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[Question]
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**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
* **Context:**
In this sci-fi scenario/story, they don't use an space walk Astronaut suit (because of costs), but a crappier version of an astronaut suit, cheaper and mass produced.
Due to the technological advancements, the war between troops is basically WWI style: if you get out of the trench, you die, if you stay too long in a trench, you're bombarded. And yes, they are frequently sleep deprived, tired, angry and constantly miserable.
They can remove the suit, the helmet and the body aren't connected, so they can change the suit, but due to the circumstances, they cannot take the suit for more than a few minutes (either to protect them against shrapnel or against chemical weapons). Also, I thought on the helmet having an inside carbon filter instead of focusing on air filters.
For the soldiers, they can't just take out the suit and take a bath.
So, what would be the best way to clean their bodies "on the move" and avoid diseases through months of walking on trenches?
---
The options I thought was having a small ozone generator that goes around the body, killing viruses, bacteria and oxidising materials, just like we use those in the real world. **But** ozone can be toxic, specially if thousands of soldiers use those at the same time. And I don't think that they would be capable of cleaning the building up of sweat.
I also thought on a suit inside the suit, were water and cleaning agent would circulate a bit and then be expelled. **But** I believe that this is too much of a waste of water, not to mention that the remain water in the body wouldn't be able to evaporate to the ambient, because there isn't an ambient. Maybe inserting a ventilation system with a filter could help? But then you need a crapton of filters...
Does a mix of both or just one of these options are good enough, or there is a way simpler method to achieve the hygienic demands of the high commanders of the army?
[Answer]
Read about good trekking shoes and thier construction. Most of them have some kind of silver, copper or bronze lining for antibacterial, anti viruses and anti fungal purpouses. Smell comes from bacteria and fungus no bacteria and fungi and no smell.
Psyhologically soldier can't stand more than 2-3 days awake and in battle. If not taken back for rest then most soldiers go crazy and do something stupid like suicide. You need to rotate them giving them 2-4 days of rest for each 1 day in field. Including showers and some opposite sex assistance give You more like 2 days, not giving them showers, drugs(alcohol, smoke) and company more like 4(and riots).
[Answer]
**Rotate troops often enough and it's a non-issue.**
In a system of earthworks, the fire-trench where the action happens is only the outermost layer of a complex tiered system of trenches, bunkers, and buildings that can extend many miles in depth. One of the many functions of these works is to ensure you have some troops *nearby* (so they can respond to any emergencies) but not actually *in the trenches*.
No matter how heartless your commanders are, the fact of the matter is that troops in the trenches become less combat effective over time and need to be replaced with fresh troops in order to maintain a strong front line. While they're recuperating behind the lines, you also have time to consolidate forces, replace expended weapons, repair damaged kit, and generally get the unit back in fighting shape for their next rotation.
While troops on the front are constantly exposed to (potential) enemy action and thus need to wear their protective gear constantly, the inner lines are secure enough that you can get by with blockhouses with air filters and sandbags.
Each unit spends a certain amount of time (I recommend a week) in the fire-trenches, buttoned up 24/7. And no, it's probably not very hygienic in those conditions, but they can survive that for a week. Then they spend 1-2 weeks rotated out in the back line where they can shower, catch a hot meal, and patch up a damaged suit or faulty seal. Of course, if a major advance comes, they'll be expected to drop everything, suit up, and head into the fight, but most of the time that won't happen.
[Answer]
**Wear the suits for weeks and then burn them**
My Grandad fought in Burma in WWII. Hot, damp, full of things that bite and sting. I recall him saying they used to get smeared with anti fungals and pest repellants, put on their uniforms, and patrol the jungle for weeks. On return they would march past a bonfire, pausing to strip naked and burn every stitch they were wearing before showering off the caked on layer of congealed sweat and weeks old ointments.
Being a soldier in a hostile biome is savagely uncomfortable and gross.
Your suits are mass produced and cheap.
Keep the soldiers in them for as long as they can stay healthy, then bring them back, burn the suits, and send them forward again.
The reality of learning to deal with being sealed in a suit in a paste of ointments and your own excretions could make for some great storytelling.
[Answer]
I doubt that in the situation that you describe
>
> the war between troops is basically WWI style: if you get out of the trench, you die, if you stay too long in a trench, you're bombarded. And yes, they are frequently sleep deprived, tired, angry and constantly miserable.
>
>
>
bathing would be the least of their priorities, and not bathing would surely contribute to make them miserable.
Some bactericidal effect can be achieved with proper [surface engineering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bactericide#Surfaces) of the material used to make their suit
>
> In 2013, cicada wings were found to have a selective anti-gram-negative bactericidal effect based on their physical surface structure.[4] Mechanical deformation of the more or less rigid nanopillars found on the wing releases energy, striking and killing bacteria within minutes, hence called a mechano-bactericidal effect.
>
>
>
That would get rid of the smell, at least.
[Answer]
**Hook up to the ethanol tank**
The suit and soldier in it is flushed with 80% ethanol. Residual ethanol evaporates into the air cycle within the suit and eventually is dealt with by the soldier's metabolism.
On the one hand the soldiers welcome the possibility of a little buzz. The ethanol does a good job of killing germs and carrying away sweat and grease.
On the other hand this washing ethanol is used over and over and again, for many different soldiers. New ethanol is added to make up for losses but old ethanol is not wasted. Hair and skin flakes at the bottom of the main reservoir accumulate. The whole thing is pretty nasty.
But cooooool.
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[Question]
[
If electricity didn't exist or behaved differently, would a society be able to develop and reliably produce modern-level guns and other weaponry, like assault rifles and missiles?
[Answer]
I'm going to focus just on firearms here as that's what I know.
Let's look at production, as it's kind of pointless to design something if you can't produce it.
### What goes into making a 'modern' firearm?
Metal is mandatory if you want it to be portable (as Mythbusters has proven, you can make a cannon out of a *big* log, but that's way too big to carry). For most mass produced guns, steel (often 4140, but occasionally other alloys) is the material of choice, because it's the cheapest option that meets all the requirements. Steel has, of course, been produced by humans to varying degrees of quality for millenia, so that's one thing off the list.
Most modern firearms also have the metal components specially treated to resist corrosion and abrasion. Standard methods include, in relative order of development:
* Bluing: Is a simple passivation process that produces a layer of magnetite (black iron oxide, or iron (IV) oxide) on the outside of the metal part. There are four main methods that have historically been used, but none of them 'require' electricity. The methods that involve heat (also the most efficient ones) can be made more efficient through use of electricity (electric heating is generally more efficient than using something like a forge), but still don't require it.
* Parkerizing: Also known as phosphating, is similar in many respects to bluing, but produces a layer of iron (III) phosphate. In most cases, it produces a distinctive satin black finish (if you've ever seen a Glock in real life, you would recognize the finish). Functionally, parkerizing is low temperature heat catalyzed chemical process, and thus also does not need electricity except for improving efficiency.
* Ferritic Nitrocarburizing: Also known by the trade names Tennifer and Melonite, this is much more complicated, and can't be simply explained by the production of a single compound. Unlike the other methods, which are simple enough to not require particularly precise control, ferritic nitrocarburizing is an extremely sensitive process. While the salt-bath method is technically possible without electricity, it requires sufficiently precise control that it pretty much needs electricity for any kind of reasonable results. The other methods all require electricity.
So, the protection of the metal parts would have to resort to (less reliable and less effective) older techniques.
Plastic is also very common in many modern firearms. Usually, it's used in the grip, the trigger, and other components that don't typically take heavy shock loading when the weapon is fired. With almost no exceptions though, pretty much anything you can find on a modern gun made of plastic could be made of either metal or wood, so this isn't an issue.
The next potential issue is tolerances. Manufacturing of a firearm needs to be reasonably precise for a couple of reasons:
* Accuracy. Lack of precision results in weapons that aren't consistently accurate (that is, the variance between individual weapons will be larger).
* Repairability. You have to have rather precise (but loose) tolerances if you want to have drop-in replacement parts like most modern designs (eg, AR-15's or Glock's) do.
* Safety and reliability. If things are off by too much in certain places (for example, the chamber dimensions), you end up with a gun that isn't reliable or safe.
Effectively, you need modern tooling to make modern guns. This is technically possible without electricity, it's just insanely difficult, and you won't' be able to get quite as precise as modern tooling is (modern stuff isn't limited by the precision of human visual acuity or fine motor skills, without electricity you do have those limitations).
So, given this, so far it's possible, but probably not for mass production.
Next you have to consider ammunition. The same requirements for precision tooling apply here, except it will mostly just hurt your accuracy. As far as materials, standard ammunition consists of:
* Lead: Easily doable, people have been casting lead since before they could produce steel.
* Brass (for the casing): Also pretty easy, though the exact alloy is important. For quality on par with modern designs, you need at least WWI era metallurgy skills, possibly WWII. Alternatively, steel works, though it's potentially bad for the chamber if it's too hard, and aluminum works too (but that functionally needs electricity to get any realistic quantity).
And optionally:
* Copper: Used as a casing for the bullet. Not mandatory, but makes it easier to clean firearms after use and reduces metal buildup in the barrel. This is just as trivial as the lead.
* Some particularly hard metal: Armor piercing rounds have a special hard metal core. Traditionally it's steel, but it could also be almost any other hard metal. Modern rounds may use titanium, tungsten, or even depleted uranium.
* Wax: Used in some ammunition to waterproof it.
So, basic materials are covered. That leaves the propellant, and the primer.
The primer is easy. Pretty much any metal styphnate or fulminate will work, as will any other shock-sensitive compound, so you have lots of options, most of which were readily available long before electricity.
The propellant is a bit trickier. Modern guns use smokeless powder, not classical black powder. Smokeless powder is complicated. For those who care about the specifics, the [Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokeless_powder) is a good starting point. In short though, it's possible to make smokeless powder without electricity, but it's expensive.
### Overall, is it possible to produce a 'modern' firearm without electricity?
I'd say it's a definite yes, but it's not going to be cheap. Looking to some modern designs that use no plastic, you're looking at about 800-1000 USD for a decent semi-automatic handgun with electricity involved. I'd expect that to almost double without electricity, and for the ammo costs to almost triple.
### OK, what about more specific stuff like assault rifles?
I'm going to assume you mean a military assault rifle, not the politicized name for a 'scary weapon'.
An assault rifle is typically defined as a long gun (a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, thus having a stock) with selective fire capabilities (it can be switched between semi-automatic and full automatic, and usually also offers a burst-fire mode too in modern designs) chambered in an 'intermediate' cartridge (something less powerful than classical battle rifles like the FAL or M14, but more powerful than handgun cartridges).
The first 'modern' assault rifle was the [StG 44](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StG_44), a firearm developed by Nazi Germany in 1942. If you want to go even further back, the 'first' fully automatic rifle was the Italian [Cei-Rigotti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cei-Rigotti), developed in 1900, and the first 'practical' fully automatic rifle was the American [M1918](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1918_Browning_Automatic_Rifle), developed in 1917 just before America's entry into WWI. All three of these were originally produced without requiring any electricity.
So, yes, most modern assault rifle designs are possible without electricity (though do note that some designs that never really caught on, such as the [H&K G11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_G11) would not be possible without electricity).
### OK, what about all the stuff other people are saying you need electricity for?
In most cases, a lot of the things other people are claiming electricity is needed for for the production of firearms just need it for efficiency. Namely:
* Computer Aided Design: Nope, not mandatory for making a modern firearm. Drafting is a lost art at this point in our world, but there's no reason it would not be on par in terms of precision with what we can do with CAD software today in a world without electricity. Realistically, some designs would be out without CAD software, but most of them either never caught on in our world, or require electricity anyway (see for example the aforementioned H&K G11).
* Electric machining tools: Also not needed. Many such tools either exist in some steam powered form (for example, power hammers or lathes), or were developed when electricity was already ubiquitous but don't necessarily *need* it (for example, drill presses or milling machines). In reality, there's essentially nothing except the barrel and chamber on a modern firearm that you can't just cast instead of machining it, and the barrel can easily be machined by hand (in fact, people still do this in some cases, though it takes significant skill to get the rifling right).
* Alloying: OK, this one is actually possibly a problem if you want really 'modern' stuff like vanadium or titanium alloys, but such alloys are unnecessary for modern style firearms. As I mentioned above, most stuff is some form of tool-steel, usually 4140 or 4150. 4140 is a mid-carbon steel (that part is easy) with traces of chromium, molybdenum, manganese, and silicon, and low sulphur and phosphorus content. Overall, that is actually doable with old 1800's technology, with the appropriate knowledge, though the level of precision for the trace components would be well outside SAE tolerances. It doesn't *need* to be 4140 though. Any alloy with reasonably similar mechanical properties will work, provided it can be case hardened, which encompasses a wide selection of alloys.
So, yeah, overall, still very doable, just not at levels of production we have, and things would likely be significantly more expensive.
[Answer]
This entirely depends on *exactly* what you mean by "modern-level gun" and "missiles".
Weapons are very simple. Stamp out some metal parts and mix explosives and that is it. The "assault rifle" is a century old - the basic principles are even older and all that is updated is some better metallurgy and more precise machining (which just takes technological refinement).
Missiles are a tricky question because it depends on exactly what you mean by "missile". Rockets predate electricity by hundreds of years, but it would be absurd to expect modern guidance systems (by definition electronics are not possible without electricity). You would need a much clearer indication of what you intend here - a metal tube self-propelled by combustion is easy as soon as you have enough basic chemistry to make an explosive, while infrared or radar guidance packages are clearly not within scope.
As a general rule, think about the weapons used in the first world war - you generally don't need electricity for what was seen on the battlefield (obviously telephones are out but I'm referring to what the typical soldier actually carried), and any advances beyond that which are just refinements on the same theme are likely possible as well.
[Answer]
Yes to the guns, even an "assault rifle" is just a machine gun. This is an exercise in metallurgy, engineering, and chemistry.
Missiles are much more complex, and imply some sort of guidance system. Germany developed the V-1 flying bomb, using a pressurized-air powered gyroscope based auto-pilot. A "vane anemometer" was used as a odometer, to determine when the bomb had traveled far enough, and should descend.
Approximately 10,000 of these bombs were fired at England, and about 2400 reached London. So they do have some level of operational effectiveness.
[Answer]
Without electricity you will need to redesign the history of Humankind. For example: Tomas Alva Edison invented the light bulb in 1879, and in 1800 Volta invented the battery. You need to redesign the civilization without electric light and without batteries, so there will never be electric motors, or telephone, or any radio communication. Perhaps the most widespread machines on industry could be steam powered, however, I don't see why weaponry could not evolve. Even rockets or assault rifles, just with a slower development. We humans are very creative with our inventions. Actually we could built clocks before the electricity (see this Forbes article: <https://www.forbes.com/2008/02/28/oldest-work-clock-oped-time08-cx_po_0229salisbury.html#49f13c0531f3>
But definitely, everything will be sloooooower, starting with the communications: email, whatsapp or the internet will never exist. And with that, all the society evolution.
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While large-scale manufacturing and precision manufacturing is going to be hard, any chemical based weapon wouldnt be impossible. R&D behind it would take much much longer though.
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I'll disagree (in principle) with some of the other answers, at least as far as missiles go. (Again) in principle, some forms of guided missiles might be possible.
There exists a form of logic called [fluidics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics) which uses the flow of a liquid or gas to perform logic operations. This could be used to control a missile in flight, since it would use the same high pressure fluid both to perform computations and to drive the output actuators.
The concept was being developed at GE in the mid-60s as means of making smart artillery shells, since the final processor would be extremely robust, although some problems were experienced with Coriolus forces affecting the fluid flow. The whole idea was eclipsed by the explosive growth in electronics capabilities, but seems to be poised to make a modest comeback in some applications.
However, this only applies to missiles which are self-contained in flight. Anything needing either a command link or radar is going to be out of luck. Although even then, people's ingenuity makes absolute pronouncements hazardous. Homing doesn't actually require radar, necessarily: there was a peculiar military program which attempted to use pigeons as suicide pilots.
[Answer]
Missiles use electricity, They carry a high voltage battery to power the onboard gyrostabilizers and whatnot. Rockets however, can be ignited via a percussion cap and since theyre unguided they need not have any onboard power supplies.
Assault rifles dont require electricity to be made, even a lot of modern ones could be produced in an old fashioned steam engine driven machine shop. They will just take about twice as long and cost twice as much to make.
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There are actually not many electrical components you couldn't replicate using pneumatics or hydraulics. The only area that might lead to problems is the capability of electricity to produce, emit and register light, heat or other radiation or trigger chemical processes. You *could* even build a pneumatic or steam-operated computer, accepting that it is going to be much bigger, clunkier and much more susceptible to mechanical wear than its electrical counterpart.
Some technologies like electrolytes that are typically used for metal plating or the production of metal alloys can be replaced with pure chemical processes, albeit at the cost of effort and time (you **can** produce Aluminium, for example, without electricity - See potassium reduction).
Weaponry as such is pretty simple technology - an assault rifle does not need electricity, neither for operation nor manufacturing. Even guidance systems for missiles and rockets can be purely mechanical (even based on clockwork technology, maybe, early torpedo guidance systems were purely mechanical), but might have some limitations on sensor technology and no obvious method for a remote control without a radio technology.
You would face a lot of problems that you wouldn't face when having electricity available, but keep in mind people normally don't miss things they don't even know they exist...
The fact that human technology was never forced to invent solutions that work around missing knowledge about electricity (which I, BTW find highly improbable, but that was not your question), doesn't mean that such workarounds do not exist.
[Answer]
I think it all depends on your scenario. Electricity exists by itself and it's known since 2700BC and [Thales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales_of_Miletus) made experiments with electricity as early as 600BC, so in any case what you mean is "ways to create or manage electricity as we know it". Or do you mean [ELECTRONICS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics)?
Think about this: electronics needed for missile control require electric circuits. Do you know which other thing require (and has) electric circuits and impulses? [Neural Networks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_neural_network). So, as you can see, you don't need a society to understand or manage electricity, it just exists inside us, even in animals. However, you need an understanding of the methods to manage it to create electronic components!
You also mention it could behave differently, so that allows us to think in scenarios where a society developed other methods. Maybe gravity, magnetism, fluidics, quantum chemistry, quantum computing, electrochemistry, advanced thermal energy, some kind of unknown physics, even magic, why not? Electronic devices use energy, so as long as you can create energy from some source, you'll be able to develop devices. It doesn't matter what kind of energy you create as long as it is enough to make the device work
Furthermore, I see fluidics was already mentioned, so here you have some [**uses of fluidics**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics#Uses):
>
> Fluidic injection is being researched for use in aircraft to control
> direction, in two ways: circulation control and thrust vectoring. In
> both, larger more complex mechanical parts are replaced by fluidic
> systems, in which larger forces in fluids are diverted by smaller jets
> or flows of fluid intermittently, to change the direction of vehicles.
> In circulation control, near the trailing edges of wings, aircraft
> flight control systems such as ailerons, elevators, elevons, flaps and
> flaperons are replaced by slots which emit fluid flows. In
> thrust vectoring, in jet engine nozzles, swiveling parts are replaced
> by slots which inject fluid flows into jets. Such systems divert
> thrust via fluid effects. Tests show that air forced into a jet engine
> exhaust stream can deflect thrust up to 15 degrees.[citation needed]
> In such uses, fluidics is desirable for lower: mass, cost (up to 50%
> less), drag (up to 15% less during use), inertia (for faster, stronger
> control response), complexity (mechanically simpler, fewer or no
> moving parts or surfaces, less maintenance), and radar cross section
> for stealth.
> **This will likely be used in many unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), 6th generation fighter aircraft, and ships.**
>
>
>
In short: quite honestly, your question has to be rephrased and you'll need to provide details about what level of scientific development did your society achieve. But as far as it goes, the answer is: **YES, it's possible**
[Answer]
You could try to train animals to steer missiles. Or as in an Issac Asimov story you could use humans. Then again you could use use sex starved males... :-{
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[Question]
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When all the fuels are consumed, the bullets are all exhausted, it all comes down to melee weapons in terms of surviving a zombie horde. My question is, will a human in a knights armor be the key to surviving a zombie infested world?
I'm thinking, the armor would be platemail and underneath is a chainmail for extra protection (and some space if the teeth manages to pierce the platemail).
The human can carry 2 weapons or 1 shield and 1 weapon.
The human is your typical Joe, can read, write, had 1 year training as a military cadet.
The zombies are your typical brain eating, not running or jumping zombies which will bite anything that smells human.
Let's say the human must cross a 50 kilometer road for this test, which is full of zombies. No covers! Just his armors and guts versus the zombies that want to gut him.
Will the human survive?
If you want numbers then it will be:
1 kilometer = 2,500 zombies
2,500 \* 50 = 125,000 Zombies in total!
The task is just to survive the horde and make it across this land, not necessarily killing all the zombies, but all those hands and teeth might make this quite hard for sure.
[Answer]
# What's going to kill him is exhaustion
Full plate armour is perfectly resilient against considerably more than brainless biting and scratching, but he's not going to be able to fight more than 50 at the upper end before needing a long rest and some lunch.
The shield is not required, nothing is attacking him with anything that would penetrate good armour. He could theoretically take a nap by the side of the road with the zombies wailing at him in perfect safety with appropriately secure armour.
[Answer]
Your knight is dead, even if they don't manage to bite him they will swamp him and immobilise him almost immediately. Then he will either starve to death, die of thirst, die of heat stroke, or have a heart attack out of sheer terror. Possibly a combination of some of the above.
Unencumbered and without biting no one could push through that many people attacking relentlessly.
[Answer]
Let's look at some of your assumptions first
You are saying that there will be "1 kilometre = 2,500 zombies" yet this will be an open road with no cover. This is going to be a high population density. Very few countries on earth have 2,500 people living in a square kilometre. Even on a road, this will be about 2.5 zombies per meter. You don't say what kind of road, for some reason I'm assuming single track.
So if your knight is forced to stay on a road of Zombies they will be done for. Exhausted and crushed. However, this is perhaps not a very good test of the knights vs zombies theory. With a horse and a wider field say a KM wide, the knight should be able to avoid most encounters and will be reasonably protected in the encounters they do have.
(Side note, modern weapons may not work much better in such situations, this reminds me of the [Battle of Yonkers](http://zombie.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Yonkers) in the book World War Z)
[Answer]
Your knight would be better off with leather armor.
It's still resistant to biting and scratching but it's a fraction of the weight and a lot quieter.
He'd be better of trying to sneak around the zombies. He will die of exhaustion if nothing else trying to cut down 125K zombies while walking 50 miles. He still needs to eat, sleep.
[Answer]
It all depends on his choice of weapon.
# Melee
At best 50-100 meters. He's dead jim. Why? He will run out of steam hacking and slashing through the first kilometer. And promptly eaten. Even a swordman of the middle ages was rarely in combat for more than ten minutes in a row before they would take a short breather of a minute or two as they assess the situation - our Zombie fighter won't have that.
# Bow
He'll die after meter 8 for his 20 arrow quiver is empty and he has to stop to refil from his backpack. Or maybe he is smart and uses a large back quiver, then he reaches meter 88, where he is out of his 220 arrows.
# Pistol
Let's assume he uses dual glock 18 with 100 round magazines, and he is smart and shoots just one at a time. Also, he has 6 reserve magazines with him. Let's assume he is good at the gun... like, a shot a zombie. That makes 800 rounds, which is, at the given density, 320 meters.
# Flamethrower and a long fuel line
0 meters. Instead of zombies you get bruning zombies upon you.
# [Davy Crockett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device))
Now, THAT's a solution to clear 280 meters in one go using a normal [10](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=0.01&lat=40.72422&lng=-73.99611&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&fireball=0&rem=&zm=18) to [20 t](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=0.02&lat=40.72422&lng=-73.99611&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&fireball=0&rem=&zm=18) yield. He will have to deal with a lethal radiation dose though... Even the [250 t](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=0.25&lat=40.72422&lng=-73.99611&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&fireball=0&rem=&zm=17) variant only clears out about 640 meters. To clear 50 km in the 3rd degree burn area one needs [48 kt](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=48&lat=40.72422&lng=-73.99611&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&fireball=0&rem=&zm=14) on a urface detonation or [38 kt for a 610 m high airburst](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=38&lat=40.72422&lng=-73.99611&hob_psi=20&hob_ft=2007&fireball=0&rem=&zm=14)
# tl;dr:
Unless his chosen weapon is a nuclear device and he is for some reason immunity to radiation, he can not feasable hack through that density of zombies.
[Answer]
Gatsu (from the manga Berserk) won't bat an eye to face this task, but i fear that would be difficult to accept Gatsu as the "average guy". :)
As already stated the average guy with a heavy plate armor won't even walk for a tenth of the supposed distance, especially with such a zombie density.
Maybe can be interesting to see, modifying some OP requirements, what a "lone knight" could do in a similar situation.
1: the walking distance.
50km is way too much for a sedentary person, but not impossible for a quite trained one. I'm not talking of professional athlete, there are a lot of amateur athlete that do marathons (42+ Km), therefore a young guy, who was military trained for one year, has a chance to close the distance.
Actually, 50km is exactly the lenght of the ["Kepi" march](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_march), part of the French Foreign Legion training, in which the legionnaire have to march in "full combat gear carying rifle, helmet and 30 kg load".
Without the huge amount of zombies (and imaging that a plate armor is comfortable enough) the distance is an acceptable requirements.
2: the armor and the weapons.
A full plate armor is more of a hindrance than a help. It cause additional unnecessary wheight, is feasible but for sure uncomfortable to run wearing it, it makes a lot of noise (and probalbly it shines, not helping to avoid zombies) and the standard helmet reduces the field of view.
I would go with a leather suite, covered with grease (you really don't want to give grasp points to the zombies, or the 40+ Kg armor will easily rise to 200+ Kg and you'll be stucked). An hockey or football helmet, with some protection for the neck, will complete my defence against biting and scratching.
The weapons should be 2 because you are supposed to face a huge number of zombies, and two arms to wear out are better than one. Since you are supposed to move constantly you only have to cripple the zombies that are on your path. You don't have to slash anything that's particullary strong, therefore something that's lightwight and handleable would work well, i'd go with a couple of tomahawks or the traditional machetes.
3: the zombies [measue unit: Z] density.
You stated that the guy should expect 2.5 KZ/Km -> 2.5 Z/m.
You didn't say how wide the road would be, therefore we/i assume 10m for simplicity -> 0.25 Z/m^2.
Assuming that the guy needs only 1m wide track to proceed, he will face 12.5 KZ. For sure the Zs tend to mass against the guy, therefore the density won't be uniform and we should at least double the previous number -> a total of 25 KZ on the path.
25K machete hits to clear the path can't be sustained from anyone but, if we reduce the number by one order of magnitude, maybe is not impossible.
2.5K is still a lot of hits, and you also have to walk 50km: the only possibility for the guy is to have some triathlon ironman-level physical training.
In this case it could be feasible:
- walking 50km is affordable for an ironman athlete, he's supposed to RUN for 42+ Km.
- he won't swim, but he needs to hit some skulls with tomahawks. The arm movement is quite similar to front crawl style. The ironman athlete is supposed to swim for 3860m, and a good athlete will complete one 25m pool with 15 arm swings. This means that the ironman is supposed to do 2316 arm swing, with a little more effort he could swing the arm another 186 times and actually clear his path.
- an ironman athlete should also ride a bike for 180Km, we can dedicate this "energy reserve" to deal with the armor additional drag and to manage critical events (particularly annoying Z groups, sprints to gain time to drink).
4: food and water.
The food isn't as important as water, you have to eat for sure but 1 Kg of high energy density food will be surely enough to finish the trip, the water is a problem.
During a race, an ironman athlete needs 1.1 liter/h, the fastest athlete can finish the race in a little more than 8h but since our guy must deal with a lot of distractions he should plan a 16h run. Moreover, he won't use a triathlon suite but a (hopefully) light armor instead! Sweat increase, therefore 17 liters of water are definitely required, and this means that he needs to carry at least 18Kg + other gears. The plate armor is really a no-go option because of the weight.
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To summarize:
* an average guy, with a metal plate armor, facing 125 KZ on a 50 Km path -> he doesn't stand a chance.
* an ironman athlete, with a leather armor, facing only 12.5 KZ on a 50 Km path -> if lucky, he can hope to reach a safe place after 16 hours of fight, outworn but alive.
For the records: for few people this trip wouldn't be anything special.
For instance, we can consider [James Lawrence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lawrence_(triathlete)), a man who completed 50 ironman-length triathlons in 50 consecutive days.
Apparently, provided he could rest every night, this guy could kill at least 6.25 BILLIONS of zombies on a streak! 0\_0
He's not an athlete, he's a war machine...
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[Question]
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Jormungandr, the Snakebot of Doom, has unleashed its 6.8 metric ton railgun rounds upon the world's 700 or so petroleum refineries over the space of forty-five minutes. Its goal is to put the refineries out of action and to ignite any petroleum products stored on site by rupturing their storage, tasks that its railguns have no difficulty in performing.
Jormungandr's 6.8 metric ton disintegrating railgun rounds will achieve this goal over an interval of about fifteen minutes as the shots it targeted upon the refineries in order from the most distant to closest impact their targets. Any petroleum tanker ships on-site at coastal refineries will also be destroyed and their contents - if any - ignited.
What general environmental impacts would occur from every petroleum refinery in the world being destroyed and any petroleum on site being ignited? Please describe both the short-term impact to the immediate areas and globally over the following weeks, and the long-term impact over the same areas, over the following years.
I am not concerned with the possibility of humanity being broken of its petroleum addiction, so please address only the impact of the refinery fires over the time frames specified, and do not address the effects of the possible cessation or reduction in petroleum refining, or any economic or military implications. This is a purely environmental question.
I'm after a generalised answer as to the environmental effects, not specific details as to the effects on a per-refinery basis.
[Answer]
### Not particularly devastating. Will average to about 1/25th of the Australian 2019-2020 bushfires.
So in terms of environmental damage from fires, I'm going to define a new unit: "A Black Summer." This is the environmental damage done from the Australian bushfire season that bridged 2019-2020, which we've titled "The black summer" locally.
"A black summer" put out 830 million tonnes of CO2, [killed 445 people from smoke inhalation](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/26/australias-summer-bushfire-smoke-killed-445-and-put-thousands-in-hospital-inquiry-hears), hospitalised 4000 people, [killed 3 billion animals](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/28/almost-3-billion-animals-affected-by-australian-megafires-report-shows-aoe), resulted in AUD 2.2 billion in insurance claims, hit productivity to the cost of about [$20 billion](https://cdrta.com.au/2020/02/05/the-wider-economic-and-socio-economic-impacts-of-the-australian-bushfires/#:%7E:text=Economic%20Costs%20and%20Market%20Effects&text=More%20than%2010%20million%20hectares%20have%20burned%20during%20the%20bushfire,in%20NSW%2C%20Australia%27s%20biggest%20economy.&text=Westpac%20has%20estimated%20that%20the,0.2%20to%200.5%20per%20cent.).
There's also "1 Australian Black Summer" which is 1 black summer divided over the land area of Australia.
Lets first convert your disaster to Black Summers.
How much oil is out of the ground and in ships / tankers / refineries / storage tanks? The sum total of [global strategic oil reserve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_strategic_petroleum_reserves), which is the best figure I could find for all the oil between extraction and consumption, is 4.1 billion barrels (650,000,000 cubic meters). If production stopped tomorrow, we have 41 days of oil on hand, 1.4 billion of which is government controlled reserves, the rest is stockpiled at refineries or on ships.
If all this is burnt, this [handy EPA calculator](https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gases-equivalencies-calculator-calculations-and-references) allows me to calculate how much CO2 is emitted - it's 0.43 metric tonnes per barrel.
Multiply it out and you get 1.763 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted, which is basically 2 Black Summers. This will be stretched over the following days or even weeks as the fires slowly burn (much is underground with limited oxygen to combust through the rail gun holes), similar time frame as the reference Black Summer.
So the total environmental cost can be summarised as:
* 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2.
* ~1000 people dead from smoke inhalation.
* ~8000 people hospitalised.
* 6 billion animals die.
* 4.4 billion AUD (~\$3 billion USD) in insurance claims.
* $40 billion AUD (~\$30 billion USD) in smoke-based damaged to economic output.
That's.... not as bad as one might think, right?
This makes sense... All that oil was going to be burnt by cars and trucks and planes over the following few months anyway. It's been a little more compressed in time, and burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment anyway, but it wont be devastating on its own. No nuclear winter or anything.
You've got double the disaster of the Australian bushfire season diluted over the entire earths surface. Australia is about 2% of the worlds land area, so twice as bad in total, spread over 50 times the area. Average it out - I calculate this as approximately 1/25th as bad as the Australian Bushfires per unit of land.
Using SI prefix notation of milli being 1/1000th, your disaster from igniting all the worlds oil refineries and storage is 40 milli-Australian-Black-Summers.
---
Honestly that's the end of the interesting analyses. But you did ask about local affects too.
I don't think the local affects are really that notable environmentally, at least compared to the oil spills we're used to seeing in the media. Remember the oil wont spread as far because it'll be consumed in a fireball. The larger the oil spreads, the more surface area to interact with oxygen and the faster it burns.
Some petroleum by-products don't burn easily. I'd normally worry about them getting into the water table, but with millions of litres of liquids burning in a close area vaporising everything within 10s of meters, including normally non-flammable products, it's almost all going to be burnt. Many of these obscure products are "not flammable, but combustible", meaning if you try hard enough, they'll burn.
Surrounding the refineries will be a black scorch mark maybe 100m in the direction of the prevailing winds directly caused by the fire, but the secondary fires ignited by this firestorm will disguise any notable direct environmental damage outside the refinery perimeter. Expect a nearby bushfire and surrounding buildings to be torched.
Almost everything spilt will get burnt in that firestorm so you wont have the images of ducks covered in crude oil or the shiny black beaches 100s of km away - it'll just be a thick smoke cloud for a few days, then sooty black covering everything for a few weeks, and then washed away in the next rains leaving a scared blackened landscape, with nature starting to regrow within a year.
5 years later it'll look like a ruin with normal vegetation and wildlife around it. A trained eye may spot the fire history in the shape of the vegetation, but it'll look fine to you and I.
[Answer]
At the end of the war against Iraq to free Kuwait, the retiring invading troops set many Kuwait oil fields on fire. That looks like a small scale version of what you are asking.
This how the fires looked when [seen from the Space Shuttle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_oil_fires)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rOfpN.jpg)
>
> Immediately following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, predictions were made of an environmental disaster stemming from Iraqi threats to blow up captured Kuwaiti oil wells. Speculation ranging from a nuclear winter type scenario, to heavy acid rain and even short term immediate global warming were presented at the World Climate Conference in Geneva that November.
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> In retrospect, it is now known that smoke from the Kuwait oil fires only affected the weather pattern throughout the Persian Gulf and surrounding region during the periods that the fires were burning in 1991, with lower atmospheric winds blowing the smoke along the eastern half of the Arabian Peninsula, and cities such as Dhahran and Riyadh, and countries such as Bahrain experienced days with smoke filled skies and carbon soot rainout/fallout.
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> Thus the immediate consequence of the arson sabotage was a dramatic regional decrease in air quality, causing respiratory problems for many Kuwaitis and those in neighboring countries.
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> According to the 1992 study from Peter Hobbs and Lawrence Radke, daily emissions of sulfur dioxide (which can generate acid rain) from the Kuwaiti oil fires were 57% of that from electric utilities in the United States, the emissions of carbon dioxide were 2% of global emissions and emissions of soot reached 3400 metric tons per day.
>
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> In a paper in the DTIC archive, published in 2000, it states that "Calculations based on smoke from Kuwaiti oil fires in May and June 1991 indicate that combustion efficiency was about 96% in producing carbon dioxide. While, with respect to the incomplete combustion fraction, Smoke particulate matter accounted for 2% of the fuel burned, of which 0.4% was soot." (With the remaining 2% being oil that did not undergo any initial combustion).
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What about the effects on the environment?
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> Although scenarios that predicted long-lasting environmental impacts on a global atmospheric level due to the burning oil sources did not transpire, long-lasting ground level oil spill impacts were detrimental to the environment regionally.
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> Vegetation in most of the contaminated areas adjoining the oil lakes began recovering by 1995, but the dry climate has also partially solidified some of the lakes. Over time the oil has continued to sink into the sand, with potential consequences for Kuwait's small groundwater resources.
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[Answer]
It's worse than you think.
Never mind the refineries and oil storage depots.
Never mind the resultant global shortage of petrochemical products.
Never mind the rather toxic clouds of smoke from burning chemicals.
For that matter, never mind the *many* thousands of workers killed instantaneously at the impact sites.
You have a LAND-BASED gargantuan, firing 6.8 tonne hypersonic projectiles to many,**many** thousands of sites around the world.
The sheer devastation of the sonic booms under an atmospheric, low-flying, hypersonic 6.8 tonne projectile will leave a trail of devastation hundreds of kilometers long.
Think what happened at Chelyabinsk, [where *one* such a projectile passed overhead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor), at an altitude of more than 30 km. Now multiply that by many thousands of projectiles, that circle the globe. And are traveling near the surface (at least at the point of origin, and near the point of impact)
[Answer]
On a local level, not all the petroleum products from the oil refineries will be burned. In some locations, some of the storage tanks will rupture, spilling their contents on the ground. Fuel lines supplying crude oil will also rupture and some of the crude oil will spill on the ground. Some of the split petroleum products and crude oil will get burned and depending on circumstances, at some locations it will seep into the ground. This will locally contaminate the soil with hydrocarbons.
Some of the contaminating hydrocarbons may also contaminate underground aquifers or surface streams, lakes, bays depending on where the oil refiners were located.
Both the contamination by hydrocarbons and the resultant heat from the burning of hydrocarbons will kill soil microbes in the upper portions of soils at the sites. This will produce a dead zone which will make it difficult for plants to reestablish themselves at such sites for a period of time.
[Answer]
Humanity would be mostly wiped out.
Most food is fertilised by petrochemical fertilisers. Most food is transported by ship. That would stop in a week. The world doesn't stockpile any more. It's all about minimum inventory. No food, no fuel, no shops. Farming relies on scale, and without energy and equipment, effects would be dire and immediate.
The small amount of natural energy generation still working would degrade in a year or so without manufactured spares or means of transporting them. Dams would fail, solar panels would degrade, and wind farms would fail due to lack of maintenance and lubrication.
Machinery requires fuel and lubricants, so factories would stop. There would be some electric transport for a while, but no road maintenance and no car repairs. Medicines would no longer be manufactured. Not would anything else. Pandemics would reign. There would be no health care.
All cities would be war zones. You would kill your friends for food or a box of matches. But your own army will almost certainly kill you first, to take your stuff. People don't cooperate these days. They compete, and the army has guns. They'll be on foot, and will spread across the landscape like the Sea People at the end of the Bronze Age, laying waste to all before them.
Indeed, you only need to take out the 3 biggest refineries or so to cause global catastrophe. I think there have been a few novels with this as the plot line, where a few people think they are doing the world a favour by blowing up something humanity depends on to the extent that it does. Then everybody dies.
If you plan on doing this, stock up on canned and dried foods, and learn how to start a fire with sticks. And move below the 30th parallel. Bears. And stay out of the water. Sharks.
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[Question]
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 2 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/195794/edit)
# Background
## What are blademancers?
Blademancers are mages (going by the definition "Anyone who uses magic", and **not** "old man who wears a pointy hat and carries a staff") who can control blades from a distance.
***Note**: Henceforth I will be using 'sword' and 'hilt' and other such terms, because I am using sword as a default weapon here. Thus when I talk about a 'sword', I mean whatever weapon the blademancer is using.*
A blademancer is able to control only those swords that have a specific magical seal/mechanism built into their hilt. Once they have such a sword, they can take control of it. For this, they first reach out and 'feel' (psychically) the blade, then 'take hold' of it. After that they can move the sword as if a disembodied hand was grasping and moving it.
## Limits
**Number:** A blademancer can, depending on their level of mastery, control 2-8 blades at a time. Only the weakest of the weak blademancer struggles to move past one, and the average blademancer (not that 'average' and 'weak' is comparable to blademancers. You have to be extremely skilled to even become one) can, in his/her lifetime, attain 6-7 and sometimes 8. Gifted humans, demigods, gods and other such powerful entities can attain even more, but are so extremely improbable as to not factor into worldbuilding at all. They can take control of them at once, and do not need to repeat the 'taking control' procedure for each sword. if a sword breaks, they can take control of a previously uncontrolled sword without letting go of other swords, but that will take time and concentration and may be very hard to do when in an active fight. **Number affects mental stamina.**
**Weight:** Each sword in the above given limit is around 1 - 1.2 Kg (2.2 - 2.6 lb). The heavier the sword, the more the effort needed to control it. **Weight affects both physical and mental stamina.**
**Distance:** Most blademancers can control swords to a maximum of 3-5 metres away. This is distance from the blademancer to the magical seal, so the weapon can have parts of it outside the limit. **Distance does not affect stamina perceivably. Holding a sword 5 metres away is not significantly more difficult than holding it a metre away, though for a very long duration, it can start to affect physical stamina.**
**Point to note:** The weight affects the limit pretty linearly - An 8-mancer holding 4 2Kg swords will feel the same strain, and if he/she holds 8 such swords he/she will get tired twice as fast.
However, the number limit is absolute. A 7-mancer is unable to fight properly with 8 swords not because he/she gets tired more quickly, either physically or mentally, but because of an inability to focus. Using 8 swords will not make one sword weaker, it will mean being bad with **all** swords being used, or only using some swords at a time while not moving the rest. This is the same as a beginner piano player who can't play with both hands at the same time and upon trying makes a cacophonic mess with both hands.
Thus, using 500 gram swords will not make an 8-mancer be able to use 16 swords. However, an 8-mancer will be able to hold them at the same level of physical strain, and can do things like chucking a few at the enemy while finely using the rest.
**Additional limits:** Humans are bad at multitasking. It is extremely mentally straining for a blademancer to fight multiple targets not close to each other at the same time with a high level of skill. They are also pretty bad at fighting what they can't see so no fighting behind their back. They can **move** swords behind them, and doing something like having a sword circle you is easy even when it goes behind their back, but they can't fight someone behind them any better than just slashing in the general vicinity and other reflex actions.
# The Question
What weapon does it make the most sense to fight with, for a blademancer? Only weapons with one/limited components are allowed, as each component *and moving part* requires a seal on it. A bow will require a seal on the bow, and the arrow, and so on.
# Edits/ Additional Information
Will be updated as requested
**E1:** Due to the fact that every weapon needs to have a magical mechanism built into it, the weapons do have a minimum weight. Assume 400-500 grams. Magical mechanisms are tedious and expensive to produce, and sometimes some cults or organisations (not necessarily blademancers, but applies to them too) keep it secret how to make them. So a group of blademancers using cutting edge (hehe) magical seals would make damn sure not to leave any of their weapons just lying around, though this is less of a consideration than the time and effort needed ot produce the blade.
**E2:** The magical seal/mechanism is an actual physical thing, like a carving or a rune, made of its own material. It is not some metaphysical thing or enchantment upon the blade that is there but not in the physical world. It is very much in the physical world.
[Answer]
The smallest, sharpest blades they can afford.
# Take a Lesson from [Yondu](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Yondu_Udonta)
For a normal swordperson, a sword has to fulfill multiple roles. It can be a bludgeoning weapon against a person with heavy armour. It can be a protection against a similarly armed enemy. It can stab, it can cut.
But they have to hold it, and get within sword-length of someone else.
Your Blademancers don't have to worry about anatomical impossibility, nor the normal laws of leverage. So needle-thin, razor-sharp daggers with the smallest hilts possible mean that they can kill practically anyone. The blade can be behind an opponent, driven up under the gorget and into the spine with all the force of a sword thrust and none of the armour resistance. They can be driven through eye holes in a helmet, into joints in the limbs. The grip on the hilt isn't affected by the slipperiness of blood or the binding of armour, so it can be yanked back out to stab again, and again, and again.
All the force and leverage that a *normal* swordsperson needs a nice, big hilt to get their fingers around can be delivered in something that their opponents can barely *see*, let alone defend against.
[Answer]
**Don't bring a blade to a throwing knife fight**
Stop me if I'm wrong, but you don't seem to forbid the use of throwing weapons. I would therefore be inclined to have your blademancer primarily use throwing daggers. Give it as much momentum as you can while it's in your range of motion and let it go.
There is also the added benefit that even a "bad" blademancer who can only juggle a few weapons at a time will still be able to throw a hell of a knife, and the fact that you can carry many more spare daggers than swords.
**If you still want a melee option**
Maybe keep a simple [Roman gladius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladius) by your side, as a way to defend yourself from nearby assailants, as it is fairly short and not too heavy (a 60 cm blade for about 1kg). That should make it relatively easy for your blademancer to manipulate while still throwing dagger after dagger. As gladii are quite easy to handle swords, they can be a good way to find weaknesses in enemy armor.
**Let's pike it up**
My answer might not meet the requirement of the question after the edit, so let me propose something else: a pike! Basically extremely long spears, the Macedonians made great use of them. Some pikes could be as much as six metres long! They would be rather heavy if you went to that extreme, but even if you have a third of that you can have quite an impressive range, keeping the enemy at bay. You could easily have a one man phalanx that is nigh impossible for an adversary to approach!
I would still advise your blademancer to keep the above-mentioned gladius, as a last resort weapon.
[Answer]
## don't use one type of weapon use them all.
The less diverse your weapons the less diverse your options and the easier it is to counter you.
Axes or maces for power, shields for protection, swords or spears for precision and control.
Use couple of shields to cover your back and defend from ranged attacks, you have a lot of space you are trying to cover. On the plus side a shield should not require much focus. Getting stabbed from behind kills a lot more people than anything else. luckily leaving out handles will reduce the weight of your shields significantly, so with a single piece of bass or steel for ease of enchanting. you are not swinging a shield so weight may be less of an issue. 3-5 meters is a LOT of space, most will not be using them at this distance, out in the open 8 weapons may not be enough to cover all that. they need to be fighting multiple opponents at the same time, if they try to focus on one they die because all the other enemies rush them. **So cocky blademancers to try to fight at full distance or bring many weapons to bear on one opponent don't live long**
I would suggest one weapon per shield and vice versa depending on the size of your shields up tp about 3 shields. Of course if your blademancers can wear armor and carry a shield you needs fewer floating shields.
Consider having extra weapons so you can switch out depending on what you expect to fight. Use swords or short spears for light infantry or enclosed spaces. have few axes, hammer, billhook, or Halbert for dealing with armored opponents. A properly made axe or mace is not heavier than a sword.
Personally I would build a metal bracket that can be enchanted then fit a normal and thus disposable shield or weapon to it, but you make your rules. A good but light wooden shield has many parts and does not weight much. Metal ones either have to be smaller or heavier. of course you could go with simple wooden planks as shields it will just mean replacing them often.
[Answer]
### Ninja stars
Small 3-or-4-pointed stars, 10-20cm in dimeter. No more heavier than needs to be to penetrate flesh (200g should be plenty)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z9OIn.png)
Just walk up to an enemy army with them flying from jugular to jugular, or eye to eye.
