to overcome all of these challenges would require so much extra valving, it would be incredibly impractical. A jet engine would be great at providing a drone (like the bagpipes) or a siren - or anything that didn't require changes in pitch or tone or timbre or alike. That said - I like airplanes, I like jet engines - and so if you want a world where there are jet engine instruments - you could do it - the music would have to be written specifically for the limitations of the instrument - but you could do it. To conclude - instruments as we know them and music as we know it now - no, a jet engine would not work. But in terms of a raw air-source to make different kinds of music suited to the above limitations - sure, why not Edit: If Tchaicovsky can use a cannon as an instrument for the 1812 Overture, then you can use a jet engine. [Answer] Yes, such should be possible. There are a great number of strange musical instruments in existence, from the octabass to the glass harmonica, from the contrabass flute to the theremin. Additionally, avant-garde composers such as John Cage and George Crumb would often compose unusual pieces, both tonally and instrumentally (for example, John Cage once composed a piece for an 'amplified cactus'...). If your story requires a wood or pipe instrument powered by a jet engine, it wouldn't be the strangest. (Side note: Your question reminded me of the Helikopter-Streichquartett, a piece written for four helicopters and four violins. Just goes to show that composers are always stretching the limits of music...whether their works are good is another debate.) [Answer] Here is a 1968 article on [Flame Amplification](https://deramp.com/swtpc.com/PopularElectronics/May1968/Flame_Amplification.htm). We looked at this when I was at university. It seems that if you use a microphone coil to modulate gas flow to a flame, then the flame can act as an amplifier as well as a speaker. For Hi-Fi buffs ask the time, this was the best amplifier-tweeter you could get, but the efficiency falls off below 2KHz. My dad told me of a rocket launch he saw in the 60's (?). it was not a pulse jet but it had some anomaly that produced a lot of infrasound. He could not hear the infrasound though his ears told him that something weird was happening to the pressure, and it resonated in the chest cavity and stopped him breathing. He said it was pretty painful, though the effects did not last. So, rocket engines can produce the low notes too. Any good suggestions for the midrange? [Answer] ### Yes An Organ could be powered by a jet engine, with enough engineering... I would suggest using either a miniature jet engine, or only using a small percentage of the air flow from regular sized jet engine. (unless you plan on sound as a weapon, and deafening your audience). There is nothing that stops this from working. The heat of the exhaust does create a challenge, but it is a solvable engineering problem, which can be solved by radiators to cool off the gas.. Alternative materials with a low coefficient of heat, some type of ceramic probably. actively cooling your organ's pipes. Or even designing the entire assembly to only be in tune once it has warmed up from the heat of the exhaust (though wear/tear from thermal expansion/contraction might make that idea bad, but if this organ is played constantly, that becomes a non issue). [Answer] What immediately came to my mind was the "[Large Hot Pipe Organ](https://youtu.be/Oceb7Uf4ucQ)". Its creators billed it as a "[propane-powered explosion organ](https://web.archive.org/web/20040202060104/http://www.lhpo.org/)". Basically, they'd set off small, controlled propane explosions and funnel the resulting blast of air through massive organ pipes. It did produce sound, and was entertaining to watch. It wasn't a particularly effective musical instrument though. When you scale up to something that extreme, you run into a couple of problems. One of the biggest is that it's typically not safe to be anywhere near it while it's operating. Listeners will be at a distance, and much of your musical sound would have attenuated before they can hear it. Also, the noise of the apparatus itself tends to drown out the musical output. In the recordings of the LHPO you can clearly hear the explosions, but the notes being played are rather faint. People who experienced it in person said that you felt the music more than you heard it. Even at smaller scales, a [chainsaw-powered trombone](https://youtu.be/mP0Vqpz6F9k) is mostly noise and little music. A jet engine musical instrument would be much the same. They're literally deafening to be around. You'd be hard-pressed to generate music at sufficient volume to be heard over the engine noise. Even if you managed to do that, it might be the last thing your audiences ever hear. The exhaust gas leaving a jet engine can be [near or above the speed of sound](https://pressbooks.lib.vt.edu/aerodynamics/chapter/chapter-2-propulsion/), which can make it difficult to create stable, controlled sound waves that survive the abrupt transition from supersonic flow to still air. All that being said, I have to admit that the idea of a hybrid jet engine/kazoo sounds hilarious. [Answer] The answer has to be Yes based on the principle that anything that can make a sound can be a musical instrument. But I have the sense you are thinking of it as a high-velocity, high-volume airflow source for a wind instrument of some form (understood broadly). And I still think the answer is yes. I think the most natural type of instrument to use is a whistle rather than a reed instrument or a horn. The latter two work at higher pressures and lower flow rates, and involve vibrating flexible materials that might fail under intense conditions. But that is an engineering question and they could probably all be made to work. The point here is that getting a high velocity flow of air to make a sound is easy. The hard part is keeping it quiet. And a resonant pipe is a very robust method to specify a pitch. I don't think the rate of airflow from a jet engine is anywhere near the engineering limits of a beefed-up organ pipe. An organ (which I count as being in the whistle family) seems like an obvious choice. One downside is that the engine itself is loud. I think (without analyzing it carefully) that the organ would be very, very loud, so perhaps from far away you could hear the melody but not the jet. It occurs to me that a large bank of electric fans forcing air into a constricted channel may be able to get as much airflow as a jet engine. Jet engines produce a lot of power in a small volume and weight, but if you're building a giant organ you may not care about volume and weight. That said, apparently [wind tunnels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_tunnel#How_it_works) sometimes do use gas turbine engines, so they might really be the right tool for the super-organ as well. [Answer] This is a frame challenge answer. Yes, in a way not half as spectacular as what you are thinking of. Jet engines as used in aircraft usually have the ability to supply compressed air to the aircraft. This is called "bleed air." Bleed air is tapped from the compressor. Bleed air is used to start other engines and to drive the air conditioning packs (the first engine is started from bleed air provided by the APU or by ground systems). If you ignore the air going out the back of the engine, and use the bleed air instead, you could use that air for wind instruments. The result would be like an old-fashioned Orchestrion, but with a jet engine providing the air to run it. The jet engine would also be providing a rather loud sound that might completely overpower the Orchestrion. But you can just label the jet engine as a "drone instrument" and call it good. A good reason to use the bleed air instead of the air coming out the back is that the bleed air will be a lot cooler and your instrument(s) won't need to be as fireproof. [Answer] I suggest a flute: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g96i8.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g96i8.png) There is no particular reason why this wouldn't work, although since the fundamental frequency of a wind instrument is inversely proportional to its length you'd better be prepared for an experience more like being shaken by an earthquake than an actual audible tone. I'd advise building the flute out of reinforced concrete for the same reason. (Or scale the whole thing down to the size of a large organ pipe and get a potentially almost usable but extremely loud bass tone.) On the other hand, this design uses an unmodified jet engine, and is clearly obviously ridiculous (assuming that's a plus point). [Answer] Others have noted practical concerns and rightly question what makes something a musical instrument. But with that said, let me introduce Survival Research Laboratory's "Flame Whistle" - "Comprised of 200 lb. thrust turbojet with a fuel afterburner and a large police whistle attached. Machine is stationary and the engine has been modified to work in conjunction with the whistle, primarily to generate sound. It also produces hot air and small bursts of low-lying flame with an average distance of five feet. The engine is shielded by 1/4 inch thick steel plates (heat shield), runs on diesel fuel. Made in 1996." ( From <https://srl.org/machines/flamewhistle/> ) So, if a police whistle can be considered a musical instrument - the SRL team built a jet powered musical instrument. ]
[Question] [ I'm writing a story of a fictional location on Earth, or a very Earth-like world, perhaps set in the late 1800s, or at some point when lighthouses were still in use. It's located on the Eastern end of my fictional island. It's standing on a mountain-like area, perhaps 10 meters over the water level. There are some rocks nearby in the water, but it's not extremely dangerous waters. I'm basically wondering if lighthouses had to always be placed nearby very dangerous waters, or if they also were used as a general "visual aid", perhaps even without there being any real harbour nearby, just for the sake of being able to make maps with the lighthouse marked out, which they can see far away even if they are just passing by. I also wonder if there's something that makes its location in the East unlikely/wrong. I don't want to end up realizing later that all lighthouses are always in the South or always in the North or always in the West or something, and that they were only placed where there are massive dangerous underwater rocks which the lighthouse has to warn about, etc. A bit to the North (well within sight, perhaps 1-2 km distance), there is a larger island or land area with mountains/forests/a beach. Does my fictional lighthouse/island seem reasonably realistic? I imagine that it may be located near Scotland or England or something like that, but I don't want to specify the exact location since it's supposed to have some fantasy/mystery elements, but still be based on "logic" from our world. [Answer] # Lighthouses don't necessarily mean "stay away". They can also mean "you are here". Your setup is fine if: * theres lots of ship traffic within a few kilometers. * or theres a hazard within a few kilometers. This could be a reef or sand bar out to sea, or dangerous rocks several kilometers up the beach. * There are no other night landmarks around. No busy town which may have lights visible at night. A lighthouse gives ships a directional heading and approximate range to a known point allowing some accuracy of navigation. By cross referencing the light with a map, the ship can find its position. By knowing its position, it can avoid obstacles. Those obstacles include land the lighthouse is on. But may also be dozens of kilometers away. A lighthouse can also be used as a navigation marker in safe waters. "Turn here to get into the port" or "this way back to shore in a storm" for a fishing fleet. These can obviously be on any side of an island. [Answer] [Here](http://fishing-app.gpsnauticalcharts.com/i-boating-fishing-web-app/fishing-marine-charts-navigation.html?title=Scotland++West+Coast+boating+app#8/56.342/-6.773) is a nautical chart of a random bit of Scottish coast: [![The chart](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mogDc.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mogDc.jpg) You see all of those coloured arcs and circles? Every single one of those is a lighthouse or similar (there's also a bunch of smaller buoys with lights on marked - I make it 45 in total between the two categories). You'll also notice that none of those lighthouses have any wrecks at all marked near them (there are some on this screen, but they're all clustered around the SW corner). This is not an exceptionally dangerous area of coast - you'd see something similar in a whole lot of other places. So yeah, lighthouses are everywhere, for a wide variety of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with specifically marking the most dangerous part of the coast. [Answer] Lighthouses are not cheap, quick, or easy to build or maintain. Because of this they are only likely to be situated where they're going to give the most benefit So what benefit does a lighthouse give? It's a big light, that can be seen at a great distance. You can (and usually do) also have shutters rotating around to make it appear to flash in different patterns, and have filters to make it appear different colours in certain directions The pattern of flashing allows you to give each lighthouse an identifiable pattern so that the person at sea can work out which lighthouse they're looking at Some of these patterns have specific interpretations. I.e. 2 quick flashes every 5 or 10 seconds is an isolated danger mark, often used to mark small rocks or submerged wrecks. If you see one of these, you just don't go near it and you're good. Another common pattern is that of a cardinal mark which tells you to stay a particular side of the light. As your lighthouse is on the Eastern tip of your island, it would likely be an East Cardinal Mark, which would flash bursts of 3 flashes, warning people to stay East of it (North Cardinals flash continuously, South Cardinals flash 6 times possibly followed by a long flash, and West Cardinals flash 9 times) If none of those apply, you can still take a bearing from the lighthouse to try and get a fix on your location. You get your compass, measure the bearing to the lighthouse and use this to draw a line on your chart that you know you're on, with another light you can get an approximate position (more lights will generally give you a better and better estimate). Knowing your position is always useful, and historically was a necessity for navigating narrow channels after dark (nowadays these channels would have electrically lit buoys marking the edges of the channel making regular fixes less necessary) I also mentioned that you can add filters to make the light a different colour in certain directions. This is important because getting an accurate bearing at sea is tricky. Your boat may be rocking or rolling, or being smacked by waves making it hard to keep your compass steady, and if there's a lot of iron onboard the ship (obviously less of an issue historically than with modern steel ships) this can cause magnetic deviation (where the iron onboard the ship bends the magnetic field lines resulting in compasses not pointing as expected) which requires careful calibration to properly account for, and in general you also need to account for magnetic declination (the fact that whilst charts are made with respect to true north, the compass reads magnetic north, which also moves) which requires a fairly easy calculation to account for, but one which people will inevitably occasionally mess up So, if you have a narrow channel, or harbour entrance that you want people to be able to follow, you can arrange your light at the end of the channel or entrance, with the filters set up so that it appears white if safely in the channel, red if too far to port (left) as facing the light, or green if too far starboard (right) as facing the light. As these filters are fixed on land, they can be set up very precisely and their usefulness won't be as affected by strong weather or local magnetism on the ship Another common technique here (especially for particularly narrow channels), is to use transits, where there are two lights set up, a low one at the end of the channel, and a higher on further inland. These are set up so that, whilst on the channel the higher light appears directly above the low one, but they'll be out of alignment if you're not in the channel. If you're too far to port (left) as facing the lights the top light will be to the lower light's left, and if too far starboard (right) as facing the light the top light will appear to the lower light's right (colours are reversed I believe in the Americas and Japan, because they're buoyed focussing on leaving ports rather than entering them) This is just a quick rundown of how navigation lights work, but hopefully gives you an idea of why they're not just for putting on windswept rocks, and your location is a perfectly plausible location for a lighthouse (unlike for instance an straight section of deserted coastline) The patterns I've listed here are the modern standards regulated by the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities (IALA, after the previous name which left out the middle bit) which was founded in 1957. Obviously your world wouldn't be quite the same, but in an area with substantial hazards or shipping, there would likely be equivalents of the early Lighthouse Authorities (e.g. Trinity House, founded in 1514 originally for managing the Thames but now covering all of England and Wales, the Northern Lighthouse Board, founded in 1786 managing Scotland, even though at the time it only had a handful of lights, and the Commissioners of Irish Lights, also founded in 1786 and managing all of Ireland, and doubtless examples from outside the UK) In particular, whilst the categories of mark are likely to transfer fairly well (ones for marking isolated dangers, dangers to stay a particular side of, general location, and sectors are fairly natural once you've developed the technology for such flashing lights and colours), the mnemonics the patterns reference will likely be different. The flashes of cardinal marks in our world references a clock face, so in your world, if clocks are different, so might the cardinal marks be. Or you might use a different mnemonic altogether (if your culture associates colours with cardinal directions, your cardinal marks might be coloured to match). Likewise we have a consistent port (left) is red, and starboard (right) is green colour scheme used in sector lights, lateral marks of channels, and lights on individual ships. In your world, to the extent this is standardised (which would likely not be a huge amount), the colour scheme is likely to be different [Answer] Not an answer but... ...They don't build light houses anymore, but as other answers point out, navigational lights -- typically supported by slender steel masts -- still are very much in use today. Classic 19th century light houses were built that way for several reasons. 1. Height. Back in the day, slender steel masts did not exist. If you wanted a tall tower, either to see from or to be seen, your best option was to build it of stone. 2. Accessibility. Bright, low maintenance, electric lights did not exist. If you wanted the light to burn all night, every night, you needed a stairway up to the light, and room for a "keeper" to work to keep it burning. Classic lighthouses typically used a large whale oil or kerosene lamp for the light source, and the keeper was needed to keep the burner in good condition and, to work a pump to bring the fuel up to the lamp and possibly, to pressurize the fuel. 3. Machinery. The long-distance visibility of classic lighthouses was achieved by surrounding the lamp with giant, glass lenses; and the flashing patterns were achieved by a clockwork mechanism that caused the entire lens assembly to rotate around the lamp all night long. The clockwork was powered by weights that descended from the top of the tower all the way down to the ground. Every two hours or so, the keeper would have to crank the weight all the way back up to the top to keep the lenses moving. [Answer] You could put it anywhere you want really, because people make things with the best of intentions but are sometimes wrong, especially in times before computer modelling where you couldn't get easy feedback on an idea. Take the old lighthouse on Lundy Island in England as an example. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lundy#The_Old_Light> They built it at the highest point of the island but this meant that the majority of the time the actual light was obscured by fog to those at sea level, making it functionally useless. This does give the lighthouse a story which makes a bit more interesting, more to write on the plaque inside than if it was retired just for being old. ]
[Question] [ Background Intelligent aliens have invaded Earth in 2024. Unfortunately for them they miscalculated. From watching our TV, they thought we were the same size as they were. Each alien is about 1 centimetre tall with the approximate intelligence and scaled-down manipulative ability of a human. Assume their physiology allows this. In the first wave, their largest space vessel is 10 meters long. Apart from the mother ship, they have a thousand smaller "fighters" and "destroyers" of various sizes (Say 0.5m to 5m in length). These have any scientifically plausible weapons that can be made of the requisite size. Question Supposing that they are subject to our laws of physics, can we quantify the size of the fleet they would need in order to conquer us? Are there any circumstances within plausible science that would allow them to win? --- Assumptions 1. Individually they are as destructible as an equivalent sized Earth creature. 2. The mother ship can carry a maximum payload, including crew, of 1000 lbs (450kg). The smaller ships can carry a proportionally smaller amount. 3. The mother ship can carry a nuclear weapon if that is theoretically feasible given the payload restrictions. However such a weapon is unlikely to destroy more than one medium sized city. 4. Handwave - The way they cross space to get to us is undisclosed. It is possible that they came from Mars and we simply didn't detect them there. Perhaps they used a convenient wormhole. Maybe they came from an asteroid or moon of a solar-system planet. [Answer] One Ship (and not even a very big one) If they have the tech to travel the stars, they have the tech for biological weapons. If they can make and use biological weapons, they can spray it into the atmosphere and wait to clean up the stragglers. We wouldn't even have to know they were here. Do it right and make some ethnic specific targeting viruses the Chinese could blame the Americans, Americans blame the Russians and the Russians blame the Chinese. You could start a real war. Alternately if their computers are better (which they should be), they could start cyber warfare to kick off a real war. Release each other's codes anonymously to each side. Create some false documents on servers for people to steal. Release tech to each side to make things more unstable. Also a 1cm high assassin with high tech could kill a lot of leaders, bankers, scientists. You could trigger a war that war. Just killing the American president using a Chinese nerve agent would do it. There is more to wars than just shooting and bombing. An alien race could easily get us to off ourselves without them firing a shot. [Answer] The Fleet They Have Is Good Enough To Conquer Earth, At Least For Some Definitions of Conquer In chess, there are two kinds of attacks. There is an actual attack, i.e. rook takes bishop, and then there are the threat of an attack - moving a rook so it threatens a bishop. If you ask an amateur player which of the two is better, they'll likely say the first, but if you ask