If anyone is wearing plate armour, rotate the blade it such that it fits into the seams - Achilles tendon seeking blades essentially. Pre-perspex helmets had a slit for vision - since you can manoeuvre the star precisely you can line it up with the slit. Since they're light and manouverable when confronted with a full chainmail outfit you can use one star to lift and another to slice.
These are easier for the mental-component than a sword or even a throwing dagger - as in the unarmoured case, with the transfer of the blade from dying enemy 1 to enemy 2 you do not need to rotate the blade 180 degrees to target that next enemy - Just accelerate towards the next jugular, there's already a blade facing the right way.
Also, the wealthy blademancer can stockpile them. You can launch a few using your magic outside of the 5m range by accelerating them across the threshold - they are meant to fly like a frisbee. They may hit at a distance, or they may not. You can walk up near them later to re-use them. You can fit 50 in a backpack that you can carry into battle and spam the enemy army 8-at-a-time at face / jugular level.
But these are also good for the frugal blademancer - These are re-usable . If a level 1 can only use one at a time and can only afford one he can still do the cool walk through an enemy army with the single magic ninja star 3-5m in front of him bouncing from soldiers neck to neck.
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I'm uncertain of what the minimum tech needed to stop these (without shooting the blademancer) actually would be. Any exposed skin and your a gonner. Any seams and your a gonner, any armour that is multi part and you're a gonner because they can lift parts away. Modern swat teams and riot police dont have armour on the back of their shins or buttocks - nor do modern infantry, and big arteries run right through there.
Two stars back to back counter rotating will function as scissors, which I know from experience can cut modern kevlar fabrics quite efficiently, so 3 working in tandem could quickly penetrate a full bullet proof suit like that used by riot modern swat police even if it was extended to cover every part entirely.
[Answer]
* **It depends on the style of 'blademancy school' they studied.:**
***Ranged Attacks.** (For assassination of distant targets).*
These could be stunningly accurate over vast distances. A dart which can be accelerated within the area of control (5 meters ish) could achieve astonishing speed, the accuracy comes from the degree of control. (Think, the longer the rifle and the 'steadier the hand' - the better the marksman). Darts for armor-penetration,
***Melee.***
Finesse: This can be achieved with a daggers (or a few), or a foil-like weapon ([Fencing wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foil_(fencing)))
More robustly: Opponents can be fought or disarmed with a two-ended bludgeon type weapon.
More reach: This can be achieved with a staff with a spear-end and maybe a club, rake or scythe at the other.
The gentle way: Primarily defensive, can be achieved with a shield or buckler-type weapon, using it to disarm, trip or 'gently' knock-out the opponent. Also blocking ranged attacks.
Cat's cradle: Another gentle way is the lasso, using it to whip round opponent's limbs, trip them, or hold them still. (Possibly sending them spinning upon release).
* The ability of blademancers to not only master more than a single weapon at a time, but any additional fighting styles, would be viewed with great respect.
[Answer]
**Needles**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GgJII.png)
Eight poisoned needles can find holes in armor, eye slits in helmets. Chain mail would be no protection at all. They'd be almost impossible to block, hard to see and easy to hide. Also being so light, they'd be almost no strain to control.
Even if not poisoned, needles going through someone's eye slits if going to mess their day up.
Perfect assassin weapon.
[Answer]
**Frame Challenge: Biological Weaponry**
Why would blademancers focus on using blades? As per the OP: "Blademancers are mages (going by the definition "Anyone who uses magic", and not "old man who wears a pointy hat and carries a staff") who can control blades from a distance.
Note: Henceforth I will be using 'sword' and 'hilt' and other such terms, because I am using sword as a default weapon here. Thus when I talk about a 'sword', I mean whatever weapon the blademancer is using."
So, first we have a specific term-"blades" then a vague term-"weapons." Assuming a blademancer can control *any* weapon with the special seal and/or mechanism on it, then blademancers can be something more lethal, something more *dangerous* than those simple mages flying blades around willy-nilly: **puppetmasters.**
Seriously, what is a person trained in martial arts? A *living weapon*-by honing their skills through training, they have turned their body into a weapon. Put a seal on such an individual, and one would have a formidable weapon, since "Point to note: The weight affects the limit pretty linearly - An 8-mancer holding 4 2Kg swords will feel the same strain, and if he/she holds 8 such swords he/she will get tired twice as fast."
Weight is essentially a *non-issue*, so a blademancer can lift their puppets, fly them around, set them down, and magically enhance the force of their strikes. Granted, controlling a whole *person* should be quite a mental strain, and will likely require the puppeteer to move *with* their puppet, sort of like the puppet is reflecting the puppeteer's motions.
"Oh, but wouldn't that require lots of seals, one on every human joint?" Yes, but tattooing has been around since at least Egyptian times (tattoos were found on mummified skin) and putting tattoos all over someone's body has been done before, many, many times. It'd likely be even *less* cost-extensive to simply tattoo someone than engrave a seal in solid steel, however it'd likely be harder to control one over the other.
That all being said, **all of this falls to pieces if blademancers can only control blades.** But not quite. Why? Two words: *screws* and *skeletons*. If needles are a viable weapon for a blademancer, why not screws with a seal on the head, holding a skeleton together?
Logically, even though the OP said one can only have 1-8 blades, a screw is so small that one could argue that it doesn't even *count* as a full blade, only 1/16th of a blade, so a *really* good blademancer (probably female, women seem to have a natural ease of multitasking) could field an entire squad of skeleton soldiers!
If not, since one can control swords and spears, then it would seem only one part of a weapon has to be a blade. Logically then, one can control one skeleton *and* the screws inside it, allowing one to lift and move (even fly) a skeleton around. Even taking the limited distance in the OP into account (which would require the blademancer to be relatively close to the skeleton), a skeleton would be a formidable opponent to defeat, since it lacks vital organs and can wield weapons itself (swords, crossbows, etc.)
Another option would be to stamp seals into specially made (and blade-shaped) plates of armor and control those, allowing one to move plates of armor around to deflect attacks, trap weapons before they can hit you, or even detach and fly around the wearer to shred surrounding enemies. This would require either a way to drastically boost the number of blades one can control at a time or a group of blademancers working together, which is unlikely to work.
A metal version of a wooden-snake toy, with a razor-sharp edge on the front and top and a flat underside, could also be a formidable weapon. After coiling around a person's shoulders, it could pull them up (or forward) and cut off blood flow to the arms, and two of these "serpent-swords" could force together one's wrists and/or ankles and then bind them together.
Blades could be affixed in similar ways to make other weapons for the eccentric (or stealth-loving) blademancer: cockroaches, pidgeons, fish...the list goes on and on. Keep in mind that these "aniblades" can be disguised (except for the pointy bits of course).
A dancer's jewelry could also be weaponry; even if she's not being puppeteered, a willing dancer could sneak (or be invited) into an enemy camp. A belt with connected blades serving as a skirt could tie up opponents (and the attached blades may be built to fly off and cause chaos or stay attached and rend people as the belt flies around), segmented bracelets or anklets, a belly chain, a razor-sharp piercing or two.....
As a final note, shields with edges could be a valuable tool for blademancers, serving as both protection and a weapon, and crossbow bolts or arrows (being basically spears) could be controlled by blademancers to ensure the accuracy of allied archers.
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The primary weapon I would choose would be a bunch of 500 gram double-sided metal darts. These can be propelled at others for ranged combat, can circle you at your maximum range for stopping others from entering it, and can also be used for closer combat. You should also have a large shield that normally protects your back but can be moved to wield off particular dangers. You should also ideally have a spare "slot" or "hand" or whatever so you can "catch" another blademancers blade if it is propelled at you.
if you could weild 8 blades at once you would organise them like this:
1 sheild
1 attacking dart (for ranged combat)
1 empty hand/slot/space
5 darts rotating around you 5 metres away from you at the highest possible velocity
you would likely carry a few other darts on your person for when/if you make a ranged attack with your primary attacking dart. If you could weild less things you would just decrease the radius of the circling darts and have less of them. If you can only weild two blades I would choose to have one sheild and 1 dart that I would not throw and only use for melee.
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**Mancatcher**. You want some sort of flying collar that has a trigger near the joint at the middle to snap shut with a spring, so you only need to control it from one point. (You could have a second seal inside to allow you to unlock it, but it would take effort to push from the first point against the spring at the same time)
Once the victim is collared, he can be dragged forward into range or kept away if his sword gets too close. The mancer might gain an advantage in "tweezering" blades relative to one another, and in any case can reduce the ability of the mark to evade.
Since the mancer can't manipulate the collar very far away anyway, he could also have it at the end of a chain, the other end of which is connected to a winch and heavy weights in a way that could summon the mark to a most unpleasant meeting with some other blade lacking any seal or mobility at all.
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**Frame challenge!**
Your question implies that the blade mages are basically a band of people into one. They are expected to use several swords for normal humans and act as if they *are* several humans using those swords. That only follows from the imposed restrictions.
However, within the confines of how blade magic works, it seems that the optimal route is not to be very focused on perfectly controlling a small amount of swords, but just get a crude control of a very large amount of very small blades.
Weight-wise, that works - if each blade roughly the size of a (very sharp) pizza cutter wheel, you still control dozens without incurring mental stress.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dd314.png?s=256)
(this without the handle)
Moreover, you don't need to perfectly control them - a hundred pizza blades sweeping to an opponent will make them no less dead than a good stab from a normal sword. Only a hundred small blades are ***exceptionally hard to defend against***. As opposed to there being a big sword or four. A pincer manoeuvre or just "surround and squeeze" with the blades is bound to hit.
Which turns towards the finesse of the operation. No need for anything fancier than commanding this block of blades to move here and the other block of blades to move there. Sure, you miss out on control but you more than make up for it with numbers and capacity to damage an opponent. Presumably the blade make can always focus on only few blades to make them move very precise, e.g., between armour plates.
Having a circular shape of the blades similarly aids in mass controlling them. You have a very high guarantee to cut. If not with one, then there are dozens more of the blades going towards the target. At least some should be able to cut them. If you really need extra guarantee, then you can have two (or more) interlocking circular shapes that define a sphere that will in whichever way it hits.
So, there you go - a blade mage shouldn't really focus on controlling large swords made for humans to use them. A blade mage should focus on controlling many small blades that will make mince meat of anything they hit.
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Avoid using levitating blades. **Use several crossbows with an enchanted piece that will pull the crossbow.** Quite a simple action. Place the crossbow bolt with your hands and release the trigger. And crossbows are pretty easy to make, that's a plus
The main limitation of crossbows is their reload speed, but you can reload 6 very powerful crossbows per second. A powerful crossbow bolt capable of piercing 2 millimeters of steel! You can be a living machine gun!
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I am looking for plausible alternatives to our traditional water based showers and bathing for maintaining hygiene in a science fiction story that is set far enough into the future to the point where humanity has colonized other planets outside of the solar system.
No aliens or pets will be using it so no special considerations in that regard is needed. It is intended to be used in normal gravity on relatively normal planets. It should be superior to our modern showering/bathing in one or more ways. For example it being faster, cheaper, more convenient, more effective, or being special like being able to wear clothes while using it.
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I'm going to go all sci-fi & fantasy with it:
There's the [sonic shower](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=26&v=aRmqNewzX1g) from star trek. Similarly vibe showers from Babylon 5. These work using vibration and sound to take dirt grime and sweat off the body.
The [dust shower](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCKJWi_4jvA) from Tank Girl. Likely chemicals which kill bacteria in the dust. But this actually has precedent in real-life. Clean sand or dust can be used to cleanse the body when no water is around for ritual purification in [tayammum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tayammum). Seems counter-intuitive but desert cultures have used sand to scrub the body and clean it in the past when water is at a premium.
There's also the oil bath from Wicked, because the Wicked Witch is allergic to water. In real life, oil baths are sometimes used because of medical conditions and on the face. Here's a [link to an abstract on a scientific paper on that](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2364574) and the effects on skin. In it, basically they talk about skin staying more hydrated as a result, which might be great in a desert environment. And, while this is ancient rather than not, look into the Etruscan/Greek/Roman [strigil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigil). Even though this oil-based cleaning is meant to be used with water in mind for later, it's still an interesting cultural touchstone.
In the series The Girl from Tomorrow (an Australian TV show in the 1990s) I believe there was a light shower, that is a shower using light to kill everything and take away grime. This concept has come up now and again in sci-fi. Now, in real life there's something called [Ultraviolet germicidal irradiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_germicidal_irradiation) but that's mostly used for equipment, water, and air in medical facilities. Because, if you look at the wiki link, it's sort of detrimental to human life, what with the cancer-causing and eye damage.
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Specialized microscopic nanobot Roombas that actively hunt out your stinky bits and clean them up. No shower needed, they're just always on you working away like shrimp in a fish tank or painters on a bridge, so you're always fresh :D
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A microorganism that eats stink bacteria. In fact some people have already been doing studies on [products like this](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/my-no-soap-no-shampoo-bacteria-rich-hygiene-experiment.html?_r=0).
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Another possibility would be the clothing. Equipped with nanobots to strip away loose epidermis (did you know that most dust in a house is human epidural matter?) any dirt, even the bacteria that feed on sweat and cause odor. That solution would come in handy for space journeys where water would be at a premium.
Or, maybe in the future, it will be stylish to be smelly.
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Genetic engineering to make the skin too smooth for dirt to stick too, and further genetic engineering to allow for conscious control of body odor, from pheromones to perfume.
Alternatively, have the geneticists retarget our mostly useless sense of smell to allow us to detect rising co2, declining o2 and the presence of other, currently odorless, gasses which might be encountered during space flight. Being able to smell an approaching lion was a life saving capability a few thousand years ago, but now it is mostly a wasted sensor. Update it for our modern environments. Make it useful again for a humanity rising into the stars.
...and while you're at it, edit out that part where we can smell body odors... that way we can skip showering altogether and no one will care.
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Why does this need to be science based? A simple solution would be to blow steam (possibly with cleaning agents mixed in) at a person from multiple angles. This would be done in a simple chamber with multiple valves lining the walls.
Cleaning would be as simple as walking in, getting the steam bath, and then drying off. Drying off could be a bonus feature of the steam shower.
Could be done in less than a minute. It's not particularly futuristic or unrelated to current showers, but it does the job.
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If you are happy to forego real world science in favour of sci-fi "handwavium" science.
What about a kind of microwave shower, that bathes the user in a configured energy field/radiation which destroys bacteria and dirt without penetrating the skin. The perk of this is that it would also clean your cloths and also remove parasites.
You step into the booth, the booth scans you, it's computer works out what is dirt, what is clothes, what is you etc, then releases a burst of handwavium to leave you clean and dry.
This also presents a plot opportunity where someone with very high technical skills can circumvent the MANY safeguards and turn your shower into a murder weapon.
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*Back in my story, organic beings and AIs fight together against a frightening enemy, one that threatens everyone's freedom and chance to overcome their flaws and achieve a peaceful world.
However, in the case of the war, they have a little bit better units than their enemies, but the enemy can easily outnumber them. So we had to be clever and creative:*
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In order to conceal our commands and to create effective squad tactics, we wish to use music, that's something that the Great Computer's army cannot decipher, they mimic human behavior, but never truly understand it.
* So the plan is to use music as commands to create synchronized
tactics and communicate.
* The music is **composed by** five very **humanlike AIs**, that are **capable of making the same thoughts as humans** but much more quickly, **for them time is really slow.** They are:
+ *Amitiel - angel of truth.*
+ *Sachiel - "covering of God."*
+ *Uzziel - "strength of God."*
+ *Uriel - "God is my light"*
+ *Israfel - "angel of music"*
***We aren't snobs so the genre of the music can change.***
**Now, I need to make them (my team members) know when to strike, run or make an action. Is it possible in a music, that would confuse the logically thinking robots?**
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**This won't work.**
Your enemy doesn't need to *understand* music to predict your actions and destroy you.
Music is - at its core - math. There's a limited number of patterns that people find "attractive", and which really count as music as opposed to random noise. The distinction is important, because the latter can actually damage the focus and rhythm of your troops, thus defeating the purpose of your endeavor (we can't follow the flow of a "non-flowing" sound, right?).
The enemy will simply catch on to what you're doing, and learn to predict your movement patterns by analyzing the signals you're putting out (they might not recognize them as an art form, simply a method of coordination). Once they do, you're toast.
>
> The humans seem to be coordinating by using a strange signal being blasted across the battlefield. Our analysis indicated that every time the signal reaches the X frequency their flanking troops coordinate an advance. The next time we detect that signal we shall preemptively fire our area denial weapons on their predicted path of advance!
>
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Furthermore, by constantly changing tunes you're more likely to confuse your own soldiers than the enemy.
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This is a fun one because, as many have noted, on the surface the plan is doomed to fail. If it's used to synchronize a bunch of humans in the form "attack on beat 3 of the last measure," it's just a very inefficient code, easily parsed and defeated.
To make this work, we have to stop thinking like computers. **We have to stop thinking in terms of simple triggers and use the music for that it is intended for: to stir the human spirit.**
You don't need music to synchronize a bunch of pre-planned activities. That is easily done using traditional communication means. The power of music is the ability to synchronize when the actions are much less planned. War is hell. Nothing ever goes according to plan. If you can adapt your behavior to fit reality, rather than slavishly following a plan, you have a huge advantage. Human beings are amazingly good at improvising, if given the opportunity.
The hard part of improvisation is keeping it cohesive. If you look at improve troupes, who make a living going out on stage and improvising, some of the most impressive content they produce is when one person improvises something outrageous and another person just runs with it, turning it into something funnier than the original content could have ever been, and something completely unpredictable.
To make this sort of humanity on the battlefield a reality, we need to focus not just on the composers. **You need a conductor.** A conductors job is not to stand up in front of a bunch of windbags and keep tempo. Any one of those windbags or fiddlesticks could keep tempo on their own. **The job of a conductor is to inspire and direct the human spirit deep within those skilled musicians to form a unified spirit so potent that many poets have theorized it may be capable of stopping war all together.**
In that spirit, the notes on the page are really just a framework. The real music comes from the spirits of the musicians unifying and becoming more than they were before. A skilled conductor brings out the very best in each and every one of us on stage (and ideally, in every one of us in the audience).
If I may quote an [answer that I gave](https://music.stackexchange.com/a/31411/18819) to a question on Music.SE years ago:
>
> [...] At the epitome of skill, the conductor becomes a peer and a trusted friend. At some point, you can't go any further without losing yourself in the music. Someone is going to have to find you again. That person is the conductor. I will never forget a beautiful violin concerto done by a brilliantly talented violinist. She started the concerto with her opinion of what the music should sound like in one of the classic opening concerto solos. The conductor smiled patiently, and let her take control of the music completely (he even adjusted the tempo to suit her). As she continued the ferocious stream of notes, you could see her start to destabilize -- the music literally was taking control of her. The tempo wavered just a little, suggesting ruin.
>
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> Then, in one moment, the conductor changed how he was conducting ever so slightly and locked her playing into something he had some control over. He then tied her emotions directly into the orchestra, so she was no longer just a soloist, but part of the orchestra.
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> Once she was assimilated, he pushed her harder. He drove her further into the emotion and speed until I don't think she could have stopped if she had tried -- her fingers would have unraveled before she could have stopped the violin from playing its notes.
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> Half way through the final movement, he calmed things down and let her lose. She finished off the concerto in her style, under her own power. The applause at the end was deafening. She proudly took a bow for her skilled work, but you could see from how she shook while bowing that the conductor had taken her to a level of skill she wasn't even aware she had, let her grasp the stars, and then come back safely.
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> That, my friend, is what you have a conductor for.
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Good luck, Mr. Great Computer.
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The thing is, this system is ultimately doomed to fail.
Robots may *very well* have no musical knowledge whatsoever, but they can recognize patterns better than any human can. Eventually, they'd realise that after *n* number of downbeats you strike, and if time actually is slower for them, they would see you coming from a metaphorical mile away anyways!
For this to work, the code would have to constantly change. I'd imagine your team would have a much tougher time recognizing how it changes, and even that simply couldn't be pattern based.
One possible thought is that the notes that the are played are proportional to the movements of the robots in each of the great computer's squadrons. This does in fact not work nearly as well for teams sending signals to each other, but would be much better suited for them to decipher that the robots battle plans are actually famous musical pieces. Like squadron a and other musical notes.
Perhaps that's the system that he'd used to encode plans. Perhaps the team would have to create a musical piece to make the robots run into each other. With that being said: I'm with the last guy on this not being plausible.
Good Luck,
Aidan
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You could use music to coordinate actions like a quarterback uses a nonsense stream of shouted numbers to coordinate plays. The music would be a code that your side understands, just like the football players know what to listen for when the QB shouts the play. For example action one might coordinate to 80s pop hits. You could use any number of pop hits or clips from that era. A different action might be a clip from a disco string section. That as distinguished from an classical piece with a string section or orchestral movie music from last year.
You could definitely coordinate the actions of a group of humans with shared cultural references. Lots of americans can identify a song from a very short clip. Even if a supersmart AI had all songs on a database and could quickly search and find the song from the clip, it would have no way to know that the relevant point in this context was that there was a mandolin, or that it had a measure of 7:8 time in with the 4:4, or that it was a song about a car.
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There are some great points about music as a code being crackable, because it is, at it's core, math.
You might try something with the emotional context of each song though. Establish a musical genre code. An obvious one might be using a band like Five Finger Death Punch for a general, aggressive advance, while a prog rock song from Yes for a feint. Ride of the valkyries or similar operatic music for an arial assault. Obviously, Disco would sound a general retreat :) . This way individual songs don't get assigned any specific meaning, but anyone can recognize speed metal, or jazz, or funk.
The vulnerability is that genres will have some similarities in instruments and time signatures that the Enemy might suss out. This might be combated with interesting covers. I don't know what kind of signal would be sent by a mariachi cover of Ronnie James Dio's "Holy Diver", so the enemy might be equally confused. You might benefit from de-centralization of planning, giving the individual units general objectives with timing keyed by the music, but execution left to individual units.
Each unit would have their comms gear enabled with an Ipod like device that would trigger a locally stored song. This would mean that a radio signal would not need to broadcast the whole song, and the enemy would have even less information to work from. Individual soldiers get their own playlist. for an aggressive advance, soldier one gets FFDP, two gets Disturbed, three gets Metallica, and so on. That might keep things random enough to keep it from being figured out.
It might also be useful to try to keep engagements on as small a scale as possible. These would have a shorter duration, giving less time for pattern analysis.
I think its a really fun concept.
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First stack exchange post ever, take it with a grain of salt.
## Music is useless! Right?
As has been pointed out in several other comments, music is math so as a unified 'this music means that maneuver' it's easily cracked. That doesn't mean it can't be used. With where we are at in todays world with AI, and from the sounds of your more advanced AI, I don't see why your series of battle conductor computers wouldn't be able to work with soldiers directly.
## Your enemy AI doesn't understand emotion
Instead of a single battle hymn playing, each soldier could have their own musical feed. Just like in real world military training where reactions to events are ground into you to the point they become natural, do the same thing but teach each soldier to react to their emotion directly. Teach combat maneuvers, but tie them to emotions. Since each person responds to music differently, this would essentially create a custom encryption for each solder's direction.
As an example, some people jump at loud noises while others freeze or maybe even take a step back. In training find out each soldiers reaction, and use that gut instinct in battle. One person hears a random cannon go off, and they drop to the ground taking cover just when they were fired on. Another stops moving so they stop making noise for half a second just as they could have been detected by sound nearby.
This can be applied to noise levels as well as types of music for each individual. Metal tends to be background noise to me and makes me tired if its too loud too long. String based classical gets my heart pumping while symphonic metal draws my attention. I get irritable at rap.
## TL;DR
Soldiers trained to respond to emotion, and trained to focus on their emotions in battle could be individually directed, giving the idea of music for tactics a path to success.
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What you can do is set a crypto code to relate a specific music thema to a specific action (like it was done in the past with the sound of drums or trumpets; for obvious reasons you don't use guitars or violins on a battlefield).
Therefore you can have 3 hits on a drum meaning "left wing advance" and so on.
But this is easily exploitable by the enemy after few econunters, so it would be like shouting orders in the open.
You can try a more elaborate scheme (like from 10 to 11 am 3 hits of drums mean "left wing advance", while from 11 to 12 am 3 hits of drums mean "hold your position") and change this scheme on a daily base.
This will be more hard for the enemy to decript, but also for your own troops, which will take longer to react to the order (training induced automatism play a big role in tactics operations).
So, to answer your question, I think music has no specific advantages.
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Music does have a meaning for humans (and maybe for animals), but you seem to assume that this fact, that music has meaning, would be helpful in concealing your intentions.
This is not the case.
If you strip the meaning from the music, all you are left with is a signal.
Since you want humans to unterstand those signals without having to run some deciphering first, what it boils down to is code words.
So you might as well replace the beautiful song you had your AI write with the wod *swordfish*. Because they are both the same: You have agreed beforehand that a certain signal has a certain meaning.
Obviously, the enemy computer will have this decoded ater the fourth or fifth use.
For one-time use this is unbreakable, but you cannot use it repeatedly. It's no cipher, and if you look at it from the perspective of someone hearing a foreign language, it does not even matter any more if you say "attack it's legs" or "swordfish" or sing the ode to joy. neither signal has any conceivable meaning, but you can simply watch and quickly find out that there is a specific reaction to the signal.
You might do something else, though, but it will requite a machine to receive and interpret the signal:
You could use the music as a carrier wave for an encrypted message. Provided you manage to make the AI believe it was "just music", and keep it busy enough to dismiss it as "some background noise"; you could encode a lot of communication over the sound of a piece of music.
Of course you need to extract it on the receiver side and make it intelligible for humans. The friendly AI would obviously be able to read the signal on the fly.
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You can use music to establish *timing.* Which can help coordinate something that was planned ahead of time. See [Hudson Hawk](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102070/) for a cat-burgler who used songs as a stop-watch.
But, as [Aidan Smith](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/74095/32987) and [AndreiROM](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/74091/32987) mention, using music to encode commands is fraught with problems. The computer will, eventually, realize there are encoded commands in the music. Probably not at first; music has patterns, built in, after all. But the AI would eventually connect patterns with actions after enough battles.
Plus, music is a noisy system. You would have to work carefully with each song to make sure the background sounds built into the original music *don't encode unintended actions* accidentally before you select the songs.
Then you'd have to carefully train your non-commissioned officers or music receivers (radio-men? Comms Officers?) to HEAR the song -- over the sounds of battle -- to pick out the commands embedded in the song. And they'd have to know the song really well. Well enough to recognize the alterations where commands are hidden. The learning curve / training for that would be intense. And would fall apart during the first artillery barrage or tank main-gun firing or other noisy combat effect that disrupts hearing. Which is basically *every weapon used in modern warfare.* Oh, and while the song is playing, no one could talk to your music-man who's job, like a radio-man, is to listen to that song. Ever. Because if she loses her concentration, she could miss a vital command sequence.
Also, are we talking about just using *really loud speakers* or using *radio transmissions* to get the song to your soldiers? If you use speakers, then those speakers become a trivially easy target. Modern warfare is really good at tracking radio signals. There's no way an alien AI couldn't re-engineer their tracking systems to track audio waves. Or realize the audio must be important to consume so much of the military's effort, and therefore they deploy countermeasures like white-noise speakers that get air-dropped on the combat zone. And sound travels at a slow enough speed to observe the gap. The soldiers at the rear will hear the song first and start acting before the sound can travel to the front of the lines. Or worse, the sound will deafen your rear lines while the front lines can't hear it.
If it is by radio transmission... well... jamming radio is a built-in function of modern warfare. Again, your AI would catch on quickly to the value of blocking the entire radio spectrum via white noise broadcasts that flood your radios, whether to block the music, or to block voice commands.
Back to my first paragraph. If you use a song to establish timing, then each soldier can easily have an iPod-like player that has a synchronized start time. After the start signal, it operates independently and is just there to say "start your squad's advance at the second chorus" or whatever. Harder to jam. Less prone to hacking or deciphering. Each song would have been pre-planned, so there's no code to crack. Your flaw here, then, is that *[no plan ever survives contact with the enemy](http://www.lexician.com/lexblog/2010/11/no-battle-plan-survives-contact-with-the-enemy/).* You can plan your first move or two, but after that, everything has to be fluid enough to allow for whatever the enemy just did. So even a preplanned, timing-based, song system would only be good for coordinating the *beginnings* of a fight. Beyond that initial encounter at the beginning of a battle, sticking to a rote plan could actually make your military *easier* to defeat rather than harder. Because the soldiers would train to the plan. And that plan may need to change, but the soldiers can't show enough initiative to adapt to battle conditions, because the song said go NOW, not early because there's a visible weakness, or later because the timing is bad.
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As stated in the title, I would like my setting to have combat akin to WW1 trench warfare. I've done my best to create systems that would enable that, such as keeping weapons and vehicles comparable to modern day and making orbital bombardment too costly or ineffective due to planetary shielding, but that still leaves a lot to be desired in terms of making sure that the style of combat I want works within my setting.
Visually it feels like this style of warfare would suit the setting perfectly, but being a mostly hard sci-fi setting it feels like there is more that can be done to rationalize it.
In regards to the settings tech level, the Expanse is just barely below the average tech available to the various factions and nations, with the exception of one faction which uses advanced energy weapons such as beams and Star Wars-like plasma bolts. Most ships are more than capable of making an edge-to-edge solar system journey, but lack FTL thanks to ancient space gates. AI is advanced but not to the point of sapience of full sentience.
In regards to the planets being fought on, the majority of them are very very Earth-like thanks to the terraforming of a now long-dead empire whose tech was lost in a galactic dark age. What few non-earthlike habitats exist are akin to the cylindrical stations from the Gundam series or the domed habitats on barrel Mars-like planets.
The nations/factions in focus come in two groups:
* A feudal empire with a focus on conscripts, power armor and mechs, utilizing heavy kinetic weaponry and explosives against a tyranid/zerg style hive mind of huge proportions.
* A stratocratic oligarchy with a heavy focus on energy weaponry and bioengineering against a Terminator-style machine network that strips planets of resources and people to be repurposed.
As to what specifically I'm looking for with the WW1 style of warfare is that claustrophobic, dirty, highly drawn-out combat with heavy cost both mentally and physically.
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**Have at least five men per meter of front line.**
Trenches remain useful and widely used in the modern age of missiles, drones, and precision guided artillery. However, to get the trappings of WWI trench warfare - long, mostly static fronts of opposing layered trenchworks - you need enough men to hold that much territory, and that number, historically, is staggeringly huge. Spanning a few hundred kilometers of the Western Front took armies of millions, with some individual battles involving millions of men. The biggest reason why you don't see extended trenchworks in modern conflicts isn't modern technology, it's the fact that trench warfare is *totally mobilized warfare*, and modern total war is nuclear war.
Which brings us to:
**It's total war, but nobody can use nukes for some reason.**
You'll probably have to dip into the suspension of disbelief a little bit for this one, one way or another. Some sort of technologically themed magic nonsense would be my suggestion.
Now we have the necessary preconditions to have trenches at all, we need to make them useful, so we must:
**Make area-targeting artillery the king of the battlefield, and give infantry the tools to protect it.**
Infantry protects artillery from infantry. Trenches protect infantry from artillery. If artillery is king, infantry is queen, and if infantry and artillery rule the battlefield together, they have layered trenches in the front protecting artillery fortifications in the back. This means pushing down the usefulness of air power (including orbital strikes and long range missiles), precision guided munitions, and armored cavalry (tanks, etc).
We can get rid of armored cav by giving infantry man-portable direct fire artillery that can put holes in tanks. It has to be reach-out-and-touch-it weaponry of some kind, not something like a modern man-portable missile launcher, otherwise tanks will be able to beat anti-tank infantry to the punch, and will disrupt our perfect trench paradise.
Getting rid of air power is harder, since we need artillery shells, which go in the air. Maybe anti-aircraft and anti-missile missiles are crazy effective but both sides' supplies are low, so we only use them to shoot down valuable targets, not thousands of dumb shells fired by artillery.
Note that *both sides* need to have these capabilities, and they need to have artillery with the same effective range. If either side's artillery can kill the enemy artillery from farther away than it can shoot back, or if either side has armor or air that can punch through or over trench lines and kill the enemy artillery, you'll have guerilla or urban warfare, not trench warfare, regardless of any other factors.
Now that artillery and infantry are fighting it out with millions (maybe billions in scifi) of men and no nukes, highly effective tanks, or highly effective bombers to ruin our fun, we need to do some research about:
**How actual historical trench warfare worked**
The below is an extreme oversimplification by me, a non-expert!
The main mistake that fiction makes is making it seem that the defender has the advantage in trench warfare. The exact opposite is true. The reason why trench warfare is a stalemate is that winning an engagement as the attacker means occupying the enemy trench, and the enemy knows this in advance and gets to position their artillery and back-up trenches in such a way as to make their own trench a place where they can counterattack and kill you.
It evolves something like this: artillery will absolutely 100% murder the pants off your infantry if you have to cross more than a few hundred yards to get to safety, and then their infantry will murder your artillery. You dig a trench to prevent this, and their artillery can't approach too close or they'll get pounded by your artillery, so they set up their artillery just out of range of your artillery and slowly advance their own trenchworks until they can't go any closer without being killed by sorties by your infantry.
If the enemy artillery can do a decent job of suppressing your infantry, their infantry can cross the no-man's-land and murder your infantry before your artillery can kill enough of them, because a trench that the enemy is at the top of is just a grave that you dug for yourself to die in. Then they can then hide in your trench to make your artillery stop killing them.
However, their artillery has to stop shooting or else they'll just blow up their own infantry while you're hiding in your nice trench. If you can rush back to the line with your machine guns after the barrage ends, you can machine-gun all their infantry while they're crossing no-man's land. So they try to time it as close as possible, and you try to slow them down with barbed wire, interconnected fall-back trenches that you can retreat to during the barrage, and so on. However, sufficiently overwhelming and tightly timed artillery fire can give the attacker a better chance of getting there first.
You know this problem, so you dig an extra trench line behind your trench line. Inevitably, they will drive you back, but doing so will cause their infantry to advance into range of your artillery. So as soon as they finish winning the battle for your front trench line, they're in a horrible, exposed position. As soon as your infantry is ready to counter-attack, you shell the heck out of them (they hide in your trench), advance your infantry at the double (no barbed wire slowing them down behind your front line!) and your infantry murders them in your trench, re-occupies your trench, and everyone's right back where they started, except a lot of people are dead.
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# Beam Weapon Dominance:
Line-of-sight weapons have become extremely powerful and effective. Aircraft are all shot down. Missiles are all shot down. Even mortar shells and artillery shells are hit mid-air, and must be massive to avoid being vaporized or ablated & the aim thrown off. So precision in long-ranged attacks has plummeted. Beam-resistant shielding is too heavy to be practical on most ground vehicles and tanks are enormous and slow.
To hit opponents, giant artillery need to fire projectiles weighing tons. Or, conversely, the shelling must be so massively profuse as to essentially be indiscriminate.
The beam weapons are fairly fragile, however, and sit just beyond the horizon, burning anything that rises too high off the ground. They might pop up to shot really high-value targets, but otherwise remain a hidden menace.
Meanwhile, individual soldiers are armored and carry powerful but short-ranged weapons. Fighting is close, brutal, and favors those sitting behind enough loose material to absorb large-caliber guns and RPG shells. Creeping robots and engineered monsters stalk no-man's-land ready to pounce. AI-driven mines with IFF software move about into areas previously cleared of mines to wait patiently with claymore-like shaped charges.
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This isn't as hard as it sounds. What you have to do is eliminate the reasons that trench warfare went out of style. Consider the case of naval warfare. The only real differences are that the trenches are mobile, and you can't send waves of men ship-to-ship.
First, create [automated turrets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS) that can shoot anything out of the air that isn't ballistic. This eliminates anything in the air up to a few miles, including cruise missiles. Add in Kessler Syndrome to eliminate orbital munitions.
Put your soldiers into heavy powered armor to negate chemical and biological weaponry, shrapnel, and maybe anything smaller than a 50bmg. You be the judge.
A lot of sci-fi goes all tanky at this point, but the firmness of the ground you drive on is a hard limit to the size of anything that moves. You aren't going to be able to drive your sixteen inch guns up to the front line.
This all adds up to man-scale mechanized warfare, and there's no better armor than a few meters of good old dirt. I'm sure Tony Stark would design machines that dug tunnels, but such a thing would be on the front line, by definition. Most of the war would be figuring out when the optimum time and place to have everyone hop out of their holes at once and attempt to blow up the other guys' holes.
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**Set the Battles on the Frontier**
Trench warfare went away when we invented airplanes. Your world has airplanes (and spaceplanes) but not in the places the story happens. The stories take place on the frontiers. Planets with new colonies. They have advanced tech in their bases for food production, medicine, and sanitation. This covers your **sci-fi** setting.
The colonists also have rifles. You see many of them are rootin-tootin, red-blooded freedom-loving, red meat-eating, God-fearing, wife-beating American citizens.
Being allowed to bring a gun was part of the strategy for recruiting colonists. Many of these guns are closer to WW1 guns than modern guns with their computer chips and silicone hand grips. The colonists brought hard-wearing and primitive devices you can repair in your garage by hand.
But no one thought to bring the B52 Bombers to found the colony. They could order one from headquarters but it will take tens or hundreds of years to get here. Because it is **hard sci-fi.** So their wars uses more primitive tactics.
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There are several things you need to eliminate for this to work.
# Electronic guidance.
Since the long ago age of humans throwing spears at a mammoth from a cliff, humans have looked to outrange their enemy. You need to make missiles less effective, so trenches can be close to each other.
To do this, have the shield fry unshielded electronics. Dumb artillery can easily hit enemies, but most mech suits and such rely primarily on non electric insides and electronic weapons don't work that reliably.
Stationary locations are much easier to shield from interference, so trenches tend to be much more defensible.
# Stop mobility being a massive advantage
Most wars aren't fought mostly in trenches because mobility is a massive edge. Make it not so.
Anti air weapons need to be much more effective than air power. The norm would be to send power armored soldiers to crush anti air before using air power.
Anti tank weapons need to be much more effective than vehicle armor. If you send a tank out without good support, it'll get smashed.
With all that you can have trench warfare.
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Lets go from big to small.
-orbital bombardment/WMDs.
Most people on here believe that Orbital Strikes would become the norm. That would never be the case however as its just never ever a smart move.
Lets take Russia's attack on Ukraine. They could easily have started the attack by throwing a bunch of nukes on some important military targets and then rushed in. Why didnt they?
• if Russia had used nukes, everyone else will use nukes too against them (if only when they assume Russia might be aggressive towards them).
• it destroys the livingspace and people living there, forcing them to move away. Worse: if you use too many nukes (or Orbital Strikes) you may destroy the very living space across the country/planet. This is bad both for short term and long term plans as the time and cost to make it liveable and rebuild the infrastructure are massive compared to the time and cumulative resources gained from capturing and utilizing that livingspace and infrastructure (mostly) intact.
• it destroys infrastructure you might want, especially since that is what the owners will likely try to protect.
• its only real use is terror and genocidal depopulation (and perhaps as an area denial weapon)
• its costly. You may counter this with "but rocks in space are cheap". But you have to consider the fuel expenditure to nudge the right rock on the right trajectory to the right target and have it land within a reasonable timespan and the options of the defenders to detect and intercept it in time (one tiny nudge a day in advance can make it miss the planet, let alone its target).
• the ludicrous amount of targets on a planet and the amount of Rods from God or similar you need to bring across space to properly hit the targets you want, not to mention that any warfare would take that into account and hide/create fakes that you cant easily differentiate between from orbit.
* cruise missiles and other smart munitions.
If you follow modern military production you may notice that the sheer amount of tanks, aircraft and their munitions has declined rapidly. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of high tech machinery and a lot of rare resources to build and maintain them. Most of these would be used against important targets rather than a trench, and have a limited amount of them available. After the initial push by the attackers to secure a landing zone for its troops these are all relegated to just that. You arent likely to bring enough smart munitions to win a planet outright and it would take a lot of time trying to detect all the targets effectively. That means most of your ammunition will likely be produced and used on the ground and will be less advanced munitions.
* the amount of forces both teams can bring
Space travel remains a costly undertaking with your restrictions, meaning your capacity to bring heavy aircraft/tanks/munitions is going to be limited. And to bring enough forces in one go to capture a planet is going to be tough, requiring you to bring tens to hundreds of thousands of space ships (or ludicrously large ships). To take on all the military personel and equipment on an entire planet is likely going to make more than one trip of supplies and people. This means that the attackers will likely land somewhere with a limited supply and advanced equipment and dig in while they set up a production chain for less advanced tanks, aircraft and munitions while their transports go and collect the next wave.
The defenders in the meantime can stockpile more vehicles, aircraft and munitions, but have to spread them out more as they cant predict the location of the landing in advance. And they may have to content with multiple landings forcing them to keep some forces on most places. On top of that the larger stockpile will require more maintenance, so they'll likely not have too many at a time. That means for them too that they'll do the bulk of their warfare with more mass-produced less advanced equipment.
* infantry
Infantry nowadays is mostly mechanized to follow the vehicles. However with power armor you'll see a shift in how war is waged. If every infantryman can potentially carry a capable anti-tank weapon and is much more stealthy (less heat signature, less noise from the engine/actuators) then vehicles storming a trench becomes a lot less effective.
This would be a prime battlefield for trench warfare, where the top of the line equipment is just too rare and expensive to use on a bunch of infantry regularly, although it will definitely leave a mark. The attackers will ironically be the ones most on the defensive at first as they try to ship in enough men and equipment to start taking territory from the much more numerous defenders.
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If you don't understand why trench warfare was useful and where it was successful, you haven't read Duffer's Drift (it's short and public domain).
If you want to understand why there was extensive trench warfare in WWI, read Liddell-Hart. That's long, so I'll summarize: bad translations of Clausewitz showed up in influential journals right at the turn of the century. Yes, really; it's that dumb: (In bad translation) you win by bringing force to the decisive point; the decisive point is the opponent's most important force. Artillery is the most important force, therefore you win by bringing a mass infantry charge to the artillery. Obviously wrong in several ways, and more obviously wrong with a proper translation, but actual-Clausewitz is extremely successful, so ersatz-Clausewitz had a lot of currency. However, once you are committed to a strategy that says you need to infantry-charge emplace artillery, trenches are the clear winner.
Finally, if you don't understand why trench warfare stopped, it's simple: there isn't any real reason to engage with trenches. Just go around them and do whatever you planned to do.
So, for trench warfare to actually work, the biggest thing you need is a reason to engage with the trenches.
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[
I've been doing quite a bit of research on how to hide an entire continent (that's located on Earth, mind you) and I've only found one even slightly possible solution which is the following: prior to the first *clear* satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean/Western Hemisphere (which if I'm not mistaken was taken on November 10, 1967, by ATS-3) was revealed to the public, the United Nations General Assembly Convened to discuss the clearly visible continent, the debate lasted for quite a while but eventually most member states agreed to never reveal the existence of the continent and to never exploit its resources and things of that sort, subsequently NASA was forced to conceal the continent using advanced photo editing.
Now, my question is, would this be realistic/possible? If not, are there any plausible solutions that don't include magic or any such thing?
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Your example is not possible. During the several centuries when sailing ships were the dominant carriers of international trade, they went essentially everywhere. The vagaries of the wind meant they could not follow precise routes, and they always had to keep a good lookout to avoid accidents. All of the uninhabited land in the world was discovered and located on maps during that period. Nothing big enough to be a continent - which I assume means at least as large as Australia - could have escaped discovery.
You could technically have a new large island discovered in the next few decades, as the polar caps melt. But it's a *very* technical discovery, since it just amounts to the discovery that a chunk of Antarctica or Greenland is a separate island. That's already suspected to be the case, and the newly revealed land would have been under an icecap for thousands of years.
An island, but definitely not a continent, could have escaped notice in the Arctic Ocean for a while. It was known by the [late nineteenth century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fram_(ship)#Nansen%27s_1893%E2%80%931896_Arctic_expedition) that there was an ocean current flowing through the Arctic. An extra island in the Arctic would not have been discovered until Arctic exploration started seriously after that. It would have been found by about 1960. Again, the island would have been covered with ice for thousands of years.
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# No, because people just flew wherever they wanted before that.
It wasn't till around the 1950s and 1960s that radar and regulations got advanced enough to track most planes. Hobbyists and rich people and businesses could fly their planes wherever, and they'd certainly notice any large landmass. You can commonly see 200 kilometers away, and people took a lot of routes depending on the winds.
As such, a bunch of people would have seen the continent, and probably tried to make it a refueling stop.
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**Without changing history, and it being a year-round dry landmass: nearly impossible, however...**
I can think of two options.
**OPTION 1: Cyanobacteria covering the entire landmass**
These are bacteria which appear blue to cyan in color and can grow in a variety of different environments. The goal here is to have the landmass be covered by a bluish tarp which would ensure that you can't quite see it until you view the entire landmass at once, such as with a satellite. Ideally the type of bacteria covering would have three traits.
Firstly, the bacteria should be relatively toxic to humans. Having the bacteria be toxic ensures that any ships and people who reach the landmass are not able to tell anybody that it happens to exist. This would create a region which people avoid due to no know successful voyage through it but not direct knowledge of the continent.
Second, this bacteria should appear to be nearly indiscernible from ocean water but not exactly the same. The idea here would be that it seems that due to the similarity in color the water, from the surface or air where only a portion of the landmass is in view, is simply a sandbar, reef or debris present in the water. Once it is determined that the *ENTIRE* region is the same color and that color is not quite ocean water it would slowly become clear that this is in fact a very unique continent not a difficult to navigate portion of the ocean.
Finally, to constrain the cyanobacteria to the continent it should not be able to survive very well in ocean water. This will severely limit the potential for previous contact with the bacteria to occur which in turn will further enforce the idea that this portion of the ocean simply has weird colored water.
**In summary: Cover the entire landmass in bacterial camouflage which is toxic to those who are unfortunate enough to reach the landmass**
**OPTION 2: Very, very specific geography and a series of barriers to navigation until the 20th century**
In theory a landmass which has very specific geography could likely evade discovery as a continent until you have a clear picture of the entire Atlantic Ocean. Specifically if it was difficult to navigate during the age of sail, large enough for its extend to be indeterminate from a commercial plane and if the core landmass was surrounded by difficult to navigate waters.
There are a few stages to this:
First, basing this continent well inside (minimum 50 Km to deal with the horizon on ship which has, say a 100m mast) inside of a gyre *should* make it more difficult to reach in the age of sail in the first place until we have self propelled ships, since travel is slower inside of these regions it makes it more difficult to navigate to and possibly map the potential landmass.