a grandmaster then you'll be told that a threat of an attack is equal, if not superior to the attack it threatens. And the reason for this is quite simple - with the threat of an attack, you not only have the possibility of the attack but you also haven't committed anything to the attack. If a rook takes a bishop, then that's the rook's move for the turn, and it might now be in a bad spot. A rook threatening a bishop can not only force the opponent into losing turns playing defense, gain the ability to take the piece (assuming that the situation is worth it), but it also has the ability to threaten other pieces in the process - so a threat can be said to be worth far more than the attack. Why did I just spend a paragraph talking about chess? Well, because the alien fleet right now is a threat. If it attacks Earth, it likely doesn't have enough firepower to destroy the entirety of the human race - simple facts. But it represents the threat of a space-faring race beyond the solar system that can, at will drop in and start harassing us using all the tricks an FTL civilization has, from kinetic energy weapons to jumping in fleets past the Earth's defensive, not to mention the potential to call in for reinforcements from their home world. So what they would do, if they wanted to conquer the Earth, would be to park themselves in orbit and casually announce that, yes, they were there to conquer Earth and while they didn't have all the firepower they needed, trust them, they'd be more than capable of it and if Earth didn't want that to happen, they'd need tribute. If the aliens wanted to enslave all the human population to work in spice mines or something, they'd need a lot more, but to just establish supremacy, this would be good enough. [Answer] Just one ship: 1. Land on the far side of the moon and start mining thousands of rocks. * This means setting up the launching infrastructure. So...a base. 2. Launch a couple thousand rocks, timed for simultaneous impact. * Includes destroying all retaliatory capabilty (ICBMs, launch sites, etc) * The bigger the first strike, the better. Consider spending years preparing this strike. 3. Move to the near side of the moon now that it's safe. * Observe the results * Farside base continues to mine and launch rocks at human concentrations to degrade human civilization. * Farside base continues to mine and launch rocks at human retaliatory capabilites to protect the invasion force. 4. Move to high Earth Polar Orbit * Survey the Earth carefully for survivors, organization, and capability * Farside base continues to mine and launch rocks as needed to continue destroying human capabilities. After a couple years of bombardment, the few surviving, disorganized, unarmed, filthy humans will be easy hunting for the newly landed invaders. [Answer] Oh Yes Indeed. It's Called Nanotech Cyberwarfare might be doable, but for all we know it'll take years for their programmers to figure out what exactly we're using and how. After all, they can't give us quantum-computing viruses if those viruses depend on four base states to operate instead of just 0 and 1. Bio-weapons? Perhaps, but barring some handwavium we'll have more in common with sea sponges than them in biological terms. They'd likely be starting from square 1 in the chem/biowarfare department. If they can manipulate DNA like the universe is one big Spore creature maker we're hosed. But it's more likely they don't even HAVE DNA, so what good is their knowledge of their equivalent/s when it comes to screwing with us? "Realistically" I think all you can go on is their good old fashioned engineering and physics tech, at least at first. But even so, their 1,001 ship fleet has a problem. It can't be everywhere, and throughout history overwhelming air power combined with ineffective "boots on the ground" means it's impossible to hold down a territory of any real size. Our 1cm tall invaders can't have hand-held weapons of any great strength. At least at first. They didn't KNOW we're not 1cm high, so all their "small arms" are going to be almost completely useless. Like maybe they can put an eye out, but probably not if you wear eyepro useless. Their tanks might be able to kill us, and might be very good at it. But even 10,000 of them can't control the entire planet. So they need effective ways to hold ground. Lucky them, they have a trump card and it's nanotech. They're going to spot their "oh shit these guys are huge" SNAFU before they announce their presence. After all, any quick scan of the earth is going to reveal "massive" buildings and the fact that we're real big. So the mothership sits on the dark side of the moon while the smaller vessels conduct recon. Meanwhile the fleet admiral commands the building of nanobots capable of ruining human bodies. It's the one tech they have that'll be just as effective against each other as us. All a nanobot swarm needs to kill a human rather than a 1cm tall alien is a couple more generations of self-replication. The mothership then seeds the atmosphere with said nanobots. probably not in huge quantities, but enough to being self-replication. Once they get to a specified amount of X nanobots per meter (and they're SMALL remember, you could inhale 10 thousand with every breath and never notice) the aliens announce their presence. Maybe those 1,000 warships launch key strikes against critical military forces, maybe they just announce that Earth is now the property of the Martians. Whatever. Then they make their REAL threat. They tell humanity that the entire planet is saturated with nanobots keyed to humans (presumably our genetics, as it's easier to ID whole DNA than manipulate it.) and any resistance will be met with the activation of said nanobots in the region in opposition. As a demonstration, they might activate nanobots in a given area, or maybe wait for some government to declare active resistance and hit them. Either way, the results are.... gruesom. Depending on your flavor of nanobot you could have them rip apart individual cells/DNA strands, or go after brains or cause heart attacks or whatever. But in a few minutes all the humans in, say, Beijing are dead. At that point everybody's going to give it up. or maybe a few more cities/regions need to be taught a lesson. Formal resistance ends quite rapidly. The 1000-odd support ships are used as a peacekeeping force. You can set up "exclusion zones" where the nanobots in the zone automatically trigger. This keeps your tiny colonists safe from direct harassment by being so big they're unlikely to be of much use as slaves day-to-day. For "heavy construction" or whatever else you think you need humans for, you can monitor small groups with your tank-equivalents or aircraft. The 1,000-odd ships are too few to be everywhere at once, but as a patrol force and rapid response group they're pretty good, and if you need to down a group of humans at once just re-activate the nanobots. At this point your story becomes some ragtag band of humans SOMEWHERE trying to figure out how to nullify the nanobots before a more "conventional" resistance war can begin. They'd only have but so long to figure it out, as eventually there'd be too many tiny high-tech ships and tanks for the depleted human forces to resist, even IF an AK or M16 is equivalent to their tank rounds. [Answer] ANTIMATTER: > > "I can reduce this pumping station to a pile of debris, but I trust my point is clear. I am one android with a single weapon. There are hundreds of Sheliak on the way and their weapons are far more powerful. They may not offer you a target. They can obliterate you from orbit. You will die never having seen the faces of your killers. The choice is yours." - Lieutenant Commander Data <http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/149.htm> > > > ANY plausible weapon? 1000lbs? Every fighter is equipped with a one gram warhead antimatter torpedo with a perfect vacuum and cosmic ray shielding. Done. <https://www.quora.com/What-can-you-do-with-a-gram-of-antimatter> Yes, science fiction overdoes antimatter. Yes, it's a stereotype. There are lots of perfectly good reasons not to use antimatter weapons [Cons of Antimatter Weaponry](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/177476/cons-of-antimatter-weaponry) BUT for tiny aliens, with really advanced tech, they solved all these problems long ago. Even without teleporters (which would allow them to deliver warheads anywhere on Earth from orbit) or remote wormhole generators (allowing them to open portals to the inside of the sun, or, I think, creating black holes) or any of a million other handwavium devices they are likely to have available, their tiny ships could fly invisibly to targets, drop one gram warheads, fly to orbit, and then remotely detonate - assuming the missiles can't just fly there on their own from the edge of the solar system. So you destroy the infrastructure of the Earth one gram at a time until there are no more military bases and no more industrial cities. Then, you demand unconditional surrender or else another city dies every day. They make it clear that they will sterilize Earth before they accept defeat. The point is, they don't need to come up with a clever strategy, or be devious, or use something we don't understand, or even think outside the box. By brute force, they would crush us like bugs. [Answer] 1. If they are faster than light, they should be able to shift the position of earth to be off orbit, wait for all humans to die and then shift it back. 2. Heat up the planet and watch all the humans get flooded, then cool it and conquer what is left. 3. Nano bots that create each other from eating carbon as was also previously mentioned. 4. Historically viruses and bacteria are the humans arch nemesis. 5. Their small size is actually beneficial to fighting humans. As explained here: <https://youtu.be/ImYu9dJM4kQ?t=351> 6. Spend a lot of time shifting a large meteor to target earth. 7. Create a stable (maybe small) black hole on earth. 8. Radioactive contamination. 9. Make a hole in the earths magnetic layer. 10. Leak air into space. Since they are small, they are virtually undetectable by our current technology at large distances. [Answer] It depends on how their FTL drive works. If they just use wormholes or some other method to jump to an alternate reality / hyperspace / something where distances are shorter, and then jump back to real space, there is not much they can do. They might even doom their own civilization, as humans will reverse-engineer it and pay them a visit. However, if they have some method to actually travel that fast (Alcubierre drive, for example), then they can accelerate any mass to any fraction of the speed of light. You can kill all life on Earth with a baseball if you accelerate it to 0.99999+ (add some nines if not enough) times c. [Answer] # They could do it with modern-equivalent tech, but they'd need to go back home to get more vehicles. Leaving aside things like weapons of mass destruction or them leveraging the orbital high ground, I think that this might be doable in a conventional military confrontation, but they'll need more numbers to do so. If their tech is roughly comparable to modern-day human tech aside from their FTL, they'd be able to hold their own against most modern military hardware; their "fighters" are about the same size as [some of the smaller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster-Miller_TALON) modern-day military unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). This would allow them to use them to fill a role similar to human infantry, but they'd need millions of them rather than a few thousand if they want to successfully attack Earth. Similarly, their "destroyers" are roughly the same size as modern-day tanks, and could fill a similar role. Judging by the [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_level_of_military_equipment) on the world's military equipment, they'd need around sixty to seventy thousand of these destroyers to match the real-world army's tanks. Finally, their mother ships are approximately similar to the F-35 in overall size; according to the [Royal Australian Air Force](https://www.airforce.gov.au/technology/f-35a-specifications), its dimensions are a wingspan of 10.7m, a height of 4.4m, and a length of 15.7m. If they design ships of similar size that are optimized for air combat rather than carrying other vehicles, they should be able to produce something roughly equivalent to them. Again, though, they'd need many more of them; according to Wikipedia's [list of military equipment by nation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_level_of_military_equipment) again, they'd need twenty-five to thirty thousand of these vehicles to match the Air Forces of the Earth, rather than just one. Of course, they'd also require logistical vehicles that can provide all of these vehicles with fuel, electricity, and ammunition, as well as other logistical vehicles that can carry these supplies. Their diminutive size means that they'd likely require less food and water than humans would on an absolute scale, though the scaling of metabolisms due to the inverse square law means that they'd need to spend more time eating because they'd lose more body heat to the air around them. This would likely be most efficient if these vehicles were many times the size of the motherships posited in the original post, similar to the real-life logistical vehicles used by modern Earth nations. [Answer] Yes! They crawl through the airvents of wherever all of America's nukes are located, set them off, and make earth uninhabitable. The ultimate kamikaze. [Answer] Reality check: A race that size wouldn't make it past the Nuclear Era, let alone space travel. Nuclear Fission requires a chain reaction, that reaction requires a minimum amount of mass in order to create the cascade we're looking for. Assuming the fundamental laws for this race still apply some other issues: * Our electronics at modern day already work on the Nanometer scale. At 7 nanometers we're already having significant issues with scaling, the electricity required to perform an operation on a computer is so powerful that it begins to jump between parts of the hardware. We jumped from 9 to 7 nanometers and that process took us years and this is an exponential difficulty curve. You're asking for this race to scale it down by a factor of 100. Anything less and their electronics would be relatively bigger than ours. If their electronics are bigger than ours, they cant have a ship smaller than ours. * For this race to evolve at the size they are, they would need an exponentially smaller home planet, which means a lot less resources to build with (they are using a bigger percentage of their resources to do everything) * If by some miracle, they developed on an earth sized planet, they would be one of the smallest species on it, because everything else would likely develop into earth sized proportions. And then it doesn't matter how smart your race is, any thing bigger than a housecat would have no trouble killing your race. [Answer] Depends in how big a hurry they are. If they can wait few decades, they could simply tako no risk approach and wait it out until we make Earth [uninhabitable for us](https://xkcd.com/1732/), and then move in. If they need it faster, they can use their small size as advantage to sabotage a few of our nuclear reactors - much easier than having to produce and carry nuclear weapons over here. And if enough go down in short time, energy shortage would induce technological collapse even worse than nuclear fallout effects. Or they could hack in (or just bribe/nudge a disgruntled social network employee) and post as president of one of world superpowers that COVID-19 is just a light flu and that we have it under control, and there is no need to take any actions. [Answer] I'd say an FTL capable civilization would progress militarily in a manor close to us. I mean sure we can argue but I don't think any human can truly write an alien, like 100% alien, culture so we will just advance what I think we would do if we got almost unlimited tech. Intelligent life is all about surpassing manual labor. And so is warfare. So their size matters little. And you have to understand that limitations on our own mechanical contraptions is imposed because either we don't have the tech or we have to put humans in their. I mean we have stuff like Battleship cannons who are very powerful but have to be mounted to a battleship. But imagine if we can scale down the size, and all other negative stuff, but retain the exact firepower. Would we have soldiers running around with hand held weapons that can destroy a block at 20 kilos? Only if the military can afford it. So another limitation. The dreaded budget. Here I highly recommend terrible writing advice. For example the perfect tanks? A hoovering monstrosity the size of a building, why not a 100 meters, with plasma, or better, cannons and sophisticated AI, or something similar, that is also equipped with void shields and a meter thick armor. Add a lot of anti air guns. A bunch of super advanced drones for reconnaissance and urban combat. Then connect units of 3, or more whatever, of them into a network to control the local battlefield. Lastly add teleportation technology so you can simply use your teleportation network to achieve firepower superiority whenever is needed. But it's too big, it's too expensive, it's too overkill. Nah. We have the resources of the known universe, nothing is too big and there is no kill like overkill. This type of warfare is starting to sound futuristic. Not humans with laser guns or whatever. In fact the removal of the human, or alien, element is the ultimate goal here. So if your aliens posse such technology the entire fleet can be commanded from a single ship with the AI, on whatever level, controls thousand of such terrifying machines. In fact introduce titan like, titans from Warhammer 40K for extra cheese, command units which is basically a super advanced AI with the entire military history and theory of the entire aliens race in their memory. It also functions as a mobile fortress of absolute insane power. Seriously read the wiki. Anyway this is beginning to touch on ground warfare. But you might ask. Wait a minute. Why would the do that to begin with? Well because they have a comparable history and since we established FTL travel then, I'm guessing since your world might only include 2 intelligent races, it stand to reason that there are other races and many many planets with even races that are giants. So with that in mind, again comparable history and other races, it only makes sense for them to make their military in such a manner where either the size is small but a 2 meter tanks can destroy a whole country, or they push their sizes and their tanks are a 1000 meter tanks that also can destroy a country. Point is go small or go big. Firepower is present in dangerous amounts. But if you have FTL travel unlocked can't you accelerate a bunch of metal shards to something like I don't know 80000 the speed of light and throw that at a planet? Huge plasma cannons. Asteroids. Honestly the book of crazy science fiction, or fantasy, weapon can include insane stuff. Black hole making ships. Super heating or super cooling the entire planet. Heck. Our own little race posses enough nuclear bombs to destroy us. And all that without getting into stuff like chemical or biological weapons. Nor are we talking about super viruses for the lulz. Honestly if we let our imagination run wild we can destroy the universe faster than you can say what. So my answer is that they can win. Of course they can lose. Imagine stargate like technology but on a larger scale. That race found a floating stargate on their moon on in their orbit. They constructed something similar to our current spaceships and upon entering they are simply teleported into another location. Whatever that tech is. Like is it a network you can navigate or a fixed type traveling. Anyway once they arrive they are no better equipped than our current spaceships. Obviously you can move up and down that scale. From can split the planet in half or have to relay on windows vista for FTL travel. So honestly think what you want to do with the story and work from there. And more context on the aliens is also welcome. ]
[Question] [ So I am working on a world for fantasy setting and I drew a map as one is oft to do when making a world. The story, at least as far as I have planned, will be limited to one continent on this planet. My problem is after placing all my movers and shakers in the political world I have nearly half of the continent empty. This seems really unlikely to me if I just look at Earth and the fact that humans have popped up pretty much anywhere there is water to be had. So here is the world's info so as to be able to better answer this: * The world is about Earth sized and the continent in question is nearly 74 million square Kilometers in size (based on estimates and it being relatively rectangular-ish). The planet has an axis tilt of about 11 degrees and as such has more milder seasons. However the suns (in a binary system) are a bit closer to the planet most of the time and as such it is slightly warmer. Secondly instead of a moon there is a similarly sized planet that orbits around a shared central point. The most pertinent effect of this is that the tides are about 3x more powerful than on Earth. * There are four major intelligent races that live on this continent: Elves, Humans, Dwarves, and Dragons. Dwarves are a subterranean humanoid creatures that rarely if ever leave their cave cities in the northern mountains. Dragons are coastal creatures who grow to immense size and feed mostly off sea life and as such are semi-aquatic. Dragons live by themselves or in small groups of up to three in rare cases. They will live to be 3000 years old assuming something doesn't kill them, be it disease or otherwise. Both Dragons and Dwarves rarely bother with the politics of the other races, humans and elves. Humans and elves are much more people oriented. Elves routinely live to be 1100 years of age and humans live to be about 100 on average. Elves have about 1-3 children in their lifetime and humans the same and the humans out number the elves significantly. * There is magic. At this point I have not quite worked out the kinks of what the system can do but suffice to say there are a large portion of the population that is magic users in some way (about 25% of the population) and all can perform a very limited form of magic which is a simple enhancement system though they require help to do so. To do magic with out help, one must have an inborn talent for one of the five disciplines of the world. There is Alchemy, similar to what is seen in Full Metal Alchemists, Spoken Truth, a true name type of magic, music magic, a form of enchantment and magic item making, and conjuring of magical animal-like spirits. This is not a new development but has been slow in development in many ways. * There are gods who literally walk the planet and often times will directly lead the mortals who in turn often worship them. All gods can perform powerful feats of magic and are immortal but they are not all powerful (well the ones that walk the planet aren't). * The land that is already filled with countries are as follows: A Theological Empire ran by a god who wants to unite all mortals under his rule. A Federation of Smaller merchant states which have banded together to avoid that fate. A Kingdom of Elves semi-isolated by mountain range from the Empire and the Federation which has isolationist policies. And a human/elf nation that is mostly socialistic and highly family oriented. All nations have access to flight, mostly through riding of drakes, dragon like creatures which are less intelligent and significantly smaller. All nations know the general size of the continent. * It has been at least 4000 yrs since the onset of agriculture. What would be out in the empty places on my map? Is it possible to have areas with access to water that are not populated? There is a mountain range that separates the continent in two and most of the "empty" space is beyond that. With the mountains making on foot travel over them difficult and there not being major sources of population does it make sense that the war happy Empire would ignore what is semi-empty land? [Answer] Yes, they are. As you referenced the size of your Planet to be Earth-like, let's look at some Earth Population Data! [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HFZ9q.