Second, Make a large series of reefs, rocks, sandbars and barrier islands surrounding the continent which cannot be easily seen from inside the gyre, an area with established currents and good prevailing winds, such as the Sargasso sea. Also, you are not able to see *ANY* of the continent itself as of yet, and the closest island/sandbar/reef/rock needs to be at least 50 Km away as well. Ideally you would want to establish that this barrier region can only truly be navigated at all by *VERY* small watercraft, which can't reach the region unassisted. The reason for this is to make a barrier which is notoriously difficult to navigate which is inside of an area known for calm winds. The pairing of these two factors would nearly force sailors to avoid this area until the 19th century where you could then attempt to navigate a steamship inside of this region. Given the historic difficulty of navigating these waters major shipping would likely avoid the region. Since larger ocean worthy ships would not be able to pass this barrier region and there does not appear to be any landmasses in the region it becomes less likely that an expedition to this region would occur in the first place.
Third, the continent itself should not appear to be connected until you view the entire area at once, and width should be at ideally around 600 to 700 Km to ensure that the exact extent of the content can't be determined from a commercial plane. The geography of the continent comes into play here, if the continent is mostly marshland with very few to no obvious land-forms then even it would be very difficult to determine that it is in fact a continent-sized landmass from the surface. Given it is difficult to reach in the first place it is likely that nearly nobody would attempt to search for land within the region.
Optionally, like the first option, have most all the land area covered by various levels of special cyanobacteria or similar blue-green appearing organism. In this case, without viewing the entire area it would appear from above that the region just has strange colored water by anybody who gets close or only views a specific portion of the region by plane. The difference in the water color would become apparent only when the entire area is viewed as a whole by satellite.
**In Summary: People would know that there was a large portion of the Atlantic which is difficult to navigate for one reason or another but can not determine that is a single connected landmass until viewing the area as a whole.**
Both ideas would likely lead to indirect knowledge before the satellite photo but no confirmed discovery. In either option it would not seem likely that people would want to live in this region.
REFERENCE:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_island>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_latitudes>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargasso_Sea>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATS-3>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria>
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# No
What happens if a country decides to violate the agreement and settle the new continent? The international community would have to sanction that county, but do that without saying why they are sanctioning them. If they can’t sanction them then they need to go to war over something they can’t explain to your average person. Both scenarios won’t go over well in most countries. Because of that, there is no reason not to exploit the new continent.
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**Charles Fort was right.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vzuqk.jpg)
>
> Several times, in the course of this book, I have tried to be
> reasonable. I have asked what such repeating phenomena in one local
> sky do indicate, if they do not indicate fixed origins in the sky. And
> if such occurrences, supported by many data in other fields, do not
> indicate the stationariness of this earth, with new lands not far
> away--tell me what it is all about. The falling stones of Chico--new
> lands in the sky--or what?-- New Lands p. 535
>
>
>
<https://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/land/index.htm>
Charles Fort compiled many accounts of anomalous falls from the sky - stones, animals, huge blocks of ice - weird stuff. On trying to account for where these materials were coming from, he posited unseen lands just above the atmosphere, and went into a little detail about what must be going on in these lands.
In your world, satellite images showed Fort was right. There are lands above the upper atmosphere, invisible from the ground. They can be seen from satellites and also by orbiting spacecraft but they are too high to be accessed by planes.
The exact nature of these lands remained unclear. In the fiction, an SCP Foundation-like entity takes charge of keeping this secret and also investigating the Fortean New Lands. As with other anomalous phenomena, the world governments keep their mouths shut.
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# The Ocean of Death:
Obviously, if you are going to have an extra continent, the landmasses need to be arranged differently. On our Earth, weather and such would be altered by an extra continent, so I think some differences would be merited.
On your world, you have a smallish uncharted continent in the middle of the only and very large ocean almost completely devoid of islands. Your existing habitable landmasses are all closer and more broken up, with numerous passages and navigable routes with fair weather generally. People can get to every known place in the world in ships that for most of history were not overly seaworthy because they didn't have to be.
Everyone agrees the planet is bigger. But due to custom and religion, there is a widespread belief that all land is clustered around the known landmasses. There is also a general belief that in the great ocean there are terrible predatory monsters (which there may be - imagine megalodons and giant squid that can survive near the surface). The weather in the ocean is horrible, with titanic storms rolling off the ocean. Anchored floating coral-like structures float just beneath the surface. Throughout the age of sails, no ships survived journeying out into the ocean, including a large and fairly recent one with only a handful of survivors who turned back to confirm the hazards and monsters (maybe the monsters are real, or just an excuse for failure and bad planning).
Only fools journey into the ocean, ships aren't generally built for rough conditions and deep oceans, and there are very real hazards that kill all those who venture there. The distances are such that other trade routes are faster and more efficient. With the large inedible megafauna, there are few easily obtainable fish or other resources. With no refueling stations and treacherous storms, no attempt to fly over the ocean has succeeded.
People pretty much gave up trying to cross the ocean. I mean, what's the point?
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You only option I think is to have a large volcanic area which
* undergoes periodic eruption, producing scattered low islands all across its extension. Think of something like [Ferdinandea island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinandea_Island), but on a larger scale
>
> Ferdinandea Island (also Graham Island, Graham Bank or Graham Shoal; French: Ile Julia) is a certain volcanic island/seamount in the Mediterranean Sea near the island of Sicily that has, on more than one occasion, risen above the Mediterranean via volcanic action and soon thereafter been washed away. Since 300 BC this cycle of events has occurred four times. The top of the island is presently 6 metres below sea level.
>
>
>
* is quiescent between each eruptive period, so that the newly formed volcanic islands and archipelagos are quickly reduced to shallow waters by the oceanic environment
In this way the continent is most of the time just laying below the water surface, except for those brief periods of time when the volcanic activity makes it surface and weather.
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## Geology that is just right.
The center of the island is intensely cold. This naturally makes the air above the center of the island cold, and hence it descends. As it nears the ground it has to go sideways and so there is a constant wind blowing away from the island except at high altitudes, where you get sucked in and would be lucky to survive.
Ships and low level planes get blown away. High altitude planes get sucked in and destroyed by turbulence. No word of the island gets out.
So how could the center of the island stay so cold? I suggest the rocks of the island form a giant natural [thermoacoustic heat engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoacoustic_heat_engine). Such an engine uses sound or vibrations to move heat from one place (the center of the island) to another (hot spots on the edge of the island)
The vibrations need a power source. I can suggest more amazingly fortuitous geology and tidal power - as the tides come in and out it forces air through small tunnels that produce just the right sounds to drive the heat engine.
Or, you could have a [natural nuclear reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor), which boils water deep underground and the steam produces the vibrations as it escapes.
Your island is now unapproachable, but a hell-scape of constant freezing storm winds adjacent to places of unspeakable heat. A few oases of livable conditions exist where they are sheltered from the wind but not too close to any of the heat engine's outputs. Strange sounds dominate the island, causing [psychological problems](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16201210/) for anyone who sets foot there. If anyone has got to the island and escaped, they probably think it is haunted.
In time, the wonderful just-right geology will erode and the effects fade. That could be soon or in thousands of years. Some well placed explosives could destroy the heat engine.
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[Question]
[
So, in the setting I've created, there are many animal and plant materials which are comparable to modern materials and some even greater than what can be made today.
For example, there are molluscs with shells that are comparable to bronze, large lizards whose scales are like iron, predators that have large teeth as strong as high carbon steel and some rare flying monsters even having naturally formed carbon nanostructures within their very bones making them stronger than steel but lighter than plastic.
This extends to plant life as well with some trees with wood that is stronger than the strongest wood in our world and vines that have a tensile strength greater than Dyneema rope.
Why would anyone waste their time with copper, bronze, iron, or low quality steel when a dagger or spear point created from a creature's tooth works better, why have a bronze and even iron sword when a club with animal teeth along its edge works better, and why make suit of metal armor when a fitted suit of sea shells and lizard scales works better, is more comfortable, and weighs less too?
However, this raises the question, in a world with so many natural plant and animal materials comparable and better than what can be made with modern technology why would any civilization develop metal working to make metal comparable to what already exists?
[Answer]
**Tools and parts won't grow on trees**
When people were primitive, they used stones as tools. There are plenty of stones for use, but they almost never have a shape that a tool needs. What was a major advancement for humanity is a skill to shape stone, creating stone axes, spearheads and primitive knives.
Iron-hard natural objects would be very difficult to utilize, because they will be very difficult to reshape. Stone can be chipped away. Cutting steel or even bronze requires stronger tools, which in modern world are almost always powered. Metallurgy and metalworking is taking advantage of the fact that metal can melt or become very ductile at high temperatures (as @AlexP noted). If natural objects of this world can't do that, people would be stuck with natural shapes. They may be able to go long way with that if suitable knife-like and needle-like shapes are available, but eventually this would become a technological dead end.
Metallurgy would be a niche technology in antiquity, but as limitations of natural shapes would become more and more restrictive, metalworking would take over and surpass the use of natural hard objects.
On the other hand, this is your world and you *can* make tools grow on trees - and this can be quite a story with a lot of fun!
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**Art**. Metal has a look and feel unlike other substances. Jewelry was historically a major domain of metal.
**Electricity**. All those lovely wires need metal. As soon as someone figures out that lightning can be bottled, metallurgy will take off.
**Other useful properties**. Metal can be cast, can be machined, can be drawn into wire, can be rolled into sheets, can be hammered or forged into any shape. Metal is elastic, it is not brittle, and it is about as strong in tension as it is compression.
**Any season**. Metal can be “harvested” year round. It doesn’t migrate. And it doesn’t cry in pain when you mine it.
**Nothing is free** - those tough animals and vegetation are high risk to harvest, and require a different set of skills, akin to mining - it might be *easier* to work with stone or metal
**Weight can be an advantage** - density is the desirable quality of a bullet; similarly, you do not want an arrow to be too lightweight. Even if you can have a super light, super strong arrowhead, it has to have the mass to have kinetic energy to do actual damage against those tough creatures.
**Avoid hunting/farming** - Similar to the any season point to have to farm or hunt for the materials is a larger time sink then if you were able to create a material/item on demand system.
**Metal by-products are useful too** - Iron oxide, aka rust, is commonly used for creating red building materials such as paving slabs. Steel aggregate, aka slag, is used for high load bearing road surfaces as it has excellent grip and compression properties.
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How exactly similar are those equivalent? Because even if a lizard skin is as hard as steel, if you can't melt and shape it, it is clearly not as useful as steel. Your society will start with scrappy tools that are much better than what they would get with the scrappy tool they would have made
***Herding ain't cheap***
What will immediately force your civilisation to find an alternative to animal resources is that as soon as you sedentarize and can't spend your day looking for a lizard
Unless your lizard with impervious skin has good meat, it is hardly justifiable to have a herd of every single useful material
And raising just for material reasons is just not doable until you have industrialized your farming technique. The expense of raising stock is the most terrible of all in the period: food. With how scarce it is, you certainly can't afford to spend it to not get at least some food back
If you can get good material on top of a good amount of meat? cool. Raising a weird porcupine who tastes like shit but whose quills have some great use? you'd rather eat.
***I wish I had a good joke with plants***
Pre-industrial society still had a tendency to deplete their forest fairly quickly. Look at the amount of primary forest left in Europe, heck, Louis XIV planted a full forest because he wanted to build a fleet but there was not nearly enough trees left in France to do what he wanted
You will soon enough run into the same problem with the plants, they take a long time to regrow and it is quite hard
What mining solves is that you just have to use people to mine and it is extremely scalable. Iron and bronze were rather shitty materials, probably not as good as teeth and wood, but they were much more scalable.
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I mean, the easy answer is **they wouldn't.** They might discover that the ground has metals but not care because there's plenty of lizard scales laying around.
But if the point of the exercise is to specifically think up why they *would* still get into mining then there's all sorts of possibilities:
**Sheer volume**. Mining iron surely works out better in terms of "economies of scale" than herding. Iron in the ground is sitting there waiting to be mined. Herds of steellizards would need to eat, poop and do all the things steellizards need to do and that surely requires space and handling and probably works great on a small scale but breaks down when you need to build skyscrapers. Iron mining actually gets more efficient the more of it you need to do (you can just keep making bigger and bigger machines to extract and process it).
**Food scarcity**. Any animal that has steel for skin must have a heck of a diet. That's a lot of mass that has to come from something. What's the ratio for tons of steel produced by lizards versus tons of whatever it is they eat? Maybe what they eat is rare and only exists in specific biomes and is not, itself, easy to farm.
**Comparable to, but only in some ways**. You say the animal product is "comparable to" a metal but in what way? Metals have a lot of properties. How brittle is it? What's the melting point? How easily does it corrode? Is it magnetic? What's the weight per volume? How conductive is it? Late civilization might answer your question right there: maybe the animal products are non-conductive. Or the animal products actually are not metals and therefore cannot be smelted or have their properties easily changed. (e.g. "steel" is not one thing. There are lots of different steels. Different combinations of ingredients can produce steel with different properties which can be useful. So maybe an animal can give you "steel" but if it can't be tinkered with as real steel can, to modify its properties, then its use is limited.)
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**Unworkability**
Scales and shells are too hard and/or brittle to work and thus can't be shaped as desired.
**They Don't Scale Up**
Spider silk is stronger than steel in some very useful ways but is far harder to get enough useful quantities than mining+smelting, of all things!
**Undesirable Traits**
Those that can be worked and scaled up are susceptible to pests with even tougher teeth, fungus or bacteria that naturally degrade the material. Another possibility is that the material is toxic or an allergen for most humans. If this is an alien planet, that's actually pretty reasonable.
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We have real-world examples of this. Up through the 19th century, we hunted whales in order to harvest various oils that their body produces. These oils were highly desirable as lamp fuel, and were also used as lubricants, rust inhibitors, soaps, margarine, and medical products. In the last half of the 19th century, we turned away from these animal products in favor of artificial oils derived from petroleum. The reason? Whales had been hunted nearly to extinction. Demand for these products had long outstripped the ability for animal sources to supply adequate raw materials. We were harvesting whales an order of magnitude faster than they could replenish themselves. Instead, petroleum supplies were abundant and available much closer to industrial and population centers (thus cheaper to produce).
Animal sources will almost always suffer from this limitation. Plants have much shorter life cycles, so you can often mass-produce them in sufficient quantity to meet your ever-changing needs (we call this *farming*). If you can plant and harvest them in the same year, then they might be mass-producible. If your ultra-strong trees or vines require 10 years to grow to maturity, however, you might have a problem. We used to use parts of willow trees, poppy flowers, etc. for pain relievers. Those plants are far from extinct, but we don't farm them for medicinal purposes any more. Instead, we learned how to isolate the active ingredient and synthesize it from artificial sources. Aspirin can be mass-produced from artificial sources significantly cheaper and easier than from natural sources, so we no longer farm plants for these chemicals.
Your world would undoubtedly use similar logic. When demand for materials outstrips what nature can sustainably and conveniently supply, people will turn to other sources. They'll either do it once the cost of the animal/plant source exceeds the cost of the artificial source, or once they've driven the natural source to extinction.
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So I've got a colony ship crashing onto a world, and I want to reality check its effects on ship, crew and landscape.
Firstly the ship is fairly large. Its job is to seed human colonies on alien worlds, and while it can move faster than light, its journey time length it still expected to be decades and thus it carries families and extensive facilities with it to cover every expected need.
However, on its final approach to the earth-like planet, it was planning to colonise, things go very wrong, and it loses the ability to properly slow down as it enters the atmosphere and crashes into the planet.
Couple of key points that need to be true for the sake of the story.
1. Most of the crew need to die, but I need to be able technobable my way how a small number didn't. So I need to avoid a 100% fatality rate crash.
2. I need some of the ship systems to still be repairable, the ship can -mostly- be a wreck, but not annihilated.
Now here come the bit where I'm wondering about the details.
Would it be reasonable to assume that a large ship would likely create a new canyon-like effect if it crashed at the right angle and slide across the surface?
What kind of damage would a mostly metallic hull likely suffer and what would it look like? Crumpling, discolouration?
I'm going to assume the main causes of death would likely be g-force related and fire.. so broken bones and people being smashed against walls? Along with people being burned alive and smoke inhalation?
Another factor that's important, is the crash site been left for a few hundred years in a earth like climate. Besides the obvious rotting, are there other factors I need to be aware of?
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### The ship breaks into pieces in high atmosphere, each with separate aerodynamic properties
I'm assuming the failure comes pretty late in the entry sequence, after a heat shield has slowed the craft considerably - otherwise, this will be a short story.
A big generation ship wont be built for high G loads like tumbling through the atmosphere, when air resistance hits the wrong parts of it (probably for the first time ever if it was built in space), it will rip into pieces.
This is the key to your story. Big light chunks fall slowly as they get air resistance. Small dense chunks fall quickly. Imperfect chunks tumble. Chunks deform on impact, decelerating survivors slowly enough that they survive.
The chunks will be spread over hundreds or thousands of km; eg this is where from the space shuttle Columbia ended up:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/W18QK.png)
It's not only plausible for there to be a small number of survivors after an event like this - it's happened multiple times. Wikipedia list [5 people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fall_survivors) who have fallen to the planet's surface at terminal velocity without a parachute and survived, 2 of which were able to walk away from their impact with minor injuries, and 3 who needed immediate medical attention but survived:
* [Vesna Vulović, 10.1km.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87) Pinned between an airline food cart and a chunk of the aircraft cabin. Major injuries and needed first aid on the ground
* [Alan Magee, 6.7km](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee). Slowed down by a glass roof of a train station. Broken bones and organ damage but recovered in POW camp.
* [Juliane\_Koepcke, 3km](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliane_Koepcke). Still strapped in her seat and seat rows were joined together, and they deformed optimally on impact. Walked away and was found next morning.
* [Ivan\_Chisov, 7km](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Chisov). Hit the edge of a snowy ravine. Needed major surgery.
* [Nicholas Alkemade, 5.5km](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade). Hit pine trees and snow cover. Only injury was a leg sprain.
### Will it create a canyon?
Only if it's made of unobtainium. When big metal things impact the ground at high speed the ground tends to win. Look at [aviation crashes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801) for example.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XM1g1.jpg)
It depends exactly on how its constructed - but I'd expect each individual chunk that reaches the ground to be about the same size, composition, and velocity of the worst aviation disasters. They may scratch the ground, but they're not going to create a massive geological feature like a canyon.
### What's the most common cause of death?
Someone's actually [published a paper on this](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/13930058_Injury_patterns_in_aviation-related_fatalities_Implications_for_preventive_strategies). Head injury is the most common single cause of death.
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### Are there any other factors? Yes - nudity
**The corpses will be naked**. Very little clothing (including underwear) will survive free fall from these altitude. Eg In [MH17](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/07/why-were-mh17-victims-missing-their-clothes.html):
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The sudden exposure to 500km/hr+ wind of an inflight breakup will rip most clothes at the seams.
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**Bail out.**
Some of the people in the crashing ship see what is going on. They are close enough to the shuttlecraft equivalents to get aboard and get out.
The big ship goes down and people inside are asphyxiated as the big ship breaks apart from air resistance entering the atmosphere. The broken apart pieces are slowed by atmosphere (and heated up) then they all fall at terminal velocity. Big pieces will leave a dent in the ground. As in a plane crash the bodies inside are smashed up when they hit. No-one is burned alive. If gory specifics are needed for your story I am sure you can find online exactly what happens to people in a plane crash.
The shuttlecraft free of the big ship try to shed velocity thru various improvised maneuvers of varying success. Some of these craft make it to the surface more or less intact. They would probably be able to find pieces of the big ship large enough to salvage for repairs although parts would likely be spread over a huge area and possibly nowhere near where the shuttlecraft come down.
Maybe there were other last minute launces besides the shuttlecrafts. I like the idea of the shuttlecraft parties later finding a lady and a cat that got into her gas giant atmosphere probe that then methodically lowered itself and its cargo down into the atmosphere. To make sure of the methodical part she tweaked the program from the inside on the way down.
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You want a big ship crashed from orbital+speeds, with a nice canyon dug out by the ship, and you want some, but few survivors. Many systems intact-ish, but broken.
Canyon: Requires high impact inertia, huge mass, and something harder than unobtanium. But *not* extremely high impact speeds, as otherwise you just get nice round impact craters.
Survivors: Normally speaking, forget about it. Human bodies will turned to a bowl of soup-with-bone-shards at impact energies *way* below the "canyon-forming" levels.
**Only practical solution: Limited range and location**
# Stasis Fields
Your travelers have the means to set up a complete motion stasis field, wherein nothing moves. At all. Effectively, time is suspended within the sphere.
These stasis spheres cannot be too large, otherwise they would have just covered the whole ship with it and landed like a brick. Say the stasis field is a bubble 5m in radius, max. It will completely protect its contents in perfect condition, unless the field collapses under *enormous* stresses. In which case, the field fails and it crumples like a tin can.
Shield bubbles cannot touch, cannot overlap. They must be discrete.
When the ship tries landing, it is like a bag full of walnuts. The guidance, propulsion and navigation *cannot* be inside the spheres, as being frozen would prevent them from working. Nor, unfortunately, can the crew who are manning these emergency systems. Nonvital crew and passengers and sections of the ship that are not required to do a landing, *are* suitably protected. Mostly. Some of the protective fields fail, most survive.
End result:
The ship lands 80% or so intact, but the engines and computers and bridge crew and engineering are completely wiped out.
The ship gouges a huge canyon in the ground as it impacts. Quite destroying the exposed segments, but leaving many of the passengers and stores and non-ship equipment intact.
Ship structure on unshielded segments between stasis bubbles is crumpled, bent and generally badly damaged. Ship structure and mechanisms that were inside stasis bubbles that survived are in pristine shape.
You could even make a plotline out of having some of these stasis fields survive the landing, only to fail to switch off after the event. So there's this metallic-looking sphere sitting in the wreckage. It is an active field. What is inside? Maybe some other crew, maybe food, maybe those repair robots we so desperately want.
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You have your solution right there: it loses the ability to properly slow down.
This doesn't mean it can't improperly slow down. Things went very wrong, but it didn't just crash into the planet.
Sliding is possible, and it may do some damage to the surface, but a full-blown canyon is improbable, because the earth being tossed aside will dampen its forward motion, and the harder the earth, the less damage the ship will be able to do, and the softer the earth, the more quickly the damage can erode away.
Damage to the ship is likely to look very like the damage to a car when it collides with rock: crumpling of the metal, breaking of fragile parts, people tossed about. Note that unlike today's cars, it will not have crumple zones.
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**Some replicators survive**. The ship can't decelerate, but the atmosphere slows it down a little. It comes down as a flaming half-kilometer ball at twenty times the speed of sound, tearing branches off the trees a hundred miles away. But the computers enact one of their worst case scenarios and use maneuvering thrusters and aerodynamics to spin it up as it moves into the atmosphere until it breaks apart, and one of the pieces thrown backwards suffers comparatively little damage. That means that a few of the myriad solid state replicators, built from solid blocks of patterned silicon, are still able to produce expert technicians with portable equipment from the rapidly dwindling chemical feedstocks embedded in their microfluidic architecture.
The crash site is essentially a large meteor impact, decorated with blocks of alien stone (actually sophisticated electronics/microfluidics). The diversity of feedstocks present, and the centralized nature of some of them used for particularly specialized equipment, means that miners may occasionally tap a wondrous lode of silver or gold hidden within these ancient stones.
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Crumple zones.
The centre of the biggest pieces remain mostly intact as the bits in front of it take the impact.
The ESA [Schiaparelli](https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Exploration/ExoMars/Schiaparelli_s_landing) used an analogous mechanism for the final landing. Though obviously the mechanism wasn't proven given the failure of the landing.
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This question is really straightforward: can a sane species adapt to be **highly violent, aggressive and war-like**, but at the same time be very **non-sadistic, empathetic and compassionate**? If so, what circumstances would it have evolved from?
The context is evolutionary psychology of a humanoid sapient race. The reason is that I want them to be very dualistic in nature, capable of great evil and great kindness. Since I want it to be a common mindset across the whole species I would rather not make it a cultural factor, or at least a solely cultural factor. Naturally they can't be incapable of doing harm, but prefer doing it in a more merciful way.
For example: could the same group of people have no problem with slaughtering enemies and kidnapping their women as concubines, while **at the same time** always aim for quick kill so as to not prolong suffering and treat said concubines as lovers or wives?
Or could they have no problem with hunting and even do it for sport, but think of humans as worse for "kicking someone who is down" and similar behaviours?
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## Of Course:
Behavior can be learned or genetic, so if you want it to be a racial trait, no problem.
Look to the rich and noble people of the world. They are frequently cruel, brutal exploiters who have an insatiable hunger for power. Yet the same Rockefeller building financial empires is creating endowments and universities. Why?
For your race, I would propose that they are driven to be the alpha dogs. They can't help it. They aren't happy until they are on top of all other races. But Machiavelli in his work *The Prince* suggests that rulers, while ruthless, should also try to be beloved by their people (ruthless first, but...). A tyrant who is constantly brutalizing the people will eventually get overthrown either by another tyrant or the people he is brutalizing.
Nobles want to believe they deserve to be the masters of all people. But just being the biggest bad-ass means you are knocked off the pedestal the moment you show the slightest weakness. A ruler who is tough but beloved will always do better than a brutal jerk. People do things because they like the ruler, or at least know he/she is better than the alternative. The idea nobles want to be better people than their common servants is why and where we get the idea that nobility is something fine and honorable, and well NOBLE.
So in a species driven to dominate constantly, it would be natural for them to mellow their behaviors once they are successful. Testosterone levels for dominant male apes are LOWER than the non-dominant males. They become gentler and kinder. The kindest males are more likely to remain in the social group after being defeated, and they often continue to successfully reproduce after, since females may prefer the gentler elder male to the aggressive younger one. I've bred mice for research, and the males used as breeding stock are less aggressive, not more (and by a big margin).
Now we are talking about a species here, not an ethnic group. We won't get into the ethics of slavery and concubines, but history is full of dichotomy in behaviors towards slaves. They could take concubines, but it's up to you if they can interbreed. Half-blood individuals might carry the dominating genes, and thus create sub-species with each race they interbreed with that form a noble class. That's up to your world.
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People already are like this: warlike and aggressive to Outsiders, and empathetic and compassionate to clan members.
It starts with the family, and extends outwards:
* Fight with your brother, but fight a cousin who attacks your brother.
* Fight with the village guy who attacks your cousin.
* Fight with the guys from another village who attack the guys from your village.
* Fight with the guys from both villages against people further afield.
Note how the "In Group" keeps expanding.
All the while, when you're with the In Group, you're empathetic and compassionate.
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I interpret the question as being about how a race of warriors could maintain a gap between, on the one hand, being violent rapists and, on the other hand, abhorring cruelty. You want them to wage wars, plunder and abduct women, but in the same time express strong opinions about the lack of kindness in humans.
### People are very compassionate, and go to lengths to fight injustice and barbarity. As long as it doesn't interfere with their way of life, that is.
What you describe is not that strange at all. **It's already inherent in human biology** and I see the phenomenon all the time among my fellow westerners; I see it with people of many ideologies.
@DWKraus mentions the ruthless rich and others mention racists, but, perhaps paradoxically, one could argue the contrast is just as large on the left. It might be they behave in a more "caring" way than the nationalists, but they also think of themselves as more caring, **leaving the gap just as large**. There are, of course, many many exceptions (perhaps even most people?), but the pattern is clearly there. Let me explain:
A person on the left might care deeply about human rights and be quick to condemn people they think are breaking them, yet they ignore the problems in their own behaviour. Slavery is bad, but they buy clothes and other stuff made by people earning $1 a day or even less. Phones, on top of being fabricated by poorer people than those who use them, often contain metals mined in terrible conditions, or even [conflict metals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_resource).
Speaking of electronics takes us to pollution. The mining and refinement of raw materials to make computers, phones etc doesn't just frequently harm those doing the work, but the people living in the surroundings. Used electronics are then dumped in all sorts of places (see for instance [Agbogbloshie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbogbloshie)) where it poisons people and environment alike.
Production of clothing, cars and all sorts of other things pollutes to different degrees as well.
Now, the point is that people know about these things. For food, and maybe even clothes, they might choose some degree of "organic" options. Few, however, have all their clothes made by fairly paid workers, of locally grown fibres, dyed in a way that is non-toxic along all the production chain. You can buy clothes second hand, buy few of us abstain from buying a smart-phone less than a few years old. Many people own cars much larger and newer than they need.
A person may care so much about their fellow humans that they attend protests against racism, gender discrimination, or even the the hurtful misuse of gendered pronouns. Don't get me wrong! These are good things, and I'm all for them. What I want to point out is the contrast. The same person may change their phone every other year (or even more often!), dress in new clothes and travel there in a 5 years old large car. And I've not even started about green house gas emissions yet!
Cars emit carbon dioxide, but the *production itself* of the car can produce just as much emissions as the driving it does in its lifetime.
Eating meat is also problematic. There are estimates saying half of our greenhouse gases stem from food production, and meat and dairy constitute a huge part of of this.
The very justice-aware person mentioned above might drive, even fly occasionally, eat meat every day, and overall live as if they don't care about the climate. If they're a vegetarian, chances are they eat a lot of cheese.
I could go on to other aspects, but I think I've made my point.
There are people who gets a lower salary solely because of their gender, people forced to conform to a binary gender system and people who run run a 1/100 000 risk of being shot by the police instead of the average 1/1 000 000 (numbers made up!), and this is terrible. Is it more terrible than the horrors fuelled by the way of life of our hypothetical activist? I would say they are most certainly not. No matter how organic, fairtrade or whatever marking's on the product, western level consumption of stuff isn't sustainable. *And deep down our activist knows this!*
People choose what to be upset about. Again, don't get me wrong: it tends to be important stuff! It also tends to be stuff that doesn't require much change in their life. And, by strange coincidence, it tends to be stuff that doesn't trouble the people in power too much either...
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### The enemy isnt "really" human.
It's easy to have two different feelings to two different groups. Dehumanise your enemy.
Your race is caring and empathetic and selfless and charitable to all humans, but that enemy race isn't really human.
Of course they may look human to the uneducated, but \*insert characteristic or allegiance that's makes them the enemy\* makes them unworthy, and their devious nature is capable of tricking people in mistakenly caring for them. The world would be better if they were quietly dealt with.
Ultimately removing them will make the world a better place, and any selfless person should rationally get behind that cause.
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**An extreme form of nationalism.**
In the past there were nationalist movements so extreme that they viewed people of a other nation/race as a completely different species. As if they were barely human or not human at all. Your entire race could biologically be hardwired to think this.
In a world filled with extremely hostile environment and scarcity in resources might force a species to evolve to do whatever is needed to survive. That being killing all competition for resources and ensuring that as many of your groups survives (for reproductive reasons for example).
This would not make them cruel but highly efficient, allowing them to emotionally distance themselves from others. They hunt others for sport because they need to learn to fight and defend themselves or to keep possible hostile populations in check. Killing just becomes a second nature they don't think about anymore, they just do it and move on to the next like desk clerk going through papers.
In a response to DWKraus his comment, there were Norse/Germanic tribes who held slaves from victorious battles. But in some tribes the children of those slaves were considered free-men (although still looked down upon) because they were born in their land/their tribe. This would also increase the tribes numbers aiding further long-term survival.
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## It is feasible
If your species evolved on a world where resources are somewhat rare, then there would be pressure to make maximum use of what little resource you have, such as carefully cultivating a food source to ensure it produces as much as possible, and not wasting any of it.
At the same time, there would be pressure to take resources from others (more so than on our, more bountiful home), violently if necessary, whilst at the same time limiting damage to the resource in question.
As a species becomes more intelligent and works in groups, the definition of asset gets blurry. Whilst two groups are at war, their warriors are enemies that must be destroyed, but the moment peace is declared those same warriors are now assets, be it as allies or as mates.
Thus we get our duality. A world where individuals will fight tooth and nail to take resources, (be it food, territory, mates, whatever), carefully cultivate the resources they have (dutifully weeding and watering their garden, improving and defending their territory, loving and cherishing their mate), even if just days ago they had trashed the place in the process of taking it from the previous owner.
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## This is basically most of human history
A bit late to the party, and many other answers touched this topic somewhat, but it's interesting to dig deeper into how earlier human societies actually functioned.
People had a lot closer connection with death before the modern era, due to two important factors.
* there was no cure for many common illnesses, and especially childhood mortality was high. There almost wasn't any family who didn't have at least one or more children dying.
* over 90% of the population was involved in food production, and most of the rest in the defense of it.
There was no fast travel and transport. There was much less variety in the foodstuff than we have now. There was less economic surplus, and not much opportunity to import food if the harvest was bad. There weren't as many methods of food preservation. One year of bad harvest meant you'll either starve, or have to invade your neighbors.
If your tribe chief said *"we are now stronger than that tribe, so let's go and kill them, because if we wait for them to get stronger, they will kill us"*, then everyone understood it. If the tribe chief said *"they have a better pasture then us, let's go and chase them away"*, then no one asked why. Who didn't understand it was an idiot. There was no moral issue there. Do you want your family and your tribe to starve to death the next winter?
Also, war wasn't generally seen as a bad thing, or at least not as bad as it's seen today in a comfortable developed country. Here and now we can be almost sure that unless some exceptionally rare misfortune happens to us, we'll easily live to at least 80 years or more. Back then, people you know were dying all around you. Fertility rates were high and the death rate was also very high. Why fear going to war if you could die next weak of smallpox or cholera or just a simple pneumonia? Before the 19th century wars had fewer military deaths than deaths due to illness.
War was common, that was what people expected life to be like. But nothing prevented them from being compassionate to each other. Especially as lacking many of our modern technology, people had to rely on their extended family and their neighbors much more than we have.
## But what about...?
Many people today have different moral values than in earlier times. But that isn't because back then they were evil for the sake of being evil.
Let's jump right into the most controversial topic of all: **slavery**. Everyone except psychopaths today regards slavery as evil. But the further back in history we go, the muddier that concept gets. Let's jump back at least 3000-4000 years, into the bronze age, when civilizations started to coalesce from smaller tribes.
Let's say your tribe fought a battle with a rival tribe, and you've won. You captured many of their warriors. What to do with them?
* if you release them, you'll just have to fight them next time, and next time they might win. And if word gets around, then everyone will try their luck fighting you, because they know there will be little risk if they lose
* or you could slaughter them all.
* there is no option to just keep them around as POW, because remember, you live in a subsistence economy, you barely have enough food yourself, you can't afford feeding people who aren't working.
So, *under those conditions*, slavery was the kindest thing to do, as strange as it sounds. The only other choice was to just kill them all. If you want to be even more compassionate, set a limit in years how long they must serve you. Or manumit them for good behavior and faithful service. Or let their children become free, and integrate them into your society. These all happened historically. Or even if they remain slaves, entrust them with a degree of authority. Many slaves in ancient Rome were scribes, overseers, teachers, doctors. Oh, they weren't allowed to leave their masters? Don't forget that personal freedom didn't mean so much back then as it is today, as even the free men didn't have many personal choices. Almost everyone worked in agriculture, you couldn't just leave your only source of income behind so simply. Government wasn't centralized, there was no state police automatically investigating crimes, so there was no protection from anyone wishing ill upon you if you weren't a member of a clan, a tribe, or a powerful family. But all this also means people relied much more on each other than they do now. This makes plenty of opportunity to be kind and compassionate. What matters if they were warlike at the same time? They had to, otherwise their neighbors would conquer them!
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**Weak Teams Sports Players**
**Weaklings**
Your species are extremely weak, even in comparison to how weak humans are in comparison to some animals. However, your species also have communication and empathy to help those who can't help themselves, which in this case is everyone in their species.
**The power of synergy**
A single one of them can't do most tasks as well as a normal species. But two of them can do it more efficiently than one member of an average species. Four of this species can be more efficient than 5 normal species members.
**On the battlefield and the bedroom**
Since the people are weak they need warriors to protect themselves, and since they are individually weak they need group tactics to do that. This means that their warrior culture is highly empathic as marching in step and acting as one is important to survival. To teach this behavior team sports and other kinds of games become very important, and proficiency in this would show proficiency on the battlefield or to protect the village from animals. This makes these games essentially mating rituals similar to dances. This furthers their compassion for fellow players on their team, and on the enemy team. However it primes them to be able to consider others in their species as the enemy.
**Super coordinated Super leaders**
However, as civilization grows, Normal warring leads to a normal amount of wars, but these wars are made worse by the fact that highly effective generals are able to get more out of their highly coordinated troops and more loyal lackeys. This leads to super leaders like Genghis khan and Julius Caesar steam rolling the continent every century or so, Since every army is able to get the most out of its leadership. This instability leads to a greater need for military build up and war, making the species warlike.
**Instincts in the Stars**
The instinct to work as a group and be highly territorial against other animals would make the aliens likely to be compassionate with people inside their species, but distrusting of other species. However, as they go into the stars, getting this species to accept more people into their "tribe" will be easier over time. Eventually, this highly collaborative group will have nearly everyone will join their in-group. As a great philosopher once said, [I say the whole world must learn of our peaceful ways, by force](https://youtu.be/0Ig2qZEiNv8) -Bender.
**The result**
*Super cute warriors who will slit your throat with their battle sisters in three different directions for not signing their trade agreement.*
[Answer]
## They Go to War to Die, Not to Destroy
A lot of "Us and Them" and "Matter of Necessity" answers, but such a species is not really empathetic & compassionate across the board. Humans have a broad range when it comes to how empathetic we are, and cultures that we see as both generous and warlike often only get there through a stark divergence between a civilian minded population which focuses on their virtues, but then they send their least virtuous people off to war to do horrible things far enough away to not have to think too much about it.
Individuals who are actually empathetic & compassionate will generally refuse to go to war AKA: [Conscientious Objectors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_objector). A species that is empathetic & compassionate will generally refuse to go to war as a whole.
Since the OP is asking for empathy & compassion as a trait of the species and not just a trait of individuals, human civilization generally does not model to what he is really asking for. So, if you really wanted to get a kind and compassionate people to become warmongery, you can not do it by convincing them that it is what they NEED to do. You need to convince them it is the RIGHT thing to do.
The best way to do this is for your alien society to have a very broad collectivist sense of morality. The idea that the survival and well being of life itself is more important than the survival and well being of an individual is important to them. In this way, a truly moral species might see overpopulation, famine, environmental damage, etc. as a greater evil than war due to their inability to sustain life if everyone clings too hard to their own survival and comfort. So, they use war not as a way to exert power over each other as humans do, but as a way to control their populations and protect the planet for future generations.
This would create some interesting aspects in the compositions of their armies too. For humans, we mostly send our young to war because they are strong and most likely to win the battle, but this civilization would mostly send their elderly to war. The elderly care too much about their families to want to become a burden on society; so, they go to war to die. Those who survive the war would inherit the property of those that they killed giving them the wealth and resources to support themselves into old age. As for taking women as sex slaves... well that is how it looks to us, but what they are really doing is bringing the widows of those they killed home with them because they are taking responsibility for their actions by taking care of them.
Since women dying does more to control the population, you may also see a much larger number of women volunteering to join the military. In their case, victory may mean taking home extra husbands along with their spoils of war, or perhaps men may even bring home other men and women other women where they would be treated as household servants instead of as new spouses.
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[Question]
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About 200 years from now, a human scientific expedition, lead by a international coalition of Earth nations, is sent to an alien moon around a habitable planet, light years from earth. Like it's parent planet, the moon has a stable atmosphere and is mostly habitable but with extreme temperatures that vary during it's seasons. The explorers arrived through a wormhole discovered near Pluto orbit, which is discovered to be the cause of massive, gravitational anomales in the kuiper belt in Sol. (As a note, a small colony already exists on the parent world governed by this international organization which is a next generation UN). After spending some time surveying the moon, this team discovers these alien devices.
* At first the devices appear to be large rocky formations that don't particularly catch anyone's eye.
* Subsequent scans reveal radiation — a lot of radiation. Across nearly the entire EM spectrum.
* The radiation is so strong that protective suits are necessary to approach them.
The shipboard science team realizes that these "pillars" are nothing like anything humanity has seen before, and so the cavalry is called in. Through the course of my story, the cavalry discoveres many things about the pillars, but the important discoveries are:
* The pillars are large AI-controlled emitters that are generating a nearby wormhole. (The same wormhole the initial explorers came through.)
* The devices are powered by antimatter reactors deep within a nearby cave network.
**My Question:** I have little idea what types of people would be called in to study these strange alien devices. The ship's science team doesn't know what they're dealing with, so who would be called in first? Once the discoveries start piling up, what specialists would be called in second?
[Answer]
## A multidisciplinary team
I hate to give the unhelpful answer but with technology so far beyond our own (I assume it’s that because we want to study it) Everyone from theoretical physicists to material scientists to anthropologies and linguists would be sent as one huge team
(they might pull the linguists out if they found no writing at all)
The other option is they might send nobody because they are afraid of what anybody would learn.
## OK maybe some clarification
I am sticking to scientific specialties and assume other specialists needed to support them are assumed.
I am assuming that we are dealing with an organization who has a very deep talent pool and can pull anyone they want from other projects if nessesary.
I am only giving one narrative of people brought in there are alternate ones.
It has been stated that the rock formations are unremarkable but the amount of EM radiation reaches deadly levels so it will interfere with equipment and generally be hard to miss. And triangulation will point to the rock formations. This points to a physicist but anyone who can track a signal and survey an area could do this.
After the rock formations have been spotted. Geologists and Material Scientists would be brought in to determine if these structures are natural or artificial. Also this whole thing is putting out very large amounts of energy it seems so someone would be brought in to see where the power is coming from, I am not sure what their specialty would be they need to be able to figure out what form the energy is being transported in. You would also want a specialist to try to determine how this relates to the presence of the wormhole but I don’t think that field of expertise really even has a name yet.
Some variation of anthropologies who study aliens would also be brought in once the structure was determined to be artificial.
At some point the mechanism would be found (I don’t see an AI without some kind of interfere to it). At his point you need a whole set of engineers/researchers/anthropologies specialization in devices not made by humans (another field that does not exist yet). Then start with the commuting hardware, then the mathematics, then software, then AI.
[Answer]
# Xenoarchaeologist
Unsurprisingly this is already a concept in Science Fiction.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoarchaeology>
>
> Xenoarchaeology, branch of xenology dealing with extraterrestrial cultures, is a hypothetical form of archaeology that exists mainly in works of science fiction. The field is concerned with the study of material remains to reconstruct and interpret past life-ways of alien civilizations. Xenoarchaeology is not currently practiced by mainstream archaeologists due to the current lack of any material for the discipline to study.
>
>
> The name derives from Greek xenos (ξένος) which means 'stranger, alien', and archaeology 'study of ancients'.
>
>
>
If the technology is still active then you're looking at the multidisciplinary team that PChapman has mentioned. Though he neglected the requirement for a security detail.
[Answer]
**Geologists**, with a specialty in lunar geology (if such a specialty exists in your world), since it is necessary to understand what parts of the rock formation are natural, which are not, how both the natural and manufactured parts were made.
**Miners**, or something like them, to provide hands-on perspective on some of the geologists' concepts.
**Military** (or security specialists) to help identify threats and maintain situational awareness, as threats are identified.
**Chemists** to study samples of the formation, **biologists** to hunt for any traces of life, **microbiologists** to study any samples found, and **geneticists** to study those samples even further.
**Doctors** to look after the health of the team, and to evaluate any illness for cause (specifically looking for alien disease, pollutants, etc.)
**Mechanical engineers** to evaluate the stuctural soundness of the area, and to design ways to improve the soundness of structurally unstable areas. **Builders** to carry out the plans.
**Radio/communications experts** to evaluate the signals and attempt contact with the AI. **Mathematicians and computer experts** to assist them.
**Linguists** and **AI psychologists** (if they exist in your world) to determine if the level of the machines self-awareness and independence and to attempt meaningful conversation witth the AI.
**Linguists** to attempt making sense of any written or transmitted communication.
**Psychologists** and/or **historians** to glean what its all there (with suggestions from military). **Astronomers** to help determine where they came from.
**Antimatter engineers** to evaluate the power systems. **Theoretical physicists** or **wormhole engineers** (if such exist in your world) to evaluate the wormhole.
[Answer]
# United States Air Force
The USAF science divisions will study this alien technology. The military can provide all the resources needed to fund and protect the project. The air-force scientists realise that some of the symbols on the pillars look like hieroglyphics, but struggle to interpret the meaning. They bring in a civilian Egyptologist, who believes that aliens have been involved in Earth's past, to help decipher the device and make it operational.
You send a team through the now functioning wormhole, it should consist of the archaeologist, a male covert ops commander brought out of retirement, and a female hot-shot astrophysicist pilot. After discovering some aliens, the team will be joined by a strong, bald alien who will provide any extra knowledge needed about the alien worlds.
[Answer]
# ROBOTS!
Why send a bunch of under-evolved meatbags to understand a machine, when you can send the most advanced machine available to understand its alien counterpart?
# If not, then two distinct teams
1. the one aboard the reconnaissance vessel (you get it for free, given that they find the artifacts)
2. a team of nuclear physicists/engineers, which arrives on a specialized ship equipped with our computers and large-AIs
A bit of reasoning below.
TL;DR sending a lot of humans in space for the *just-in-case* is way more expensive than sending *just-the-necessary-right* humans with a good encyclopedia and a powerful computer (we're in the future afterall).
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Let's consider a real-life case first: the discovery and study of the [Antikythera mechanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism). When we look at page listing [the team](http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/project/team) that analyzed and figured out the artifact and its inner workings, one thing becomes evident: the team changed/expanded over time as the understanding improved and goals evolved. These people were of course working from the comfort of planet Earth, and relied heavily on computers and other types of equipment. A lot of the experts were simply there to be asked questions, but did not necessarily need to do any "field" work. Without detracting from their expertise, we can presume that an encyclopedia from the future could have been almost as effective in providing a similar level of contribution.
Back to the case described by the OP, following the OP's timeline, there seem to be increasing understanding of the alien tech and thus changing goals. There are going
1. The first team is already aboard the ship, if the ship was sent to study the celestial body. This is exactly as the OP outlined it. In fact all that they need to do is to identify the rocky formation, measure the radiation and raise a flag for sending someone to continue the research. I imagine we are talking about a **chemist** (also acting as geologist) and the **ship's chief engineer**, who is trained in nuclear physics. A geologist is unlikely to be aboard provided that rocks strata are not going to change quickly, and there is no need to dig/build/do anything with them during a reconnaissance mission. This team gets as far as wearing a suit and going on site to record radiation from close to the pillars, perhaps even collecting a sample.
2. Radiation occurs spontaneously, so there must be something unusual about this particular case. Perhaps the next goal may be to understand the source/pattern of the radiation. There goes the **nuclear physicists/engineers** team. Nuclear physicists and engineers do have enough computer science and math training to discover, identify and study unusual patterns. I imagine that the large AI can be found by looking at some kind of patterns. This team travels on a spaceship of the future, which will be designed to perform detailed analysis. We can safely expect the ship to have the equivalent of future wikipedia stored in its mainframe, as well as future state-of-the-art AI technology to assist in the analyses. This team has all the required knowledge to figure out the presence of a wormhole, the existence of antimatter reactors and engineer a simple interface to interact with them. I am not claiming that they will understand the mechanism, or that they will be able to reverse-engineer them, but that did not seem to be the question in the first instance.
*Notes:*
The following experts have been left on Earth:
* **Linguists**. If current AI can translate between human languages today, future AI can probably identify some elements of communication between us and aliens.