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HFZ9q.png) To give some numbers: In 4.000 BC, there lived an estimated 28.37 million People on Earth. Lets just put them all in your > > 74 million square Kilometers > > > sized area. That'd mean, everyone would have around 1km² to himself! That's huge! Now 4000 years passed: In the year 0, Earth's Population was at an estimated 188 million. We can go even further: You have 4 major races. Let's assume there are 188 million of each! Except for Dragons, as 188 million Dragons sounds terrifying (and would be a massive drain on available resources) You now have a population of 564 million Elves, Dwarves and Humans. That's a population density of ~8 people per 1km². So yes, big, unpopulated areas are perfectly valid, depending on the age of your overall population and their Tech-level. What could be in those uninhabited regions? Adventure! The mother of all Dragons, where she gives birth to all of them? Perhaps! Basically anything that fits your story. Edit: it was not calculated above that the Dwarves don't need to be counted as they don't live above ground ("Rarely even come outside") so that math is a bit more cramped than it should be where ~8/km² should be ~6/km² with ~2/km² Dwarves, but Math wasn't my strong point, feel free to correct it. Also, I'm not sure, but did they accidentally include Dragons in their Math? If so, instead of my earlier ~6/km² it's closer to ~5/km² (factoring a size factor of \4 to a population factor of /8, ⅛ the population but 4× larger than average Humanoids), maybe even ~4.5/km² due to food limitations of the Dragons. [Answer] Generally speaking, lacking water supply is a good reason for having unpopulated areas (just look at our earthly deserts). However, you can still have unpopulated or scarcely populated areas thanks to one of the following reasons: too much water: swamps and permanently flooded areas are generally not healthy places to permanent live * sacred places: the walking gods claimed those areas as their personal retreat and forbid other races to access it. * intense vulcanism: well, a lava fountain is not exactly the most nice place to live close to, considering it would burn and cover in ashes everything (in addition to the toxic gasses produced) * remoteness: some areas are simply too far away from other civilized places to make it worth the effort of building something there. [Answer] Define "empty". Is this genuinely empty, as in no-one lives there at all, or has ever lived there? Is this empty like the Alps? No-one lives on the tops, but there are people living in all the valleys, and the higher slopes are a traditional part of transhumance agriculture. Is it empty like north Africa? There are fairly wide areas where no-one lives, because there's not much water there, but there is regular traffic between centres of population (which are founded around sources of water), and it is still considered "owned" by the tribes/countries who cross it. Is it empty like the larger forests in the US or Europe? You can go quite some distance without seeing anyone. But forests have edges, and where a forest is entirely within a country, that country owns it, even though no-one may actually live there. Is it empty like the mountains between India and Pakistan? It's a dead zone as far as humans are concerned, but there is a strategic and political importance to it which means actually there are people there for military purposes? Or is it empty like the central Sahara, where the place is basically a killing zone for anything larger than insects and small lizards, and there's no strategic or political importance for anyone to be there? All these areas could easily be called "empty", and certainly there aren't any great centres of population in those areas. So the answer has to be "yes, it's possible". In many of these examples though, they are still owned by a state or tribe, or people use these areas or travel through them. So you'd need to decide whether there are reasons for them to be genuinely empty, or whether it's only that there are so few people there that they're not worth counting from a tax/resources/defence perspective. And whether, in spite of their "emptiness", they should still belong to someone. [Answer] There are large areas of desert in real Earth, taking up a bit of a contenent. Look at pre-industrial populations, and you see they are not huge cities. They are spread out, with farmland and villiages. It might be a day's journey to the next settlement. After keeping that in mind, I think adonies is right: have unknown areas, not uninhabited. Set up natural barriers, such as deserts and mountains. You can have trade with peoples on the far side while being vague as to what’s actually there: think of the Silk Road for example. [Answer] I think one important aspect to this question is: how long ago was your world created? If all races evolved over a long time frame then it's VERY likely that most of them are present in the empty space (unless the shore line AND the mountains are completely impassable - humans on earth made it too Canada during the Stone Ages). Their cultures, languages(!) and technological level should all be different from the main area you're focusing on (think the America's or Asia before anyone from Europe arrived there). Maybe the races there are at war with each other, maybe it's just a few tribes in the grasslands. The area could also have their own gods, magic or no gods at all; same thing for agriculture. If your world was created not too long before 'the onset of agriculture', it's reasonable that humans and elves never made it across the mountains - especially if the gods kept them 'occupied' in their territories. However, I would argue that dragons & dwarves should still live in that part, since they could easily go around (through the sea) or through the mountain range. (Similar differences in culture as above, just less extreme) [Answer] I'm gonna throw out a more unconventional one here. You mention that the tides are three times stronger in your world: I think that would lead to quite a few unpopulated coastal areas. Cities are usually built on coasts to act as ports, for trading or military purposes (or both). However, if the difference between high tide and low tide is too extreme - and it will be in quite a few places on your continent, depending on the local geography - it would be completely impractical to build a city there: * You build a city near the low tide mark. At high tide, the entire dockyard is underwater. * You build a city near the high tide mark. At low tide, the city is completely inaccessible from the ocean. Either way, the dockyard would only be usable at certain times of the day, and that's so disruptive to business that you might as well not bother. There are ways around this (a floating jetty that raises and lowers together with the tide, for example), but how practical this is depends on your world's tech level. Generally speaking, though, ports would be located at specific areas, where the difference between low tide and high tide is not too extreme, and everywhere else would be uninhabitable because twice a day the sea comes half a mile inland and floods everything. On the plus side, when the tide goes back out again, you'd have some spectacular beaches. [Answer] Since you have magic in your world it could be areas blighted by hostile magic in some way, maybe it works like radiation would or something more direct such as zombies or magical monsters. These areas could be naturally occurring or the legacy of past magical wars. Either way it explains the situation. [Answer] Just going to throw out something from the real world that may have an impact on your world. In the southwest United States there are huge areas that are un-populated or very very sparsely populated. You can look up the wikipedia entries on [Chaco Canyon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Historical_Park) In New Mexico or [Mesa Verde](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_Verde_National_Park) in Colorado. these are examples of areas that had civilisations there, then nearly nothing in the area for thousands of years. Technically there are people there, but the populations are very sparse. If you visit, you see why. Though beautiful, there is little water and travel would be extremely difficult. These are places I have personally been to, and I understand there are many such similar places all over our own planet. The things I think are critical to create that kind of environment are the following: Lack of readily available water, and very difficult travel. In the places I mention they kind of play off of each other. to get to Chaco canyon, there are significant distances with no water that Make travel hard. Mesa Verde in in some mountainous terrain. All I know is that they are Beautiful, Timeless, and Empty. You have no problem at all imagining you are the first person to have ever been on that part of the planet. [Answer] Considering that first off, Magic already exists, in multiple formats no less, and it's taken Time and Effort to produce these Methods, that is an important factor, another important factor is that you already answered your own question, Dragons already Live up to 3× the Time Frame in question, the Dragons could have easily already visited the other side of the Mountains for 2,000 Years before the Humans set up their Nations, which brings me to the World Building Parent Topic of this Post: I was recently reminiscing about one of my old favorite Games (Tales of Symphonia), and in it, the Civilization is in a very Low Tech Era, this turned out to be due to Magic Shortages primarily, whereas the Second Planet had a VERY abundant Magic supply, and as a result, their Tech Levels were significantly more advanced (Steam Ships compared to Ion Propulsion Personal Multidimensional Planes to be precise). The reason this is important is because at one point, both Planets were not only Equal in their Tech-level, but they were actually more advanced back then as well! Which begs the question; What Happened? This Technology doesn't simply disappear! It's evidenced in the few Ruins that weren't purged by the Bad Guys (who are also Hoarding Magic as well). The results of the two ruling Nations fighting caused the bad guys to split the World in two, quite a catastrophic event I would assume, and from there, the decline began, which when translated to your World, means that perhaps whilst the current Civilization is only 1,000 Years old, the Dragons might remember amazing City-scapes with Magi-Tech far more Advanced than anything today, you know, before The Great Cataclysm, which wiped out almost everything, and probably helped form the very Mountains which divided the areas. There's even a possibility of an Old Elf or Two that might know a few things, perhaps they might know why everything and everyone vanished from that area, maybe not, or maybe they will even have their own Agenda to spread. There's also of course the given possibility of the Dwarves discovering this area as well, and utilizing the terrain for their own purposes (I'm thinking Refineries, Ventilation, Storage, Mining, etc.) As you are the Creator, the answer is clearly up to you, but it is very possible to discover Advanced Ruins in uncharted territories. [Answer] You just need to remove the motivation for people to move away from the populated areas and into the unpopulated areas. Why do people move? Because there's something there