* **Miners**. Unless the goal is to extract the pillars, in the OP question there is no need to dig big holes.
* **Military, security details**. Maybe they come for free as pilots aboard the ship. But considering that the planet/moon is inhabited, as reported by the reconnaissance mission, these people would just be useless cargo load.
* **Doctors, biologists**. Beyond what's typically aboard future space vessels, there is no need to add any. All research can be done from the safety of spacesuits, or even within the walls of the spaceship, provided drones to go out an explore.
* **Mechanical engineers, architects**. There was nothing mechanical in the structures identified in the reconnaissance mission. Also, the OP did not specify whether there was the need to build anything, in which case I'd rather send builders. Hence, beyond the chief engineer to look after the engine, there is no need for these expertise.
* **Radio/communications experts**. to evaluate the signals and attempt contact with the AI.
* **Mathematicians, computer experts, theoretical physicists**. Theoretical people are not exactly what is needed in the first step of looking at an artifact and figuring out how to interact with it. These are instead the people that may be employed later in reverse-engineering the apparatus.
* **AI psychologists, astronomers, archeologists, alienologists and historians**. While they may entertain interesting conversations on the way to the site, their task is fairly useless at interfacing with a set of pillars, whose function is to open wormholes. These are the people that may be employed later in building theories on how the aliens used the apparatus and why. Honestly, for the sake of making it work: who cares?
* **Lawyers, political scientists, phylosophers**. Same as above. Perhaps useful in deciding the reason for using it and when to use it, once we figure out how to.
I hope I did not forget anyone who lined up for this mission.
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[Question]
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In the near future of some plot line, the cops have been issued some sort of ranged weapon to replace their projectile pistols. I'm specifically looking for some sort of plausible explanation for a ranged weapon of the future with the following requirements:
1. Ability to shoot through wall(s) of physical material without damaging said wall - however, must still be able to hurt biological life forms
2. Doesn't "pierce" through life forms
3. Delivers at least enough (energy/force/magnetic-waves/etc) to kill a human (instantly) with one shot to the head or torso area
4. Must not be "shotgun" style - as in, it can be aimed and fired accurately (like a pistol)
5. Causing explosions is not an option
6. Must be able to shoot a minimum of 100 feet
7. If I shoot at a person behind 6 walls, the person should die, and all 6 walls remain intact - this should hold true no matter how many walls are between you and the target.
Assume infinite energy is available. Would this be possible at all? Perhaps a radiation gun? The major problem I see with the design of this weapon would be trying to get through the wall without damaging it, but still being able to kill the guy behind the wall.
For clarity's sake:
* Wall materials consist of the following: Wooden walls, cement walls, drywall, glass walls.
* In terms of not damaging the wall, strictness would be on the level of 10000 on a scale of 1 to 100. The reason we don't want to damage the walls is to make the weapon as untraceable as possible.
[Answer]
Essentially, you want something that has only a small effect on what it's passing through for almost everything it passes through - and then suddenly has a major effect at and only at the target point. Unfortunately, there aren't really many ways to do that effectively within the scope of 'realistic' physics.
**A carefully tuned frequency (using either sonic or electromagnetic waves) is one option, but it's going to be rather hit-and-miss in terms of not affecting the environment**. It would probably be possible to find an EM wavelength that interacts strongly with water but only weakly with stone/concrete/glass - microwaves more-or-less do this. That's great... until you shoot through a wall made of damp wood, and the flash-heated steam blows the timber apart as well as your target. Or until there's another bag of water person standing behind your target, and your gun happily kills them as well.
Sound waves are going to have similar problems. A gun which emits sound waves that resonate strongly with the target's skull will neatly blow his head apart - and won't hurt anyone else unless they have a skull of exactly the same size and shape as the target. Unfortunately, because the target frequencies do vary based on size and shape, you have to know *exactly* how said target's skull is shaped, *and* the angle he's holding his head at, *and* what kind of damping effects his hat/hair will have, etc. etc. And even then, you're still facing occasional collateral damage when the frequencies in question also set up a freakish resonance with the left rear wheel of a passing truck, or the hard drive in the central computer of the bank across the road, or...
There aren't really any other convenient methods of making something react disproportionately with one target and ignore anything else, but there's still the next best thing: take something that reacts with everything equally, and focus it at the target location. The most practical open-air method of doing that is **multiple beams that converge at the target point**.
That's going to be difficult from a man-portable weapon, especially since the kind of discrimination you're looking for will require a large number of beams, coming from very different angles. If your police force can put up some supporting infrastructure, however, it would be plausible to make a man-portable *target designator*, which then sends a signal triggering a number of radiation beams to all target the same point. Placing the beam emitters on towers around a city would be relatively cheap and easy; placing them on orbiting satellites gives you nation-wide and/or global coverage (and is easier to do secretly), but massively increases the engineering difficulties of building a sufficiently precise emitter. Get a decent computer coordinating the beams and you can play tricks with the exact frequencies to set up interference patterns that tighten the killzone even further.
An alternative that could plausibly be man-portable - at the expense of being only *mostly* based in 'realistic' physics - is **two converging beams, one of neutrinos and one of anti-neutrinos**. They'll pass through pretty much anything without causing any damage, but mutual annihilation at the point where the beams cross will release a significant amount of radiation. It's still going to be a messier weapon than an ordinary pistol, since there's nothing containing the radiation once it is released, but it should be possible to tune it so that 'collateral damage' means 'sick' instead of 'dead'.
Another option is **firing through a wormhole, higher dimension, hyperspace, or anything else along those lines**. There's not much more I can say about this - since they aren't really based on known physics - other than to note that they're an option, they aren't *proven* to be *impossible*, but you'll have to make up at least half of your explanation since no-one really has much of an idea of how it would actually work.
I feel obliged to mention one final *non*-science-based option, since it seems like a perfect fit: **psychic weapons**. If your world allows ESP, telepathy, or anything similar, then a purely mental attack will do exactly what you're looking for.
[Answer]
**It would depend on what your walls are made of.**
Essentially, any type of radiation you produce will penetrate some materials, but not others. Something like x-ray radiation or IR will penetrate any substance that is transparent to that wavelength, and will be absorbed by (and excite) any substance that is opaque to that wavelength, causing heating and damage.
A wall which is mostly transparent to x-rays would be pierced by an x-ray gun, which could then injure a person standing on the other side, since substances like bone are opaque to that form of radiation and would absorb the energy. However, a wall made of something that absorbs x-rays would block the weapon.
You can think of it this way: if I make a gun that shoots radiation that is absorbed by humans, I can stop that gun with a wall of human corpses. There aren't any forms of radiation that will hurt a person that won't be absorbed by my corpse-wall, or a wall with corpse-wall like properties.
[Answer]
Most of the answers so far have focused on using some type of radiation to kill your target (since it's been established that projectile weapons are a non-starter). However, there are some problems:
* Microwaves are stopped by even thin metal (e.g. your microwave oven doesn't roast you every time you use it). They also have a long wavelength (on the order of 10 cm), so you need a large emitter to create a focused beam; a handgun-sized microwave weapon would spray radiation indiscriminately.
* Going to shorter wavelengths doesn't help. Terahertz radiation doesn't penetrate objects very well (the body scanners used by the TSA can see through normal clothes, but that's about it). Many answers suggested going even higher to x-rays. However, low-energy x-rays are stopped by things like pieces of paper and air. High-energy x-rays pass right through your body (which is why they're useful for medical imaging), so they violate the "no collats" requirement. There is no intermediate range where x-rays penetrate walls but not tissue. (This is because humans are made of low-Z elements: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen.)
With projectiles and radiation pretty much discounted, that leaves only one weapon left: information.
There are two scenarios I have in mind.
## Nanobots, Nanobots Everywhere
Typically I don't like to lean on the crutch of nanotechnology, but it fits pretty well here. Imagine a future where invisible nanomachines cover every surface, fill the air, and even our bodies. They do a lot of amazing things, like turn every surface into a microphone and touchscreen display, constantly analyze the air for contaminants and monitor weather patterns, and continuously repair our bodies.
However, one organization has turned the system against us. Whether it's the government building backdoors into the system, or a group of industrious blackhats, someone has a way to override the nanomachines' programming. They now have thousands of ways to kill you, from reversing the nanomachines that increase your blood oxygen and endurance so that they asphyixiate you, to instructing the brain-machine interface nanomachines to kill all your brain activity. They can even make it look like a natural death or an accident, and when the override is wiped from the nanomachines' memories, no one will be the wiser.
## Mark of the Beast
>
> *And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand...*
>
>
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In a less technologically-advanced (but perhaps more dystopian) future, the government might require everyone to get ['chipped'](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchip_implant_(human)) with an ID tag. It's a great convenience, since you no longer have to carry around your ID, worry about getting it lost or stolen, or renewing it when it expires. Maybe it even functions as your credit cards, ID badge, passwords, and more; it might even be voluntary but ubiquitous, like cell phones.
Once again, someone has backdoor access to the system, and has found a way to kill you using your chip. This could be a secret feature placed there by the government, The Corporations, or a supervillain blackmailing the designer. It could also be a simple design flaw: when overloaded in a certain way, the fried chip releases a toxin into the bloodstream, or creates a destructive feedback loop in the nervous system.
The method of death can be as subtle or obvious as you like. It may be clear that the target was killed by their 'malfunctioning' ID implant, but without comprehensive logs determining who killed the target may be impossible.
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In both of these scenarios, the 'gun' merely acts as a target designator, like the scariest point-and-click interface ever. The ~~great~~ scary thing about this system is that is scales perfectly. An aspiring neo-Nazi could use the system to kill anyone whose DNA he doesn't like, or a supervillain could hold the entire planet hostage without raising a weapon.
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Of course, the most thought-provoking part of this question for me is, why would police need to be issued untraceable weapons? (!!!)
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There is already a weapon designed to kill living things without damaging walls: [a neutron bomb](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb). The reason it works is that living things really care about having tiny subcomponents damaged, whereas walls do not. The more refined our electronics are, the more they will care--in the 60s, electronics worked fine. Modern cellphones may not. Anyway, as neutrons are zero-charge, there is no good way to stop them except for lots and lots and lots of matter.
The problem with using a neutron weapon is that it's very hard (because neutrons are zero-charge) to point them where you want. Radioactive decay will spit out neutrons in random directions. Not so useful, unless you can deploy the bomb right next to the target.
But you can do it by accelerating charged atoms (usually Deuterium, which is one proton and one neutron) into a target (usually Tritium) and blocking all the resulting mess except for the neutron that continues flying in the same direction. These are called [neutron generators](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_generator).
They wouldn't literally leave *no* traces, and *enough* walls would eventually stop the neutrons, and if you happened to blast computers with them you might cause failures. But it's pretty close, otherwise, to a fry-humans-through-walls-without-traces weapon. If people didn't know about hand-held high-yield neutron sources, it would likely take them a very long time to figure out what was going on. (E.g. we do not currently have any sources like that--they're all vastly bigger and less portable than a gun, at least at the power needed to yield a quick death.)
[Answer]
Obviously no physical weaponry will be able to harmlessly pass through walls until it hits the target, so you are limited to some kind of energy weapon.
Unfortunately the energy levels required to instantly kill a person are going to be so incredibly high that you are certain to have significant damage to everything in the line of fire for a considerable distance.
The only way of accomplishing this with realistic physics is to have a wide array of beams controlled by a central targeting computer. Each beam is by itself is weak enough to be rather harmless (no significant damage to anything between emitter and target or off the other side of the target), by all the beams focused on a single point could deliver a high total level of energy. Additionally, some of these beams would at times be blocked by intervening objects, so a single shot might not do it (nothing sees everything not human as perfectly transparent and humans perfectly opaque - we are not a special kind of matter different from everything else).
This will not be man-portable, but would likely require a large number of emitters in the area focused on the same point from different directions. The number of emitters you need would be inversely proportional to your aversion to collateral damage.
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I think a microwave weapon could roast someone's brains pretty fast. There are materials that would block it and I'm having a hard time finding out what building materials these are but you could actually cook their brain. I think the water in the body would also absorb enough of the energy that it wouldn't be as deadly to any standing behind the person.
Knocking it up to an X-ray gun would be putting a lot more energy out and would really have to look at what will be stopping the lethal blast on the other side. But having a weapon that can change frequencies to dial in a more useful wavelength depending on circumstances would be the best.
This is really just a specialized laser...
[Answer]
So these uh... kinda *stretch* what you mean by plausible. But here goes.
**Wormholes**
The gun first uses a laser/acoustic system to analyze the wall and determine the thickness. It then users as-yet-unknown tech to open a wormhole to the inside of the wall, and fires whatever energy payload you'd like at the target.
**4th-Dimensional Gun**
Imagine this same question gets asked in [Flatland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland). One possible answer would be to fire a weapon over a wall, using the normally inaccessible 3rd-dimension. This would appear to go through walls and solid objects to the inhabitants of Flatland.
Presuming there might be some sort of 4th-dimensional equivalent for us, we could shoot a weapon using that 4th spacial dimension. This would avoid walls and objects for a short period, then come back and strike the target.
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Every human is implanted with unremovable implant at birth. Cop "weapons" are remote controls that make these implants to kill the host.
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If this is an untracable assassination tool and not a regular sidearm, you can go with a very hard to aim but highly untracable weapon by firing two really small projectiles that don't react with the target, but each other. You'd need to know the exact distance to target, though.
Basically use a weapon that has two barrels; one fires a small number of uranium atoms (these might be large enough to damage a wall, but with enough speed will punch straight through it and leave a hole that requires at the least an electron microscope to spot; effectively untracable)
The other barrel fires a stream of neutrons. These are too small to impact a wall (and probably fly straight through it, and the target).
If you aim really, really, really well and the uranium atoms go through the stream of neutrons, than at the point of impact, you'll get a miniature nuclear explosion. It'll be easily enough to blow up someone's vital organs, but might not even be visible outside of his body. Any bystander would just see the person suddenly collapse. There's no way to trace where the blast came from, and there's no reasonable defense against it.
(Of course, it's still a bit of a stretch because you have to be *impossibly* accurate to do this, but you might get away with it in a sci-fi setting)
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Basically you need as many x-ray guns as you can get (and deploy/undeploy stealthily).
1. You'll need a **whole network** of these radiation 'guns'.
2. **Each individual 'gun' is too weak** to damage the walls or the person it's targeted at.
3. You **fire all 'guns' simultaneously** at the same target (say you've arrayed them in a hemicircle around the building.
4. The amplitudes add up in a **single convergence point**. Your victim.
Boom. Dead. Incidentally, this is also how we [treat cancer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_therapy).
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I'm unsure how far off into pseudoscience this goes, the [Vic Tandy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Tandy) wiki seems unsubstantiated yet plausible, leading me to believe there might be interesting and different ways **sound can make you sick**. Also that I've no idea how to make this work (if we did, wouldn't we have these already?) -And if I knew 'bioharmonics' was a *thing* I wouldn't have gone this far.
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Basically my idea is that, like the technology behind [LRAD's](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Acoustic_Device) (Long Range Acoustic Devices), instead of directly producing the disabling sound, an algorithm decides at what Hertz it needs to play a sound to your side of the wall, in order for the necessary one to be produced on the other side (in conjunction with a real time, *x-ray vision-like* map of the surrounding topography). Theoretically go through as many walls as you want, the final one being the perp's skull, vibrating at 2.5 kHz. This is somewhat inspired by those speakers that are just drivers; whatever you attach them to becomes the 'woofer'.
Different forms of high intensity energy are easily dismissed, E.g., anything that could leave a radioactive signature is out. Being able to later detect what sound waves were present seems pretty high tech.
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Excerpt from *Guns and Energy*, sometime in the not too distant future...
**The iGun**
State of the art infrasonic projection system. Disables perpetrators with a click of a button. Simply identify the target with the onscreen display or with your iSeeU reconnaissance head set (for use with non-visual targets), then press and hold the trigger while keeping the device steady (allows for tolerances of up to 30°!). With the nearly instantaneous AI v.7 operating system, reliable wall penetration has been achieved in up to 12" thick steel reinforced concrete.
This is due to the increase of the accuracy in the acoustic detection system, allowing for a more precise fix on the target's bioharmonic frequency for their given location. We are currently the in development of expanding its capabilities to engage multiple targets at once but as of yet, no prototypes have proven up to our exacting standards of absolutely negligible collateral damage.
This amazing technology has only recently been cleared for use by law enforcement. Unlike the LRAD's of old, which can be countered by simply using ear plugs, its revolutionary use of... [Content removed due to the joint proposed IFC, EPA regulation titled under heading, *Unlawful Reproduction of Source Material Concerning Infrasonic Waves Inductive of Harmful Interference to Humans*]... **to cause multiple adjacent surfaces to resonate at just the right frequency so as to harmonize within the subjects cranial cavity**; incapacitation happens almost instantly with the loss of motor control. That means when your partner opens the door, the suspect *will* be on the floor.
(nausea is to be expected and in almost all cases, fatal side effects did not occur)
Call today!
-Coming soon: militarily grade scrambler settings; no more worrying that they'll *ever* get back up.
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You would need a high energy source that allowed you to create a wormhole through another spacial dimension, and then send waves through the wormhole with a frequency and focus that would cause them to create a wormhole with the exactly inverse spacial effect (no more, no less) at the time when they have traveled a certain distance in normal 3D space. Then point the gun at the victim and use radar of some kind (electromagnetic, aural, space-time ripple, etc.) to pinpoint the distance till said target, use that info to determine the features of the attack ray mentioned at the beginning, and fire said ray.
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With infinite energy I would suggest a neutrino gun. Neutrinos pass through EVERYTHING and they only very^1000 (yes very to the 1000th power) rarely interact with matter.
However if you do get enough of them they can be harmful, acting like most other high energy radiation when they do stop being lazy and act like high energy particles.
So like most things based on probability you just scale up the gun to neutrino-murder levels of energy (alot) and fire. Presumably everything in a line is in trouble though so we can bypass all the walls you want (even the entire planet) you just need to check allllllll the way down range before pulling the trigger.
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I would go with a particle beam made of very short-lived particles (neutral mesons? heavy baryons?): The particles don't interact with matter, like neutrinos or neutrons, but after a very short time, they decay to high-energy photons (and possibly other particles) that *do* interact with matter. So in theory, you'd adjust the beam velocity so that the decay happens mostly at the desired target location. Unfortunately, these particles won't decay after an exact time span, but probabilistically. So there will be high levels of radiation before and after the target point along the ray, thus possibly giving away the location of the shooter...
Another idea would be to have a beam that interacts strongly with water, maybe because water molecules have exactly the same resonance frequency as this beam (think [MRI](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_of_magnetic_resonance_imaging)): A drywall contains very little water, so the ray would pass through unharmed. But when the ray hits the water in the target's brain, the water starts to boil, killing her instantly.
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I see a lot of discussion here about radiation, but I think we all agree that it's way too hard to aim/make able to penetrate anything/not kill the people behind them. I feel like what you're really looking for is some kind of smart bullet.
Now hear me out -
Though this technically breaks the rule of not poking holes in the victim, some kind of bullet that can maneuver around corners, through small holes, and strike a predefined target almost instantaneously could certainly do it in such a way as the minimize any danger to a bystander standing behind the victim [i.e: strike the victim at an angle perpendicular to the line between the shooter and the target] which is what OP is ultimately worried about.
From an engineering standpoint I have no idea how something like this would work, but I really feel like we shouldn't rule out projectiles altogether. A futuristic smart bullet seems to fit the bill.
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Protons were mentioned before, but you might check out some of the new proton therapies for inspiration.
<http://www.proton-therapy.org/howit.htm>
<https://www.mdanderson.org/patients-family/diagnosis-treatment/care-centers-clinics/proton-therapy-center/what-is-proton-therapy.html>
The basic idea is that protons tend to dump most of their energy when their velocities are in a certain range. When they move too fast and they mostly pass through things, but once they slow down enough (because of passing through materials) the energy transfer is much more significant.
With proton therapy that means that the treatments can be 'tuned' to transfer energy mostly at the depth of the tumor and not before.
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Something sound based might work. Not sure if you could make it energetic enough for instant lethality, but the wall is most likely less sensitive to the vibrations than a human head - you can keep the energy levels low enough to avoid serious collateral damage.
High energy radiation can also potentially make it through a wall, but is probably too dangerous to use - anything capable of instantly killing is also capable of setting the wall on fire if it happens to hit the wrong material inside the wall.
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You could have the weapon use some sort of scanner to determine where the target is, then open a worm hole to place a lethal dose of whatever you want (perhaps electricity) into the target.
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I have multiple regions in my fantasy kingdom one of which is largely high elevation tundra, ice fields and snow covered mountains (the ice fields and tundra are not in the same area of the region). I am looking for a valuable trading commodity in addition to the cold-hardy herds and the wool, felt and weaving that would come from them. Salt was something that occurred to me. They are thirty to fifty miles from a largely ice capped sea.
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[Continents float all over the place](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift) when a planet is forming, so latitudes don't actually matter when trying to identify what resources will be available where. I'm sure we'll be mining Antarctica as soon as we run out of local resources.
When two plates collide, much of the underlying rock gets shifted and turned over, kind of like the way plows uncover worms and bugs. This makes high elevation areas like mountain ranges and plateaus convenient places to find all sorts of exposed veins of ore.
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They mine a lot of [pink salt in the Himalaya mountain range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayan_salt) on Earth. This is the result of plate tectonics and many, many tens of millions of years of uplift. While not quite as high, the salt flats of the Great Basin of North America (e.g. in Utah) are more than 1 km above sea level.
There is no reason that a fantasy kingdom couldn't have a similar resource.
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Plenty of high snowy places in the central parts of the US have large salt deposits, much of America was a covered by a sea at one point. As that sea dried up, because the land was being uplifted, it left behind salt.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XFFrV.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oN2BY.png)
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In addition to the examples already given by @RobertRapplean, @ohwilleke, and @John, see the [Salar de Uyuni](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salar_de_Uyuni) (elevation 3,656 m, area: 10,000 $\mathrm{km}^2$) [Salar de Atacama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salar_de_Atacama) (elevation 2,300 m, area: 3,000 $\mathrm{km}^2$), both ensconced in the Andes.
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I'm working on a story where the characters have **elemental-based powers** based on natural material/materials/phenomena found in nature. So far, each of the powers makes sense on a physical level, since their foundation is based on them being a form of matter or energy.
The problem is is that one of the characters has **umbrakinesis**. While there is a spiritual context in the story, I don't want to wave off as **'it's just magic, don't look far into it and turn your brain off'.**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkness> What darkness is
<https://powerlisting.fandom.com/wiki/Darkness_Manipulation> Examples of users
Darkness is essentially the absence of energy, in this case light. And this make the problem worse is because darkness has no mass, and **I want to make the darkness power be on equal footing with the other elemental powers whiles having a logical and scientific reason why this is possible?**
Like this Foundation allows the darkness to manipulate/push around objects, allows the darkness to manifest in naturally-lit areas and allows the user to darken the area around them too.
At the moment, I'm thinking that possibly it's explanation could be explained with the exact barrier to which light and darkness connect, forming a crude area of effect. But that's all I have so far.
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**You're treating the absence of something as if it is, itself, something**
It ain't.
Umbrakinesis and Photokinesis are the same thing. They may not be in the magical world of superheros and supervillains, but you tagged your question *Science-Based.* Darkness is the absence of light.1 The only way you get it is by manipulating the light.
*Why is this important? Because the contents of an empty glass could be described as "the absence of water." And I'm hard-pressed to believe that someone can manipulate what's in an empty glass and call it the ability to manipulate the absence of water. Kinda reminds me of Dwayne Johnson's line from* Jungle Cruise. *"The back side of water! ... It's totally different...."*
So, scientifically, an "umbrakinetic" is a photokinetic who prefers dark rooms. But it's all the same superpower. The ability to manipulate light.
And how do you do that scientifically?2 Well... with gravity. Or by manipulating the atmosphere to create lenses. Or by manipulating water to create really dense clouds. Or by making everything in the area that's "dark" totally light absorbent (entirely non-reflective). That could cause some heat problems.... Or, if you really want to channel your inner Einstein, give your superhero the ability to *convert energy to mass* such that the photons drop to the ground like so many grains of sand.
That might actually make for an interesting story. Your umbrakinetic creates darkness by converting light to mass, resulting in a substantial storm of "stuff" flying about like a sandstorm. Really fine "stuff." I'd probably be allergic to it. That'd be dark on several levels.
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1 *Technically, darkness, which is something perceived by critters like humans with eyeballs, is the absence of visible electromagnetic energy. But the simplification works for the answer.*
2 *What you're about to discover is that you can manipulate a lot of things other than light, all of which affect light. In other words, while it's certainly true that photokenisis is the opposite of umbrakenisis, the manipulation of light, itself, isn't actually the only path you can take to get to the "creation of darkness."*
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## It's not because you can do it that you understand how you do it
As accurately explained in [JBH's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/235123/96713), you cannot really have a plausible "manipulation of the absence of light" without manipulating light itself. So here's my solution : your character does manipulate light, but thinks they're manipulating darkness.
You can explain it any way you want, be it directly manipulating photons, the atmosphere or anything. But your character doesn't need to know how it works. For them, they're creating and manipulating "darkness", whatever that means in their mind. Even if, in reality, they're manipulating light, the way they think about it makes it so that if anyone looks at the consequences of their ability, it's manipulating darkness.
It's actually a common trope to have a character not understand how their abilities work at the start, especially because it's a good setup for character evolutions. If they ever notice that they're actually manipulating photons, or simply get a better understanding of how their ability works, for instance by having someone versed in the topic explain it to them, it could lead to them learning new ways to use it, and with enough mind gymnastics on their end, add "manipulation of light" to their arsenal.
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First, +1 to JBH, that was my first thought.
If you converted the photonic energy to mass (via E=MC^2) the amount of mass would be miniscule. At best for the brightest light I imagine you'd be creating a few atoms of hydrogen.
However, the visible light spectrum of photonic vibration is quite narrow. Beneath it is infrared, above it is ultraviolet, and X-rays, etc.
An alternative to turning the photons into mass is just modifying their frequency, say reducing it to infrared. We cannot sense infrared as light; a room filled with infrared radiation is completely dark. But it is still the same photons. We do sense those as heat. If your character has a magical lensing effect, they could create a warm shell around something that shifts all visible light into the infrared band.
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> EDIT due to comment: I wasn't clear on why this shell is warm. If we change the frequency of visible light to a lower frequency, the lower frequency has less energy. If we are not doing energy to matter conversion, then the excess energy has to go somewhere. It can go into warming atmospheric molecules at the point of the conversion. That would be a "shell" of where the darkness effect takes place. How, exactly, this reduction in frequency is accomplished is unexplained magic; but it a plausible physical consequence of reducing the the EM wave length, and thus reducing the energy of the photon.
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That would result in darkness inside the shell. The area of conversion (where the 'shell' is) can be very warm air, if anybody passes through it, and the shell would be warmer on the inside than the surrounding air. And as far as somebody inside the shell, it would be dark in all directions, because no visible light reaches their eyes from anywhere. It might as well be black walls all around.
But if they tried to feel their way to the wall, presuming the shell does not move, then at some point they find the edge as hot air, and they can walk through it into the light.
If your hero turns it off, the warm air just dissipates, like dousing a campfire.
If you want, you can make the whole region frequency converting; a flashlight inside the sphere emits no light, it just emits an equivalent number of photons as infrared light. It will feel slightly warmer [edit: due to magical frequency downshifting], that's it. The same for fire; it will feel like fire and behave like fire, but it will be a bit hotter and completely dark.
If there is no light to sense, the sighted people and animals inside the bubble are effectively blind, they cannot see a thing.
Which leads you to another way to implement this; a biological suppression of signals on optic nerves. That would be fine on a personal level, but undetectable outside the bubble of influence. So it depends on what your story demands: I suspect you want want people outside the bubble to see the area of darkness; in that case go with photon frequency conversion to outside the visible spectrum.
Alternatively, if you just want people in a bubble to experience blindness but appear visible and normal to observers outside the bubble, you could go with optic nerve blocking; or preventing retinas from reacting to light.
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# The person can manipulate the properties of surfaces to minimize light reflection
There are scientific researches into [extreme black paints](https://mymodernmet.com/stuart-semple-black-paint/) and [extreme black coatings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack). We know that perceived blackness can be enhanced by manipulating the microscopic properties of surfaces. Your character can do this. Naturally because of how its approached, they think of it as manipulating darkness not light, whatever may physically be going on.
Note this won't prevent Infra red radiation, or transmission. But most objects ate seen by their reflected light and this will kill that. Light emission is then tackled by applying the same or appropriate properties to the light bulb or other container, or at a pinch the viewer's eyeball (!).
This doesn't cover every way they would need to create and manage darkness selectively but could probably be extended to do so?
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1. Darkness wielders are unknowingly wielding light. If you keep in mind that you could make a room dark by removing light, and that there is a spectrum of invisible light lengths, one amusing explanation of darkness powers is that "darkness" wielders just aren't aware of what they actually wielding - plus its an awesome plot moment when someone suddenly doubles the nature of their powers at a late point in the story.
2. Darkness users are actually manipulating space, photons go bye-bye. The physics thingy which carries light is known as a photon. Sometimes it behaves like a particle, sometimes it behaves like a wave. If you willing to say that when your "Darkness" wielders use their power the photons disappear in the affected area, then the abilities you describe could be explained by directly manipulating space.
3. Anti-light! When matter and anti-matter collide they completely annihilate each other, releasing an explosion of energy and photons. Photons can't be annihilated because they have zero charge (matter has positive charge, anti-matter negative charge) which means that "light" has no true opposite. If you pretend there is another property of particles, and that photons are positive in it, then you could invent a negative photon, meaning there would be a type of dark light which would annihilate photons (and light) on contact in addition to the darkness which is just the absence of light.
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I have a simple answer for you. Umbrakinesis can be performed by having an area repel light. Not block it, like with normal shadow, but bend light, like with prisms, so that it doesn't hit the spot the person is concentrating on.
You'll have to figure out how far out the spot redirects light, since the redirection point will look slightly brighter to the onlookers.
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# Energy moves from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration:
Your “Darkness” wielders are actually just wicking away power. They have some huge sink into which they can dump energy. So they can absorb the energy from photons to cause “darkness” or drain kinetic energy to dampen motion. If there are electronics, they can disable them by draining the energy from a current. Real masters can even drain heat to dampen fires or freeze liquids.
So their powers don’t so much do something as stop something else. The higher potential the energy in use, the easier it is to drain. If your magic system has a consistent energy form, then magic energy is drained, with the strongest Magic’s being the easiest to defeat.
The form of this vast sink is open to interpretation, but with pseudo magic, a parallel universe with incredibly low energy potential is a good candidate.
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Change the science of light in your universe. Here's one example approach.
Light and darkness are two immiscible, compressible fluids. Light flows out of sources, bounces off surfaces, etc. And darkness is a fluid but a very compressible one; it 'falls back' when it interacts with light. It's the weaker of the two fluids by far, but there's far more of it. [Nature abhor a vacuum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics)), and what nature puts into the vacuum is darkness.
The character can make darkness more robust. Under their control, darkness can push back light, or mix with it to create shade, increase it's viscosity to create effects like slowing, solidify it to create weapons, etc.
If you think of it as a kind of wind magic, it could make scientific sense.
You just need to drop the idea of photons and rays -- but a wave theory is still possible, it's just waves of aetheric darkess.
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# It's actually dust control.
They assume they are controlling shadows, but they are actually controlling dust particles in the air.
When they move objects with shadows, they are condensing dust into a ball which looks dark and can push things.
When they darken areas, they are forming blobs of condensed dust. They have the magic of small particle manipulation which tends to form darkness when they use it.
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# Phased Light
(I'll elaborate on this answer more later)
Light is a particle but also a wave, and when two of the same waves 180 degrees out of phase overlap, they cancel out. This is the idea behind a lot of holographic technology in scifi universes.
If you had sufficient foreknowledge about the light entering a room, you could project the same amount of light at the precise time so that the two light fields are 180° out of phase everywhere within a particular region, creating a volume of darkness in an otherwise brightly-lit room.
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Set in the year 3020 CE, every crew on board has a personal issued portal gun to easily get around the interior of the spaceship. The handheld portal gun can instantly teleport the user along with whatever belonging as specified in the setting to the designated location but unfortunately tragic accidents do happens either due to improper setting or the spaceship encounters a violent stellar winds in space. How can such situations be avoided if portal gun is to be an essential part of their daily lifestyle?
Operation manual:
1. Load individual profile and layout of spaceship into portal gun.
2. Select correct designation on board spaceship, range is twice the size of spaceship.
3. Energise and target is being transported at speed of light.
4. Portal gun can only transport up to 199kg of mass at a time and requires recharging every use so no spamming.
Specification:
Dimension - similar to standard flare gun
Weight - 199 grams
Colour - pearl white/ vantablack/ azure blue
Display - holographic projection covers all visible spectrums
Power - deuterion heliotron arc nano reactor
Memory - 199 qubits (ram)/ 1.99 Pb (rom)
Network - 199G WiFi
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Similar with geofencing in today's drones - do not allow the destination be set outside the volume of the ship, at height above void volumes inside the ship or inside ships reactors/walls/hull or be operated in dangerous conditions.
It's not like this would require much of a computation power, certainly not more than fits on a RaspberryPi of today.
Those guns will likely need to implement extra security features too. Like: "Do not allow teleportation of two bodies in the same spacetime destination".
Or "Do not operate if triggered by unauthorized beings: like underage children, those that didn't pass the licensing exam and elderly with diminished intellectual capacities"
Should I continue or can you extrapolate?
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**Training, training, and some more training.**
Just like today's guns can near instantly "teleport" a bullet into someones brain, these guns can be instantly lethal when used incorrectly. The staff using these will require extreme training to prevent this. No amount of programming or error prevention will ever be flawless in unforeseen circumstances, meaning blind trust in your equipment is not an option here. Therefore the staff will need extensive training to manually double check each and every jump is correct. This might take some extra time, but depending on the size of your spaceship this might still be much faster than other means of travel.
**Fixed locations**
Another idea is to only allow teleport to a number of fixed self-calibrating locations. These locations will test if jumping is safe independently from the gun, and then communicate this to the gun pre-jump. If any issues whatsoever are present, the jump is cancelled.
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**Adequate UI design**
How do you select a destination? i would want an easy to navigate map of the ship on which i can touch a point i want to be transported to.
Points outside the ship simply aren't accessible via the user interface.
Stellar winds which for some reason make targeting unreliable are detected by the ship sensors and a deactivation signal is sent to all devices.
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> Select correct designation on board spaceship, **range is twice the size of spaceship**.
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# Well, there's your problem right there.
[Adjusts some settings...]
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Design the coordinate s of the portal gun configuration to be only internal coordinates of the spaceship
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> unfortunately tragic accidents do happens either due to improper setting
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Pay your IT staff well. Skillful, well paid developers produce less bugs, and know how to make it so that misconfigurations don't cause applications to misbehave in catastrophic ways.
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Forbid the usage of the portal gun during strong stellar winds. This can be done through software.
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**Accept them as a sad reality.**
Speaking from an American perspective, we have a history of accepting many totally avoidable deaths as a consequence of technology. It is readily apparent how these deaths could be avoided but these steps are not taken - or if they are, only after someone is sued for a lot of money. Sometimes not even then.
Perhaps tighter safety measures on portal guns means that the controllers will know when and where individuals are using them. Portal gun users feel that their freedom is at risk! They will feel constrained by Big Brother. Give me Liberty or give me Death!
And so lifesaving measures are not put in place or are routinely circumvented. Your spacefarers offer their prayers to the loved ones of those who wind up in space, and shed a tear for the sanctity of freedom.
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### The portal gun initiates an effect, but cannot actually produce that effect all by itself.
This actually has a real world answer, though most non-specialists are probably unaware of it.
As one of the world's foremost Portalologists, I knew immediately upon reading the title of your question that anything one might call a "portal gun" and assign to each individual crew member of a ship cannot possibly be sufficient to allow for teleportation by itself. It could, however, easily *interact* with an established Portalization Field, which is something that a construction on the scale of a starship could easily accommodate.
So such a portal gun would be enough to initiate, plan, and execute the complex tasks involved in teleportation through direct interaction with the ship's Portalization Field, but can't possibly operate independent of such a field. And, of course, the integrity and exact dimensions of the field can be influenced by external factors, such as strong bursts of radiation or unfortunate GLaDOS incursions. During hazardous conditions, teleporting will never be quite 100% safe.
It's sort of like using an older-fashioned vacuum cleaner: it must be plugged into a wall outlet to work, but as long as it is you can vacuum anywhere you like, along any route, at your discretion. But the instant you move far enough away that the power cord would have to be disconnected from the outlet, the vacuum cleaner immediately ceases to function.
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Maybe it's something the technology requires or maybe it's an add-on like Roomba barrier strips, but something in the bulkhead walls *allows* it to operate, either a key the portal machine needs to ID before operating or a property of the wall itself that enables the technology. Then don't put it into bulkheads leading out of the ship. If it's active, you could keep people from going through bulkheads if lethal conditions are detected on the other side.
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Centuries ago, a powerful empire fell into civil war when the five most influential families battled each other for dominance. After decades with no side gaining the upper hand, the families agreed to a peace treaty which would end the war and restore the empire to its former glory. One heir from a family will become emperor and rule the land. The other heirs of the five families will continue ruling their individual domains and operate semi-independently while still paying homage to the king. When the emperor dies, a new emperor will be made from one of the 5 heirs through a series of predetermined contests, or trials.
These dangerous trials are predetimined and are designed to test the worthiness of an heir to become emperor. They are controlled by priests, and meant to showcase the strength, intelligence, and zeal of the individual. An heir may select an elected champion to compete in his place. This can also be an option for children still too young to compete. The winner of these trials will become emperor. However, there is no shame in failing, as the losing heirs will be honorably sacrificed to the nation's god. Like all priests throughout history, this group is made up of incorruptible men whose moral authority is beyond reproach.
This system has kept the empire from falling into civil war. However, it has a few problems. The turnover rate of leading heads of family may be pretty high in a generation. Laws they have passed to govern their domain or house can be reversed quickly by the next heir if they are sacrificed. This can lead to political instability in their house and domain.
How can a ruling family avoid this fate?
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## What will happen in reality
The first emperor is ailing. The five families, the Alphaei, Betii, Gammae, Deltae and Epsilones, make ready to cope with his impending death. Outwardly, each family is preparing a designated heir to compete in the imperial trials; the Betii are the only family foolish enough to put forward a heir of their own blood risking his demise or bloody sacrifice. The other four families have seen to it that an adopted commoner, remarkably good with a sword, is designed for this position, with the understanding that should he win he will promptly abdicate in favor of one of his adoptive brothers.
Or else.
In parallel, the families put out feelers to the other familes, looking for alliances. After all, the priesthood is a purely ideological force, made up of corruptible men; the priesthood doesn't count. Each family seeks to establish an alliance with two other families, thus establishing an overwhelming force and putting the minority in the position to accept a settlement.
Eventually, the scheming rich Epsilones arrive at an understanding with the charismatic Alphaei and the rural and frankly semi-barbaric Betii; they will rule the empire jointly, with the Alphaei having paramountcy over the Gammae and the Betii over the Deltae. The Epsilones, themselves, require nothing else but the right to free trade over the entire empire, with a monopoly on maritime transport.
When the emperor dies, the priests try to initiate the deadly imperial contest; but the Alphaei, Betii and Epsilones make it known that such bloody games belong to an obsolete, dark and violent era, and the one living God looks unfavorably upon those ready to shed innocent blood. The Gammae resign themselves to their fate, but the foolish Deltae try to resist invoking an idealized tradition. However, the people and the soldiers, from the ranks of whom true power raises, are sick and tired of blood and destruction, and hail the new peaceful order.
And now the five dominant families are three.
The rich Epsilones become richer from trade and from their monopoly on maritime transport. Soon the time will come when they will persuade the newly elevated Betii to restore the unity of the empire by taking on the haughty and ancient Alphaei...
## We are supposed to learn from history
This system won't work. It will break down when the first emperor dies or retires.
I will tell you a true story; oversimplified, of course, but basically true. More or less.
Once upon a time, there was this large and diverse empire, called the Roman empire. It was a wonderful empire, except for one flaw. It did not have any fixed rule for succession; once an emperor died, or retired, it was unclear who will become emperor next. This flaw led to a long period of instability and civil war, generally called the [Crisis of the Third Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century). This dark and bloody period lasted for half a century, and it ended only when a wise man, who had been born in a poor family in a remote province, rose through the ranks of the army and eventually succeeded in putting an end to the civil wars by defeating all warring factions.
His name was Diocles, meaning Glory of God; one single name, for he came from a Greek-speaking family. When acceded to the throne he adoped the regnal name Imperator Caesar Caius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Augustus. In history books he is usually called [Diocletian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian).
To ensure the stability of the empire, and to avoid future civil wars, he invented a great system for regulating the succession to the imperial throne. His system is called the [Tetrarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrarchy), or Rule of Four.
[](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Venice_%E2%80%93_The_Tetrarchs_03.jpg)
*An alegorical propaganda statue representing the Roman tetrarchy. The tetrarchs are representing embracing, in sign of harmony, in a porphyry sculpture dating from the 4th century, produced in Asia Minor; today on a corner of Saint Mark's in Venice, next to the Porta della Carta. Photograph by [Nino Barbieri](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nino_Barbieri), [available on Wikimedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Venice_%E2%80%93_The_Tetrarchs_03.jpg) under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or later.*
The system was supposed to work as follows:
* There were two principal emperors, called *Augusti*; each of them ruled one half of the empire, co-ordinating between them any major political or military matters. Diocletian himself took the eastern half, and raised [Maximian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximian) to the rank of Augustus of the West.
* Each of the two principal emperors appointed a subordinate emperor, called a *Caesar*, who ruled over a part of the principal emperor's portion of the empire, and served as successor designate. Diocletian appointed [Galerius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galerius) as his Caesar, and Maximian appointed [Constantius Chlorus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantius_Chlorus).
* When a principal emperor died or retired, his place was to be taken by his *Caesar*, who thus became an *Augustus* and appointed a new *Caesar*.
Splendid system.
The system sort of worked for 29 years, from 284 (when Diocletian and Maximian inaugurated it) to 313. Then the empire fell into civil wars again; the complicated and messy wars ended only in 324, when [Constatine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great) emerged as sole emperor. Upon the death of Constantine, the imperial rule devolved to his three sons who were supposed to rule jointly, each controlling directly a portion of the empire.
More general strife and civil wars followed, until 395, when [Arcadius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadius) and [Honorius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorius_(emperor)), the two sons of [Theodosius I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodosius_I), divided the empire between them. From that point forward the notional unity of the empire was never again materialized. The western half fell into anarchy and descended into the long night of the Middle Ages; the eastern half met with varying fortunes, and remained a great power for many centuries.
Why did the tetrarchy fail?
It failed because it was a complicated system, vulnerable to human failings; ambition, tribalism, misplaced loyalties, all contributed to its failure. The great diversity of the empire was not helpful. In retrospect, we realize that the empire was too large, way beyond what the technical, economic and political levels of the time could sustain. But the essential failure was the mismatch between the lofty *ideology* and the dismal reality.
[Answer]
What about separating "domain heirs" and "imperial heirs". Maybe imperial heirs are required (by religious reasons) to be firstborn, so wise houses train their second children to manage the family holdings. Thus the success or failure of the imperial claimant on the contests would not directly affect the government of the heartlands of the House.
Basically, firstborn by default ousted from the office of heads of family, concentrating solely in trying to obtain the imperial throne. (and hopefully cooperating with their sisters/brothers if they succeed)
[Answer]
**Short summary:** the emperor and the heir would lose any actual power and turn into figureheads/sacrificial slaves. The ruling families and the priests both support this, and thus avoid the political instability.
*Note: from what OP said, I presume that this system works for a long time. As AlexP answer correctly points out, it's not the most likely outcome. But hardly impossible.*
We don't know what power exactly the emperor holds, but from high turnover rate we can tell that the job is actually not very rewarding. You'll be out of office quickly, that happens either by dying or resigning (but why resign? so it's forced on you somehow). Not much time to do anything with the power. If you're not dead when it's over, the next emperor is inclined to take everything from you, so you would not stand above him in any way. Otherwise, you very existence undermines his authority.
So it's not a good thing to be a heir in this empire. The promise of emperor's job is not all that alluring. But the process of getting it is much worse, and it looms ahead of you as an inevitable disaster.
If you are very capable, skilled man who can overcome the trials, good. If you a believer, even losing feels good for you. But most people are ordinary, not very capable, not very honorable, not very devout. When the emperor dies, death awaits the most of the heirs, and they know it. Surely, during ages there were enough attempts to avoid it: running away, faking the sacrifice to gods, attempting to illegally push the burden onto others, killing or sabotaging the competing heirs (and their relatives, so no clear replacement heir would be available), etc. Sure, the heirs are not some ordinary men, they hold power over their own domain before the trials, but that only gives them more ability to evade the responsibility.
We know that the system worked. The priests managed to make it work somehow. That can only mean one thing: the priests interfere with the power of the heir, check it and limit it. And since the heirs can't be that much trusted, the interference is no small. So many ways to break the system; so many decisions to not trust the heirs with.
Now look at all of this from the point of view of other people of power. Influential nobles, rich merchants, community leaders and like, what would they think?
The heirs come and go. The emperors come and go. Their ruling time isn't long. Their power is checked and limited by priests. Unlike heirs, the priests are here to stay. Through all the rulers, the priests are the same people who actually decide things. If you need a favor, if you need a problem solved, why would you go to the unstable secular power whose decision can be soon overturned anyway?
Now the priests become more and more in control of the country and individual domains. Only one force can counter this – the ruling families in those domains. But they know what's good for them. This is exactly how they can avoid political instability. If the heirs pass bad laws during their rule, just take away their power to pass laws.
In the age of civil wars, it wasn't possible: war requires a leader to command troops, and if you sabotage yours, another army will wreck you. But now there's no fighting, and there's a great mediator that can help arrange things without fighting – the priests.
Some emperors and heirs would be opposed to losing the actual power, of course. But a single man has little chances against a system, especially when it's profitable to everyone involved. Surely, it won't just all go smooth. But the more the designated rulers resist and fight, the more everyone else who matters want to get rid of them.
So with time, the heirs become officially unable to do anything in politics. They have no money of their own, they don't command any troops, nobody follows their orders, their families and priests decide everything for them. They live sheltered luxurious lives, they are told they are important for the empire, they are maybe educated and trained in some stuff that won't make them politically dangerous, but in the end, they are lead to the trials, now quite senseless, and all of them but one, no matter which, are sacrificed.
And when the trials are done, and one of these spoiled brats that can't really manage anything becomes the emperor, who in their right mind would give any actual power to him? So the emperor remains just like he was before - a powerless figurehead. Other people actually run the country.
[Answer]
If this system has been in place for a few centuries, the various institutions will likely have gotten used to it and taken steps to keep the disruption to a minimum. This means spreading any relevant knowledge of ongoing affairs to at least several people, such as a group of advisors and confidants.