that's better (or more available) than what's here. In the historic real world's migrations, "something" was often farmland or less often other natural resources (mineral deposits, furs, timber, hunting grounds). In other cases, "something" was less-oppressive neighbors, culture, or government (for many subjective definitions of "oppressive"). In more recent times (but at least as far back as the black death), sometimes the "something" is jobs, either quality or quantity. So, to keep people from expanding into the unpopulated areas, you just have to make sure that the best place to move to was always a different already-populated area. Magic reduces the value of remote natural resources. If your farmers can magically prevent bad weather, pests, and soil exhaustion, they won't need to expand as far to feed the population. Same thing with minerals. Mining gold hundreds of miles from home is stupid when the alchemist up the street can make it from lead. Without the lure of remote resources, there's not much reason for people fleeing (what they see as) oppression to settle new towns. Much safer to move to one of the established-but-less-oppressive countries. Anyone fleeing the Empire will go to the Federation. Anywhere else, they'll be too few and too isolated to defend themselves. Fear of outsiders keeps most of the Kingdom's population inside its borders, much like cultural family bonds for the Nation's population. Jobs is the easiest. New employers set up where there's already a labor pool and infrastructure. I.e., in existing towns and cities. We see this in the modern real world, even with huge tax and real estate price disincentives. Just for completeness, high demand for labor in the cities (and/or widespread welfare) will keep people from turning to subsistence farming, which might otherwise drive a few away. Bonus reasons: * The empty areas simply don't have any known useful resources. * The regions used to be populated, but a disease, war, genocide, or other disaster killed enough people that the rest fled. * Problematic fauna or flora. Who'd want to live in the areas with coma-inducing flower pollen or rats that can teleport into your granary? Even worse is if humans aren't at the top of the local food chain. * Jealous gods demand their worshipers stay near the existing temples where the priests can keep an eye on them. * Conquering gods want worshipers in the cities where they can be conscripted for conquering, not wandering around in the wilderness. [Answer] In general small fauna will not take on large targets and large animals can be hunted. However, that's not always true. There are creatures in the insect world that take on bigger stuff, not to eat but for reproduction. Suppose your empty area is the environment of a bigger version of this. The Death Snake: Death snakes are typically 1' long when mature, they are masters of camouflage as tree branches. While normally not a threat that changes when it's egg-laying time. A death snake's ovaries are in it's head, it's eggs are injected with it's venom. The venom causes permanent paralysis, the eggs promptly hatch and the baby death snakes quickly hatch and begin devouring their host while they grow. Scavengers will not eat such a host because doing so would likely eat a death snake--with lethal results. Now, if you want empty lands without a reason--everyone knows about the death snakes. What nobody realizes is that they fell victim to a particularly deadly (easy transmission, slow but certain lethality) disease and are now extinct. [Answer] Yes it is possible. Take Italy, which is named in the Bible (Acts 27). There are 20,000 unpopulated ghost towns in a small heavily populated country that is over 2,000 years old. Link: <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3068494/The-abandoned-beauty-Italy-s-20-000-ghost-towns-Stunning-pictures-ruined-villages-left-crumble-eerie-splendour-emigration-natural-calamities-pirate-raids-sent-locals-packing.html> [Answer] If the technology level is low enough and the unpopulated land is far enough from the rest of the continents it would be normal. Agriculture actually kicked in just before 10k bc, in middle east, while north America was receiving the first human foot in history ( well, pre-history). We don't know nothing about the nations of that period and onwards, by definition, but the belief that no complex societies existed is wrong. Actually there are proofs that show it: megalithic temples and tombs were done by people that don't have a name for us. And north America, of Bering strait had been larger, could have never been colonized if not during copper age, much, much later. ]
[Question] [ I have a world build for an Eastern style RPG, which includes the standard trope of monsters being common obstacles the heroes have to battle across the world; though my world gets into detail about where the monsters came from and integrates them a bit more into the actual world and story than many RPGs. The backstory of the world involves humanity’s first use of magic ending poorly when the magic 'ran out' from overuse, and a side effect of how it was used at the end, when they were desperate to find any way to sustain their spells, was the creation of a sort of magical pollution. This magical pollution acts as a mutagen, mutating human, crops, and animals. In the case of animals, this is what created the monsters of the world. 'Mutated' humans also happened, though far less often than animals (our closer connection to magical energy helped to protect us slightly). Most mutated humans resulted in miscarriage or still birth. A few were born alive but with 'mutations' of some form: * most of these mutations being disabling, * a few making the human look different but not otherwise disabling them, and * a very few rare humans were born (somewhat) stronger then the average humans or otherwise had 'positive' mutations, though not so strong as to make them superhuman or medieval X-men. This magical pollution dissipated rapidly, and a few generations later the decimated humanity started to recover from the original disaster. By the time of my story the background pollution is still around, but in a much lesser form. Monsters have grown weaker as a result, with stronger monsters generally being in areas where this magical pollution would be more common. However, monsters are still present, and generally have a few 'common' forms in a region. The basic idea had been that the monsters produced at the maximum of the pollution kept breeding and spreading so that they stuck around despite new monsters not usually being born any more; but still feeding off this magical pollution as a source of strength (justifying why decreased pollution tends to weaken them and generally why their energy output is higher than their energy input from hunting should justify). I realized this was a problem once I threw in humans. I don't want 'mutated' humans to be having children that are similarly mutated. In general I want these magically spawned differences in a human to not pass on to their children. Occasionally a 'mutated' child is still born in present day, but they’re rare and treated as such (varying areas ranging from shunning them as 'evil' to simply treating them as a birth defect to be pitied). So how can I justify the fact that the monsters are still sticking around, even if weaker than they were when the magical pollution was strongest, but that the effects on humans did not get passed on? I don't want to fall back on the claim that 'mutated' humans failed to ever have children. [Koinophilia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koinophilia "an evolutionary hypothesis proposing that during sexual selection, animals preferentially seek mates with a minimum of unusual or mutant features, …") would definitely be present, but at some point at least a few of these individuals will find a spouse. Besides, for plot reasons the story works better if these 'mutations' are not generally passed down to children. [Answer] The chance of mutation is increased by eating other mutated plants and animals The humans in this world are familiar with the mutations, recognize their source, and avoid it as much as possible. While some exposure to the pollution is unavoidable because it simply exists everywhere, it seems unlikely that any mutated crops would be harvested or mutated animals would be commonly hunted for food. Exposure to the pollution is minimized and so is the chance of mutation. Animals on the other hand are not so discriminating. In fact, many carnivorous animals preferentially hunt prey that are injured or disfigured, and a mutated animal may appear to them to fit the criteria. As a result, animals will ingest the pollution as a major part of their diet rather than just through background exposure; entire ecosystems could exist in otherwise low-pollution areas where pollution stored in the mutants is constantly recycled to make the mutant population much higher than would otherwise be expected. [Biomagnification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomagnification) Related to the idea that the pollution can be absorbed from food, biomagnification could result in carnivorous animals having a much higher chance of mutation than humans even when the ambient pollution has decreased substantially. The concept is that plants and animals low in the food chain absorb toxins in amounts too small to be dangerous, but the animal one step higher in the food chain will eat that animal in large quantities and end up with a more significant concentration. Eventually even a small ambient concentration of the toxin will be extremely harmful to apex predators. Applying this to your situation, humans that eat a mixture of primarily plants and herbivores won't have many steps for this accumulation to occur. Meanwhile ecosystems with longer food chains could have the same background pollution level while having a much higher frequency of mutation among the larger carnivores, and even slight increases in the background pollution level would have disproportionate increases in the mutation rate. A (potentially) desirable side-effect is that wild mutants are typically derived from large and dangerous predators, and in the rare case that the mutation is beneficial these "monsters" could be a major threat. Finally, if the link of mutated monsters are more likely to produce mutated offspring is key, all the same logic applies except restricted to gestation. In mammals that means the higher pollution levels from their lifestyle is key around pregnancy, and as described above a pregnant mutant animal is more likely to be consuming pollution than a pregnant mutant human, while egg-laying species have the critical period shortly before laying the eggs (though I can't claim any real expertise in what goes into that process). Essentially the link would be that mutant animals are mostly caused by environmental factors that humans intentionally avoid, so if an animal is a mutant it is likely to stay in the same environment and future generations would have the same chances of mutating, while humans actively avoid causing mutations so even if one happens by rare chance their offspring still only has the same rare chance of mutating. [Answer] I'd say there are two fairly easy ways to 'reduce' the number of mutated humans in a few generations: * Magic resistance You already said, that humans are less susceptible to mutation than animals due to their connection with magic. This can also mean that animals always pass the mutations to the next generation, whereas humans only do so sometimes (so the number of mutated people becomes less with each generation). This is especially true for 'half-breed' children, with only one parent carrying the mutation. * Evolution & social shunning If you describe the mutated animals as monsters I'm guessing that they are somehow stronger than normal animals, so they can easily out compete them over a few generations. For humans however, the the mutations don't give any positive effect