Since the heir is at risk of suddenly being whisked away to risk their life, they will keep their advisors up to speed with their plans and affairs. There could even be a specific position (like a second in command) that is designated to (temporarily) take over their job if the worst should happen.
Essentially, make sure the person who might have to give their lives is never the only one to hold specific knowledge, and that there are well-known and well-tested procedures in place in the case of their death.
[Answer]
Add a contest of "wisdom". If the turnover rate is high then the system will become increasingly robust and stable through attrition. If the new ruler is wiser than the previous one, as is the requirement, then even if the laws change it will only be for the better and the legal system will become increasingly robust and stable.
[Answer]
The next emperor should be designated by the current emperor. Doing so keeps the families in line. One person from the 5 families will head the empire, and the family/person that is most helpful, most ingratiating will be the chosen one. You don't need to kill off the heads of household because that sparks conflict and/or competition. Selection also invokes competition, but the intrigue that can be created as each of the families vie to be the "chosen" one gives you endless plot possibilities.
You probably need one rule; you can't pass the baton to someone in your own house without the consent of the other 4 families. Then you could even have the rise of the first golden child, loved by all the four families who becomes the absolute king, then fails to select a successor and dies at a young age, which brings you back to conflict.
Another method of choice would be to have the religious leaders "elect" the Emperor, but that would probably be much more boring.
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Compare your empire with the make-up of the [Holy Roman Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire). The empire was a collection of more or less loosely bound territories. The imperial crown passed from one family to another one several time, with more or less struggle.
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True power comes not from personal might, but how many sell swords you can control. So, they'd simply get their third or fourth son to take up the challenge, with the understanding that they would yield to the firstborn if they died. If they didn't there would be a succession crisis. This son would be trained to be exceptional at the competition. If they died, a substitute would be found.
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[
I am creating an atmosphere for a planet in a science fiction book I am writing and want to make sure that this atmosphere is not too outlandish in regards to sustaining life. I know the oxygen partial pressure is very low in this atmosphere, so normal humans will require a gas mask when visiting this planet, but could human-like aliens that are intelligent species arise on this planet? The atmosphere is as follows:
Atmospheric Pressure at sea level: 0.81 atm
Atmospheric composition: 54.34% nitrogen - 17.22% oxygen - 13.91% argon - 7.47% helium - 6.18% xenon - 0.88% other gases (carbon dioxide, water vapor, etc.)
Extra info: Size is similar to earth although has slightly less land mass, one moon orbits planet as well
Goal: I want to make it so that normal humans could survive without a gas mask for a decent amount of time but have a high risk of hypoxia
[Answer]
Yes. Even humans could live there with some acclimation. It might produce some pretty horrible "filtering" of people who can't acclimate.
People have lived for two years at a pressure of [475 millibars of pressure.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_high_altitude_on_humans#Effects_as_a_function_of_altitude) This is less than half of normal sea level pressure which is just over 1000 millibars. Normal atmosphere is 20.946% Oxygen. So at this altitude the relative percentage is 9.95%.
Your relative percentage is 0.81 \* 17.22% = 13.95%..
The partial pressure of oxygen you are suggesting is considerably above what people have lived at for two years. So, yes, humanoids could live there.
As I said, it might produce some horrible filtering. [Not everybody can acclimate.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_high_altitude_on_humans#Effects_as_a_function_of_altitude) Altitude sickness can be quite a serious problem, particularly among those who are genetically pre-disposed not to be able to acclimate.
The Argon, Helium, and Xenon would be interesting. I can't figure out just off-hand what it would do to people's voice. And also, the Helium might tend to stratify in the upper atmosphere, but I'm not sure about that.
[Answer]
## Welcome to La Paz
[La Paz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Paz)¹ is the capital city² of Bolivia. It has some 800,000 inhabitants, who are regular normal humans. The city is situated at an elevation of 3,640 meters (11,942 American feet) above sea level, which means that the partial pressure of oxygen is about 0.13 atmospheres.
In the conditions described in the question, the partial pressure of oxygen would be 0.81 × 0.1722 = 0.14 atm, which is *higher* than in La Paz. The inhabitants of the capital city of Bolivia would feel right at home.
Since here on Earth we have a decently large city featuring a partial pressure of oxygen *lower* than that required by the question, one can immediately conclude that (most) ordinary humans would be able to adapt quite quickly.
¹) Nuestra Señora de La Paz, Our Lady of Peace.
²) La Paz is the executive and legislative capital of Bolivia. The judicial and constitutional capital is Sucre.
[Answer]
**You're way inside humanity's ability to breathe**
The "Death Zone" when climbing mountains (about 8km) is [0.35 atm/356 millibars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_zone) and Earth's oxygen percentage is 21%. Simplifying a bit, that means that at the death zone there's only 1/3 of the oxygen we'd be conditioned to at sea level.
Ugly fractional math aside and simplifying. That's more-or-less equivalent to 7% oxygen at sea level.
You're proposing 0.81 atmospheres and 17% oxygen. Same simplification: 13.78% oxygen vs. 7% at the death zone.
Humans from outside the world would need a bit of acclimation, but not much. At worst it'd be like living your life smoking cigarettes.
In other words, there's really no threat here at all from an oxygen standpoint. You're a long way away from the threat of hypoxia.
[Answer]
A very simple way to accomplish this: The inhabitants have a larger lung area and thus can get more oxygen from the same biology. We reach our altitude limit at the point where we can't take in **enough** oxygen, our blood will still transport it.
[Answer]
## Yes, but also Maybe Not.
**Yes:** 13% oxygen is low for humans, but not crazy. Arbitrary humanoids could do just fine. There is even a good chance that any given regular human wouldn't die.
Unfortunately, hypoxia doesn't work like you want. Any given person is likely to either die quickly or be unhappy-but-fine indefinitely.
**Maybe Not:** Some of your other stuff is pretty nasty. Argon is already an asphyxiant if it gets the opportunity to settle. Xenon is way, way worse. Stagnant air is going to be a terrifying death zone anywhere on your world, and there's a good likelihood that your atmosphere will stratify into a xenon layer and an everything-else layer.
Aside from that, look hard at your CO2 level. That's going to cause very mild hypocapnia, which is not exactly bad, but will make exercise weird.
] |
[Question]
[
BACKSTORY: So in my story there was a type of nuclear winter that forced surviving humans to live underground until the world above became breathable again. By now the world than once was (our world) is gone and nature has taken back the world. It takes them a few centuries but a form of civilisation builds again. Technology is long forgotten and the world than stands is a modern take on vikings and incorporates cultures from all over the world/throughout history.
My question is, in a world without technology, these left over pockets of radiation are seen as poison. What methods would be possible for detecting or getting rid of this ‘Poseidon’?
My ideas for detecting it so far mainly is the use of certain animals beings able to sense in and not going near these areas, including birds flying around or away from it.
I want pockets of wastelands within the world where these poisons are, but they need to be able to travel through them.
Thanks for any help in advance.
[Answer]
### Only a few things will be deadly radioactive after centuries, and they'll be naturally buried for you.
Let's split the radiation into two categories: near-instant death, and bad for your health long term.
**In the instant death category;** You only need to worry about very high grade things this far in the future: Bomb parts, reactor core parts, high level nuclear waste, fractured nuclear fuel rods, etc. These will be exceptionally rare, and these pieces of debris will be buried by rubble, dirt, or washed into the oceans by centuries of nature doing its thing.
So long as you dont go digging, and dont pick up the strange shiny thing at the bottom of the water, you'll be fine.
When someone finds something pretty underground and everyone nearby mysteriously dies, someone needs to sacrifice themselves and throw it in water (even 1m of water will absorb 99%+ of the radiation).
**Regarding the "bad for long term health"**: You wont be able to detect it, and it wont matter.
A few centuries after a nuclear war, ground zero will still be contaminated at a level you or I might consider notable, but a viking society where life expectancy is 40-50 years isnt going to make much difference.
The ground being instant death goes away after about [5 years](https://www.atomicarchive.com/science/effects/radioactive-fallout.html), after wards every additional year slightly increases how long you can be exposed to it before you get deadly consequences. After 500 years radiation would be back to between background rates and "oh you might get cancer in your 50s" rates.
Not a big issue to those who consider 50 old age.
### Real example:
This is the Chernobyl dead zone 33 years later - it's [safe enough you can visit the outskirts in a tourbus](https://www.livescience.com/65673-is-visiting-chernobyl-safe.html):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/l1d0F.png)
The absorbed dose of radiation in the exclusion area is between ~1.2 microsieverts per hour (10.5 millisieverts per year.) to 6 millisieverts per hour, depending on which tourist agency you visit, but this is expected to decay as the half-lifes of these products is measured in decades - Eg Caesium 137 halves every 30 years. After 210 years, it's 1/128th of the strength, so 6mSv becomes 40 microSieverts.
Chernobyl after 210 years would be 860 mSv per year. 270 years it'll be 215mSv. 100mSv in a year is the minimum value that has been shown to show an increase in cancer rates long term, but symptoms of (non-fatal) radiation poisoning won't appear at these levels.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/R51AJ.jpg)
By Randall Munroe - XKCD
[Answer]
You are dramatically overstating the long-term persistence of radiation due to nuclear weapons.
As an example, this is Ground Zero at Nagasaki: [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lPmkJ.jpg)
And here is the memorial at Hiroshima, about 500 meters from the precise ground zero: [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JNosw.jpg)
And here is an image of part of Bikini Atoll, one of the most nuked places on the planet. The roundish area of deeper water just above the forested island? That's the crater from the Castle Bravo test that accidentally went to a 15 megaton explosion and caused people to suffer radiation sickness due to fallout.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zFDSQ.jpg)
While the radiation levels of the atoll exceed safety margins, they are decreasing rapidly. The primary concern is caesium-137, which is still at levels considered hazardous, but the element has a half-life of 30 years. After 200 years, it will be down to about 1% if its initial levels, after 300 years 0.1%, after 400 years 0.01%, and after 500 years 0.001%, and so on, and that's purely out of decay and not the material being eroded and diluted, which decreases the effective exposure someone in that area would undergo.
So, essentially, with standard nuclear weapons after a few hundred years there's no practical immediate risk to life due to radiation. There will be no dead zones or poisonous wastelands.
[Answer]
# Flowers
Gamma-ray-sensitive flowers have apparently *already* been planted near many nuclear power plants.
>
> A cloned species of spiderwort, a roadside wildflower, changes color
> from blue to pink when exposed to about the same radiation dosage as
> permitted by federal guidelines.
>
>
> The flower has become popular with the antinuclear movement and is
> being planted by the thousands near nuclear plants worldwide.
>
>
> ...
>
>
> Within a couple weeks of being exposed to radiation, the flowers
> mutate,
> and turn from violet blue to a bright pink.
>
>
>
-- Catcher In My Eye
<https://www.flickr.com/photos/heyitsdebv/5572073498>
possibly referring to:
>
> When radiation destroys the genetic material responsible for the
> dominant blue pigmentation of a stamen‐hair cell, the cell appears
> pink, according to Dr. Ichikawa. The number of pink cells counted is
> interpreted as a reflection of the amount of radiation damage. The
> color change can be observed most efficiently 12 to 13 days after the
> plant's exposure to radiation, the geneticist says. ... the plant also
> reacted to chemical pollutants ... The scientists hope eventually to
> be able to plant some around nuclear facilities in the United States.
>
>
>
--
"Flower is Detector of Slight Radiation"
Bayard Webster.
*The New York Times*,
1979
<https://www.nytimes.com/1979/04/25/archives/flower-is-detector-of-slight-radiation-scientist-says-spiderwort.html>
>
> Native Americans used T. virginiana to treat a number of conditions,
> including stomachache. It was also used as a food source.[21] The
> cells of the stamen hairs of some Tradescantia are colored blue, but
> when exposed to sources of ionizing radiation such as gamma rays or
> pollutants like sulphur dioxide from industries, the cells mutate and
> change color to pink; they are one of the few tissues known to serve
> as an effective bioassay for ambient radiation levels.[7][21]
>
>
>
--
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/spider_wort>
Gamma rays induced variations in seed germination, growth and phenotypic characteristics of Zinnia elegans var. Dreamland
Smitha Hegde
2018
<https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Effect-of-gamma-radiation-on-flower-colour-and-form-of-Zinnia-elegans-var-Dreamland-C_fig2_322244484>
Isolation of flower color and shape mutations by gamma radiation of Chrysanthemum morifolium Ramat cv. Youka
Tarek M. A. Soliman et. al.
2014.
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10681-014-1127-z>
[Answer]
Detecting the dead zones is easy. They are dead.
Despite the hope that every stray gamma ray will lead to a genetic improvement or at least a survival neutral change, the high radiation and poisonous metals, which will still be present in your pocket wastelands, will be malefic to life. As the rest of the world recovers, the lifeless bald spots are the areas you should stay away from.
Getting rid of the dead zones is a little more difficult because they are deadly.
Start with a bunch slaves with shovels and bag up the top several feet of soil and any debris which has lasted this long. Put the bags, the debris and the dead slaves on horse drawn carts and have more slaves drive the carts towards a more distant pocket wasteland.
After a few days, send some more slaves on fresh horses after the carts. Have them add the earlier horsemen and horses (by now dead) onto the carts and continue the journey. Repeat until the cart reaches the distant pocket wasteland, then leave it there.
Bring in new top soil and plant something non-edible, like maybe some flowers or some bamboo. If those plants grow normally, you are probably done, but I still wouldn't eat anything that grew there for a few thousand years. If the plants don't grow, then repeat the whole process over, this time digging deeper.
Continue until the plants breed true and thrive.
[Answer]
They would learn to perceive subtle differences in which species thrive. While the evacuated surroundings of Chernobyl are a thriving wildlife refuge, a couple of species of bird, the great tit and the barn swallow, have struggled to adapt. [There's a hypothesis that the biochemical requirements of their colored plumage compete with radiation resistance.](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/04/scienceshot-some-birds-thrive-chernobyls-radioactive-glow#:%7E:text=And%20that%27s%20exactly%20what%20most,better%20results%20than%20scientists%20expected.&text=The%20only%20two%20bird%20species,pheomelanin%20pigment%20in%20their%20feathers.)
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[Question]
[
In large doses, the body's ability to change cyanide into thiocyanate is overwhelmed. Large doses of cyanide prevent cells from using oxygen and eventually these cells die. The heart, respiratory system and central nervous system are most susceptible to cyanide poisoning.
With that stated, I plan on having spies of an organization carry cyanide pills on their person. Ingestion is immediate upon blown cover, but the need for resuscitation arises after the number of personnel suicide relative to the number of personnel intake becomes imbalanced.
With the potential for whole tissue recreation, stem cells are widely known for their regenerative ability.
Mechanism for potential of modified stem cell serum : stem cells with Hydroxocobalamin, also known as vitamin B12a.
* Intravenous introduction : begin regeneration of dead cells and treatment of cyanide poisoning.
Inhalation : bombarding the body with 100% uncontaminated oxygen post resuscitation is however required for full on recovery.
With that in mind, is this modification of stem cells sufficient for resuscitation after 'death'?
[Answer]
>
> begin regeneration of dead cells
>
>
>
Woooooaaah there. Not to put too fine a point on it, but regeneration is *hella complex*. If you just throw stemcells into someone without some additional means of telling them where to go and what to do, they'll either do nothing useful, or they'll die, or they'll merrily create a load of cells which may or may not be what you want, where you want and might actually end up resembling a [teratoma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teratoma) (content warning: there's some moderately unpleasant stuff at that link) only unlike a *regular* teratoma this will be made of healthy cells and so won't be vulnerable to conventional cancer treatment. This kind of incident has occurred with real-life stem-cell treatments which are, as often as not, dangerous and ill-advised quackery, precisely because we haven't the faintest idea how to make stem cells do what *we* want them to do, *in vivo*. Have a read up on [this analysis of a stem-cell treatment incident](https://respectfulinsolence.com/2019/07/10/olfactory-mucosa-tumors-stem-cell/). Spoiler: dude ended up with snot-producing cells *in his spinal cord*, causing neurological defects as a result of the snot putting pressure on his spine. Only surgical remediation was possible, and the end results weren't great. Fun times, I'm sure.
Of course, if you're already dead, getting turbo-cancer won't bother you very much. In fact, regardless of whether the stem-cells actually do the job you want them to do or not, they need quite a complex soup of nutrients in order to function. A dead body isn't going to be doing a whole lot of eating and metabolising, and so your stem cells will simply run out of steam before they divide very much, and then they'll die too.
Finally, even assuming you can feed your stem cells and by some miracle you can make them do the job you want them to do, and nothing else, you can't fix all the problems. You can replace brain cells, but those new cells won't have all the carefully grown network of interconnections and internal structures that were formed during growth and education and experience of the original brain and as a result you will end up with a perfectly whole human being who is slightly less intelligent and capable than a newborn baby. Probably a complete vegetable. And that's the *best* case. back to the drawing board with you.
[Answer]
There is absolutely no way to resuscitate someone who has been dead for long without basically magic-level-tech.
When a cell dies all the metabolic functions cease. They stop ion transport which alters the osmolarity balance and many cells simply rupture because they draw in water from outside the cells. The rest are choked by the accumulated waste products from the anaerobic metabolism, and breaking down of the cell machinery which are no longer processed and cleaned out. (This is why cold extends the resuscitation time, cold slows down all these chemical processes.)
These are not reversible processes unless you basically either replace every cell in the body, or somehow individually clean and repair every cell in the body. In very futuristic science fiction the magic-tech is usually nanites, which theoretically could do that repair work. But this not a modern or near future possibility.
[Answer]
/the need for resuscitation arises after the number of personnel suicide relative to the number of personnel intake becomes imbalanced./
"Who is going to go on the mission?"
"Eh, its just you and me, boss. And my alopecia is acting up."
"Drat. Where is everyone else?"
"Killed themselves, boss. With the pills. Keeping secrets and all."
"Hm. Any way to bring them back from the dead? That Judd was a good worker."
"Judd's been dead about a month. Not sure who the freshest is. Last week, for sure."
"Is a week too long for those stem cells? The B12 ones?"
---
The problem with dying is that cells begin to decay. Fast. You have minutes. Maybe as long a 15 minutes if the dead person is good and cold, because they fell through the ice into a frozen lake.
I have to think that in a situation where a spy commits suicide, preserving the body is not going to be a priority of the bad guys who have backed your spy into a corner. Hmm - maybe it would be, which is a whole different scenario...
But if this reanimation is an afterthought cooked up in HQ because there are too many generals and not enough privates, there are some hard truths. Or one hard truth: animal cells die fast when you ess with the oxygen supply, and if you want to save them you have to more quickly.
[Answer]
I am unaware of any documented case of someone being *truly dead* and coming back through some medical process. In other words, there is a point of no return. The heart may stop beating, but the neurons are still firing. During open heart surgery, the heart stops but the brain is still working and machines keep the blood and oxygen flowing.
Cyanide poising can lead to cardiac arrest, and the brain typically goes within seconds of that (in cyanide poising - there are cases where the heart stops but the brain continues for longer). As such, it is unlikely you can be brought back from death.
Perhaps you could preserve muscle tissue and use stem cells to regrow/sustain certain organs, but that's unlikely the reason why you spies are being brought back. Once the brain goes, it's gone.
Perhaps someday we'll find a way to re-start the brain, but as of today, I am not aware of any documented case of this happening.
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[Question]
[
Please assume the following:
A spaceship in the far future.
Output: The ships systems have a high base demand of energy and sometimes you need extreme amounts of Energy in a very short period of time.
Input: An advanced fusion reactor is used to provide baseline-power. There are a range of 'injections' into the system, some of them sudden, extreme energy peaks, some minor and rising/falling softly.
What would be the best way to store energy and provide the necessary flexibility?
As-always: Assume future tech, I'll accept plausible handwaves, but please keep them as minor as possible.
[Answer]
Presenting the latest product from Nikola Industries, the WhoNeedsOil Power Cell. Compatible with all mark 9 fusion reactors\*, this compact, low mass energy storage solution uses a superconducting wire chilled to a supercool 0.1K to [store energy in a magnetic field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage#Superconducting_magnetic_energy), for those extra little boosts of power.
Fear not if you need something more long term, the WhoNeedsOil can store energy practically indefinitely\*. At up to 95% efficiency, this technology leads the market\* so contact Nikola Industries today for a quote, or alternatively drop by our factory showroom, 48°51′29.6″N 2°17′40.2″E Alpha\_Centauri\_Bc.
\*Terms and conditions apply. Performance rated against 3rd generation flywheel energy storage solutions in comparable price range, when installed by a Nikola-rated technician. Incorrect installation or maintenance may result in minor loss of life.
[Answer]
[Supercapacitors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor) is my answer to you. A supercapacitor is essentially a big battery that discharges (or at least can discharge) a lot of energy in a short amount of time. They are used for short-term energy storage or delivering massive bursts of energy.
An example of burst-mode is KERS on racecars. You can use supercapacitors to store energy when braking and keep said energy for the next straight-away if you need a speed boost.
[Answer]
## If anti-matter is available use that, else a superconducting capacitor
The absolute energy storage that can be had within the laws of physics as we know it is in the form of anti-matter. This relies on the complete conversion of matter to energy and with the giant constant *c* in
$$E = m c^2$$
this makes for a very efficient energy storage mechanism. However, using antimatter leads to some tricky creation and containment issues which may have been solved. One prime challenge is how do you absolutely ensure that the antimatter never touches regular matter till you want it to? Failing to solve this challenge leaves you with a rapidly expanding cloud of super heated gas that used to be your ship. You'll have to decide whether your tech is advanced enough to handle those challenges.
## The Superconducting Super-capacitor
This is the more plausible approach since we may be able to do something like this in the next 50 years. Superconductors do weird things with electricity and magnetism at very low temperatures, chief of which is very low resistance to current flow. You'll need those ultra low resistance values when you're discharging the capacitor at max discharge rates.
You'll need the following advanced tech to make these super-capacitors:
* Ultra-high resistance dialectrics. The better a dialectric you can get, the more power you can pack into the capacitor
* High temperature superconductors. If given the choice between the cooling requirements of 4 Kelvin or 138 K, for the superconductors to work, thr wise designer will choose the high temp superconductor.
Make sure that your dialectric doesn't become a super conductor at low temperatures. That would be bad.
[Answer]
They can store energy with rotational energy, in a [Flywheel Energy Storage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage) device.
[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:G2_front2.jpg)
These store energy by using a motor to spin up a flywheel in a vacuum sealed box, with the flywheel suspended by magnetic bearings. To charge it up, power is sent into the motor, spinning up the flywheel. When it is time to power your expensive ship systems (FTL drive, giant railgun, etc) you connect the motor as a alternator or dynamo and sap power from angular momentum.
The plus side of these is that they are current day technology. No hand-wave required for your basic model! They also interact well with hand-waving miracle materials that have higher tensile strength, which would allow more energy to be stored.
For extra fun, use superconducting bearings to reduce friction further and increase efficiency!
[Answer]
Don't store it; **shunt it**. While you're at it, go big or go home.
Storing energy is dangerous: ever seen Star Trek? It'd be better if it was shunted when not called for. Oversize your reactor to be able to supply enough power to complete any conceivable task. Then give it a quadruple safety margin. The question then becomes, how *do* you shunt 1.21 gigawatts when, "blow it out the top," ([Quora](https://www.quora.com/Where-does-surplus-electricity-go)) isn't feasible?
All good warships are capable of producing their required power *on-demand*. So much so, that they can supply emergency power to small cites if they want: *"U.S.S. Lexington provides electricity to Tacoma"* –[historylink.org](http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=5113)
[Answer]
## Nuclear batteries
The [chosen answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/40504/far-future-space-most-plausible-way-to-store-short-term-energy/40506#40506) is indeed, realistically, the best one. Superconducting solenoid batteries allow for the densest theoretical possible energy storage for electrical power, limited only by the chemical binding force of atoms to prevent it from flying apart from Lorentz forces. With something like [aggregate diamond nanorods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregated_diamond_nanorod), you can reach energy densities of 20 MJ/kg easily. And while it doesn't look that impressive compared to, say, gasoline (one of the most energy-dense fuels out there, actually), remember that gasoline + oxygen is not as impressive, that you can extract as fast as you want, you don't need a bulky engine to extract said energy and that said bulky engine would be at best something 50% efficient anyway.
High-temperature high-power superconductors aren't that big of a handwave, nor even room-temperature, in fact, for fare future tech, if you don't want to bother with cryogenic equipment.
Also, it will turn all its stored energy into heat (aka violently explode) if damaged, heated too much or overloaded, which is always good for SF tech. Also also you can actually call it supersolenoid, which makes for nice technobabble.
But **that's not enough!** (After all, it never is.) We are talking about far-future tech! We don't want to be limited by weak atom bonds!
If you are OK with a bigger handwave and wants **moar power!** in storage, you can go for [nuclear isomers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_isomer#Decay_processes). A nuclear isomer is an otherwise stable atom nucleus that is in an excited state. At some point it will decay, but unlike things like beta decay, it will only emit a gamma ray - and the process is (theoretically) reversible. And an excited nuclear isomer contains *a lot* of energy. Like more than a million MJ/kg. Simply put your far-future gammavoltaic cells to turn those gamma rays into electricity and you're fine.
The problem is, isomers come in two categories: the "barely existing" ones, that will revert in a nanosecond, and the "nearly stable" with an impractically long half-life. Stabilizing the former is probably impossible - but wouldn't it be nice if we could induce the latter to revert and emit that sweet, sweet high-energy photon?
Some guys pretended they had managed it with Hafnium isomers by spraying them with X-rays. [Alas, this has been discredited since.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium_controversy) Hafnium batteries have since gone the way of the Dean drive, the water engine and the EMDrive. Sigh.
But wait, not all hope is lost! Unlike those, the Hafnium battery wasn't dismissed out of hand by anyone with a modicum of knowledge in physics, because *it could have worked*! Which means that there may be other methods, beyond current technology, that actually work. Maybe with some exotic particle that require a brand new type of particle accelerator.
The point is, while today Hafnium batteries are bunk, they are still believable as far-future tech.
There is also the question or producing those Hafnium isomers, but if you can induce de-excitation, you should know how to induce excitation as well.
Hafnium isomers have 31 years of half-life, which is fine for short-term energy storage. If you need much longer-term, you can use [Tantalum isomers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_tantalum#Tantalum-180m) instead. With 40 000 MJ/kg instead of a million, they are not nearly as dense (though still much better than supersolenoid batteries), but their half-life is much, much longer than the age of the Universe.
[Those](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_of_common_energy_storage_materials) [tables](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density_Extended_Reference_Table) may be useful for comparison of storage densities, which is on of the main criteria here.
[Answer]
**Compressed gas.**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage>
>
> Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is a way to store energy
> generated at one time for use at another time using compressed air. At
> utility scale, energy generated during periods of low energy demand
> (off-peak) can be released to meet higher demand (peak load)
> periods.[1] This is especially important in an age where intermittent
> renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power is becoming more
> prominent energy sources. CAES systems can have a vital impact in
> making sure the electricity demands can be met at peak hours.
>
>
>
You could compress hydrogen instead of air, of course. Even in space hydrogen wants to be a gas. Hydrogen might be handy for other reasons too.
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[Question]
[
Is it possible for a plane to be able to pierce a plane in the air?
These planes is ejected from another plane which acts as a fuel hub for the other planes. These little planes are small, yet has an extremely strong and sharp tip and a fast engine. These planes work by ejecting themselves from the fuel hub, then flying at high speeds before finally impacting a plane and going through it before coming out from the other side and go back to the fuel hub for a quick refuel.
These planes are like rockets, unmanned, fast and meant to hit a target, except that it's not supposed to explode.
Are these kind of planes possible?
[Answer]
Only if these planes are propelled like rockets, in the sense that they don't have an inlet for taking in air for their engines.
This is because in case of an impact, any debris ending in the turbine would wreak havoc on it, and you want the plane to survive the impact.
And the impact itself rules out the use of a propeller...
You just need to reinforce the plane to withstand the impact and possibly make the wings retractable during the impact itself.
Of course this will add weight, but having a rocket pushing it and not having to worry too much about taking off and landing might allow you to play with the suspension of disbelief.
[Answer]
**I quote this movie a lot on this site...**
>
> "Can you launch an ICBM horizontally?"
>
>
> "Sure, why would you want to?" (*The Hunt for Red October*)
>
>
>
Obviously it's possible to build a plane that can pierce another plane because bullets and missiles can do it. Just build your plane like a bullet or a missile. It does require something that's counter-intuitive for a practical plane: the fuselage and skin must be strong enough to handle the impact (you said they weren't to explode). That means more weight, which makes the plane less efficient.
But, sure, it's trivial to make a plane that can pierce another plane.
Why would you want to? Bullets and missiles are both cheaper and more efficient.
*To be fair, don't let efficiency and Real World common sense stop you. If you want planes that can pierce other plans, do it. Cool stories are rarely about common sense, which is useful for engineering but boring for stories.*
[Answer]
Definite maybe. Here's what you're up against.
First, terminology. If it's unmanned, then it isn't really a plane: it's a cruise missile, or at minimum a drone. This significantly changes the formula because you don't need to stay within the 10G that a human can survive. Also, you don't need all the stuff like chairs and windows, which gives you a lot more weight to apply to structural reinforcement. Cruise missiles without an explosive payload are sometimes called knife missiles, especially when they're human-scaled.
Let's make this easy and presume that your flying machine is basically a rocket behind an aerodynamically shaped cannonball. As L.Dutch points out, you'll need to retract any flight surfaces if you want to keep 'em.
The ability to penetrate is based on which part of the plane you hit. If you impact the cargo fuselage, then you can probably be in and out without an issue. This presumes that the craft you're running into is much larger than your penetrator craft. If you hit the other jet's engine, you're paste. If you hit a wing full of fuel, an explosion could be worse than hitting an engine. If you go through the cockpit, there are a lot of heavy objects in there that will hit you just as hard as you're hitting them.
Another problem that you'll run into is partial impacts. If you glance off the other plane, you're going to need some fancy rocket work to correct your course before you spin into the ground. I think that modern AIs can handle that, though.
Head-on impacts will be problematic because you'll be passing through the cockpit. You'd want to target wings and fins if possible, but that makes glancing blows more likely.
Coming in from the side depends on the speed differential. At high speed differentials, the fuselage of the target plane may actually put up less resistance than the air you're pushing through. You'll need to make a last-instant correction so that your missile is pointing at the correct angle, otherwise passing through them could easily rip you in half. Also, you're gonna need some serious AI reaction speeds to actually hit anything.
Coming up from behind will be tough. Yes, your missile might be able to fly 200mph faster than the plane it's chasing. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to crawl up their tailpipe. In this case, it may make the most sense to pull in your flight surfaces and plow into their wings at a low relative speed. Enough to rip them off, but not enough to put torsional stress on your ship.
So, overall, a fun concept, but it would require super-human reaction speed to make proper use of it.
[Answer]
There is the case of a [private flight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Transportes_A%C3%A9reos_Flight_1907) leaving from some place South America going north. It encountered and sliced the wing of a South going commercial aircraft. The private flight was on the wrong flight level and both using GPS for navigation which was why they were so close. The damaged commercial aircraft lost control, no survivors. The private aircraft continued on not knowing what exactly happened and landed at planned destination
Military aircraft are generally going to be stronger, and have active scanners to be more situationally aware. Would thus attempt to dodge where possible. Making them a harder target to hit and pierce.
Most militaries pierce enemy aircraft with high explosive containing mostly wingless aircraft known as missiles or rockets via shrapnel. A non exploding variant is very possible, just not as effective.
[Answer]
@Zeis-Icon has already mentioned the failed experimental "flying ram" Northrop XP-79. Since aircraft are typically quite fragile, it may be enough to punch and damage the tail, instead of piercing the wing or the fuselage. There are also reports of WWII RAF fighters chasing and "nudging" the German V1 "flying bomb" rockets, forcing them off course: <https://www.forces.net/heritage/wwii/how-spitfire-pilots-really-rammed-v1-bomb-out-sky>
These attempts make some sense because ammo and guns are heavy. If you could achieve similar result with a reinforced wing (or a pike or some articulated appendage), it would be worthwile. Anime flying robots often carry swords for that effect.
[Answer]
## Not while using any real world materials
You will find the rare story of an aircraft surviving after a very indirect impact with another aircraft, but the only reason any of these aircraft would survive is if the hit was very indirect (like wing to wing) such that there is not anything vital along the line of cleavage or if the surviving plane had enough material to ablate along the line of impact to disintegrate the entire cross-section of the other.
Most fighter jets produced within the past few decades have had top speeds between mach-1.5 (~1850kph) and mach-2.8 (~3460kph). You can reduce these numbers from further calculations a bit if you are planning for an interceptor specifically made for taking out slow planes or helicopters. Top speeds are most often used during a combat approach, so we should sample these values, and not cruising speeds for this answer because they fall in the range of likely impact speeds. Air-to-air missiles need higher speeds than the aircraft they need to catch up with; so, most modern air-to-air missiles have speeds between mach-2.5 (~3090kph) and mach-5 (~6180kph). This means that you should expect a combined impact speed of up to mach-7.8 (9630kph); though a I suspect a mach-2 to mach-3 impact would be more commonplace.
To fully understand just how energetic of an impact this is, consider what happens to a car, a vehicle designed to survive a crash, when it hits another car at 100kph. This creates an impact energy of ~770 J/kg which is enough to turn both vehicles into burning crumpled messes and according to various sources has somewhere between a 90-100% certainty of death per occupant. To fully understand how much worse an air-to-air impact is, remember that energy=mass\*velocity^2 ;so, as velocity increases, impact energy goes up exponentially; so, at our previously stated velocities, you are looking at an average impact energy of about ~735,000 J/kg with the potential of ~7,156,000 J/kg on a head-to-head impact. That is 4-5 orders of magnitude more energy to mass than a car moving at Highway speeds which should alone answer your question.
But to even see it it's theoretically possible, bullet manufactures have spent a long time identifying what materials melt, deform, and shatter the least at highspeed impacts in order to make the best armor penetrating weapons. The current leader in this particular material science arms race is the tungsten-carbide sabot. Even large anti-tank tungsten-carbide sabots begin to deform after penetrating just a few mm of steel... and that survivability will go way down once you try adding navigation equipment, sensors, propulsion, etc. So, while I might believe that a tungstite carbide armored drone missle might pernitrate the mostly hallow wing or tailfin of a fighter and come out the other side in working order, the second it nicks something of any significant mass like an engine, cockpit, or even a structural beam, it's odds of surviving the impact go way down. Sure, it will still come out the other side... but as a spray of molten metal, not as an in-tact interceptor.
## Unless you use a ram shield: AKA, the Sci-fi Answer
Since there is no conceivable way to survive the kinetic forces of the impact, your best recourse is to make up a non-kinetic one. In some settings, aircraft have nuclear powered shields that can obliterate/absorb arbitrarily high amounts of mass/energy. In these settings, the offense/defense contest is between weapons able to level a city block and energy shields made to stop them.
So, if a shielded fighter were to ram a significantly less shielded other fighter, then the shield itself could cut through the other fighter without actually making any physical contact with it. For this to work though, it's probably safe to assume that you need contesting forces of significantly different tech levels since a the shield of a small portable ram fighter would need to be able to outperform the shield of the larger aircraft it means to ram through.
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[Question]
[
A species genetically engineered/corrupted/bred for warfare is a staple of fantasy. Lord of the Rings' orcs and Wheel of Time's Trollocs come to mind, for example. Creatures created by the bad guys to conquer the world- but at the end of the day, how effective are these creatures in waging war?
If you were creating a species specifically designed to serve as soldiers in your medieval wars of conquest, what biological traits would improve their effectiveness? Would they be mammals, insectoids, reptiles or crustaceans? A way to control and replenish these creatures would also be required.
Note: I know the society of these creatures would have a very important role in their effectiveness as soldiers, but at the moment I am focusing on purely biological traits.
My appreciation and thanks to anyone that considers and answers this question- I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
[Answer]
You're asking after biological traits, specifically?
In no particular order:
* **Rapid reproduction**.
Whether natural or artificial, you want to be able to quickly create individuals. A species that naturally procreates swiftly, with relatively short gestation, is preferable.
* **Naturally aggressive**.
Some species have an inborn tendency to react purposefully and violently to anything they might perceive as dangerous.
* **Survival instinct**.
You'll want your warmongering creatures to fight until their last breath, and to ideally have an overproduction of adrenaline for that extra edge.
* **Intelligent enough** to use weaponry or other material.
* **Dumb enough** to not question their nature/instinct/orders.
You don't want philosophers or other stinking dissidents amongst their ranks.
* **Natural armour** would be nice: scales, thick leathery skin, shells. Alternatively, spines or similarly deflective coverings. If not armour, than the species should be able to rely on **speed and agility**.
* Last but not least: **strength, endurance, and willpower** would perfect these creatures. Strength and endurance are evident. Willpower is related to survival instinct and aggression, but pertains more to awareness, and a conscious choice to keep going.
I'm not sure if you're also already looking for something that meets these traits, but I'll be on the lookout.
[Answer]
**Coordinated & Fearless.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yTM0Qm.png)
We know from the Roman period that coordination and tactics are far more important than physical attributes of a warrior. We also know that in general medieval battles end long before one army wipes out the other -- rather they end when the front line gets demoralized and flees.
Your soldier race is blindly obedient and hence very coordinated. On top of this they have excellent senses to listen to orders in the middle of a noisy battle. I suggest infra-sound as it attenuates less than the human range.
Hence you can easily call a platoon of 1000 back from the front and replace them with a fresh 1000 as the fight goes on. You can even do this without practice or rehearsing, so you are free to control your army like an RTS game rather than like shouting into a crowd of thousands of dying men.
They are also immune to morale and fight to the death if ordered. Hence If 100 of these guys go up against 10,000 mundane troops they often trigger a rout. The 100 guys don't have to fight all 10,000 at once. They only have to form a circle and then fight however many enemy soldiers fit along the length of the circle. All the while they are rotating their tired troops from the edge of the circle to rest on the inside.
**Note to Self:** Add a *relax* command to make the soldiers rest and catch their breath, even in the middle of a battle.
The carnage on the edge of the circle is enough to make the nearby mundane troops flee in terror. This triggers the rest of the enemy army, who cannot see what is going on -- and only see their comrades drop their weapons and run for their lives -- to flee with them.
On top of this I suggest the Roman method of short and/or thrusting weapons. This means you can have five of your soldiers armed with short weapons comfortable engage each enemy soldier wielding a long weapon. That turns the 100 vs 10,000 battle into 20 duels of 5 vs 1.
Then add all the normal extras like thick hide, bad smell, strong body, extra endurance, lower food requirement, fast healing, disease-resistant, redundant organs, natural weapons, scary face, poisonous blood, fast reflexes, endurance to heat and cold, fast breeding and growing, and short life span.
[Answer]
If you just want melee fighters, I'd go with armored (like armadillos) 8-legged spider-like creatures. Not necessarily insects; but similar looking.
The legs end in a hard hoof, but that is like the heel of a hand; they have retractable opposing grasping digits there (like a cat's claws are retractable) that let them wield weaponry, climb, etc. These can be tipped with claws that can be used for fighting directly.
Like spiders, they can disconnect damaged legs and regrow new ones. The body part can carry weaponry. The eyes are arranged for 360 degree vision in the horizontal plane, and nearly that in the vertical plane. They have infrared and ultraviolet vision. You can't sneak up on them.
Hearing like a bat, with echo-location -- Echo location in a bat is so much like vision they can fly through a pitch-dark room with lengths of string hanging from the ceiling, and not touch any of them.
Pinpoint throwing accuracy of knives, rocks, grenades or anything else over a 100 yards are so. If a quarterback can do it, they can do it better.
They can stand and fight on any three legs, two in a pinch.
The can spew poison or disabling liquids, like skunks and bombardier beetles, perhaps lethal poison like snakes, many insects, and even plants.
They have reflexes as fast as the fastest animal on Earth, whatever that is. That lets them wield a shield or buckler (small shield) with extreme accuracy against arrows, spears, knives, or thrown rocks.
They are smart enough to don steel armor if needed.
Needless to say, extremely strong for their weight; I'm not sure which mammal holds the record, but like that.
Perhaps they have tough thick hair all over their bone armor like a lion's mane; the volume of it protects the lion's neck from bites. On this animal, it can cushion the blow of projectiles and such.
I would ground your genetic engineering in Earth reality and genetically proven evolved battle adaptations, for both offense (like predators) and defense (like prey).
[Answer]
I'm going to assume that you want a biped-capable humanoid form. With that said:
Modified Grizzly Bears.
If I have to choose between 10.000 Uruk Hai or 100 intelligent Grizzlies, I would choose Grizzlies. Especially with some armor and some redesigned weapons the Grizzlies would be closer to armored vehicles than infantry. Outside of magically enhanced fantasy creatures (say a regenerating Troll) I see little that can beat the Grizzly bear.
Reproduction:
* While not true for Grizzlies specifically, some bears can carry several cubs per litter. We'll go with the average of 2 to 3 cubs per litter for Grizzlies rather than modify it and risk health problems.
* For some bears (again, not Grizzlies), the male bears will actively kill all cubs they come across that do not smell like they carry their DNA. If they succeed the mother bear will immediately be able to become pregnant again, allowing the male bear to get more cubs with his DNA. --> we'll modify the male bear to simply try to get any bear pregnant that does not nurse cubs of his own DNA. Female bears will be modified to be able to become pregnant as soon as the previous litter is out (and a small regeneration period has passed). This feature will last until a certain population density is reached or a certain food is given by their owners.
* Grizzlies grow to maturity in about 8 to 10 years, far faster than you can grow and train humans. It might not be the "spawn them in a couple of days/weeks" like the Uruk Hai but if we allow such techniques for spawning then then I dont see a reason why the Grizzlies couldnt be spawned the same way.
Food and resources:
* like most bears Grizzlies are omnivores, from grasses to nuts to roots to fish to meat etc. This makes them relatively easy to feed.
* armies march on their stomach, a small army of Grizzlies even more. Fortunately your bears have a hack: hybernation. --> modify the Grizzlies to hibernate on command after reaching a minimum amount of food. They wake on a command (say a certain smell) or when their foodsupply is low. During hybernation the bear will even re-use a portion of their "waste". They also do not pee or poop during hybernation for several months.
* Grizzlies are excellent foragers.
Defense:
* Grizzlies are essentially 300 to 700kg Honey badgers. Their thick fur and thick loose skin make them immensely tough. They can handle the biteforce and clawed punches of their own species with relatively low damage. Edged weapons like swords and axes have trouble piercing it when handled by humans, blunt weapons are almost useless and until rifles are introduced the Grizzly is pretty much only defeatable through manpower by impaling it with a bunch of spears. A better way would be to bring small siege weapons and hope you can kill them before they get into range.
* Grizzlies are immesely strong, there are movies of a Grizzly flipping a 300+ kg garbage bin several times with ease. With some metal armor over the vitals they would be medieval tanks.
Attack:
* Grizzlies are well able to sneak up and ambush their enemies, including intelligent humans.
* even unarmed a Grizzly can beat the most fit armored and armed soldier. If these Grizzlies go bipedal with weapons and armor (and quadruped when running). When running on all 4 paws they can reach almost 60km/h.
* Grizzlies are excellent at climbing
* Grizzlies are excellent at digging.
Intelligence:
* some modifications to intelligence are necessary to make them more useful. This does mean a larger head or less skull to protect the brains. Although Grizzlies are already fairly intelligent.
[Answer]
Assuming you have some way to control them how about flying bullet ants. You release an army of them on the opposing humans and watch them scream in pain.
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Thank you SO much for asking. I've always wanted an army of soldiers to do my bidding, but never really thought about what they'd be like, but then you mentioned crustaceans and genetic mutation.
I'm now making an unstoppable army of crab soldiers. Small ones to slip in, damage equipment, and attack sleeping troops in their baaracks. Human sized ones to engage the enemy directly on the battlefield, and crabs as big as a modest home to deal with any obstacles that get in the way of my smaller crabby soldiers.
Hopefully, this will be enough. If not, I'll unleash tiny fast-breeding crabs into the trousers of opposing troops. If my victory doesn't come soon enough, megacrabs will smash the cities of my opponents.
The crab army is unstoppable. Surrender now or face their claws.
[Answer]
If you need a reason for an army that's worth the investment of all the genetic engineering, decades of housing and feeding, etcetera; start by considering the deficiencies of the alternative: a human army.
**Fighting**
And where exactly humans fall short depends primarily on the specific circumstances of the war. Are all your peasants suffering from heat stroke when fighting the desert uprising? Then maybe make the dromedaries into your thralls. Are they clumsy on the seas? Engineer some mermen! We put our human soldiers in different outfits for different climates and expect them to function just as well, but that's only because humans are our only source of manpower. If we can create our own species, then there's no reason to do it only once. Have different armies for each terrain! Have mermaids in the seas, pumas on land, eaglefolk in the air, and as many other variations as you have the imagination to think up and the means to support.
Similarly, do you want your soldiers to be ugly and terrifying? Or rather sneaky and deceptive? We expect humans to play both the part of monster and spy; why not have different species specialised to do it?
**Balance of power**
But maybe do not make them too good. More empires have been overthrown by their own uppity generals than have ever been conquered from the outside; a government and a monarch have the official monopoly on violence, but that only holds when they actually control all it.
That means that you must keep your new breed of super-soldiers from usurping you. There's generally two approaches;
* Make them deficient in some way to their human counterparts. For example, limit their intelligence to sub-human levels. Go for numbers instead. Maybe take inspiration from a fast-breeding species like insects for that approach.
You can also make them unable to breed on their own. That requires you to produce every generation from anew, but it makes them fundamentally dependent on you. It also solves the issue of having the army be a constant tax on your finances during extended peacetime - just let them die when you don't need them.
* The other is to treat them as citizens. Release them into your civilisation when you are done; let them have families, grow rich, live their own lives. The advantage is that your army will feed and support itself; the downside is that they are reduced in effectiveness because they expect pay, and to return to their farms and houses when all is said and done.
Those considerations mean that your species cannot just become superior to humanity in every single way. There's always a cost.
**Aesthetics**
Finally, many details about the species end up being less important than they might seem. When you have the magic or tech to engineer both insects and crustaceans into your very capable pawns, then their biological differences start to matter less as you adapt them to your template of a soldier. Will a camel still only need a thimbleful of water daily, after you have engineered him to be bipedal, fast as a leopard and strong as a gorilla? No way to tell until you zone in on a specific creature, but I think that the differences start to blend away the more you meld the base species to your liking.
That also means that there is much room for creativity for you as the author of the story, or for the evil lord as the author of the species. [Maybe a freak accident left the wizard with a mechanical claw for a hand, and that's why he prefers crabs?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uq9pp586AE) If he can make the crabs giant and obedient, then maybe there's no more reason not to pick that species. You can have your type of soldiers not just be 'optimal', but make their appearance serve the plot too!