and it's very likely that mutated people are less likely to find a partner and have children on their own. [Answer] ## We don't go there The easiest answer is presented by your idea that monsters still happen, but mostly in the areas that are still polluted. Just make the high-pollution areas [Forbidden Zones](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForbiddenZone). Maybe this is via political decree or by religious doctrine or just by folklore and hearsay. But people just don't ever go to the bad areas. Or if they do, the monster kill them; problem solved. Or they don't stay long enough to pick up the "[mutant powers](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ILoveNuclearPower)." If people stay out of the Dark ForestTM and that's where the monsters come from and that's how people become monsters... Well, that works. And it also allows for a few outcasts who, for whatever reason, ignore the ban and find themselves becoming the monster. You know, when the plot demands a monster. [Answer] Human choice. Get rid of the idea that mutations cannot have children (you already have mutated children); but humans are smarter than animals, and even IRL mutants (people with genetic abnormalities) are usually shunned and *very* frequently do not reproduce. (I have a grandson with a genetic brain disorder that leaves him about as intelligent as a five year old, for the rest of his life. I do not expect he will ever get married or reproduce or have any children.) Mutated humans are very unlikely to mate, and you can make the mutations such that TWO mutated humans, combining their mutations, are infertile or tend to have stillborn children. So in humans the mutations just die out. But *animals* and monsters with *animal* levels of intelligence are simply not as picky, not as repulsed, driven far more by scents and sexual compulsions when females are in heat. Males will mate with any female; female animals in heat can be more picky about their partners, but always choose one and mate on a tight schedule; they are biologically compelled to get pregnant within a few weeks. Mutated humans are shunned as mates. Mutated monsters are not. [Answer] Magical Run-Off Even ordinary, everyday pollution will collect and pool up in various places to the point that people won't go there. Nobody wants to be downstream of the chemical plant. Nastiness tends to get into the water and will pool and eddy, making the surrounding area uninhabitable. It will then stick around for a long, long time. People won't stay in a place like that unless drastic efforts are taken to clean the area up. Apply this kind of principle to the Magic pollution, but you can have fun with this. Normal liquid physical waste will follow water courses, but make the magic follow ley lines. Have positive and negative nodes that act like peaks and wells in the magical landscape. Now your humans, who created the problem and are now smart enough to avoid it. They will stay away from the Low areas and therefore the mutation rate will go down. Animals and other creatures aren't going to be as fast to connect the dots as far as the location is concerned. They might linger near the negative node because there is also a natural source of water nearby. Therefore the mutations happen more and last longer. You can tweak things so that the kinds of node influence the kinds of mutations. a very negative node might produce something that becomes extremely venomous. animals that hang around a positive node grow oversized and really strong, or maybe they gain intelligence. There is all kinds of fun you can have with this. [Answer] Well, you could play it off as similar to Malaria resistance. Perhaps, in the human population, the mutations were genetic breaks that offered some level of resistance to the magical pollution. Then, just as with Malaria, when the environmental pressure is relieved the "pure" Human genome returned to prominence because without the environmental pressure, it's stronger. [Answer] If it was radiation, I would say humans know how to use dosimeters and avoid contaminated areas. Animals don't know any better, and in fact prefer areas humans avoid. Power of mind could be a factor in the mechanism of the magic, since after all, magic responds to will. Humans could will it into harming them less, and animals would have no idea. It may operate on a different mechanism. It was originally intended that humans be the masters of the magic, whereas animals and things are under the influence of it. [Answer] Animals tend to thrive in places where humans are scarce. They even surprise us by [thriving in otherwise toxic environments](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-wildlife-thirty-year-anniversary-science/) > > It may seem strange that Chernobyl, an area known for the deadliest nuclear accident in history, could become a refuge for all kinds of animals—from moose, deer, beaver, and owls to more exotic species like brown bear, lynx, and wolves—but that is exactly what Shkvyria and some other scientists think has happened. Without people hunting them or ruining their habitat, the thinking goes, wildlife is thriving despite high radiation levels. > > > Animals seem to adapt to hardships better than people. So the mutated animals still prefer the polluted places, and they prefer them because the humans aren't there. Humans, on the other hand, know full well the dangers and avoid them like the plague. So new mutant animals are still born, and have even adapted to ensuring the mutations, just out of habit. [Answer] You can move some/most changes from genotype to phenotype. Apply those rules (simplified from real world): 1. Mutations can happen only before conception. 2. An embryo can't receive a mutations that will affect it, but it can receive mutations in it's reproductive cells that will be inherited. 3. The offspring receives changes to phenotype being the embryo if mother is exposed to pollution. 4. Creature does not receives phenotype changes after birth. That leads to options: 1. The creature has only mutations. Inherited. 2. The creature has only phenotype changes. Not inherited. 3. The creature has mutations and phenotype changes. 4. The creature has mutations and some special Magic-Adaptation-Mutation. If an embryo with the adaptation receives some magick pollution, it acquires phenotypical enchantments to genetical mutations. The more embryo gets polluted, the more phenotypical enchantments for it's mutations it acquires. So, there are mutations that are inherited, but creature becomes stronger if it was polluted being an embryo. 5. There might be mutaions that do not show up if not exposed to pollution. You can have creatures with different options in one world. Options to reduce amount of mutated people due to magical protection: 1. Most people get only phenotype changes (only while an embryo). 2. Most people's mutations are recessive, so child show up it's mutation only if mother and father has that mutation. That leads to people with hidden (not shown up) mutations. If mother and father have same hidden mutation, then a shild has 25% chance to inherit it from both parents. If it happens, the mutation will show up in the child. That might lead to "dirty/blessed blood" screnarios. :) 3. You can even apply a "Hybrid extinction" option to reduce amount of mutated human. Intruduce incompatible mutation combination, so a child with those combination can't live or can't breed. If humans have too many incompatible combinations, then mutant humans will be able to reproduce only with humans and identical mutants, producing children with hidden mutations. [Answer] ## Gestational Contact Human mutations are not genetic in nature, but are caused by contact with the mutagen during pregnancy. The human innate resistance to magical mutation is developed after the n-th week of pregnancy (insert whatever time scale is useful here), but the mother's resistance doesn't fully protect the baby. As a result, mothers who are exposed to mutagen during certain phases of pregnancy are liable to result in a mutated child. Since this usually results in a stillbirth or miscarriage, the culture has evolved to avoid that kind of contact (think pregnancy and alcohol in modern culture), although it does still happen. Because the mutations are caused during pregnancy and not genetic, they (mostly) can't be passed down to children. There are a bunch of examples of this kind of thing in our world, including the recent Zika scare. [Answer] Willpower. Humans controlled magic. They still have some residual control over the pollution. Less humans are mutated because humans don't want to be mutated. [Answer] Wild magic The magic resists being overtly controlled and overuse leads to a break. The break caused the mutations in humans. The pollution was a different side effect of that same event that embodies the increasing separation between humans and magic. The wildness of the creatures is actually the reason the pollution affects them. Only the wildest parts of humans can ever interact with that aspect of magic. Some barbarous folks may still mutate, but civilization tends to prevent it. The urge for order and control conflicts with the nature of this branch of magic. [Answer] witch-hunt You also could go for a rather dramatic approach: Mutated humans where not accepted by society and where hunted down. (similar to the witch-hunt back in 1600th) This even would allow you that there actually still are a few mutated humans, which hide far away. This could be even rather interesting for your story. A biological or evolutionary reason seems a bit complicated to explain and also is quite boring, imho. ]
[Question] [ In the land of Szerika, there lives a society of people who live peacefully. There are no other groups of people anywhere nearby, so the Szerikans have no worries of war. They do, however, fear dragons. In Szerika, dragons appear for raids on settlements about once every year. The Szerikans have no defenses, and indeed have chosen to not fight the dragons, in keeping with their practice of nonviolence. The dragons are, after all, far too powerful against the medieval technology the people have. As an alternative, the Szerikans have chosen to create movable cities. There may be other alternatives to fending off dragons, but these ones are pretty powerful. The chosen method for moving the city is modular building. The thing is, it's hard to build buildings and floors of buildings that can be attached together, moved a few dozen miles, and re-assembled - all with medieval technology. Is this possible? Here are some specifics: * The city has a population of about 5000 people, with perhaps 750 buildings. * No buildings are higher than three stories. Most are houses and businesses, built mainly with wood. * The construction/assembly materials available are those found in the Middle Ages. * The people need to move about ten miles in one week. [Answer] Maybe the people of Szerika would choose to live in tents? Tents are easy to set up and pull down, they are assembled from smaller pieces, and they are made from materials (wood, rope, hides, cotton, ...) that is easy to transport because it is relatively light and not bulky. It is harder to imagine lots of multi-stories buildings made from tents, so I guess this only works if the population density of the Szerikan cities don't require multi-story buildings. Now since the Szerikans are so peaceful, their cities don't need city walls, so they could afford less densely populated cities than the usual try-to-live-inside-the-walls city of the European middle ages. Some sources on living in tents: Historically, the Roman army was able to setup a new (somewhat town-like) camp every night when marching. According to the Wikipedia article ["Castra"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castra), "[t]hey could throw up a camp under enemy attack in as little as a few hours". In my own scouting experience, it is quite possible and not even too hard to build multi-story buildings just from timber and