[Answer]
# The Dogs of War:
I am assuming that you are talking fantasy-tech, where it's basically medieval with magical "high" tech engineering. So my logic is based on such a setting. You can argue the competitive advantages of various designs ALL DAY, and every species needs to adapt to the specific conditions they encounter. I think most war races are impractical, since they would inevitably burn themselves out of usefulness unless they were in small numbers and thus of limited usefulness. They would perpetually be a potential threat to whatever species created them.
So I propose that the biggest hurdle for such a species is that wars end and a warrior society must constantly be fed resources it cannot produce on it's own. They must follow one of two main paths. They must enslave the societies around them and be perpetual conquerors/rulers, or they must have a relatively harmless function in society when there isn't a war to minimize their impact.
* **Rulers:** A society that conquers others must fundamentally be compatible with those they conquer if they are dependent of those conquered for survival. This means they would need to be social, able to be peaceable with them, and regulate their consumption carefully to prevent them from destroying the systems they need to survive (eating or starving all the peasants). 99% of the time they would be sitting around on guard duty or patrols, not fighting. They need to be competent governors and be in charge since inevitably a non-soldier ruler at some point will come to fear or resent their soldiers consuming vast resources and contributing nothing. So these rulers are likely to be augmented humans or a similar species that can relate to the species ruled well and function in their cultures.
Most species are unwilling to create species that will enslave them, so this isn't ideal. But a war-race might be created to win the war without regards to the consequences.
* **Pets**: At the other extreme, I would suggest a military species that degenerates into something small and harmless when there are no wars. I imagine dogs where the females are relatively unintelligent breeders, and the males are like tiny lap dogs - usually. The dogs are treated well and kept as adored pets. When war breaks out, they are induced (somehow) like locusts to transform into warriors of rapidly growing size and intelligence. Loyalty is due to genetics and them being raised by and dependent on the master-species (assumedly humans). In non-war times, a handful are kept as warriors/guards and these would be the reproductive males. The females don't go to war, and as long as a handful of males are available, they can be regenerated by the master species as needed. Warriors left after war are relatively short-lived to minimize long-term drains on resources.
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The traits that you would require for a genetically/magically engineered soldier are the most important factor, from which you could then design the ideal creature. In fact, the origin of such a creature is of little importance, so long as it has or can be given the required traits.
So, the traits required would be:
1. Selective: This creature must be able to tell friend from foe, and be able to distinguish between individuals.
2. Loyal: The creature must accept orders from those in its chain of command, and must not accept orders from other persons.
3. Intelligent: The creature should be able to interpret its orders intelligently, be able to improvise around its orders and goals, and know when its orders cannot be carried out. It should have a good memory for details.
4. Fast: The creature should have the quickest possible reaction time, minimizing the duration of their observation-decision-reaction loop. Preferably it should be able to out-react a human by a very considerable margin. It should also be able to move quickly.
5. Self-sacrificing: The creature should be willing to sacrifice its life if necessary to carry out its orders, but should do so *only* if such self-sacrifice was likely to lead to the successful execution of its orders.
6. Perceptive: The creature should have good senses so as to be better able to foil ambushes or locate hidden objectives.
7. Stealthy: The creature should be able to hide and sneak effectively in multiple environments. Being able to pass for human would be a great advantage. Being able to be easily underestimated based on its appearance would also be advantageous.
8. Easily replaced: These creatures should be able to be produced in large numbers and become an effective fighting unit in as short a time as possible, with a minimum of training and a minimal growth time. Being produced with built-in skills and knowledge is highly desirable.
9. Tough: The creature should be robust and difficult to injure, highly able to continue functioning while injured, and should heal quickly. It should not be afraid of pain, and should be able to act despite its injuries when necessary.
10. Storeable: These creatures may not always be needed, so they should be able to be ordered to enter a state similar to hibernation or torpor in which they consume a minimum of energy and resources. They should be able to be roused from this state at short notice.
11. Unambitious: The creature should act for the good of its society, not for its own benefit. It should have no desires or expectations for itself or its offspring (if capable of reproducing at all) beyond its loyalty to its society and its orders.
12. Strong: Being physically capable increases both the combat and non-combat utility of the creature. It need not be physically particularly large in order to be strong. It should be physically strong enough to overpower the strongest humans.
13. Self-sufficient: These creatures should become useful after their birth/creation with a minimum of other resources, and the resources required should be as commonly available as possible. The resources required to produce them should be similarly simple and common.
14. Dangerous: Having a variety of natural weapons built into its body would mean that these creatures could not easily be disarmed. Toxins should be available to it,including soporific, paralytic and lethal options. It should also be able to employ manufactured weapons, operate crew-served weapons and make use of any available human transport.
15. Mobile: Being able to swim, run and fly well would be highly advantageous.
So... what sort of creature would meet all these requirements?
I'd personally go with something that was a chimera of a human and an insect. At first glance, it'd appear to be an average-sized, harmless-looking pretty young woman in a hooded cloak, capable of interacting with humans in a civil and civilised manner. However, beneath the cloak - which is part of its body - would be four arms, four dragonfly-like wings and an apparently armoured body and limbs that is actually its armoured exoskeleton. It would be able to extend sharp, toxic appendages with which it could fight, or could use human weapons with greater skill, strength and speed than any human.
Despite their appearance, these creatures would be sexless, and incapable of reproducing themselves. Their only genetic imperatives would be loyalty to their society, and as they are non-reproducing soldier-caste types, that could include self-sacrifice. It'd have all the traits enumerated above.
These creatures would be produced by a breeder caste, which would be kept and protected by the human society that makes use of them. There would be numerous members of each gender of these breeders so that they wouldn't be vulnerable to having a single 'queen' breeder assassinated. The soldiers would be hatched from eggs, would grow rapidly before pupating, and would be fully capable after metamorphosis into their final form. The mothers would be educated as they matured, and would pass their skills and knowledge to their offspring - both breeder and soldier - after they became old enough to be breeders.
Soldiers would be able to be born and mature enough to be fully capable combatants within a year. A single pair of male and female breeders would be able to produce thousands of eggs per year. A major limiting factor to their reproduction would be supplying the necessary food. However, given that the soldiers can hibernate, they can be produced ahead of time and stored at a minimal cost, waking periodically for nutrition before returning to hibernation.
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I have a slight addition to what others have suggested here, because I believe there are two main issues that need to be resolved:
1. As you raise the species members' intelligence, aggressiveness, and combat ability, the potential for them to go rogue grows exponentially. You might up with an army of super soldiers, but there's no telling that even a small number won't turn on you or your people.
2. Militaries require hierarchies, which rely on a difference in power or strength. This is especially true if the species which is acting as the commanders of another species is weaker (imagine a human being assigned to monitor a squadron of 9 foot genius mutants designed to kill humans).
To solve this, the species that you rely on as an army could be a **Bee-like Species**, in that it has a dictatorial Queen with superior abilities, the majority of the species is biologically job-specific, and they have undying loyalty to the Queen or her successors.
Rather than trying to control the hierarchy of power at every level (assigning squadron leaders and so on), it is far easier to have a "Queen" of sorts that you keep happy, who in turn can naturally guide her mindless drones to attack your enemies. The Queen's superior intelligence means that she acts as a "translator" between you and the army you wish to use.
I purposefully left the method that you make the Queen "happy" blank because it could range from providing her with apples to paying large sums of gold. This means that there is a tradeoff between this idea and some of the others: While you don't have to worry about controlling each individual soldier, you now have to make sure you keep the "mercenary leader" satisfied.
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This species would need to be physically strong, fit with enhanced health and immune system and also they would need to have far denser bones than the ordinary person. And also their regenerstion skills should be superhuman like Logan from X Men.
Also genetic engineering on the brain would be needed bevause your soldier species would need to kill a lot being very cold without feeling remorse like a serial killer do.
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I think the closest living being to a permanent warfare species are viruses (though I know it's still debated if viruses fit the description of life): while wolves or lions, just to cite an example, will not hunt unless they are hungry, a virus will pursue infecting available cells and hack them into producing copies of the virus, without stopping until either defeated by the host's immune system or by the host's death.
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**Loyalty and Logistics**
If your creature isn’t loyal and able to tell friend from foe; you’ve created a future enemy.
If the creature requires an inordinate amount of resources to survive, you’ve made something that won’t be cost effective and given you have a medieval society you can’t sustain things that require heavy and continuous resource investment.
Therefore you need a creature to be fundamentally loyal to its creator (imprinting, pheromones etc) and able to subsist on easily foraged resources. For instance it would be better for your warrior species to have a very broad diet as an omnivore, preferably one that can eat very common plants and insects to survive
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You definitely do not want a biped: any of the joints in either leg become a weak point that cripple them. So, six or eight legs. As a bonus, they can be their own pack mules.
Then, they should have tough but fairly light shells, not so heavy they can’t swim. They should be able to fight with their claws, with their heads protected, or also hold tools, missile weapons or spears (particularly against cavalry). Of they need to reach up, they should be able to rear up on their hind legs. Open with a high-speed spear or saber charge, then skirmish. And some fast-acting poison would be just the icing on the cake.
So, I think you want something like a crab or perhaps a scorpion. It doesn’t need to be too large—it might want to avoid being too easy to bring an axe down on, but having to attack the lower body or the horse someone is riding while being hard to reach is an overall advantage.
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Aside from the traits mentioned in other people’s answers, I would also recommend some sort of built in natural weapons, such as extremely sharp claws, spikes, or bladed appendages. Maybe a spiked tail like some sorts of dinosaurs/dragons. Actually, maybe some form of dragons or dragon-like creature would be pretty close to the perfect war creature.
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**Intelligent people are loyal for a passion or sentiment**
If you create your perfect warrior race/species such as that described in [your answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/222275/creating-a-species-purely-for-warfare/222294#222294), then some day it may not remains under your control. If they are intelligent, dangerous and self-sufficient, then they will think more of their own benefit than yours and forget loyalty.
To sacrifice one's own life by an intelligent being needs a very strong passion or sentiment. In humans, it is country, king, religion, freedom etc. What is the passion or sentiment for your race. Money is an attraction for mercenaries, but then they are not very brave. People with a passion are always more brave.
Your warrior race/species should be either very dumb (not intelligent and passionless) or must have a strong passion. Otherwise they will become something like Gunslinger in 1973 movie [Westworld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld_(film)).
**What if the enemy also develops similar race**
If enemy or many other nations also develop similar races then the whole world will be a big battlefield with almost never ending wars or until all the resources are depleted. This could cause a great damage to people and resources.
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> Creatures created by the bad guys to conquer the world- but at the end of the day, how effective are these creatures in waging war?
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Now that's an interesting question.
In many cases - including the ones you mentioned - the answer is: just effective enough. What they lack in perfect suitability they make up for in numbers and savagery. With enough orcs or trollocs - and they have *many* of them - any force of conventional fighters can be overwhelmed. At least until someone brings sufficient force to bear - as Amalisa Jagad did in the WoT TV series - to eliminate sufficient of the enemies to swing the tide of battle.
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> If you were creating a species specifically designed to serve as soldiers in your medieval wars of conquest, what biological traits would improve their effectiveness?
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The rest of the answers are heavy on details for this, but let me give you a slightly less... moral answer than most.
Were I to build an army to rival the forces of Man, Elf and Dwarf, I'd be focused on the following points:
* Durable
* Vicious
* Capable (fast and strong)
* Plentiful
* Fanatical
I'd start with the nastiest, toughest critter I can find. Something like the Honey Badger perhaps, or mongoose. Using vile magics I'd twist the base stock into a larger, more upright form while increasing the potency of their existing features: coarser, denser hair for protection, denser bones and muscles, sharper claws and teeth. As part of the process the brains would be modified to increase their native intelligence and their neurochemistry altered to break down if not supplied with particular chemicals - which we'll revisit later.
That covers the first few points. Now for the last two...
Once the desired state is achieved in a few individuals I'd have them disassembled at the smallest possible level - individual cells by preference - and use the parts as 'seeds' in a huge ritual, feeding living (or near-living) beings to the ritual to create hundreds of thousands of troops. Of course the process would corrupt some percentage of the resulting units, but as long as we get a reasonable success rate we're golden. We'll keep a couple of the best examples around for the next round of creations.
And finally, the fanaticism. This one is pretty easy in comparison to the process of creating the troops in the first place. During the creation ritual a powerful set of compulsions will be overlaid on the minds of the 'clone' troops, forcing them to follow the orders of my commanders while subverting their desires to protect themselves. If we left any of their instincts intact then we'll hook into whatever protection instincts they have left - probably the instinctual protection of their own young that most species have.
And that chemical they're addicted to? Adrenal stearate. Given just enough - in tiny doses - it stabilizes their neurochemistry. But when dosed with it at the start of battle it turns them into berserkers, super-charging their aggressiveness and combat ability. I'll let you investigate how a supply of adrenal stearate could be acquired.
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As a species, they should hot blood as it allows for better operationality.
One may say that I am lacking Imagination, but I would pick human and modify them.
Why human?
Physically They are good all rounded, can adapt to environment and have extreme endurance.
They also are outstanding in terms of intelligence and decision-making plus are naturally social and are exceptional for group cooperation.
In terms of reproduction human are slow to growth but nevertheless you can make billions of them in a century. Humanity went from 1 billions in 1927 to almost 8 billions now.
What I would change ?
I have to say that in my opinion all the following is unethical and that I do not endorse it.
First slight tweaking physically with genetic engineering not much but better senses (smell vision hearing), no more cramp, better physics overall, reflexe strength.
Better immune and digestive system.
Also you may want to increase the proportion of sociopathic people in this population as they can have normal social relationship but have less emotion and experience regrets differently.
It might be tempting to make super soldier, but you want an army not special forces. Keep In mind that you will need to feed them and that logistic is a limiting factor, so I won't increase physics and size yo much because of this.
Better food absorption and starvation resistance genes.
Selective breeding in addition.
If you can also increase the loyalty and stubbornness.
Do not reduce pain, as it is important for self-preservation.
Education and culture are essential here:
You want to make fanatics dedicated to your cause.
But they have to be soldier, adapt to the battlefield, have competent officer. So, a solution is to organize them in an all militaristic society where service and death for the creator war is paramount honor. With indoctrination and training from childhood and selection of the smarter/strongest/wisest for NCO and officer.
Furthermore, an army need a multiple of role, by not making clone and letting them as a society select and organize they will the pick the best individuals for the job.
Lastly, Individuals that are deemed unworthy of service can always be use as worker.
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* **Either fast reproduction or regeneration**. They accomplish the same effect of keeping your army full after a battle, but the regeneration make it so that your soldiers don't die often rather that replacing them with fresh troops. Personally I would go with regeneration since battle-hardened veterans are better than new troops and you get them in a few weeks rather than years to grow and train new recruits. Both would be too much to handle.
* **Superior immune system and hygiene**. More soldier die from diseases and infections than from the actual battles. Diseases spread like crazy when there are lots of people in close contact and in less than optimal health standards (aka an army). You want to minimize your overall losses.
* **Cost effectiveness**. If you have a supersoldier that can defeat 20x more enemies than your regular troops, but he also eat for 30 regular troops, you are better off with your regulars. In an army, supply is king, you need that each new mouth is worth the supplies that it will consume (food, equipment, etc).
* **Iron nerves**. Few battles are fight to the last man standing, or even until one of the sides can no longer turn the battle around. Most battle end because they got demoralized and routed, with few actual dead in relative terms. The victory should not come at any cost though, that's a pyrrhic victory. Sometimes its better to cut your losses, even if you are winning.
* **Social Cohesion**. You have to much external conflicts already, the last thing you want is for your armies to start fighting each other. Social cohesion is a good indicator of internal stability and cooperation. This specie should instinctively have a strong group bond with the whole specie. Naturally evolved races wouldn't have it since their history would be full of internal conflicts due to competition.
* **Obedience and discipline**. You want soldiers, not warriors. This is a big difference: warriors do best in small conflicts were individual skill can turn the tide, but a soldiers, while it may be weaker on its own, will fight in a formation where everyone support each other and follow the orders of its commander without questioning. In a way, both have its uses, warriors make better body guards for instance, but overall you want soldiers for warfare as they will.
Notice that intelligence is optional, you can either have than be intelligent like goblins, orcs, etc... or go with a war beast approach, where they are essentially the darklord warhounds. You can also have multiple races or a single race with polymorphism to specialize in determined roles, I listed the characteristics you want in the soldiers, but you will also need officers, generals, supply managers, etc... I also assume you can enslave your enemies to take care of the work that its not war.
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Now for which animal group would be better, this entirely depend on what you want and will allow in your world.
**Mammals** are bad at fast reproduction and regeneration, but the will not be crippled by cold weather.
**Avians** are similar, but better at reproduction.
**Reptiles** are also bed a reproduction, but better at regeneration.
**Amphibians** can do both reproduction and regeneration very well.
**Arthropods** are good at reproduction and come with some build-in armour, plus they have proven to be able to do social cohesion and iron nerves. Not sure about regeneration, but structurally they can't reach human-ish sizes due to respiratory constrains.
All things consider, quantity always beat quality if the mass do not flee when they see the first few hordes being slaughtered. And, since small means cheap, technically an army of wasps with lethal venom or rats with thine poison spears would be the ultimate fighting force. **Silly, but dangerous nonetheless.**
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At the end of the day, those creatures are as effective in waging war - or any other task - as their creator writes them to be.
For an obvious, recent example consider the various species/tribes/hordes in *Game of Thrones*.
Long before, consider the different effectiveness of Alexander's few Greeks against the uncountable Persian hordes? Consider how history suggests a few hundred Romans wiped out prolly 80,000 Britons.
When you have an idea for a story, write it. Question anything only when he wheels actually fall off… preferably not even when your wagons merely get bogged down.
Please remember, what you take in your stride, most readers will happily take in theirs, while what you merely stumble on, they will sprawl over.
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So in this fantasy world there's a region populated by sapient parrots as well as humans. The parrots are equally as intelligent as humans & fully capable of human conversation. The tech level is early modern, so warfare is fought primarily with muskets,cannon, & bayonet.
At least some of the powers in the region are egalitarian enough that parrots in command positions isn't unheard of. Since this is a geographic region rather than a single nation assume most conflicts have parrots on both sides & the militaries operate & strategize accordingly.
Obviously scouts and messengers are the most natural roles for them, but what would be some less obvious ones?
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Trap/mine de-fusing. They are too light to trip most traps, and they can fly over triggers to get to the best spot to defuse stuff.
Rear attack. Obviously it's wonderful to attack your enemy from multiple sides simultaneously, but often it's difficult to 1) get troops in a separate position safely, 2) get troops out of that position safely. *Parrots can fly*. Even though they are not as strong as humans, being attacked from behind by a parrot is not something you can just ignore, especially if you are also trying to fire your weapon forward somewhat accurately at the same time. (Your enemy will start fortifying their emplacements against this kind of attack, but that's more time they have to spend on something that doesn't directly advance their position, which is still good for you. And if they try to skip that, deploy the winged forces.)
Not just forward scouting, but also sentry duty. It's going to be really hard to stay hidden from sentries who are flying.
Balloonist. Obviously parrots have a hard time carrying something heavy like a large shell full of explosives, and balloons are unreliable in that they tend to go in random directions. But if you harness up a team of parrots to a balloon, they can drag some heavy object out over the enemy, pop the balloon, and give the enemy the middle wing-tip as they fly away. (You might want some kind of safety harness where they can quickly release in case the balloon pops prematurely.)
Range-finder. They are good with wind somehow (not sure this has a factual basis, but we'll go with it) and they have good vision so they are good at figuring out what adjustments to make to artillery in order to actually hit the target. Plus, they can fly, so they can get a much better idea of where it's actually hitting and yell down things like "half a degree to the left and 80 feet further out". (Depending on how early early-modern is, this could even just be ballista or something.)
Less obvious non-combat duties:
Medical. Of course you have parrots working in the field hospitals as regular physicians and nurses, but they're also really valuable as first aid medics on the battlefield. They are really fast, especially if there are debris on the ground in the way, lots of people have had their lives saved by a parrot with some bandages.
Camouflage. They have better color vision than humans, and they can see what they're working on from more angles, and they're more mobile so they can work with multiple groups, moving from place to place as needed. Most camouflage artists are parrots.
Clergy. They're not particularly more effective than humans at this, but they're also not any less effective. (And, as mentioned in another answer, they are much cheaper to feed/house/etc. than a human, so any task where you can swap 1-1 parrot to human, definitely use the parrots.)
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**Cartographer/Surveyor**
Related to their ability to act as aerial scouts, being able to see terrain from the air also provides them the ability to help map an area and investigate points of interest in peacetime. Having trustworthy maps helps both civil authorities administer their region and helps military forces navigate and plan battles.
**Saboteurs**
While the carrying capacity of a parrot may not be much, it's enough to carry a few matches to kindle fires in enemy towns / forts / encampments, do the same to enemy ships in a port (wooden ships are highly flammable), deliver a couple of poisoned caltrops, drop something nasty into an enemy well, etc.
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## Mental support
War veterans are sometimes given an animal to help with their recovery from the war experience. Parrots are incredibly cute and funny animals. Because of their small size they won't need as much food as say a dog. And since parrots can learn to speak, they might be taught to talk with soldiers to relieve stress.
Here is an example of using parrots for retired soldiers: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANpg3_oLxFc>
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You might count this as just scouting, but feigning scouting can be just as useful. Let your enemies learn that you scout them with your parrots before every assault. Once they've learned your modus operandi, you can now use your parrots in deception. Every time they see one, they will think an attack is coming. So send parrots to targets you have no intent to attack, and they will move their forces to respond to an attack that will never come. Then you attack the real, now-undefended target.
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# Translators
During WW2 the US sent some native americans into the field. They would relay info to the base in their native languages, and someone else from the same tribe would translate back to English at HQ. This proved to be better than encrypting the messages: encryption could be broken, but the axis didn't have a single Iroquois translator available.
Your psitacean agents could play a similar role, but using parrot language which would be even harder to decode.
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# Miner's Canary
Hey, is that gas coming out those grenades poisonous? Let private Polly find out.
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# Mail pigeons
With the advantage that parrot agents also support voice messaging.
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# Undermine enemy morale
Few things are as humiliating as being called a loser by a talking bird.
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This sapient species can do any none manual task a human can, why are they limited to this one area in the world unless under some form of slavery/less than human status? If parrots really are of equal intellect to humans then logically she/he could do most any none manual task a human can. From leading an army to a desk clerk or a scientist to a spy.
The parrot people may look different than us but don't mistake a small size for a lack of capability.
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If your parrots can mimic human speech well enough, they could cause chaos in low-visibility scenarios (night, fog, the chaos of combat) by impersonating enemy troops and commanders and shouting out orders.
It would be harder to pull off in pitched battles, but if you have small groups who are operating at night, you might be able to confuse or misdirect them, or even to get them to open fire on each other. Even just flying into an enemy camp under cover of night and then shouting that they're under attack is going to be pretty disruptive.
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You don't have military marching bands, you have feathered military **choirs**
'Let the eagle shriek from lofty peak;
The never-ending watchword of our land;
Let summer breeze waft through the trees'; ....
ta da, ta da, ta da,
Think of the awe inspiring parades you could have!
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**Gunners**
At first sight, a parrot is too small to wield a rifle. But, affix the weapon to a cart. Place a gimbal right at the rifle's center of gravity so it is perfectly balanced and can easily swivel up/down and left/right. Because of the balance it then takes very little strength to adjust the aim of the weapon and pull the trigger. Many such parrot rifles can be mounted on a single cart.
Compared to human gunners:
* Parrots require less food. This makes them cheaper soldiers and makes logistics easier.
* Parrots are smaller targets, which keeps them safer in a gunfight.
The downside is that the cart-mounted rifle would be somewhat more expensive than a rifle designed to be carried by a human, and not as mobile (a human would be needed to pull/drive the cart). But this may be outweighed by the decreased personnel costs.
Another concept: instead of mounting the parrot rifle on a cart, mount it on a harness on a human soldier, so each human has a parrot on his shoulder adding more firepower.
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They could trigger traps and defensive devices built by humans.
They could forage for food for the army: collecting nuts and fruits.
They could be officers, or other roles that are more intellectual than physical.
While scouting, they can mark trails/ features with some sort of code.
Think real life trail markers or shadow marks.
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Leaders and Commanders
Given the parrots have the same abilities to understand tactics and strategy,
they have some distinct advantages:
* they're smaller and less easy to take out
* they can get an overview of the situation from an aerial perspective
* if things go awry, they'll have a much better chance of escaping
* They can more easily get around on the battlefield, no need to cart them there
* As mentioned elsewhere, they need less food
* This may sound cruel, but it may be easier for them to keep up a certain emotional detachment and give orders that leads to deaths, due to the humans being another race entirely ( this may differ )
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## Blasphemy
Parrots are loud and they are small and they can evade in three dimensions. They can exhaust the Taliban's ammunition while joyfully evangelizing their beliefs.
## Bombing runs
Where there are muskets and cannons, there are large, glorious barrels of black powder. Armed with a clawful of leaden darts each equipped with a single perfect ember, the parrot can bring instant despair to the enemy camp.
## Eyes
Whenever the enemy would like some shut-eye, it falls to the brave parrot to open it with his talons. But he must be very quick in his unarmed combat, and quick to fly away!
## CBW
Parrots don't catch smallpox. They are vulnerable to botulism, but they know better than to eat before they wash up.
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The moon has an effect on the mana content of an individual. During high tides, a person's mana increases and becomes more powerful. This is the time in which more powerful spells can usually be performed, as a person's power reaches its crescendo. During low tides, mana decreases. However, the times in which your mana reaches its highest or lowest point are dependent on the celestial alignment at the moment of your birth. Low tides are linked specifically to the individual, and occur when the exact celestial alignment occurs again. Due to this fact, the times of increases and decreases of mana will vary from witch to witch.
The exception to this are those born during a solar eclipse. These individuals never experience low tides, and are born with significantly higher mana content than other children. Witches born during this period enjoy a constant balance of high mana compared to their compatriots, who must deal with their mana going up and down consistently. Knowing humans, many parents would obviously prefer that their kids would be born around this time. Mothers would take steps to give their offspring any advantage they could in life. As predicting eclipses are easy, witches would go out of their way to plan ahead when children are conceived, in order to align their birth with a solar event.
I would like to prevent a mad dash to have kids around this time, as these kids should be considered lucky rather than planned out. Witches should be discouraged from taking advantage of the cosmology. Is there any way to prevent this?
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# Not possible as suggested. People *will* game the system.
When it comes to pregnancy and childbirth, there are many a danger to both mothers and children. Yet that hasn't stopped people trying to "game" it and try to get something more out of it *for millennia*.
Other answers suggest some sort of rationality from people at large yet even in *our world* we have had parents try to get benefit from their progeny. Sometimes it's real, like [The Great Stork Derby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stork_Derby) from the early 20th century but that's one of the few cases where the parents had a tangible benefit in front of them.
There are many folk beliefs and practices that have no basis in reality whatsoever, yet mothers subject themselves and their unborn for supposed benefit:
* some milder variants are just fortune reading or horoscopes. They don't require anything from the parent and child and are shown to be completely unreliable. Yet the practice continues to this day and is quite popular. In some (admittedly rare) cases, a potential parent will try to "influence" the fate of their child by trying to bring it on a specific date, so perhaps they would be born under a different sign or otherwise will get a different fortune reading.
* speaking of trying to bring children on specific times - there have been a lot of cases of this over the years. It doesn't have to be tied to fortune reading - some parents would try to bring their children on a specific holiday (so, the child might be blessed or protected in some way) or perhaps *avoid* some supposedly bad days (when it would be cursed in some way). And there are many other reasons to assign special meaning to a birth date. Again, there is nothing tangible or real behind this yet parents *have* been trying to force a birth despite this.
* some folk beliefs aren't that much about the *birth* itself but might assign special meaning to actions the mother does during the pregnancy. These include practices supposed to grant the child some benefit (beauty, strength, intelligence, courage, luck, etc.) or avoid some potential harm (laziness, cowardice, stupidity, ugliness, misfortune, etc.). Yet again, there is no actual link between the practice and the supposed quality it would give or avoid, yet parents *have* and *do* practice these. So milder variations might have the mother do or avoid doing something that's ultimately of no consequence. But some practices might involve the mother imbibe poisonous, toxic, or otherwise dangerous substances. Or even harm herself and/or the baby physically. Some of the practices are not very pretty and luckily are mostly left in the past, yet even today there are home made pregnancy tests and even tests for the sex of the baby...
* ...home made *anything* related to pregnancy has the potential to be harmful. These home made recipes are still widely practised today but have their roots in ages past. Most of these have reliability less than 50% - pregnancy tests, tests for the sex of the baby, recipes that are supposed to help the mother or the child, recipes supposed to protect, etc. The sort of common thing between them is that they require mostly everyday stuff. Maybe *bleach* which can be highly dangerous, maybe some salt which isn't. Some foods might be preferred or avoided which, at best, has no relevance, but might deprive the mother and/or child of valuable nutrients.
So, for *ages* people have tried to influence the pregnancy and birth to result in some benefit, even when they can't or actually harm the mother and/or child. If there is any real benefit to be had, they'd intensify their efforts.
At the *very least*, you can expect more pregnancies and births. So, perhaps you can see a lot of polygyny relationships where one man has many women as spouses, so if at least one gives birth to a child at the right time, the whole family benefits. If we take this a step further, it could be applied to a whole community - if at least one child in the village is born at the right time, it would be of great boon to the whole village, as their protector. So, the village can only benefit of many pregnancies.
This...could turn dark. So here is the thing - pregnancy and birth are a potential problem to the woman. Even today there are many dangers. Not sure the exact state of medicine in your world but I'd expect there to still be dangers. So, of the father cares about the (future) mother, they won't take the decision to have a baby lightly. I'd avoid most of the details, but let's say that if the father *didn't* care about the (future) mother, they would be free to take the decision to have a baby together. The woman doesn't exactly need to have a choice in the matter. Men can take concubines to have children with and then just "adopt" the right child into their own family. The concubines could be slaves. Or worse.
So, overall, people *will* be trying to get a powerful child as it's a real benefit to themselves, their family, and their community. That is *despite* the potential problems the birth can pose to the mother. Thus, the system where everybody has a shot at getting a powerful child, instead of that being a lucky occurrence, cannot work.
There is a way to preserve the overall idea but...
# You have to change the system
The major problem is that *everyone* has a shot at giving birth to a powerful witch. And since the parameters are known (or can at least be guessed quite easily) then everybody can plan and act accordingly.
Here is some things you can do to make the powerful witch child a lucky occurence:
## Drop the solar eclipse requirement. Make it unpredictable
The problem is that it's too easy to aim for it. Even if there is no way to predict the correct time 9 months in advance, if it's calculable at any length of time, people will try to aim for it. Just try to space out the conceptions in a community within about a week of each other and you're set - there would be at least a few mothers that will be ready to give birth about every week, so whenever the even arrives, they'd try to induce an early birth.
So, it has to be completely unpredictable. Perhaps not until something like 5-10 minute window. That way, nobody will be able to plan and try to induce an early birth. It it might not even be a global event but something highly localised in some fashion. That way, even if people from city A don't get a powerful witch baby, they wouldn't be able to know that people from city B had the opportunity to get one.
In fact, it might be best if nobody is even aware that the baby is a powerful witch at birth. Because a rival city or family might try to kidnap the baby at the very least. So, it's better if only *later* does their power manifest. At least around 6-8 years old would be good enough to make it feel special and lucky.
People *will* still try to get advantage for their children. You cannot stop that - again, just look at the real world. However, if their efforts don't work, that would limit the risk they expose the mother and the baby to.
## Limit the pool of powerful witches
This could be an interesting way to keep the "lucky" element *and* keep the time of birth being predictable. Simply limit how many powerful witches can there be in the entire world.
As an example, in *Avatar: the Last Airbender* and the successor show *Legend of Korra* there is a single Avatar in the entire world. Once they die, a new one is born. This is heavily based on the [Dalai Lama](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalai_Lama) as the Avatar is partly a spiritual leader who reincarnates. At any rate, it's one way to make the "limited amount of witches available" - once one dies, they reincarnate. Or perhaps there is a different reason for the limit - maybe even unknown. It could be as weird as "there is only one per constellation and no more".
If you keep the celestial event requirement, then they can only reincarnate (or whatever the justification is for the limit) at that that point in time.
You can restrict on how many powerful witches can there be - only one, like in Avatar, or perhaps 100 or 10 000. Depends on how you want the story to go but you simply cannot have more than that number in the entire world. Or maybe there are very special requirement to join the ranks of the powerful witches and increase their number permanently. At any rate, even *if* one gives birth exactly on time, there is no guarantee that the child will have the powers of a powerful witch.
Do note, that this can put the witches at more risk. After all, if no more can be born *now*, then a simple solution is to kill one and plan a birth at the next significant celestial event. You can have quite good chances of success, then.
## Make the powerful witch highly dangerous
This can make the powerful witches feel special but in a completely different way. Simply *having them* might be bad news. They might lack morals, or lack restraints, or be highly volatile. Or any other thing to make them incredibly dangerous. In that case, having a powerful witch child might be more of a curse than a blessing.
Here are some possibilities
### Uncontrollable
The powerful witch can produce powerful magic but...not always what you want. Not always what even the witch wants.
* The magnitude of the spell they cast might be off - lighting a campfire and burning down the forest are both possibilities when they try to produce a flame.
* The effect might be unintended. Even *if* the witch wants to produce flame and can get the correct amount, perhaps sometimes they get a flock of birds in addition or *instead*. There can be all sorts of things that show up you don't want.
* The witch can manifest effects despite their wants or needs. They might need to work hard at controlling themselves to *not* randomly summon a lightning bolt or maybe there is no controlling that. Of particular problem might be times the witch is not in any control, for example when sleeping.
* The magic the powerful witch casts might be bound to very specific restrictions. Perhaps they cannot affect cold iron or anybody wearing it. Or people born on a Tuesday. Or other weird characteristics would come into play. So, while this might be reliably always the case, it's not going to be easy trying to determine the limits. Also, the conditions might switch. For extra fun (well, from out of world perspective) the powerful witch might get new sets of restrictions and rules for their magic *instead* of experiencing high and low tides. So, in effect, their magic might be powerful but would seem quite random from the outside. And they might not even be able to completely figure out the rules by the time a new switch comes in.
* The powerful witch itself might be rebellious and would simply despise following any rules or guidance. They would be unruly to such an extent that they won't be a boon to their community. Not for very long, at least.
### Unreliable
This is different to the above. Instead of the powerful witch being sort of random, they would be consistent...but ultimately not very useful:
* The powerful witch has exceptional magical talents at their disposal. However, instead of being a boon to their community with their spells, the witch is lost within the world of magic. Daydreaming, fantasising, absent-minded, lost within the world of magic. It's exceptionally hard to make them focus on the real world and harder still to keep their attention there enough to ask them to do something for you.
* the powerful witch might be bound by different rules of magic permanently. So, even if they cast the same spell as a "normal" witch, they'd get a different effect. The difference in this scenario could be that it's not random...but it's still sufficiently different that it makes learning and using magic much harder. Imagine if there is a brilliant mathematician but *for them* calculating 2+2 always yields 5. A triangle for them will also somehow have two sides. The rules just don't work the same as for anybody else. So, they can still be of benefit but it's hard to work together and especially hard to get a specific effect.
* The witch just cannot understand others. Either cannot relate, or tends to misinterpret, or literally is unable to comprehend communication. It makes the powerful witch exceptionally hard to deal with.
### Evil
As an example, the tabletop game *Mage: the Ascension* has the widderslainte. These are mages who followed a dark path in a past life and managed to permanently taint themselves and essentially turn to evil magic. Once they reincarnate, they don't remember any of this but are still evil and uncontrollable psychopaths even as *normal* mortals before the Awaken (read: become mages). Once they do, any magic they cast is evil and twisted. In the Mage cosmology, the source of magic is sort of separate from the human who wields it. So, it's in theory possible for the *human* to be redeemed (but exceptionally hard), yet they cannot cast anything but magic that is corrupt and brings harm and ruin to the world. Even killing a widderslainte doesn't help much as they would just reincarnate and you'd have to face them again.
So, working with "widderslainte"-like idea - perhaps the powerful witches are also unable to do anything but harm. So, having one in your community is probably *bad*. If they not only wield "bad magic" but are also bad *people*, you definitely don't want them around your family or your community. Just imagine a bunch of little Damiens from *The Omen*.
This has to actually be counter-balanced in some fashion because of the powerful witches are so undesirable, people will steer way clear from giving birth to more and can even just kill the child young or even the *mother* than let one loose in the world.
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Solar eclipses on Earth are quite rare already and short (less than two hours). Only one in 25 pregnancies ends in exactly 280 days (the average), that means even if you time the fertilization right, chances on success are at most 1 in 400. (Less if the mother isn't fertile 280 days before the eclipse.)
Giving birth is already dangerous, but suppose there's some magic involved such that during an eclipse this danger is greatly increased, to the point of likely killing mother and/or child. That would actually *discourage* partners to plan births during eclipses; only unplanned births (perhaps by less educated couples) would have a chance to occur during an eclipse.
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You need two things:
1. Give the world multiple suns. An eclipse is only when only one is in the sky and the moon covers it. With three-or-more body problem, the eclipses become impossible to predict... even with modern computers it’s near impossible.
2. Any child born by cesarean section has no magic. Magic requires a hormonal change in the mother that only happens during actual birth. Once they have the medical tech to induce births, you may have a problem (you’ll need another explanation).
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The celestial events at birth are just a coincidence. What's *important* is celestial events at the moment of **conception**. (Or, alternatively, a specific moment after conception when the embryo develops enough complexity to begin forming/hosting a soul - perhaps 27 days? Assuming that 3 is a magically powerful number, and 33 is more so...)
After copulation, conception (fertilization and implantation of the egg) can take place anywhere from a couple of minutes, all the way up to *5 days* later. This makes controlling the time a *lot* more difficult than simply getting roughly in the right ballpark and inducing/preventing labour according to a "magic moment".
Due to this delay between the visible act that kicks things off, and the important one that actually determines mana content, it has been overlooked - and everyone is obsessed about the completely irrelevant moment of birth.
(This then lets you set up a character who was born several months premature - both physically weak in early life, and *believed* to have a low mana content, they are surprisingly powerful once they grow up...)
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My suggestion is rather straightforward: specify that a total eclipse is required at the relevant point in childbirth, and you're good to go, for several reasons.
**One**: Biology does not tend to be perfectly predictable; you don't need magic to impose severe limits. Conception is by no means guaranteed on any given day in humans. Childbirth can happen in a fairly wide window (several weeks of variation, even before you include premature births). Childbirth itself certainly does not take a fixed amount of time. Put the points together, and only a fraction of those who plan for a child to be born on a specific day will actually manage that feat.
**Two**: A partial solar eclipse is fairly straightforward, but (assuming that this is functionally Earth) you are limited to at most two total eclipses per year, and they cover a comparatively tiny section of the planet's surface; any given location will only ever see a few total eclipses in an individual's lifetime. There's just not going to be that many opportunities for any one community to even try for a child during the eclipse.
**Three**: A total solar eclipse **lasts for all of eight minutes** at any given point. Even if we assume a thousand mothers give birth on the same day at the same place (fat chance of that), on average only about five or six children (assuming each mother gives birth to one living child; twins, stillbirths, etc., could affect the numbers) will be born in those crucial few minutes. Even with modern medicine, I'm pretty sure birth cannot be induced for so precise a timing. Even a C-section is unlikely to be that exact, never mind the fact that that is actually a very hazardous operation in older times that often killed the mother (or the magical ramifications of circumventing the normal process of childbirth, which are whatever you want them to be and could easily include weakened or nonexistent magic).
**Four**: You say that the solar eclipse needs to be when the child is born. At what instant is that defined for magical purposes, seeing as childbirth can go on for hours? Is it when labor starts? When the mother's water breaks? When the baby enters the world? It doesn't particularly matter for this answer which one you pick, as long as you pick a point and run with it.
**Conclusion**: You don't even need to discourage parents from trying to exploit the eclipse, and in fact it makes for an interesting source of conflict (read: excellent plot material) as parents try to manage it. Almost always, they're going to miss that crucial slice of opportunity no matter how hard they strive to catch it. Lots of potential for bitterness, angry parents (especially royalty), etc., so use it!
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Various answers to this will probably require the world to either not be as you've described it in some detail, or to add other details.
For instance:
* What if eclipses *aren't* easy to predict? Frankly, it wasn't until the 1500s that Western civilization rediscovered the heliocentric theory and solidified the math of orbital motion behind it, and it wasn't until the 1800s that the knowledge of what caused eclipses and they weren't the end of the world became common enough that men didn't kill their whole families to save them from the apocalypse when they saw one.
+ That might not make sense in your universe given the importance of what an eclipse does, however what if your planet doesn't have its own moon? What if eclipses are caused by an occlusion of the Sun by another planet, like a gas giant, which orbits the Sun within your planet's orbit in a more complex precessing pattern, and is hard to observe when not close to eclipse? What if the resulting eclipses are so far apart that they, and the people born under them, are the stuff of legend passed down from your great-great-grandmother's generation?
* What if gestation period wasn't predictable? It's practically impossible for even modern humans to predict a natural childbirth *to the day* (elective Cesarean is "cheating" in this regard, and you might make it so that medical intervention to induce labor spoils the effect in your universe). Gestation times might vary widely between women or even between pregnancies due to the influence of their magical powers or other handwaves like genetic variation in the population; so, even knowing that an eclipse is likely within the average gestation window, it would be useless to try to figure out the exact day or month you should try to get pregnant in order to even have a better chance of giving birth *at the exact moment* of an eclipse.
+ Along similar lines what if the eclipse itself caused magical changes that affected pregnancy? Even if your due date *was* on the day of an eclipse, the impending eclipse would push onset of labor to either side of it, inducing mothers early who are further along before the full eclipse, and/or delaying other mothers' labor days or weeks, making it that much rarer for a mother to fall right on the knife's edge and give birth during the eclipse?
* What if there's a tradeoff? There commonly is a balance in human traits between things we value and things we avoid. Exceptionally high intelligence stereotypically comes with a dearth in social or soft skills and in physical strength, the extreme being savant syndrome which is often co-diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. In your universe, someone born under an eclipse might gain a stably high level of magical capacity (mana), but this blessing could be its own curse:
+ The higher mana levels might cause mental or emotional instability.
+ The higher mana may require the person to use magic uncommonly frequently to keep their mana from "overflowing" with destructive consequences (which could violate social conventions or taboos about the use of magic, like not "showing off", that makes them a pariah).
+ Mana may interfere with physical development, so eclipse mages are frozen in a childhood form, or conversely age very rapidly (whether this affects actual lifespan is your prerogative).
+ Higher natural mana may make the person physically frail their whole lives, unable to do much of anything *except* by using magic.
+ The higher natural mana may be coupled with a magical version of savant syndrome; the eclipse mage might be exceptionally gifted not only with a higher natural supply of mana but with a talent for a specific type or school of magic, but they are far less talented or even incapable of even the simplest spells of another basic realm of magic. Meanwhile other mages are "jacks-of-all-trades", with competency in multiple magical areas, nothing world-shattering but definitely enough to handle themselves in general.
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## They're not given a choice of birth date.
An ancient and powerful spell covers the entire world. When someone wishes to have a child, they perform a ritual and recieve two dates - a date of conception and a date of birth. It is impossible to become pregnant outside of your day of conception, and you will give birth on your day of birth. Trying to circumvent the day of birth is... unwise. The best case scenario is that the child dies during the attempted induced labor or c-section.
Nobody knows where the spell came from. The leading theory is that the witches in deep antiquity created it to solve the problem of eclipse babies, but another popular theory was that it exists to prevent unwanted pregnancies. (It is not entirely successful at that. Never underestimate humanity's ability to frustrate even the most idiot-proof systems.)
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In addition to all proposed solutions, you could add a sort of clause.
**The birth has to be natural.**
If the mother tries to force the birth of her offspring prematurely in order to make it coincide with a celestial event, it will interfere with *destiny*, or *the natural order of things* and render her baby a creature incapable of performing magic (or less attuned to magic, if you wish).
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You need to consider two points.
1) Why is it a problem? (To the society, and to you as an author.) If there is a system, people will attempt to game it. That's just natural, people send their kids to Eton to try to give them a better chance at life and I would expect if they can game the birth system to give their children a better chance at being powerful mages then they would do so. I don't see who loses out - the parents get a baby with better life chances, the society becomes more powerful because it has a greater number of powerful mages, and the babies who are not born at the correct time are no more disadvantaged than they were before (and perhaps less so, because if there are more powerful mages around then there is greater competition so the prices of mage services should decrease).
2) What specific aspect of being born is it that triggers the person's mana level, *and how*? On one hand, the baby is already fully formed before the time of birth and there is no substantive physiological difference between the unborn baby at t-1 day and at t+5 minutes. On the other hand, birth is traumatic. You get squeezed through a small tube, go from a comfortable warm place into a cold place, have to breathe for yourself, no longer receive nutrients through the umbilical cord and so on. So perhaps it's this moment of trauma that sparks something in the mind and establishes the connection with mana. Babies born by Caesarean section experience less trauma than vaginally delivered babies, and perhaps C-section babies, even if born at the correct time, do not bind to the mana to the same extent. Natural birth is difficult enough to predict that if the mana binding requires the trauma of natural birth then you don't really have a problem. (I guess if that's the case it could lead to the awful prospect of people trying to game the system by beating their C-section delivered newborns to increase the trauma, which would be horrible.)
3) Balance the gift some other way. Perhaps babies most closely attuned to the mana are limited in some other way. The connection might stunt their growth: the idea of mighty but physically puny wizard is already pretty much stereotypical. Or perhaps it renders them infertile. Mages then would be respected for their magic powers but not necessarily all-powerful or even particularly envied.
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Solutions:
1) **Make it less predictable.** Add more satellites to the planet, to calculate orbits of more than 2 bodies is actually hard!
2) **The Government actively hunts eclipse babies.** They are feared and coveted, some groups hunt them to kill, other to forcibly recruit them.
3) **Only naturaly born on the eclipse count.** Eclipses last mere minutes, and it is impossible to calculate conception with such exactitude. Artificialy born in eclipses (C-section or the such) behalve like every other witch.
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I have 3 suggestions, none without their problems.
**1. People don't know about the eclipse correlation**
The first possibility is that while this does occur, people don't know that a solar eclipse is the cause and just think that these people are lucky. Of course it might be difficult to prevent them from finding out, especially if it's a sort of enlightened, scientifically minded society, as they might be trying to figure it out.
But the occurrence is so rare that it wouldn't be noticeable to an individual, only to someone who did a survey of many such children with this power. And depending on the type of society we live in, this research might not be carried out, or might be carried out by only someone with the wisdom to recognise your concern (perhaps by these witches themselves) and it remains a closely guarded secret.
**2. Economy II**
(Inspired by kleer001's answer)
Demand on maternity services increases around eclipse time (and maybe the process is more complicated given all the magical stuff going on) so parents have to pay a lot of money to have a baby delivered around this time. This would discourage them from planning a baby at this time. Of course this will just result in mainly rich children gaining the benefit. Not the kind of luck you're thinking of, I think.