rope. Not worth the effort for sleeping places, but for community buildings, maybe so. Here is a website that has some pictures of a tent cathedral built by boy scouts for the catholic World Youth Day in Cologne, 2005: <http://www.jurtenland.de/jurtenkathedrale>. Another historic reference you might want to look into is the mongolian yurt. [Answer] People should live in boats. When they want to move to another place, they only have to built a temporally port in the desired place until they decide to move again. For that reason, cities in Szerika may be built in a lake areas or in the coast. [Answer] I'm a fan of [tumbleweed tiny houses](http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/) - they're neat. And while the tiny house isn't directly applicable its not that far off. A house is made up of a number of rooms. Each room is built on a wagon (we're not talking spacious, but adequate). Multiple rooms are then fastened together (wooden pins) and a tent pitched over the structure on which the roof and exterior rain proofing is placed. When it comes time to move, the external tent is taken down and tucked into one of the rooms, the pins removed, and wheels once again affixed to axels. Hitch the rooms up to the horses and away you go. Houses themselves aren't that complex - there's a sleeping room, and a cooking room. If the family has a trade, there is likely a craft room (blacksmithing, wood shop, brewery). It really doesn't take much to make a small house. As the family grows, it is simple to add on another room to the family's caravan. You can even have fun with marriage customs (the husband's side of the family makes a kitchen, the wife's side makes a bedroom and the newly weds go off with their own home). This is crazy you say? Well, there is some historical precedent for a mobile home in days of yore... Just pull up a search for 'mobile yurt' and you find things such as: ![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/bA5ewm.jpg) That's not exactly modern technology. [Answer] After a little bit of thought, a simple solution occurred to me that is quite viable with any level of technology after the hammer and chisel. If you've ever played with [Lincoln logs](http://www.knex.com/products/lincoln-logs/), you'll notice that the ends are specially cut so they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. With proper planning and engineering, I imagine an entire city could be built using carefully-cut timber. When the time comes, simply remove the contents to a wagon, dismantle the building, put the logs and thatch roof on another wagon, and off you go. Just make sure you number the logs correctly for reassembly at the other end! Of course, the buildings could be designed so they could serve as either buildings or wagons, reducing the number of dedicated wagons needed. [Answer] I endorse [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/14434/28), and add: ![gypsy wagons](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kuBVI.jpg) You typically think of a "city" as being a collection of buildings, infrastructure, and people, which is usually fixed in place because some of that stuff is hard to move. While people today may enjoy "roughing it" (camping) for a week or two at a time, that's not a great way to live long-term. However, we can learn some things from groups that set up temporary "medieval-oid" cities today and extrapolate. ![yurt](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MFMJV.jpg) The Society for Creative Anachronism is a group that, very loosely, tries to re-create aspects of the middle ages and renaissance. Its largest annual event is Pennsic, a two-week-long gathering of 10,000+ people on a hunk of (mostly) open land. Most people camp in tents, but some use Mongolian-style [yurts](http://www.currentmiddleages.org/tents/yurtsgers.htm) (which the nomadic Mongols moved, too), a few set up [pre-fab buildings](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-67wNMap7Eqk/SLIZn0VyymI/AAAAAAAAAs8/L6gAH3Q0ZXg/w554-h739-no/IMG_1505.jpg), and a very few have [gypsy wagons](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-pZkKo0bfwCY/U-GPxLMlBGI/AAAAAAAADgc/Y69bjo_X-_0/w757-h426-no/20140805_142623.jpg) or [buildings on trailers](http://home.jtan.com/~cellio/house/pw31/full-front-side-sunny.jpg). Most attendees bring their tents and yurts, with furnishings, in their cars; the larger items require trucks. Rigid structures on trailers are the hardest to transport and the most susceptible to problems of terrain. I'd say that things we can transport in passenger vehicles could most likely be transported in horse-drawn wagons. ![pre-fab building](https://i.stack.imgur.com/U2Va8.jpg) That covers individual residences, but what about infrastructure? A medieval city probably has a church, one or more inns, craft/guild halls, and some shops. It also likely has a smithy. And don't forget that you need stabling and support for horses, and some provision for livestock. That stuff...adds up. And can be kind of heavy and cumbersome. A city that is designed to be mobile from the start would have to prioritize and economize on common structures. You could still have some; they might be smaller and less elaborate than otherwise. You'd also want buildings to be multi-purpose where possible. Other infrastructure just wouldn't happen in a mobile city. Farms are obviously going to be a problem; there'd also be less in the way of roads. You'd still need a water supply, though, which might require digging wells. Moving a collection of structures and 5000 people, even with many of them children, ten miles in a week seems quite doable evan when traveling across open fields rather than roads. Armies covered that in a day, though with tents and not buildings. ![house on trailer](https://i.stack.imgur.com/x5dkC.jpg) [Answer] Although it may not be immediately obvious, buildings are simply too heavy to be moved via medieval technology. Clearly you need wheeled transport, presumably powered by horses or other pack animals. You don't have modern bearings, greased axles around very imperfect smooth surfaces will be very hard to transport under the best of conditions. However, the best of conditions is also not possible. Medieval roads will not be smooth, even a very small gradient will make the building simply too heavy with animal transport. The road will also deform given the load making it equivalent to be stuck in a rut all of the time. You do not have the technology to distribute the ground pressure load enough to really make the necessary difference, tracked vehicles are out, large width wheels are not practical to build. If you work very hard on the medieval engineering, you could perhaps have some success, but the inevitable breakdowns would occur on the road and it would be impossible to make repairs in-situ, certainly not in a timely manner. [Answer] Another alternative is to just have multiple cities built, and move the population to and fro in a convoy of tent-wagons. I'm not sure why a dragon can't just follow the moving city 10 miles, though. [Answer] I think the best answer in this case is to make the buildings mobile. * This would eliminate the time needed to dis/reassemble homes and businesses which would be a major undertaking even if the design was simple. * Keep in mind these people do not have plastics and other lighter weight construction materials nor the mobile lifting tech we have. * You could maintain stone infrastructure at the various sites the city sets up shop (unless it is totally random). This would be immune to fire and durable for the times the city is else where. * Buildings would have to be generally small as the effort to move larger buildings would be to great with the level of tech they have. This goes back to the stone infrastructure idea, major buildings, inns/town halls/markets/clinics could all be built and left at the various sites. TLDR: Basically I am talking about a medieval, horse-drawn city of motor homes. [Answer] This answer assumes there is a certain degree of 'magic' in this world -Or at least some handwavium-fantasy like properties. I mean we are talking about dragons. I agree with the motor-homes being pulled by horses being unpractical. And while the lincoln logs are a nice idea, I think it would make the buildings either too simple or it would simply take to long to set up shop or to leave a location. (So unless there are like 'Dragon seasons' it wouldn't work, and at that point you might as well just have 2 cities and migrate between them) Having boat buildings seems like a good choice although you are limited to waterways and lakes/seas. It is still rather risky because if the Dragons come from the open water, they are trapped. (Or from downstream on a river) Now for the magic-handwaving-madness : People in this world build and live in highly mobile establishments that add permanent structures every time they establish in a different city. Cities are formed by several people grouping and grow from others joining them until they disband upon hearing of a Dragon threat. Some take the risk and have homes built on barges, traveling rivers and lakes and sometimes even risking open water. The poor stick to land and travel by chariot and horses (like gypsies caravans) The rich(or crazy) fly away in the face of danger, deploying blimps(I very much doubt this would be actually possible but there are dragons so why not) above their homes and travel the land unrestricted. In some locations, people have decided to dig underground cities, these cities rarely last after a few dragon attacks as the people living underground become dependent on others returning with resources and food, but a few well located for trade and travel constantly see themselves resurrected. [Answer] Steppe peoples used yurts on wheels and tent cities. So have armies, and medieval tents could be very large and multi-room, albeit with a whole lot of interior poles and trusses. For your large buildings, consider the 1800s circus tent transported on wagons, not only the canvas but the king pole, half poles, quarter poles, and all the ropes and pegs, tools and seating to boot. Now, speed. The usual wagon animals on the steppe and in China were oxen. They are the strongest, so you need the fewest animals (which have to be fed grain on the march as there isn't time for them to graze. Crazy as it sounds, the Chinese ox drawn army travelled c. 3 miles per day. Horses and mules are faster, but you need 3 or 4 times as many. Look into gigantic English road waggons of the 1700s and early 1800s right before railroads. They made about 20 miles/day on good roads. So figure 10 m/d. This is a good walking speed for humans. Still, you will need advance parties to start out weeks early to put down depots for food, fodder, forage, and firewood for everyone else. [Answer] Domesticated dragons could be used to carry or drag buildings or parts of buildings. And when they aren't doing that, they could pull plows through fields, act as sentinels, scare away other predators, etc. ( \* This is an answer about where to get the strength to move buildings. It's obviously not a mechanical / construction answer like most of the other answers on this page.) [Answer] Ideas : * [Howl's Moving Castle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howl%27s_Moving_Castle_%28film%29) ![https://film110.pbworks.com/f/1260166790/howls%20moving%20castle.jpg](https://film110.pbworks.com/f/1260166790/howls%20moving%20castle.jpg) * [The Legend of Korra](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Korra) ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/u3fLY.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/u3fLY.png) ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/ezgqB.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ezgqB.png) * There is many legends about animals carrying cities (yeah another turtle !) ![https://i.stack.imgur.com/lybSA.jpg](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lybSA.jpg) ]

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