**3. True love / lust is also required at conception**
You could add a condition - that the child must be conceived in an act of passion/love/lust - practical considerations must not be on their minds. This would rule out forward planners, but also possibly most planned pregnancies whether the date is on their mind or not.
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I've found that in worldbuilding there are few problems that cannot be solved by a massive, worldwide, theocratic bureaucracy. You need one randomly selected person from each town to be executed at the end of every year that begins on a Friday? Massive theocracy. You need an entire country to refuse to leave their houses on the first day of every month? Massive theocracy. You need people to wander into the desert on their sixteenth birthday, get high on weed for a week, and then come back? OK, technically that can just be sixteen-year-olds under their own initiative, but you see the point. The solution in this specific case is quite simple. You want an ordinary number of births during the eclipse, and for those who are born during the eclipse to be considered lucky.
All we need is for that Perfectly Legitimate, Ordinary Theocracy, aka a Diety-worshiping Establishment of Very Interesting, Completely non-Evil bureaucrats (henceforth PLOT DEVICE), to carefully take account the number of births throughout the time between eclipses. Then, 42 weeks before the next eclipse, the members of PLOT DEVICE divide this number by the number of days that have elapsed since the last eclipse, to get an average number of babies per day. They then proceed to separate all men and women into distinct groups throughout the entire world, with no intermingling, for four weeks. The only exception is a number of couples, chosen by random lot from all interested couples, equal to the number of babies required for that four-week period, as previously calculated by PLOT DEVICE, multiplied by a "fudge factor" for couples that fail to conceive. Then, nine months later, the babies are born, roughly within that four week period, with some overlap around the edges. Almost all babies born on the day of the eclipse are babies from those couples chosen randomly, thus, such babies are seen as lucky (having been born to lucky parents), and we get no unusual spike in childbirths.
Tada, all our problems are solved by a massive worldwide theocracy. Why does the theocracy do this? Because their deity told them to. That's been a good enough justification for ritually murdering tens of thousands of people each year, it's good enough for this too.
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There's a great downside--the child's power comes at the expense of the mother's power. The child always has high manna--so the mother always has low manna.
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Two things, I think, would help your plan.
First, you'd need to have a penalty for trying - if there's no cost, and possible gain, from having a baby around that time, then that's what folk will do.
One option may be children who will be born near-but-not-exactly-on-the-eclipse are generally weak, unlucky, low manna, etc. Various methods of interfering with pregnancy or birth to try and force a specific outcome may negate the potential for eclipse-born, or guarantee bad luck/low manna, or something. If the gamble is very unlikely to be (very) good for a kid vs very likely to be (very) bad for the kid, well, that'll change people's risk assessments, and so fewer kids will be born around that time (as much as folk can manage). It might not be enough on its own, but it can help... especially if one does another thing:
The other thing is, you can take that chance of bad luck and think to ask what folk *do* know. If the timing surrounding an eclipse is very broad for bad luck/low manna, and narrow for good luck high manna (someone else was saying eight minutes?), if folk are relying on tradition from before people have precise-to-the-minute clocks in widespread use and the skills to use statistics, if there's no really strong reason what folk would "know" would be accurate... well, everyone knows eclipses are very bad times for childbirth, the babies have low mana and bad luck, really, who would *ever* want their kid born anywhere near that time - um, no one! Oh, now and then you'll get an odd exception that has high manna and tons of luck, but folk wouldn't necessarily know *why* (especially before time was tracked with minute-precision). Maybe it was the parents, or fate, or suspiciously-specific rituals, or ancestor-spirits, or the meddling of gods that cause this child or that to be the exception.
To be fair, you'd still get folk trying to game the system (some might even succeed). but most wouldn't know what system to game, whether it's precise timing or rituals or sacrifices or bloodlines or talismans or various things done/not done along the way. Folk might figure it out once birth times are routinely tracked, and eclipse times (to the minute) are recorded, and someone runs a statistics search... but by then most would already have found something to believe from the traditions and rituals and explanations of older history.
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# Unpredictable gestation periods
In our world, babies are in the womb for more or less the same average time, regardless. No matter what the pedigree of the child, it always takes approximately the same amount of time (ignoring preemies and what have you.)
Your world doesn't have to follow this. It can differ from ours however you like.
So change it. In the one extreme, a few instances have been recorded where a child has to have been conceived *at most* a mere one month before being born. But women are *also* regularly with child for more than a year, and the most extreme verified case is more than three.
What's most important for your problem is that the [standard deviation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation) is large, and that it not be predictable. People in the world can't be able to say "well, John and Leah's last two children were both 10-monthers, so their next child will probably be 9 to 11 months". It needs to be so random as to be essentially unpredictable.
If the "average pregnancy" lasts, say, nine months - but comes with a "plus or minus six months" qualification, it is essentially impossible to predict when any given child will be born, and thus the system cannot be gamed.
This also gives you an opportunity to divvy out abilities and skills, by associating types of magic to specific gestation periods, but specify so little is understood about how to affect gestation periods that it is effectively uncontrollable.
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**Economy.**
Have these Eclipse born also get some kind of balancing detriment. Maybe their mana is larger to begin with but takes longer to resupply? Maybe their spells are less likely to work? Maybe they're outcasts as everyone is afraid of them?
You should be doing this with your magic system on the whole...
That is managing your **costs** to balance with their **benefits**.
**Brandon Sanderson does a great job of this:**
<https://coppermind.net/wiki/Sanderson%27s_Laws_of_Magic>
Another good source:
<https://mythcreants.com/blog/how-to-create-a-rational-magic-system/>
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[
So I am finishing up a functional concept of an alien I have been working on (a large semi-aquatic amphibian) and I am at the final piece of the puzzle. Their sails.
I wanted these creatures to evolve spinal sails but didn't have a use for them yet (which I later came up with a way to incorperate it into how they use wasted energy and food). But I am curious if they would have a use for two more sails on its side, close to the center of the spine then going out diagonally but I am having trouble as to a possible use for said sails. If used for display it would probably use the larger, central sail for that so I'm curious to see other possibilities for this evolution... if possible.
Edit: Thank you everyone for all the suggestion. Some pointed out the sails could be for heat, some for movement, and others for just sexual attraction. But in the end I decided to turn their sub sails into a super respiration system. Thank you all once again.
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# Gills
You know what else takes lots of surface area? Respiration. The alveoli in land animal lungs have a huge surface area to allow the exchange of oxygen and CO2 with the blood (there is no active pumping of these gases, it's just driven by diffusion). Fish gills also have a relatively large surface area for the same reason.
What would lead to an aquatic animal evolving super-gills? Well, the same thing that led to the evolution of lungs mostly. If they are large animals, the cube-square law dictates that you need relatively larger respiration area to maintain the same metabolism rate. And maybe they are evolved to have higher-than-average metabolism for any number of reasons like maintaining efficient homeostasis in extreme temperatures, or traveling long distances at high speed, or maybe powering an oversized brain.
As a bonus, if the sailgills are meant to be exposed to air, the available oxygen content is higher, which could allow even greater respiration. But you don't want your gill membranes to completely dry out, so you have to rotate the exposed surface back into the water, which gives you the spiral pattern. If this also provides propulsion, you could have a species of slowly spinning creatures, idly sailing across the oceans while pondering the mysteries of the cosmos with their overpowered brains.
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In real-world biology, Sails are all about adding to surface-area.
They're usually for either catching the wind or for temperature control.
Aquatic animals with sails include the Portuguese Man of War, a Jellyfish which tends to float on the surface and uses a large frilly dorsal fin as a sail to navigate and propel itself.
More lizardlike, the Spinosaurus used its large spinal sail primarily for temperature control.
If you've got multiple sails, it's because your creature needs either more surface area to control its temperature with, or it uses the additional sails to steer while the main one is the larger one that does most of the wind-catching.
In addition to those, large areas of the body can often serve as a signalling organ, either for Mating Displays or for communication over long distances. In that regard, having the central sail be brightly coloured with dramatic patterns, and then having the two secondary sails able to close up around it to conceal or reveal the pattern would serve to provide camouflage when not displaying and could be flashed as part of a Mating display.
See for example, brightly coloured butterflies that can fold their wings together to conceal themselves from predators.
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An unsual option predicated on more-surface-area-is-better: **water collection**.
In the Namib Desert on the coast of southern Africa, precipitation is very rare - but a fog rolls in from the coast for a few hours most mornings. There is a species of [darkling beetle](https://www.pubfacts.com/detail/20637085/Fog-basking-behaviour-and-water-collection-efficiency-in-Namib-Desert-Darkling-beetles) that uses its shell as a condensation surface to capture a drink.
Many coastal areas are subject to wet/dry cycles (from tides or other mechanisms), so this wouldn't have to be unique to a desert. Any area with periodically humid air but little rainfall would be plausible.
Being amphibians, your species would have a greater need for water than most. Perhaps they can use the morning fog to make enough of a puddle to last through the rest of the day - and more surface area for sails means more water.
Having sails be foldable in the heat of the day would be desirable to prevent drying. When the air turns cooler near dusk, perhaps the sails are raised again to **attract potential mates** to a creature's particular puddle, and again here larger / more colorful sails would help visibility. In fact one of our world's most terrestrial fish, the [leaping blenny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaping_blenny), has a "sail" that it [uses for this purpose](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xC9K9DIkGwQ).
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A few options come to mind:
1. Its an amphibian, so it could use the fins to steer itself while swimming.
2. Sexual attraction, like a peacock.
3. Elephants use the surface area of their ears to lose heat. These creatures could use use their fins in a similar fashion.
4. Any combination of the above, which is most likely to be the case.
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I got 2 ideas
First is, the sails have use similar of a [Dimetrodon](https://www.newdinosaurs.com/dimetrodon/)'s Sail, which is to capture sunlight to heat himself up, because he is warmblooded. Another one is, its a leftover product of a evolution, you may say that your creature evolved from a Sailed fish, then your creature will evolve on something else.
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In addition to the answers given, **why not let the creature use its sails as ..sails**?
It could be an extremely efficient way to travel while consuming relatively little energy.
They could use this mode of transportation
* to find suitable mates (possibly as solitary creatures);
* to migrate by being able to traverse very long distances (like the [sea turtle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_turtle#Distribution_and_habitat) or
[albatross](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albatross));
* to semi-passively feed on krill, or other small sea creatures (provided these (fictional) creatures have a high enough density at the sea/ocean surface).
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**Underwater breathing.**
The sails are actually exotically-shapped gills. They absorb oxygen from the water as the creature swims, helping it to extend its time underwater before needing to go outside to breathe. More sails would add more surface area for oxygen collection.
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If I have a research & mining outpost established on the surface of Europa, in which there is a small complex of buildings, how do I claim to have them protected from potential breaks in the ice (either from proposed tectonic activity or thermal vents breaching the ice)?
Things I've considered:
Having all of the buildings compose a singular ground-unit to maintain the outpost integrity in the event of a break in the ice.
Having the buildings mobile in a way that can travel over ice (i.e. treads) to allow for movement in the event of ice shifting or breaking. This would, however, prevent the base from being anchored.
Neither of these are truly protective measures though, so how can I justify that they're protected enough to bring the level of risk into acceptable levels? I mean I have to convince people to want to go in the first place.
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# Avoidance; or, don't build your house on a thermal vent
The Earth has tectonic activity: both earthquakes and "thermal vents" that spew fiery rocks out (i.e. volcanos). How do you know you aren't in danger of being volcano-ed into the stratosphere as you sit at your desk typing questions on Worldbuilding?
The answer to that question is that tectonic activity and volcanoes follow well understood patterns. If you are typing in Nebraska or Latvia, you are at almost zero danger from either. If you are typing in [Lombok](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2018_Lombok_earthquake) or [Antigua, Guatemala](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Volc%C3%A1n_de_Fuego_eruption), you are at a significantly elevated risk; though not so elevated that hundreds of thousands of people won't live there. If you are currently typing from inside [Erta Ale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erta_Ale), you are either dead already or some sort of fire elemental.
So the simple answer is that geologists will study Europa, then people will build outposts where the tectonic dangers are not significant.
In the case that your entire planet is shifting ice (note: I do not think this is the case with Europa!), then the example of [Halley research station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley_Research_Station) in Antarctica is instructive. This British base has been in place since 1956, built on a floating ice sheet. It has been rebuilt/moved five times due to various snow and ice calving related dangers. So even in dangerous locations, you can still operate a base safely for decades with a little geological knowledge.
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**Inflatable structures.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kKau3.jpg)
<http://www.wisn.com/article/big-bounce-house-how-two-guys-from-scotland-made-dream-a-reality/11552070>
You do not need to worry about weather or wind on Europa. A light, self contained inflatable structure will be intrinsically earthquake proof because it is not attached to the substrate, just resting on it. If the bottom is insulated with mineral wool that should do against hot jets from below. If it falls into open water it will float. You could (and should) make an inflatable structure modular, so you can expand and rearrange space to fit current needs. Modules which break away under stress (you can have them self-seal if interior pressure drops) will limit damage to the whole and would serve as extra insurance against seismic events.
Inflatable structures make tons of sense for places like the moon or Europa. Inhabitants need a pressurized atmosphere anyway and the atmosphere can serve double duty as a structural component.
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Many people talk about building the platform on legs or pylons to keep level on shifting ice and move if required, but the much larger danger for a surface platform on Europa is you are in the insanely dangerous radiation belts of Jupiter, and will receive a lethal dose rather quickly. Even electronic machinery will be effected by the radiation.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m5Sxh.jpg)
*Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station*
You will need a massive amount of shielding, for example melting water and filling a dome over the station with a shield at least 5 metres thick. Burrowing into the ice is also an alternative, minimum depth would be 5 metres, but the ice sheets are thought to be kilometres thick, so you can go down a considerable distance, or even into the ocean itself.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hBeGu.jpg)
*Europa*
Careful observation of the surface before landing and drilling operations are conducted should;d identify large and stable ice sheets. The networks of lines on the surface ice may indicate the places where the ice sheets meet, and should be avoided.
So a surface platform is likely not the best solution for working on Europa.
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Good propaganda, you can *never* guarantee the safety of anyone, alive or dead, anywhere. You can take precautions, yours are sensible, (I would suggest that a mobile lab *stay* moving at all times to reduce the chances of the lab's weight creating an issue) I'd add overall buoyancy of the structure, it's not sitting on the ice, structurally speaking, it's just resting on the ice as somewhere to be. But ultimately any claim of total safety is something of a lie.
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You cannot protect anything against shifting ice. Modern scientific bases in the Arctic and Antarctic are all build on stelts and able to "climb" up on fresh snow to not be buried in the ice.
To be clear: the problem on Europa is not that you could fall through the ice, but that the ice is constantly cracking and shifting.
To not fall into big cracks in the ice, your buildings should have protusions on each side, making the ground area wider than the building itself.
On Europa gravity is lower than on Earth, so you shouldn't have problems making buildings mobile. Either put them on wheels or on movable legs.
Space probes have shown giant fountains of water erupting from cracks in the ice, so you must prevent your buildings being swept away. You should anchor each building on its own tether.
Emergency measures could consist of heat sources to melt approaching ice. That could be flame throwers or exhaust of combustion engines (your outpost had to land in some kind of space ship, right?).
But with all these measures, there is no safety from shifting ice. Europa is constantly kneaded by gravity, which cracks ice quite fast. Giant floes, shards and spikes might shoot up right under your building.
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If I recall correctly, the ice of Europa is pretty thick. You'd have to drill down into it for a little ways before you hit water.
With that in mind, you might want to invest in technology to detect where ice is thin or thick, or if ice is currently thinning in a location where a base is built. If the ice begins to thin, it's time to pack up and change location, and since you have a tool to help give you some advanced notice of thinning ice you can afford to have an anchored in base of operation, since you'll have time to un-anchor and move.
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Build a large flat surface deck a bit like an oil rig and place the base on top of this. From the bottom of that surface extend several dozen strong vertical metal supporting struts that rest on the surface of the ice and can be raised or lowered through the deck. Continually adjust the length of each strut to ensure that the base remains even and level depending on the ice level immediately below it. The strut movement motors could be connected to strain gauges to automate the process. The bottom of each strut could be heated temporarily to make the raising and lowering easier.
The base should be built away from the centre of major fractures in the ice to prevent the need for excessive amounts of strut poles in very deep cracks. The deck base should be as wide as possible to ensure maximum stability.
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## Wire mesh
You can string out wire cabling in a mesh pattern to try to bind the ice more securely together. This can be done over 1000 square yards, or 1 square mile (or whatever units or size you prefer), depending on your scale and desire for security.
The wire would have to be embedded into the ice, which could be done by simply heating the wire until it melts into the ice. Trenching the ice, then melting the debris back on top of the cable works, too. Once this is in place, build your research area in the center of this mesh. Since you want stability, you can do a more dense mesh in the center and build a platform/foundation to extend beyond your building's walls to attach to more of this mesh.
To get more security, attach the cables together at their intersections, rather than just draping them across each other. This could be welding them or a simple bolt on clamp. With the clamp, it could be weather treated from the factory, where it would have to be treated onsite after welding. However, welding equipment would be already standard issue equipment, whereas the clamps would be a specific use case and weight more than a spool of welding wire. Gotta weight those pros and cons!
This should also help prevent your buildings from sinking into the ice.
If you made the mesh out of metal and designed/constructed it correctly, this could potentially double as a very large radio antenna.
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Must they be on the surface, or is simply on Europa good enough?. As discussed in [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/119340/hanging-city-on-europa-is-it-feasible) it would be feasible to have a city hanging down into the ocean below the ice supported by the city's buoyancy. The structural integrity of the ice is therefore not a concern, and presumably one would not place the city above an active vent. *A Spy in Europa* by Alastair Reynolds describes such a city.
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In the future, a globalized economy gradually stitches the various governments of the world together into a single federation. The richest and most powerful of each state and economy entrench their economic and political dominance to the point where social mobility has stopped completely, creating a permanent upper-class and under-class, much like the nobility and peasantry of the European Middle Ages.
Technology has progressed to a point where the vast majority of material production is done by robots, entirely owned by the ruling class, which perform nearly every task from resource extraction to transportation to manufacturing and in many cases, automated interfaces sell the goods themselves (Amazon?). The only thing regular people are good for are as consumers, or sources of entertainment. There may also be a gladiatorial system (Hunger Games?) which weeds out the weak and exposes the strong, either to target them as potential threats later, or to have their genetic material used to strengthen the elite gene pool.
Likewise, the militaries of the various nation-states have also been gradually disarmed (as in a global government, there is no war, only rebellion), and replaced with robotic soldiers, completely controlled by officers of the ruling class, who are groomed to lead from an early age, somewhat like the ancient Spartans and/or the Kshatriya/warrior class from the Hindu varna system. Therefore, there is very little association between the military leaders and the underclass, and there is almost no reason at all to disrupt their position of extraordinary privilege.
How would the future underclass rebel, undermine, or otherwise dismantle a system of pseudo-slavery?
To sum up the conditions:
* The general populace has no combat training, nor do they own weapons
* The military is staffed by robots and led by elites who like the way things are.
* The elites do not depend on the underclass for any material needs whatsoever.
* The underclass has little to no access to the backbone of society, such as power generation, natural resources, infrastructure, and so on.
* Any armed rebellion would be swiftly put down with heavy casualties to the underclass and little to no loss of life for the elites.
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I like @Cort Ammon's answer a lot, and was already drafting my answer when he posted.
If the leadership class is truly indestructible as you say, then the goal of the rebellion would not be to destroy the leadership class, but to establish independence from it.
A rebellion would stay hidden, develop underground hydroponic food production and light industry, create a network of recruits and exploit sympathizers from the elite class, get military and technical training from those sympathizers and then initiate a series of terrorist/propaganda attacks and raids on police and military targets.
They might be able to capture and hack some robot soldiers, either through experimentation or with the help of a sympathizer, and put them to use in espionage, sabotage, and assassination.
Where the underclass is completely isolated from a chain of production, they can undermine any part of that chain. E.g., sneak into farms that grow food exclusively for the elite (you know they have those in China?) and apply a generous sprinkle of poison or radioactive material or salt.
Typically a rebellion benefits greatly if there is a leader to be the face of the rebellion (Hunger Games), or an event that galvanizes the oppressed ("Let them eat cake"). If not that, perhaps the rebellion could actually start off innocuously as just a shadow-government of the oppressed, originally formed as a charitable organization (maybe ironically under the auspices of the leadership class?) but then as support and infrastructure grew the organization developed sentries and spies and then became a real shadow-government--an underground nation within a nation. Then finally, they would claim land and declare independence and fight in open combat.
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These sorts of questions are difficult to answer. In the body of the question, they give a set of macroscopic behaviors which suggest that one party is completely and utterly superior to the other in every way shape and form. Then, they ask how the underdog can win.
This is tricky because you cannot give StackExchange enough information to actually answer it. If you could, then the question wouldn't be exciting, and you'd stack the odds further against the underdog. It's a no-win situation, so instead of providing specifics of how to deal with your particular scenario, I think it's helpful to explore a solution which works for a great number of similar scenarios.
The secret to the underdog winning here is patience, untouchability, and sensitivity. They need to quietly bide their time in a way that makes sure they don't get destroyed, and need to be constantly aware of their surroundings. They are looking for something. What are they looking for? I don't know. It's not in the question. They're looking for the chink in the armor of the upper class. Something that a rational analysis may need to suggest that the robots need to keep 90% secure, but it's actually only 89.999% secure. They then use this as leverage to build more power, until they finally have enough power directed at the weakpoints they find to topple the system.
Where these weakpoints are is up to you, and each one they discover is going to change *how* they seek out the next weakpoint because they have some unique little edge they didn't have before. There wont be a plan that you can give them ahead of time to say "follow this plan and we'll topple the robot overlords in 2 years"." It just won't exist.
Sensitivity is key because they need to be capable of observing weakpoints that the opponent hasn't observed yet. Given the mass resources of the robot overlords, I'm sure all the obvious stuff is covered. They're going to have to look for some subtle nuance. Maybe on a particular day of the year, at 9:15, the sun blinds one sensor to the point that a child (but not an adult) can slip past the sensor undetected. They then gather intel on that side for a year, and then slip back across to tell everyone on the same day of the next year. It's *really* hard to defend against all of those without wasting resources, but typically we don't see those weaknesses because we don't have the sensitivity to see them. If your rebels have that sensitivity, they can find the weakspots you need, without the story feeling too contrived.
Their entire job should be not to lose ground. They don't need to capture much power, they just need to make sure that once they capture it, they never lose it. If they do need to lose it, they need to make sure they can instead trade it for more power than they gave up. They need to do this for some unspecified amount of time until a true glaring weakness appears in the robot overlords. *That* is the time where a plan can be put forward to end the suffering.
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If given the choice between a independent life of hard work with risk of starvation, and an enslaved existence of leisure and guaranteed security, the smart money is on being a slave. Those who would put freedom ahead of basic life needs like food and shelter, haven't spent enough nights outside, starving under the pitiless stars.
In your scenario, the underclass have been reduced to being consumers and entertainers. Funny, I dream of someday becoming solely a consumer and an entertainer. It sounds like a great life, compared to my current work-a-day world. Your scenario makes no mention of starvation or homelessness. There is no signs that the underclass are being abused by the elites. The only "crime" of which the elites seem to be guilty, is having a better life than their underclass counterparts. That is not justification for a revolution.
It is however an opportunity for the development of an under-economy. If the food provided by the elite isn't very appetizing, growing fruits and spices and learning how to make food delicious, will give some underclass citizens a better life than their less industrious class-mates. Improving basic housing through carpentry is another path to comparative prosperity. Sewing and needle-craft would also bear value. Practically all of the "trade-class" skills would still be valued and could enhance the lives of the underclass.
Given all the free time which the basic generosity of the Elite provides to them, industrious members of the underclass could create a very luxurious life for themselves, without the need for rebellion or bloodshed.
Revolution is the last option of the oppressed. It should be used only when survival is at stake; not as a cure for class envy and jealousy.
I know that this doesn't answer the question, and that I will probably loose a few points for posting here instead of in the comments, but I think the point is important (and too long for the comment feature to accept).
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## Divide and Conquer
The only chance the underclass has is to turn the upper class against each other and let them destroy themselves.
The following plan would only work if the underclass has some exposure to the leaders of the upper class on TV or in real life, because it starts by promoting interest in the doings of the elite and making them look larger than life.
The next step is to identify a number of upper class people that are narcissistic and vain. Think of Donald Trump as an excellent example of the type needed. The more they are disliked by the rest, the better. Then a number of positive attributes are assigned to each of those people. Things like "generous", "kind" and "trustworthy". These are then injected into public life, by members saying things like
* "I want to be generous, like X"
* "Y is so trustworthy, why can't you be like that?"
* "Whenever I get angry, I think of Z and the kindness he shows"
As these thought spread through the underclass (with some prompting left and right), it's time to have people come out as complete fanboys/devotees of one particular chosen upper class person. It will spread like wildfire for two reasons:
1. It gives the underclass license to imagine themselves a bit upper class by emulating their chosen, this gives them exactly the one thing they may lack: Freedom! (from being underclass).
2. It gives the chosen the thing they need most: Adoration. It will be addictive as crack to them and they *will* engage with their fans and promote the behavior.
Ironically, all this positive attention is the one thing the elite can't produce with all their robots, and jealousy will burn in their hearts, so they will either try to put a stop to it or compete with the initial chosen. Both will cause angry reactions from the chosen (and their new followers).
In all this chaos, the instigators need to identify the person most likely to turn the robots on anyone trying to stop him and then try to lift him above all the rest in the devotion of the crowd. The rest will try to take him or her down and hopefully, they'll start a bloody conflict.
If the exalted one wins, he will likely trust his devoted more than any reluctantly turned officers, and that will be his doom, eventually.
If he loses, the devoted have to shift their attention to the next contender after declaring the previous one a false prophet. And on it goes...
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Three ways.
1. A paradigm shift: Something new comes up, which changes the basis of power, e.g., a new invention, which undercuts a critical control of the ruling class; an alien invasion; a natural disaster. Examples: a new, cheap energy source that cuts off dependency of state provided power; Skynet; an earthquake that destroys a key component of the robot army's infrastructure, so that a large proportion of robots go rogue or can be reprogrammed.
2. Inbreeding: Given enough time, if the upper classes stay sufficiently isolated, they'll breed themselves to extinction; your working class just needs to survive the period of insanity before that happens.
3. Entropy: Wait for their mistakes to catch up to them. Eventually, the number of errors will become too much for the system to handle and it will break down. And given the type of people running a hegemony, once the lower classes are not a consideration, they'll start to game the system for their own benefit at the expense of their colleagues.
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What the underclass needs to do is find a way to plant malware into the robots, preferably integrated into their OS directly at the factory so that it doesn't look like foreign code. At the opportune moment, a switch is flipped (metaphorically speaking), and suddenly all the robots work for the underclass. Then it doesn't matter how indestructible the leadership is, they won't be able to enforce their orders (unless we're talking about a genuinely superior race a la 'Kahn Noonien Singh' or 'General Zod and company', then you probably don't stand a chance anyway).
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The underclass could "infect" one or more of the elites with something that causes them to act against the interests of their class. For example, a ruler might fall in love with someone in the underclass causing them to work to undermine the government. Or for a less cliche scenario, the underclass could develop a religion or philosophy that converts some of the rulers to the same effect. The underclass could then use the defectors as undercover agents to find a way to effect the collapse of the government.
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## Leave
That is the plot of the middle part of [The Queendom of Sol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Queendom_of_Sol) series. The prince and other youngsters who would never replace the previous generation (being immortal and indistructable) was sent off to found a new colony.
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**Grief is a strong and illogical creature**
since the society is so far ahead when it comes to be taken care of, then it likely that even if they are studious in the art of tactics that they are not saints of the mind but rather greedy.
If there was no underclass there would be nothing to feel above besides competing over each other. Thoughts like "we don't compete with rats" will lead the upper class to mostly ignore the underclass and leave it to the robots to make a profit off of them.
One day a jealous man sought to win the love of another upper class lady *(or preferred gender)* but there is more than one interested party. Underhanded deals and schemes take place each trying to make the other party look bad or make themselves look good.
Eventually this leads to one suitor winning over the others but our jealous man is stricken by grief because he was one of the suitors trying to win her over fair and square.
He visits often trying to convince this lovely individual of their folly, or that they are being deceived. The spouse gets wind of these visits and at first add's extra protection and procedures to her guards to prevent this man from coming near.
But the man has already put too much of his heart into trying to win back his beloved that he cannot give up now.
He starts trying the program procedures into his own robots and this inevitably leads to fights amoungst the forces and soon the his beloved never goes out again, trapped by her betrothed.
The animosity grows amoung our jealous man and his beloved's betrothed.
after many months of discussions, lawsuits and vandalism, our jealous man discovers that robots are inefficient at anything besides taking orders and that his adversary is better at tactical control than he is.
In desperation he starts using the trash of society. They are easy to manipulate as they will do anything for money.
he starts cultivating a small settlement by sending training bots and merchant bots to hire and train mercenaries.
at first many were easily slaughtered but every now and then there would be a survivor.
after enough battles there are battle hardened mercenary soldiers who even have platoons under their command maybe comprised of one or more robots depending on their accomplishments.
After a while, our jealous man's love interest, being locked up for her own safety, has been driven mad by boredom, and the horrors on the news and has slit her wrists.
When the two adversaries get the news both are driven into a mad rage, blaming the other. After mourning (aka. making bad decisions to try settle their grief) there are now armies.
the government decides they have to step in, they don't mind internal feuds, but there is no way they were going to allow riff-raff to "command" anything but it is too late. The seeds have been sown.
The human commanders do what they need to do to survive with the tools they have been given and our jealous man supports them as he needs them to get his revenge...
...and we have a rebellion
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For the sake of context, this is a fantasy setting where this character has no access to magic and lives in a small village. He would like to write a book and since wiriting materials are a little expensive he would like to plan out pages in inexpensive chalk first. My thought is to use a series of unglazed clay or ceramic tiles since clay is plentiful. Does this make sense or would it be too much of a pain to use?
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The ancient erasable and reusable low-tech scratchpad is a [wax tablet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wax_tablet). Wax tablets were used for a thousand years in the classical world, and they have the advantage of being hand-portable, unlike a blackboard.
[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_(writing))
Left, modern reconstruction of a Roman wax tablet diptych. One wrote on them with the sharp end of the stylus; corrections and erasures were made by tamping the wax with the blunt end of the stylus; for a full reset the wax was melted. Photograph by [Toilet](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Toilet), [available on Wikimedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Table_with_was_and_stylus_Roman_times.jpg) under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version. Right, a 19th century slate tablet for use by school pupils; one wrote on them with a chalk pencil, and they were erased with a damp sponge. Photograph by [GodeNehler](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:GodeNehler), [available on Wikimedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MEK_II-411.jpg) under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Blackboards or chalkboards are a modern invention, late 18th or early 19th century. The original blackboards were made of natural [slate stone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate), sort-of oversized versions of the [slate tablets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_(writing)) used by school pupils since the 1500s or so.)
The Greco-Roman wax tablets and the early modern slate tablets have left their traces in the fixed phrases [*tabula rasa*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa) (literally, scraped tablet), (to start from a) [clean slate](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/clean_slate), and to [wipe the slate clean](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wipe_the_slate_clean#English).
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A piece of soapstone will write on a slab of slate just like chalk on a chalkboard without the need of manufacturing or processing of the materials. Sourcing these materials should be easy enough to justify and use of them is realistic and perfectly reasonable.
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[Birch bark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark), provided that you have those trees around, is rather cheap as a writing material:
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> Birch bark or birchbark is the bark of several Eurasian and North American birch trees of the genus Betula.
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> The strong and water-resistant cardboard-like bark can be easily cut, bent, and sewn, which has made it a valuable building, crafting, and writing material, since pre-historic times. Today, birch bark remains a popular type of wood for various handicrafts and arts.
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> Removing birch bark from live trees is harmful to tree health and should be avoided. Instead, it can be removed fairly easily from the trunk or branches of dead wood, by cutting a slit lengthwise through the bark and pulling or prying it away from the wood. The best time for collection is spring or early summer, as the bark is of better quality and most easily removed.
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It was [commonly used](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript) before the invention of paper
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> Birch bark manuscripts are documents written on pieces of the inner layer of birch bark, which was commonly used for writing before the advent of mass production of paper. Evidence of birch bark for writing goes back many centuries and in various cultures. The oldest such manuscripts are the numerous Gandhāran Buddhist texts from approximately the 1st century CE, from what is now Afghanistan.
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It has also the advantage of taking less space than writing on pottery or tablets, because it's thinner.
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Consider the metalpoint / <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverpoint> technique. The wikipedia page gives a good historical account you can use for inspiration
Several folk have already mentioned bark as an erasable substrate.
Paper covered in wax works as well, and is an upgrade. And access to graphite works event better
You could have a story line where the writer gradually upgrades materials - maybe using fishbone + bark at first, then getting access to metal pointer, finding chalk and/or graphite, with paper upgrading to wax on bark, then wax on hemp or other rough fibre, then paper etc...
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**Charcoal on panel.**
Coat the panel with traditional gesso, a mixture of skin glue and chalk (or another whitening agent). The result can be a perfectly smooth and beautifully white surface, and you can easily wipe off the charcoal and start over. When the surface gets too grey, you can wipe it clean with a little water, or simply apply a new layer of gesso.
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If you have pottery (very likely in medieval settings), then the [ostraca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracon) are cheap (literally broken trash), plentiful and durable. And they were good enough for ancient Greeks as well.
Alternately, in more Chinese-like settings, where bamboo is abundant, you can use [bamboo slips](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_and_wooden_slips).
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To make a long story short, my world has a variety of individuals of varying talents, and along with that, malevolent monsters of the large and dangerous variety, who these people are often employed to defeat (Superheroes, to make a long story short).
One individual has been gifted with super strength. Instead of beating monsters to death with various melee weapons like many who share a similar power do, he has taken a far more unique, and less suicidal approach: Carrying the biggest gun possible to blow these monsters apart.
This man is roughly twenty-five times stronger than an adult male on average, capable of reaching up to fifty times in times of desperation. He is rather large, roughly 7ft and 190kg. He lacks any superpowered way to anchor himself to the ground (and would prefer to not carry some sort of pitons or stabilising equipment which could do so), and is only a small amount tougher than an average human(Hence his reluctance to face monsters head on), meaning any gun wherein firing can produce forces sufficient to physically damage a human body will do so, albeit to a slightly lesser extent than a non-super (For the sake of the question, we'll assume that his super strength means that he won't damage his muscles, bones or joints by carrying these heavy weapons).
He would also prefer a weapon which he can feasibly use, as while he may technically be capable of lifting a certain weapon, its sheer size makes it impractical to aim or move. He will largely be using it as a hip/shoulder fired weapon.
Taking into account features such as recoil, power-to-weight, reloading, and the sheer size of the weapon in comparison to the human body, what is the largest, most powerful weapon which he could practically carry around and use? The technological level is identical to that of real life; that is, if it exists in real life, its fair game. He is also a government entity, so no restrictions on what exactly he can use (For the sake of the question he has access to guns belonging to every country.)
Note: For the sake of the question, weapons defined as "Guns", that is, propellant-based weapons which fire a solid projectile directly at the target, (Anything from a .22 pistol to a tanks cannon) would be preferred over, say, mortars or missile systems.
Bonus round: What is the most practical gun for an individual with super strength to use?
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**Anything that has less kick than friction between the superman's legs and ground**
The primary problem with those guns, big or small, is the law of saving impulse. If something is thrown forwards, the rest of the system is thrown backwards, m1\*v1 = m2\*v2, or better with vectors, yet you got my point. If your superman can lift a Dora, let him use it, but if he can't stand still when that Dora fires, what good is there of him using that big cannon? Essentially you are limited to a minigun in the range of M61 or a Gatling (hello Fallout!), or a flak cannon 23 to 30 mm caliber used as single shot weapon instead of full auto. Anything bigger will topple the superman when firing.
An educational read on topic: <https://what-if.xkcd.com/21/>
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TL/DR: Rather than one huge gun, your hero would opt for a practical kit that may be too heavy for a normal person, along with more ammo. He would use his super strength to make it work, or simply to move faster while carrying it.
This will depend a lot on the type of monsters he will fight, and where it would happen.
Unless he's invulnerable, the first thing would be suitable armor. This depends on what the monsters use to attack, if they use ranged weapons, etc. Armor weight is a big problem for soldiers, but not for this guy, so that's definitely a plus.
At close range, and if the monsters aren't too armored, he would probably opt for a full auto shotgun with drum magazine. This is suitably badass, and not too long, so it is not unwieldy inside the tight corridors of a dungeon. In addition, it offers a very flexible choice of ammo, buckshot, slugs, door breaching rounds, explosive rounds, etc. One 12-gauge slug cartridge weighs about 45 grams, so this guy can easily carry one thousand rounds in his backpack. That should be enough for some dungeon cleanup action.
Of course he would need a sidearm, and he's probably the only guy in town who can handle a Desert Eagle, so at last this gun can do something useful in a story, although the ammo capacity is really tiny.
Another potential sidearm could be a suitable bladed weapon, preferably longer than the monsters' reach. A polearm would not be practical, so perhaps a bastard sword. Adjust to taste depending on the monsters' carapace thickness: it could also be a hammer or a bec de corbin. With extra strength, bladed or blunt weapons would be really fast and deadly, as the kinetic energy is directly dependent on the user's strength. If no guns are available, I would also suggest a bow, since this guy wouldn't have problems with draw strength.
Unless they have magical armoured skin, it is unlikely the monsters would just shrug off 7.62mm. Such guns are small enough to be handled indoors, which also becomes a problem if the gun is too long. So at ranges where a shotgun is not adequate, he'd probably end up with a military assault rifle. The reason armies have switched to smaller calibers is ammo weight, and our guy has no such issue, plus there is a wide range of ammo available already.
At very long range, or for heavily armored monsters, of course a .50 cal would be ideal. However it is long and heavy, which means a high moment of inertia. Since our man has to rely on ground contact to turn around, if the gun is too heavy, he won't be able to turn around quickly: his feet would just slide on the ground. So even with super strength, the huge heavy .50 sniper rifle is still impractical in most circumstances.
In addition, because even heroes have to reload, he'll need teammates. He can carry their ammo, and carry them if they're wounded, though. In fact, the hero can carry the huge heavy .50 cal rifle and ammo for his sniper buddy so the team walks fast, then drop him on a ledge overlooking the action so his buddy can cover him.
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## TL:DR - A machine gun AND and anti-materiel rifle
Assuming that 'practical' includes things like 'I can buy the weapon, spare parts and ammunition off the shelf' then may I suggest the H&K MG3? Technically speaking this is a General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG). It's distinguishing feature is a very high rate of fire, up to 1300 rounds per minute. As poaching in Africa has sadly demonstrated, even elephants can be brought down with enough bullets. Normally a rate of fire this high can be an issue as 1000 rounds of 7.62x51 ammunition weighs over 2.5Kg (5.5lbs), in addition to the 12Kg (24lbs) of the gun itself. However, your super human can tote this around like a kids BB rifle.
While intended to be fired prone from its bipod, recoil is manageable from standing, and could be improved further if a gunsmith were to fit an effective muzzle brake (although hearing protection would be absolutely essential at that point, or your hero would be permanently deafened by a couple of minutes firing). Probably also worth pointing out that accuracy further than a few meters away is about zero with any battle rifle cartridge on full auto from standing, and being strong doesn't really make much difference. So prefer longer range engagements from the bipod. Super strength just makes carrying all this weight practical.
This covers engagements from 0 - 300m (330yds). Normal people only get to bring one gun to a gun fight. But not our guy! With 25 times the lifting capacity of a normal human he is currently less encumbered than we would be by a pocket pistol. So he can bring along a really big gun too. The choice is between any accurate, compact anti-materiel rifle (e.g. the M82A1 Barrett 50 - 12.9Kg (28.4lbs) for raw power, or a rifle chambered for something like the Cheyenne Tactical .408 or Barrett .416 for accuracy and supreme long range capability.
He still has enough carrying capacity left over to armour himself like a presidential limousine.
Finally remember that these weapon systems are very expensive, and being good with guns requires hundreds of hours of practice a year. Which is also very expensive!
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You have to consider two aspect of the recoil on the person firing a weapon: the risks of slipping and topping.
For slipping, the coefficient of kinetic friction of rubber on dry asphalt is 0.9.
Since your subject weights 1900 N, if we assume they are wearing rubber sole boots on asphalt their weight will be able to ensure resistance to a recoil force of $0.9 \cdot 1900 = 1710 N$. Anything greater than that and they would start slipping under the recoil. Of course it is likely that they will not always be in the ideal situation, so you will have to account for that.
For the topping, things become more difficult, because they will have to lean forward to avoid being flipped by the recoil. To simplify, let's assume that the weapon is held at $2h$ while the center of mass of the character is at $h$.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NzNeM.png)
If they lean forward by an angle $\alpha$, the max recoil force they can withstand is given by $2\cdot h \cdot F \cdot cos(\alpha)=m\cdot g \cdot h \cdot sin(\alpha)$ which gives $F=1/2\cdot m\cdot g \cdot tan (\alpha) = 950 \cdot tan (\alpha)$.
As you can see from the above simplified model, for any leaning less than 45 degrees their weight will not be enough to avoid being tipped by a smaller recoil force.
Therefore, if you consider the limitations of being on a grippy enough ground and leaning forward while firing, I concur with [Vesper's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/237042/30492) to not get too fancy with using overpowered weapons, since they would make firing them more and more cumbersome.
[Answer]
## **Meet the RT-20**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wQvJ1.jpg)
It's a Croatian anti-materiel rifle designed to fire 20mm Hispano-Suiza rounds - the very same you find in the autocannons of the good ol' Spitfire.
Initially designed to disable and "blind" modern battle tanks, it shoots off things like armored optics impervious to regular machine gun fire.
At 20kg, it is a bit too heavy for a regular human to try to fire from the hip - but would make a perfect fit for your super. It is also recoilless like an RPG launcher, so super-traction is not required.
It also comes with several bonus points:
* Rounds come in both armor-piercing and high-explosive variants
* Cross-compatibility with Hispano Mk V means it can be easily modified into an autocannon (regular RT-20s are single-shot)
* It looks badass with the recoil tube and muzzle brake.
[Answer]
### Wrong question - he'll use his strength for armour and ammo
#### Ammo
We already have guns designed for taking down [large, aggressive, heavily-armoured monsters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_gun), and have had for 200 years. These only need a regular human to operate them. They were even scaled up to the point they could take out [light-to-medium armoured vehicles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_rifle), easily penetrating an inch of solid steel. I don't care what your monsters look like, an anti-tank rifle will make short work of them.
Because of recoil (and likely the practicality of dealing with the much larger cartridges), anti-tank rifles have tended to use smaller magazines. Your super can handle that no problems though, so they can presumably figure out some way to work with larger magazines or a belt/drum.
The biggest problem with fighting this way is what happens when you run out of ammo, of course, and your super has no doubt seen further than you on this. What makes you militarily effective is how long you can keep putting lead on your target(s). So your super will have a couple of hundred kilos of ammo stashed (somehow) around himself. Even a seriously large bullet won't be more than 100g per cartridge, so that gives him maybe 2000 rounds to play with. That's enough to fire off 1 round per second for half an hour solid, which is going to put a serious crimp in the day of most malevolent monsters.
#### Armour
Then the other side of the equation. If one of these malevolent monsters does manage to get up to him, he's no more resilient than your average human. Strong does not equal bite-proof, and you only need to screw up once to become a chew toy. So a sensible super will cover their bets by getting armoured up.
Your average fit human being can easily manage a 20kg load, so your super can manage 500kg. With 200kg of ammo, that leaves 300kg payload free.
An entire suit of plate armour [weighed around 25kg](https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aams/hd_aams.htm#:%7E:text=An%20entire%20suit%20of%20field,battle%20since%20the%20nineteenth%20century.) and was typically [around 1mm thick](https://www.tumblr.com/armthearmour/180395608728/how-thick-the-armor-usually-was). Your super can therefore comfortably outfit himself with 1cm thick steel all round. This won't stop something truly determined from doing some damage, but it'll radically improve his chances.
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**Bazookas**
According to [this guy](https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/bfa1i7/requesthow_many_times_would_the_bazooka_need_to/), rocket launchers feature an open back to spread a majority of the recoil force into the air behind the user. [Watching a live fire test](https://youtu.be/mv7_4_0Tj-o?t=41) certainly seems to back up that statement. Notice that the user is standing, not kneeling, the entire time and seems to barely move during or after firing.
Due to his military connections, your super strength man could plausibly request a modified version of this AT4; one with a "clip" of missile heads that automatically load into the tube and perhaps a single-handed trigger allowing him to fire with one hand, or even use two akimbo.
Given the restrictions you described, this would probably be the most useful for him, considering that the largest inhibitor for RPG launchers is the weight of ammunition and the weapon itself rather than the actual usage of it.
As far as most practical, I would reiterate that it depends entirely on the situation and the types of enemies faced. If it's one big guy with one small weak spot and a bunch of armor on it, I'd suggest a very large, heavy sniper rifle. If your strongman is facing a large group of enemies, a better weapon would be an automatic shotgun or a grenade launcher, depending on the distance and how willing he is to wrestle with recoil. Longer range large enemies (or flying enemies) would be most suitable for the akimbo bazookas I suggested, especially since you can equip him with heat-seeking warheads.
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# A [light howitzer like the M101](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M101_howitzer)
Towed artillery has wheels, which means he can drag it along with no need for external stabilizers. He can stand to the side when it fires, removing any need for damaging himself.
The gun has quite a punch, so he can hip fire the gun.
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# The Mountain Katyusha
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On one hand, I hear ya. On the other hand...
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If there's one thing I know about monsters, it's that they don't give a crap about bullets. Notoriously bulletproof, monsters are. Another thing I know is that rockets are technically neither mortars, nor missiles. So borrow a book out of the Soviet library and hand your man a Mountain Katyusha.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6A9MA.png)
Carrying a total of eight RS-82-derived Soviet rockets, this rail-aimed weapon system was made to be disassembled and carried by half a dozen men in backpacks, this somewhat adhoc weapon system and its handy tripod are perfect for giving the monster of the week the surprise of his life in the form of 12lbs of explosives carried on 150lbs of rocket motors.
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My super has this weapon, a [M230](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M230_chain_gun) thirty mm chain gun (he's much more powerful than yours, 'tho, and has flight powers to anchor himself)--
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Zwjg9.png)
Instead, he could use a M134 7.62mm mini-gun in a similar arrangement, bicep mounted, with the backpack of ammo, motor, and batteries. Although I can't find the recoil of the weapon.
[M134](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8rEWQaQTAw)
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Look to modern day rifles. Big rifles are recoil-limited to what the human body can take and you say he's little better than a normal human in this regard.
Thus the biggest rifle he can handle is a .50cal. (There is a bigger rifle in existence, I believe it's Russian, and it risks breaking the shooter's shoulder if they're not very careful. You normally don't see them in the US because being over .50cal makes it an NFA item, tons of paperwork.)
Use the extra strength for things like armor.
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Yeah, I know I asked a question about a medbot just the other day but my book has multiple AI "characters" [dunno if they count as characters] and one is a maintenance bot [at least it used to be]. For reference the setting is a high-tech space-faring society, though it is still pretty hazardous – even short colony-to-colony trips are still dangerous and take months, and a lot of people die from catastrophic failures from faulty/cheap tech; damage to [space]ships is common since there's a lot of unrest.
Maintenance bots, in this world, are used to crawl around the inner the ship [generally beneath the floor in a so-called "maintenance space", very creative], and makes sure everything's still working. "Everything" being hydroponics systems, water/air filters, the engine, some electronics, door mechanisms, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Keep in mind they do alert humans of these errors, and will let them take over the job if necessary. They're their in case of an immediate emergency that needs immediate attention, and a human can't get there easily/it would be dangerous for a human to do.
Basically I'm trying to design a maintenance bot primarily off function/practicality, and since I'm bad at designing robots [and you gave me amazing answers last time], I'm asking you again :)
Also, if you need any sort of clarification/have any sort of critique [as long as it's reasonable], please tell me!!
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Multiple locomotive arms with magnets and rollercoaster style runners built into the ‘claws’, then multiple utility arms capable of switching in/out a variety of toolsets all built around an internal bay that can contain replacement parts (or a 3d printer) and the various tools required for repairs. Attach various sensor/communication arrays and diagnostic interfaces at the nominal ‘front’ and you’ve got a fearsome looking design bristling with usefulness.
The locomotive arms can either crawl by attaching one at a time to points inside/outside the hull or, if they’re available, lock onto dedicated guide rails and engage some electric motors to get around the ship fast. If it needs to switch rails or move over a damaged portion of ship then a second arm can be engaged before the first releases, making sure it never loses contact with the ship. The sensors and diagnostic interfaces spot problems that the ships sensors haven’t, the communication arrays network all the repair bots and the ship.
Then if any damage is detected a repair bit will either repair it on the spot with it’s utility arms and 3d printed parts, or will summon one of it’s compatriots with suitable replacement parts. If the damage is minor repairs can be effected at blinding speed thanks to the locomotive guide rails and multiple utility arms. If it’s major repairs can still be completed because the bot can crawl independently, even in 0 g, and multiple bots working in concert can move even large pieces of equipment across the ship.
For added security you can add a couple of magnetic grapple guns and some limited gas thrust capability, making your bots the nightmare spawn of a shrimp, a spider, a squid and a tool shop.
ADDENDUM:
You might also want to consider making your AI a swarm consciousness. Having dozens or hundreds of highly networked repair drones in a single, coordinated system makes much more sense than having multiple potentially conflicting AIs.
Plus you get a swarm of shrimpspidersquidtoolshop bots instead of just one!
[Answer]
# Cockroach.
This form is ideal for scuttling about, squeezing through very small crevices, walking on walls and even ceilings. Capable of operating in a wide range of lighting conditions, including complete darkness. Has advanced tactile and olfactory and chemical sensors for environmental awareness.
You would need various sizes, for the various specialities. Tiny ones for electronic maintenance, medium ones for garbage removal, large ones for structural work.
It should be easy enough to adapt the low, many-legged form for outside operations, possibly with magnetic or electrostatic contact pads on the feet.
You do not need to design your bots, nature has already done the field work for you. All you need to do is to figure out the most effective way to manufacture/program/train them.
You might even want to imitate not just the form, but actually adapt the biological organism itself. With suitable controls, you have a self-replacing robot workforce that can get anywhere.
For a fuller answer, just glue Joe Bloggs' answer directly to this one, the sum of the two is the full answer.
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The name of the game for these robots is **prevention** - within the available "maintenance" space, there will be too little chances for actual repairs. There may be some work in emergency patching, but I would not call this "maintenance".
In brief, I propose you:
* robots acting as mobile sensors platform, scan for troubles in advance and pinpoint the detected weaknesses.
Use X-ray and ultrasound for metal pipeworks, ultrasound only for plastic pipeworks, sensible thermal camera for electricity, wall/floor vibration sensors for things that rattle when they shouldn't, even [amplified vision for inspecting vibrations](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEoc0YoALt0) (watch this linked YT, highly recommended)
Since only the platform needs to be mobile, you can use interchangeable sensor payloads.
A static network on sensors won't be as thorough, because there will be places in which powering and connecting those static sensors to comms would stay in the way of the main utilities.
* self-preservation AI, running on a different neural system than the flight (and weaponry?) control systems. Pretty much as the immune system and the [enteric nervous system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system) doesn't run on the brain.
The static and mobile sensors will feed into this subsystem which may compile a report to the humans in terms of "arthritic pains in attitude control" or "slightly feverish air regeneration unit" or "food poisoning in the left engine"
Of course, when asked what are the real causes and what needs to be done, the AI will switch to a more technical language and possible present *a set* of plans for remedial (set that may be empty, in which case the diagnosis may come "Its dead, Jim, now you're properly effed")
Note: the details about robots mobility and their number is considered a trivial problem: whatever fits the bill.
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It depends on some certain factors.
The biggest one is if your world has artificial gravity on the spacecraft or not. If not, then you'd find that it would have reaction control thrusters to maneuver quickly through the weightless environment. If not, it would have legs to scamper around in the space. Think a mini version of Boston Dynamics's Spot perhaps. Maybe it would also have adhesive footpads and such.
A big thing is that it would have robotic arms for doing the various tasks needed, maybe multiple if it needs to do things quick and doesn't want to have to take the time to pull in the arm and change out a tool.
It'd probably have a camera on it to give the operator a view of what was being fixed, to make sure the robot is doing its job.
In reality, a robot like this is not too far away - Spot is rather close to this - you just have to figure out how to make it climb on ceilings.
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I would think something like a squid (with any number of tentacles) would work for the majority of applications, and it would be a [soft body robot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7AFsk40NGE), rather than a typical hard plastic body.
The soft body approach would allow the bot to get into tight locations as well as form around parts and tools for manipulation and brace themselves for stability. Some parts of the robot could still be hard, to help reinforce a stance for stability when handling heavy pieces or during hard maneuvering, but that would be a bare minimum of rigid pieces to perform those specific functions.
The robot could house typical tools in it's body crevices in the same way a carpenter has a leather toolbelt. There could be specialist versions of this bot, so if something requires a special set of tools, it can be called as backup or replacement for the standard bot that went out to investigate.
It doesn't matter that parts of the ship aren't pressurized, since the movement would still be controlled in a similar manner as how it works in a pressurized area. In a habitable space, the robot moves by "air" being pushed into the sacs and then sucked out. In vacuum, the "air" would be drawn into the sacs and then sucked out. This gas doesn't have to be air, but rather nitrogen or any easily sourced gas that minimally reacts chemically with components, such as Noble gasses.
As the bot is on a ship, the skin would have to be tough, since it will it move past sharp corners, general hardware, general friction, and it's own sometimes sharp tools. This means it's already likely going to be able to handle the pressure differential between the vacuum of space and it's own sacs. Sudden decompression of a compartment/room/hangar/whatever would pose a threat, but as long as the skin remained intact, it would only incapacitate the bot for a very short time while it recalibrates the necessary pressure in each sac to remain working. Depending on how slow a decompression is, the robot may not even be incapacitated, as it would have time to adjust as the pressure falls. It would likely have more concerns of being sucked out with the air than continuing to do delicate work.
With this being a flexible robot, it can be designed with [flexible circuit boards](https://www.flexiblecircuit.com/all-products/multi-layer-flex/). Some of the circuits might even be incorporated into the body and tentacles, itself, allowing for a smaller volume of space that ends up not being flexible in order to store the pumps/motors and any other components that have to stay rigid.
There will likely be fewer motors/servos/actuators/pumps and them being centrally located, it'll be easier and lighter to shield them from various forms of radiation. And because the electronics for this bot will likely be simplified and the majority of higher order functions being completed remotely to reduce circuit size, the shielding will be considerably less, too. The actuators might even be as simple as solenoids.
Then again, some of these parts may be flexible, but less than the rest of the squid, due to [synthetic muscles](https://www.designindaba.com/articles/creative-work/scientists-say-they%E2%80%99ve-overcome-one-final-barriers-making-lifelike-robots). Using these synthetic muscles, there may not even need to be "air" sacs, but rather these be used in the tentacles themselves. This would avoid the need for a gas reservoir to be carried around. There are even [flexible batteries](https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/28551/20201208/newly-made-flexible-battery-is-10-times-more-powerful-than-current-lithium-batteries.htm) and [flexible solar panels](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B01EY5FIGW) to power the robot. Given enough development, these robots could potentially be only a few millimeters thick for storage, minus the tools.
I was thinking that suction cups could be used on the tentacles, but that relies on air pressure around the suction cup to hold the cup when suction is applied. This works well in an atmosphere, but not in space. Instead, small electromagnets could be used instead. They could be spaced out and individually activated, just like suction cups. These would be embedded into the skin, to prevent damaging the electromagnet and whatever it's attaching to from bumps and scratches. Suction cups could be an alternative on the tentacle, when moving in a space that's non-ferrous. Other forms of attachment can be used when on carpet, liquid, or pretty much any other surface. With this being a flexible bot in no/low gravity periods, it could even use jets of air or waves of a flattened tentacle to "swim" through a pressurized area.
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I would say it depends on the ship. I'm rather fond of the [DRD](https://farscape.fandom.com/wiki/Diagnostic_Repair_Drone)s from farscape. Little wheeled pods, with independant eyestalks
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/C4v9j.png)
While there's a few 'special' ones, the main advantage there is they're a swarm of little robots, able to wander around the ducts to check and fix things. I would use these as the 'core' of a more versatile systems with little diagnostic repair drones being able to control bigger 'dumb' chassis as needed.
While like ants, I guess a large number of these could do bigger tasks, you can't exactly have a dozen of little shoebox sized drones balanced on each other. For some reason the 'wheeled pod' form factor is popular. Amusingly the local police trialed the two form factors I think would be perfect here
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PK0qt.jpg)
[(source)](https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/high-tech-robot-guards-take-part-in-security-exercise-at-ang-mo-kio-mrt-station)
One large wheeled machine used to move around parts and equipment, one large, 'humanform' machine, though with arms for tasks that need humans. In theory you could use a boston dynamics style 'big' dog bot - as per this [Tom Scott](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkW9wx7Kbws) video.
Finally you need some way to do space based inspection and repair. While 'organic' space flight capabilities would be nice - its weight you don't need.
Babylon 5 had [little repair pods based off the starfuries](https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Work_pod)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/28cpy.png)
Basically a cockpit, engines, manipulators and just enough structures to hold it together.
I'd pair it up with a smaller 'thruster pod' - maybe something inspired by the [multiple kill vehicle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1HCFM9yoKo) - essentially multiple jet thrusters allowing for ludicrous agility.
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**The top half of a humanoid.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JiMt8.jpg)
<https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/blog/aliens-movie-alien-queen-attacks-android-bishop>
In Aliens the part where Bishop comes back is the best. I cheer every time. What, you have not watched Aliens? Callow youth! But you are in for a treat. Go watch it now!
Ok, you're back. Bishop was a half android by accident which is why he is so messy in this picture. But Maints is half an android out of practicality. You had a lot of humanoid androids and a lot of the ship was built so that humans could access it. The top half has all the needed parts and it is more nimble without the lower half.
Sometimes Maints uses a wheeled dolly getting around populated areas of the ship. Just as often it walks bipedally on its hands. It is lightning fast on ladders or webbing. All that gut stuff is tucked in of course. It is still more than a little creepy, especially when it emerges unexpectedly from a vent.
Maints still has its legs around somewhere. It can get them back on if the princess visits or there is some other formal occasion.
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If it's largely an inspection bot it will be checking various components/areas for temperature, vibration, pressure, corrosion and leaks either chemical or radioactive. If it has limited space to move through it should be small, or at least have a small cross-section. For creepieness I'd suggest something snake-like with a flexible body that can charge sections of its skin electrically or magnetically so as to achieve cohesion there and using a slithering motion to use those sparse sections of cohesion to move freely among bundles of piping, cabling and through small crevices in structural work irrespective of gravity. It would have sensors in its skin to measure the factors above and rely on direct contact, by slithering over equipment or through spaces, to take its measurements. For added danger I'd give the snake-bot a behavior of constricting structural members and slightly compressing them, linearly not axially, to check that their stress/strain curve is linear. This is important for determining if structural loads are within design specification but also gives the snake-bot sufficient strength to be dangerous.
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Your ship has to be designed for members of it sentient species to do maintenance as well. That means that there are maintenance spaces and access ways.
They need this in case the droids are taken offline.
So for a human spaceship, a human shape is best.
Generic universal answer is a sapient shaped droid made of a large aggregate of nanobots, so it can change to whatever shape is needed.
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Humans can send rovers and machines on other planets to navigate or to establish bases before human occupation begins. These rovers and machines are non-humanoid and suited to their mission roles. Then why would humans build or send humanoid robots on an alien planet before occupation?
One reason could be to test how humans would navigate the rough terrain. But other than that, is there any reason for humanoid robots on another planet?
EDIT: Humanoid robots are not the only robots sent, to be clear.
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**Crash Test Dummies**
So you have various machines building a new base on a new world in preparation for occupation at a later date by their lords and masters - the meat bags. That includes not just the habitats themselves but the myriad of miscellaneous components humans will need when they arrive. Power sources, vehicles, tools and equipment, green houses... everything.
And all of those things should be tested to ensure they work exactly as expected. No faults during fabrication, no unanticipated design flaws or systems that don't work as well on the new world as was expected when they were trialed back home. Basically testing for any bugs and kinks.
So the last thing built after the base is completed are a small number of humanoid robots. They are then remotely activated and instructed to test drive vehicles, operate air locks and life support systems and generally push all the buttons and use all the systems that humans would during a normal day at the base. Especially the key systems that will keep them alive. And if nothing goes 'boom' fine, you have the base operating and all set up when you arrive, along with a small team of humanoid workers.
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### They're our ambassador between first contact and meeting actual humans.
Space is big. Real big. There are billions of planets that aren't worth sending humans too, and due to that cost, humans aren't even dispatched until after a robot sends back its data feed showing value. It could be hundreds or thousands of years between the robot arriving and humans arriving.
Should the robot make first contact with an intelligent race, that robot would be responsible for establishing relationships, accepting or proposing treaties, negotiating trade, exchanging knowledge, and other things you'd expect of a diplomat in that situation. If there's a communication delay of 1000s of years the robot is on their own acting on our behalf.
The robot represents us as best it can in that time. To do that, it helps to look like us. We're not a society of rovers.
When two nations want to discuss a treaty, they usually do it in person, face to face, even if it means extra effort or inconvenience; [eg 14 days of quarantine in a pandemic](https://thewest.com.au/politics/scott-morrison/scott-morrison-lands-in-australia-after-trip-to-uk-for-g7-summit-ng-b881904106z). We can't send a billion generation ships to get real humans on a billion one-way trips to a billion planets that may turn out to be worthless rocks, but by sending a billion robots that can function as an ambassador, we're set up to form relations if intelligent life is found, and can commit to future relations with those societies hundreds of years before flesh and blood humans arrive.
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## Because non-humanoid robots require special accommodations
The colony you are building already needs to be designed for humanoids. A standard human staircase has 7.5" stairs at a 37deg incline which is hard for wheels to go up. So rover bots would need extra ramps or elevators installed to gain access to upper stories. We often build shelving and cabinets up to a heights of 7.5ft to maximize usable wall space which is easier to reach when you have a vertical body plan. Our standard doorways are 36" wide which is hard for something with a large flat base to get through. Our standard operating control interfaces can include a very wide range of widgets include knobs, handles, levers, switches, keyboards, triggers, buttons, latches, dead-mans-switches, plugs, etc... While many of these can be manipulated without a proper hand, they were all designed around human hands; so, the optimal appendage in almost every case will be something like what humans have.
... but these are just the every day things you need to reach...
Reaching the AC unit in my attic to restart the piolet requires first pulling down on a string that is 6ft in the air, then climbing a 75deg set of stairs to go through a 2ft wide opening that leads straight into the the low point of the roof line so you have to twist your body around as you come up the stairs to not hit your head, then you have to climb either over or under a 2ft high cross beam, step around the ducts so as not to crush them. Then you need to walk on other crossbeams because part of the attic floor is unfinished or you will step through the ceiling below, then you have to crouch down and hold down a knob with one hand and press a button with another to start the piolet light... yes, this space could be redesigned to be way more convenient than this, but it would mean more time, energy, and materials. Since my attic was only designed for occasional human use, a lot of corners could be cut and assumptions made knowing that no one was going to be running thier roomba up there.
No matter what body plan we choose for a robot, there will always be places that a Human Colonist can go that the robot can not... unless you give the robot a human body plan. So, by using humanoid robots, it means that you can design everything in the colony to be equally accessible to both robots and humans such that things don't need to be redundantly designed to accommodate both.
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The use of humanoid robots is a policy that was established after the failure of the first human expedition to HES-5743.
Several flying and wheeled probes had been sent in advance and found the local fauna to be pretty tame, including a local predator (species HES-5743-057) resembling a cross between a tiger and a hyena, but which only hunted small reptiles.
However, an hour after the first humans landed, a pack of -057s attacked them, and turned out to be surprisingly fast and intelligent -- and resistant to small arms fire. All 21 humans were killed off within 15 minutes.
Later exploration of the planet found that there had been a humanoid species on this planet in the past, and the -057s' brains had somehow kept the humanoid form on the list of prey.
From then on, it was decided that humanoid robots would be on the pre-settlement checklist.
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## They're Mass Produced
Custom is always more expensive than mass produced. If you are already churning out humanoid robots for use on Earth and other established colonies, they might be cheap enough to be the default choice for exploration.
If your humanoid robots so common as to be expendable, then it doesn't really matter if they are perfect for the job or not. Just send a bunch, and some will get stuck in rough terrain or break early, but overall the mission will be accomplished.
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A conquering android army.
Or a colonizing one if you don't have something like nanomachines that just make everything and still construct a lot of things as you do back home where there is a lot of intervention of the human form.
Who is going to furnish and perform the interior designing of my living room before I set foot on the planet? A specialized non-humanolid form for those tasks might be a bit excessive for an environment made to suit humans and be modified by humans.
Have you seen a snow plow? Some look purpose-built but many (most even) are just a dump truck with a snow plow on the front. Why? Because we use trucks everywhere and are proven, just like how we use humanoid bodies everywhere and stick tools onto them.
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They're the citizens who volunteered to oversee the other robots.
The humanoid robots have human-level intelligence and are legally considered citizens equal to any human. The other robots are animal-level intelligent and need oversight to make sure they stick to the plans when building the colony. Sure, you *could* send humans to do the job with a few thousand extra tonnes of supplies to keep them going for the few years it takes to get the colony built, but this particular one was under-funded and couldn't quite manage that within budget, so when looking for volunteers for the construction phase, they specified AIs only.
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**Humans are used to avatars, because most planets are rough.**
In this world, remotes are how the humans usually operate planetside - because circumstances on the surface are usually bad for human flesh. The atmosphere is caustic or poisonous, radiation is too high, gravity is wrong, monsters etc. All of these can be compensated for by appropriate remotes. Most colonies are all remotes, with the human (and AI) operators living in orbit. By the time they find a nice planet, humans have a lot of experience with remotes.
When the humans find a planet that is pretty nice and that they might visit in the flesh, it is something new. The humans start out the way they have done a hundred times before - with the remotes.
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**Why did humans build humanoid robots at all?**
Presumably, the humanoid robots had some role on Earth. They would prepare and fulfill the same role in the colony. Whatever jobs they had on Earth, they'd do in the colony.
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If this is some sort of precolonization situation where they're trying to get a better understanding of the planet then beyond moving around the environment perhaps the humanoid robots also have systems to imitate human organ functions to see how the environment may interact with the colonists down the line.
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In my culture we place a high value on self-sufficiency. This means that according to tradition at least one meal a year must be prepared from ingredients that have been grown at home. This is going to have some impact on the type of housing available in our culture as it will be impossible to sell something that doesn't provide the space to grow this single meal.
What's the minimum area that needs to be dedicated to reliably be able to produce a meal for a single person and/or a five person family at a specific point (this can be anytime, I'm not fussy) in the year? And what are we going to be eating? Local climate can be adjusted, so a solution that fits anywhere on earth is acceptable.
Meat is not a requirement, but equally it has to be a real meal not just whatever pea-pod currently looks biggest, or a single plain baked potato.
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It takes 1300 square meters to feed a vegan for 365 days, it might take more than twice for meat eaters. So the vegan option is better if you want to save space.
For one single day, we get 3,5 square meters, a really small garden is enough to feed a human for one day for 3 meals. It gets down to less than 1.18 meters for one single meal.
But what about efficiency? Hydroponics and vertical farms exist, which means you could make the walls of a house to be a living garden. Or build an enormous garden on top of each persons roof.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/anGAX.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LMJwB.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/279RY.jpg)
Vertical farms can yeld up to 20 times more crops per square meter, therefore a small sleeping room of 12 square meters might be enough to feed a person for 207 meals, roughly 69 days.
This is all approximation since different crops have different nutritional values, but if you wanted to be really efficient. I suggest soy.
Soy beans are the highest proteic food on the entire planet and rich in fat. 36% of soy is pure protein by weight, more than any meat and it's close to protein powders.
This is what a hydroponic vertical farm of soybeans looks like,and remember soy is objectively speaking the most nutrious food on the planet by sheer numbers alone
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> Together, protein and soybean oil content account for 56% of dry soybeans by weight (36% protein and 20% fat, table). The remainder consists of 30% carbohydrates, 9% water and 5% ash (table). Soybeans comprise approximately 8% seed coat or hull, 90% cotyledons and 2% hypocotyl axis or germ -[source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean)
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tdvIy.jpg)
Soy can be cooked in many different ways.
* Soy mince with tomato sauce, resembling an Italian ragu.
* As plain cooked beans or chilly
* It can be made into a paste and make tofu grilled, roasted, fried, boiled or even raw
* it can also be used to make bean stews.
* it can be used to make cooking oil
* it can be used to make sweets
* it can be roasted and eaten like peanuts
Soy beans alone have been a staple food sources for many Asian cultures for millennia.
**spices**
* garlic grows in agglomerations, it doesn't care about space as long has it has enough water and light, you could get one garlic bulb for every 1.5 centimetres of space, which is the average diameter of a garlic bulb
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zqj0N.jpg)
* Peppers/tomatoes grow vertically but can also be compressed into small spaces
And produce up to 60 fruits per plant if fertile [source](https://www.growveg.com/guides/the-long-wait-for-ripe-peppers/#:~:text=Use%20Small-Fruited%20Varieties,50%2C%20or%20even%2070%20peppers.) a single plant can be grown 40 centimetres apart [source](https://www.burpee.com/gardenadvicecenter/areas-of-interest/seed-starting/growing-peppers/article10252.html#:~:text=Provide%20a%20sandy%20loam%20soil,some%20into%20flowerbeds%20and%20borders.) but can be scaffolded as shown in the images above.
* onions, they grow just like garlic but being bigger require more spacing apart, you could grow one every 11 centimetres based on their diameter
* tumeric, sugar and other tubers are like growing potatoes, you can get a dozen or more tubers from one single plant. And it requires little space.
For a single meal option with diverse foods and spices, 1.18 square meter might still be enough.
If meat must be an obligatory option then the most economic choice both in therms of space and feed are insects,rats or small lizards as they are really small and can feed themselves by eating smaller organism or things like paper/clothes or hairs.
Filther feeding fish might be an option too, but they require some water source.
Does finding a small animal in your home and cooking it count as growing it?
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It used to be common for most homes in rural or even suburban homes to have gardens. If you have never gardened, you might be surprised by the amount of food they can produce. Even in an urban setting, a couple of planters on a balcony or a portion of a roof top garden can easily produce food for several meals a year. Two zucchini plants can produce enough to feed an entire neighborhood. Ask anyone who has ever planted them how they managed to give them away. Potatoes, peas, beans, carrots, radishes, tomatoes, onions, pumpkin (takes some room), strawberries, all are easy to grow.
As for meat, many people today keep chickens. They do it of for the eggs, but once a hen stops laying, it either becomes a pet or Sunday dinner. You certainly don't want or need multiple roosters so they tend to become dinner much sooner then hens. While not common in many countries, some people raise rabbits or even Guinea pigs as food animals.
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**A few square metres.**
This depends on the exact definition of **ingredients that have been grown at home**. If you keep animals must you also grow the feed for them or can you buy it? If you are allowed buy the feed two possibilities are
**Chicken Coop**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2riXl.jpg)
Your chicken coop does not need to be as nice as this one. Just fence off a few square metres of your garden. The chickens will provide eggs all year around. If you eat enough eggs at once it can be an entire meal. For an easier option just buy chicks or pullets a few weeks before the big day, feed them up, and slaughter them.
**Rabbit Hutch**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/06zwt.jpg)
A rabbit hutch like this is small enough to go indoors if you don't mind the smell. Again buy baby rabbits a few weeks before the big day, feed them up, and then slaughter.
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Absolutely nothing.
In fact, less than nothing. If people of this culture aren't picky eaters and can eat anything, they can turn house cockroaches into a nutritious meal. Normally, people may have to work hard to eradicate them - now they don't have to do it! When the time comes, they only have to catch as many of them as needed, and that's all.
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Anything big enough for a bucket, you can grow most veges in a pot including quite large ones. Definitely pumpkin and potatoes but plenty of others. [Examples](https://www.thespruce.com/great-vegetables-to-grow-in-containers-848214)
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Nobody's mentioned mushrooms. They're handy because they can be grown in the dark, and in fact prefer it. You can get quite a lot of mushrooms from a small space:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kZjjq.jpg)[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oFiK0.png)
If you want something more exotic, there's the giant puffball (*Calvatia gigantea*). This monster grows to the size of a football usually, and in rare cases to as much as 90 centimetres across! According to Richard Mabey's *Food for Free*, it can be stuffed and roasted like a chicken, and tastes rather like one too. The snag is that nobody seems to have yet cracked how to cultivate the things, according to <https://www.mushroom-appreciation.com/puffball-mushroom-identification.html> . But if your society could master that, that'd be an impressive dish for a special occasion.
Of course, for the very reason that they *are* so undemanding, relying heavily on mushrooms and not much else might not be considered doing the thing properly, since the object is to commemorate being able to grow your own food. Rather like relying on ready-made things out of packets for Christmas dinner - it's Christmas dinner, but it doesn't have the same bragging rights. One can imagine a hard-up student in a small flat making their Whateverit'scalledmas dinner off nothing but fried mushrooms and windowsill lettuce, while people who have big gardens and take the whole thing seriously - or just want to show off - serve up omelettes, crusty bread or rabbit with three veg.
Don't forget about pudding. You sometimes see absurd little dwarf apple and pear trees advertised, that can be grown in a large tub and produce quite a few pounds of fruit. Or you can stick to smaller plants such as currants, raspberries or strawberries. (Some of these, such as strawberries, can be grown as trailing plants in hanging baskets, which may be useful if you're trying to fit a lot into a small or awkward space).
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I'm considering making one "creature" that is encountered in a story a sentient star in an alternate universe. I hope to hand-wave a little of the more complicated stuff by saying "this universe's constants are different", but the problem is I don't even know where to start when making a star sentient. Surely I'm not the first person to write about such nonsense, but I'm not sure where to look for examples for inspiration.
Can you give an example of how it could work, or a reference to another author who has done it already? I want it to be at least semi-plausible, not just say "This is how it is, deal with it." Note that "sentient" doesn't mean it has to be an animal of some sort, just a being with self-awareness.
**Edit** based on comments: I was considering that all stars in this universe could have developed intelligence in the same fashion, assuming that's plausible. But as far as them being a race capable of reproduction, I'm guessing that's better to skip for simplicity. Let's say they just "developed" intelligence somehow, through natural causes. How could a star contain a kind of "brain" or some capacity for intelligence?
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If you want a [reality-check](/questions/tagged/reality-check "show questions tagged 'reality-check'") the answer is "no."
A star ball of matter large enough that elements at the core get compressed until nuclear fusion begins. Lots of energy is generated which heats the rest of the star, molecular bonds break down, etc.
While there is no sound, scientific explanation of [consciousness](/questions/tagged/consciousness "show questions tagged 'consciousness'") that I know of, the usual assumption is that this takes highly *organized* matter, while a star has highly *homogenized* matter.
Either you think of it as [fantasy](/questions/tagged/fantasy "show questions tagged 'fantasy'") or you "invent" some property of matter that lends itself to organized structures and would not get affected by the fusion reaction. Technobabble about cosmic strings and quantum.
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I believe that one of the characters in the television series *Andromeda* 2000-2005 turned out to be the humanoid avatar of an intelligent star.
Morris the Cat's comment mentioned a Frank Herbert story about intelligent stars: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipping\_Star [1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipping_Star) <http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?30>[2](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?30) <http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2257>[3](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2257)
workerjoe's comment mentioned John C. Wright's "Count to a Trillion" series. <http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?7227>[4](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?7227)
Ross Rocklynne's Darkness series was about an intelligent nebula or galaxy. <http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?450>[5](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?450)
Isaac Asimov's story "Buy Jupiter!" (1958) featured aliens who were plasma in highly structured magnetic fields and lived in the atmospheres of hot stars. If the entire atmosphere of such a star was a single intelligent giant plasma being one might say that the star was a person. <http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?68272>[6](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?68272)
Intelligent stars are among the wonders in Olaf Stapledon's novel *The Star Maker* (1937).
Here is a link to an article about living planets and living stars: <http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/living_worlds>[7](http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/living_worlds)
It mentions about nine examples, and some of them may offer explanations of how the stars became structured enough to develop intelligence.
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As noted in other answers, intelligence, while poorly understood, is most likely to be related to a kind of high-level heterogeneity; a certain kind of structure that is predictable and unpredictable in equal measure.
For this reason, highly homogeneous environments, like the inside of the star are a poor candidate. Luckily the outside, the photosphere and the corona, show more structure. In particular, sunspots provide an interesting level of heterogeneity and interaction. Sunspots move across the surface, have polarity, interact with each other, and expand and shrink. Ingredients enough to make complex interactions feasible.
If you can engineer a star with a much higher number of starspots than ours, at a much finer scale, it's not too big of a stretch to imagine self-sustaining structures being a possibility. The "life forms" found in [continuous versions of Conway's Game of Life](https://github.com/Chakazul/Lenia) might be an inspiration:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kWxIW.png)
Of course, this gives you life on a star, not a star that is itself sentient. But there's a spectrum between a colony of sentient beings and a single sentient entity. Even our brains are often hypothesized to function as a kind of "council" of competing desires. The self-replicating structures could evolve into greater complexity, driven by competition for resources (probably the energy from the star powering their internal computation), and eventually merge into something like a single entity.
These would be largely 2D entities, so learning to manipulate the third dimension, and discovering a universe in three dimensions would be a big breakthrough early in their evolution. On the other hand, they have a *lot* more energy to tap into than we do, so their evolution may proceed much quicker than ours did.
Finally, if you can think of a mechanism by which this intelligence could be transferred from one star to another (perhaps an incredibly focused gamma ray beam could copy a structure from one photosphere to another across light years) then the spontaneous emergence of structure could be relatively rare. After they've covered their first star, all they need to do is focus their energies in order to expand to a whole new universe. Before long, the entire galaxy would be covered in sentient stars.
In fact, who's to say that it isn't...
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Not through natural means, however, a very large computer would look like a star from the outside. The waste heat from it's calculations could be transferred to a coolant which becomes a plasma by time it is ejected out of the core. The plasma would be cooled by space before returning back to the core to repeat the process over again. Ejecting the coolant maximizes the surface area the coolant has to release heat into the space around it and the gravity produced by the mass of the machine pulls the coolant back into the core again.
The very odd flare activity as well as the abnormal light spectrum for a star of very small size would attract curious travelers to see what the deal is. The computer could communicate with these travelers to gain data about the outside world.
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I don't know about sentient stars in fiction, but Terry Pratchett in Dark Side of the Sun wrote about The First Sirian Bank which is an intelligent planet. Basically if I recall correctly the rock (silica) of the planet had formed computer circuits and it had developed artificial intelligence.
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## Plasma Processors and Godstars from the Orions Arm Project
In the Orions Arm Universe a substance called [magmatter](https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/48630634d2591) exists. Magmatter has a bunch of fancy properties, but has the slight flaw that we have never observed any magnetic monopole in a physics experiment. However it is a downright conservative substance compared to exotic matter with negative mass.
Magmatter enables some godlike AI's to create the ultimate computers, [plasma processors](https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/506308cd7f8c1).
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> The original concept of the plasma processor dates all the way back to the Information Age, when various researchers theorized about the ultimate possible limits of computation using conventional matter. These theorists quickly determined that the ultimate speed of a computer was dictated by quantum theory and Relativity, which stated that the minimum possible time it could take for something to change from one quantum state to another was limited by the amount of energy available to it. Assuming that the maximum amount of energy available could be had by converting the entire mass to energy led to the result that the so-called 'ultimate computer' would consist of a ball of plasma operating at nuclear temperatures for a tiny fraction of a second before radiating energy blew it apart. This was generally presumed to mean that no actual computer could ever operate at the ultimate theoretical limits of computation and for millennia this was the case, until the first S4 minds appeared.
> First developed at the 4th Singularity level, a plasma processor consists of a complex three-dimensional magmatter mesh constraining high energy plasma via the intense magnetic fields associated with the material. Computations are performed as the plasma changes state an enormous number of times per second, with data being stored in the quantum states of the magelecton clouds associated with the magmatter mesh. Input/output and internal system communications are via gamma ray lasers and/or modulation of the associated magnetic fields. In the most advanced designs, comm-gauge wormholes also play a role, being magnetically contained and used to route communications to external systems (sometimes light-years away) or across the largest internal distances of the processor.
> A standard S4 plasma-based computronium node is able to process some 2.98e38 bits per second, per kilogram of computronium. This makes a single kilogram of plasma processor as capable as an entire S3 moon-brain. In practice most plasma processing nodes are much larger, being used in Jupiter-brains, god-stars, and other deity-class processing nodes. At higher S-levels, plasma processor capabilities seem to increase greatly, both in terms of raw computational horsepower (it is believed that high energy S5 and S6 plasma processors are respectively some three and seven orders of magnitude more capable than the S4 versions, possibly taking advantage of space-time alterations generated as a side-effect of the energies involved) and the ability to decrease both the size and energies required to produce plasma based computation. Such 'cold plasma' based units are far less capable in terms of raw power but require far less support infrastructure and may be employed in applications such as experimental deep-space lifeforms or god-tech based angelnets employing restructured planetary magnetic fields as part of their processing architecture.
> The greatest limitation on most plasma processors is often waste heat. The intense energies associated with the devices limits their ability to operate in close proximity to other, less durable devices generally including nearly any object made from conventional matter. This is a common issue with magmatter and other more advanced technologies however, and the design principles and best practices of working with such devices are thousands of years old.
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Stars are made of a lot of plasma and some archailects figured out how to combine a magmatter matrix with a star to turn it into a gigantic processor. The baselines call these archailects/stars [Godstars](https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/46f96750760b3).
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> The godtech modification and transcension of a star into a high S-level (>SI:4 due to multi-nodality) archailect.
> While appearing as a normal stellar object, the Godstar is a fully transapient being with control over many aspects of stellar behavior. The Godstar is in some ways analogous to a Planetary Caretaker God, maintaining an optimal stellar environment for bionts and AIs. However, unlike the Caretaker God which resides on or in the planet, the Godstar is the stellar object. It is believed that subsidiary beings of SI:2- SI:4 (Flarelings and Spot Dwellers) exist in conjunction with em. The recent discovery of the Godstars provoked varying reactions throughout Terragen Space. The affiliation of 23 currently-known Godstars is unaffiliated with any of the known archailects, nor has the nature of eir origin and creation as yet been ascertained. Their long-term effect upon Sephirotic polities remains unknown pending further investigation and developments.
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The only two things you might have going for you are:
1. The [equations that govern plasmas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlasov_equation) are non-linear. So maybe, maybe, maybe complicated combinations of 'structures' in the plasma waves could be possible.
2. There is a tremendous amount of high-quality energy to be had in a star. Specifically, there is a [thermal gradient](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/iris/multimedia/layerzoo.html) between the various layers of a star. That thermal gradient can be the source of useful energy. Any kind of life form needs an energy input. Any kind of computation also needs an energy input.
[Answer]
**It is a different question if stars *evolve* intelligence, or that it is intelligent through other means (perhaps *designed* to be so).**
Evolving intelligence is not possible in my view, as there are not enough generations of stars, not enough interaction to push intelligent forms, and no physical means (they are just mostly fusion explosions) to form a brain.
However it may be possible to *design* it, by perhaps installing within a star a system of neurons (a brain) using materials that are not fuseable, using the fusion of the star as its energy source. It would have to withstand the heat of the star, and communicate with other neurons in the star the same as a brain. An intelligent race would need to install this into all stars.
The other aspect is *sentience* - you need this star to communicate and sense otherwise it has no way of knowing it is separate from the universe (no sense of 'self'). Orbiting satellites could give it senses, and could provide a means to transmit and receive messages with other stars, to feed back ideas and give it an identity, a community, an idea of self-knowledge and self-worth to enable a sentient idea.
[Answer]
Stephen Baxter has a species in his Xeelee-sequence called the Qax whose sentience arise from interacting convection cells in a turbulent fluid.
From *Timelike Infinity* by Stephen Baxter:
>
> '...turbulence is an example of the universal self-organization of
> matter and energy', the Qax said. 'In the ocean of my world the energy
> generated by the temperature difference between the vulcanism and the
> atmosphere is siphoned off, organized by the actions of turbulence
> into billions of convection cells.
> 'All known life is cellular in
> nature,' the [Qax] went on. [...] But there seems to be no rule about
> the form such cells can take.'
>
>
>
So why not this sort of sentience in the convection cells found in a star?
] |
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[
In the novel "The Emperor" by R.D. Villam there is a scene where 6 people are traveling somewhere riding horses but each of them also brings 2 extra horses, with a horse running at either side of each person.
The scene explained that every 6 hours, they will change their horse so that the horses didn't get too tired. Thus, they can move continuously.
The scene also explained that they only stop 3 times for 2 hours each. Every stop is for resting and letting their horses eat grass.
Is all of this realistic??
\*edit:
In that scene, the rider arrived at their destination in 2 days.
[Answer]
**Traveling with multiple horses is not unheard of, but not so much for this reason**
In Europe, many wealthier knights traveled with 2 or more horses, but they did not switch off like this. They would have one large riding horse called a Palfrey that would carry the rider while traveling. On top of that, they would often have additional draft horses called Sumpters that would act as pack animals or pull the supply carts. These two kinds of horses were not the fastest, but they were well bred to carry the weight of a rider or supplies over very long distances. Then they would have a smaller, faster warhorse called a Destrier that they would only ride in battle. Because the draft horses were bred for endurance, and the warhorses for speed, the warhorses would be just as worn out after a long day's march as the draft horses. This means even if you had multiple Palfreis, switching off would be highly impractical because the Sumpters and Destriers still could not be driven any harder.
Another example is the Huns. They often traveled with many more horses than soldiers. While they would have changed mounts as they traveled, that was not the point. Hun soldiers often traveled with minimal provisions and lived off of the blood and milk of the horses. Any breast feeding mother will tell you that producing milk is a lot of work, and having to do that on top of exercise is quite exhausting. Having more horses meant your horses would not fatigue as quickly from having to put out the extra calories necessary to feed the rider. At the end of the day though, any animal will have tired, achy feet after a long walk with or without a heavy load.
**How multiple horses can make you faster**
When you do hear about switching out horses to increase speed, you are typically referring to the use of waystations on a road where people frequently need to travel in both directions quickly; so, you keep stables every few miles apart so that as a rider gets from one station to the next, he leaves his horse at the station to rest and picks up a fully rested horse to continue with. In this case, you only have 1 horse with you at a time, but you may easily end up riding 3 or more horses in a single day. These systems were most often seen used by courier or postal services such as Pony Express to expedite messages, and would allow a rider to cover MUCH more ground in 2 days than they could with a single horse.
Based on various sources, most agree than an average horse can sustain about 30 miles per day. In contrast, using way stations and fairly average horses, a rider can generally cover anywhere from 75 to over 200 miles per day depending on how the stations are spread out.
**Now for your specific case**
Note in the previous paragraph, I mentioned that the **average** horse can do 30 miles in a day. It is important to remember that horses are animals, not cars.
Imagine you have two people. One is your run of the mill computer nerd, and the other is a professional athlete wearing a 25lb backpack. I don't know about you, but I'm putting my money on the slightly encumbered athlete in just about any sort of race.
While most horses can only do 30 miles a day comfortably, many horses specifically bred and trained for distance can comfortably average 50-60 miles a day. When pushed to the max, a quality endurance horse can do 100 miles in 24 hours, and many champion endurance horses can even do 100 miles in as little as 12-15 hours! In other words, a good horse with a rider is still a LOT better than an average horse with no rider. For this reason, taking extra horses is a bad idea. Assume you have a stable with 18 horses in it. If you take all 18 then your top speed is capped by the weakest horse in the group; so, you may not travel more than 15-25 miles per day as you constantly have to slow down to let Ol'Bessy keep up with the group. In contrast, if you just take the 6 best horses, you will be able to push them much longer and harder even with riders because they will be tough enough to make up for the weight and then some.
[Answer]
**True:** Bringing extra horses and changing them regularly slows how fast the horses tire out. They can travel slightly faster and quite a bit farther than with one horse each.
**False:** They can travel continuously or almost continuously for several days.
For almost-continuous travel, they need post stations where truly fresh horses wait. One which has been walking along without rider is *fresher*, but not *fresh*.
As ksbes pointed out in the comments there are [endurance riding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_riding) competitions with remarkable feats, but this does not just involve specially trained horses and riders but also a large support infrastructure. Often feed and water is delivered to the pre-planned rest places.
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[
I have a very fragmented world, composed of different kingdoms/nations most of which have no connections with the others. How can I explain the adoption of the same calendar (or metric system for that matter) at a certain point in the past without using a common root civilization that conquered all of them?
The calendar in question doesn't have to be too complex, no leap years are needed for example. But still when I mean "same" I mean technically the same, but not culturally.
So same number of months, same number of days per month, same number of days per week. Names for months and days can vary depending on the culture.
Also I'm not saying no contact has ever happened, but the contacts were scarce. No cultural invasion.
[Answer]
**It is based in some regular, useful, synchronized, easily recognizable phenomena**
In Earth, calendars based in the lunar cycle are common: it is easy to look up during the night and see that the moon now is no exactly like yesterday, and a lot like it was a month before.
So, you need something in your world that is regular enough to allow to use as a measure of time and , global for everyone to notice. Here the most plausible candidate is again astronomy.
In this case, you may want to avoid the issue that caused the downfall of the lunar calendaries: lunar cycles do not match solar cycles, and solar cycles:
A) Are necessary to keep track of if you want to develop agriculture / predict weather.
B) Being longer, induce a greater possibility of error in its calculations.
Make your moon perfectly synchronized with your solar cycle, so that each year are exactly (or close enough to not be relevant to primitive cultures) X months. Additionally, you could try to add a second satellite with a different cycle (but still synchronized with the solar one) so combination of the two moons'states are useful to track time in the year (e.g., twice each year the two moons will be full moons, which mean that you can use it to mark the start of the seasons).
[Answer]
# Trade
Even rare trade would have an influence on the way people measure anything. After all, you need to deal with the proverbial pound on one side and kilogram on the other. Traders become experts in conversion and the greatest evangelists of standardized systems.
Believe you me, the last thing a trader from Űryk wants to do is arrive on the last day of the Improvidence of Kœđđna during the Descension of Botath Reporatory — lest he become part of the Expression of Union.
You betcha, traders want everyone using exactly the same calendar.
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One option not previously mentioned is a former world encompassing empire. The empire may have broken up so long ago that it is just a myth but some things will be retained like the calendar format and possibly measuring units.
There may be other cultural parallels like similar deities and take your hat off in buildings.
Some empires allow different regional languages (so long as official business is done in the empire's language). So, if the empire's language in remote areas was only known to a few, after the breakup, only the local language is likely to survive.
Reasons for the breakup could be:
1. **Some external threat:** Someone/thing/group from outside the empire
destroyed it well enough that the survivors had to begin from
scratch. I would also include disease or plague in this category.
What was the threat? Is it still out there? will it be back? Why
did it leave after breaking up the empire?
2. **Succession issues:** People pick sides and fight it out first with
words and then with property damage and lives lost. The empire
could have just worn itself away through a series of battles until
it didn't have any interest in its vassals. In this case the
fighting heads toward the center of the empire with fewer and fewer
troops available. Think of two very tired and beat up boxers who
keep standing there, throwing punches at each other.
3. **Rebellion:** The vassal states have had enough or a few governors get
greedy and it becomes the empire against everyone. In this
scenario, the time frame can be the shortest as each group does its
best to erase the empire from all records and tales.
Then you need to decide what is left of the empire and why people don't see it. Was it all looted and pillaged? Is there disease or poison in a "forbidden zone"? Is there some kind of automated defense in the Forbidden zone? Is there a rocky field of craters where the seat of the empire once stood (or an ocean)?
[Answer]
They may reach the same conclusion if the observable phenomena is similar.
* A plant that blooms and withers each month.
* A wasp molting each week.
* A tree giving fruit each year.
The wasp pollinates the plant, which in turn is a symbiotic organism on the tree.
* Tree - year
* Flower - month
* Wasp - week
*There! You have your calendar!*
[Answer]
# A regular eclipse
Will start everyone's "year"¹. This is an event this is super obvious and awe inspiring enough to make everyone revolve their year around that. Then they split their calendars into sets of 10, since they count in base ten, so that makes the most sense. It would be easier know how far days are away cross-month.
It would help greatly if the number of days in the year is an exact multiple of 100, since months can then be broken into days that are a multiple of ten. They all count in base ten because that's how many fingers they have.
---
¹: Not necessary a scientific definition of a year (1 full orbit around the planet's star) But it would help greatly if it were close, so the seasons will roughly align with their "year". Otherwise you can also have seasons not be bound to months, so people get the new date ranges for each season at the start of each year.
>
> Mommy, when does summer start this year?
>
>
> It starts at 3-6.7
>
>
> Wow, that's only 50 days away! It's a good thing the months use the same base as our days or this would have been harder to figure out.
>
>
>
[Answer]
**religion**
most major religions on earth defined their own calendars, and
although historically the spread of religion was culturally invasive, it doesn't have to be. if the religion doesn't conflict with local cultural practices and doesn't introduce new rituals, it doesn't need to change culture.
instead religion can teach generally acceptable moral tenets and focus on solving actual social problems and then introduce the calendar as a practical solution that gets adopted because it's convenient.
names for days and months can be taken from local culture too.
not much contact is needed for that to happen. the religion will spread out from one location, but only a few people are enough to bring it to a new location. if the teachings are actually helpful, it will be accepted and within a few hundred years it can cover the whole planet.
if the new calendar is a significant improvement over any old calendar then not even a majority acceptance of the religion is needed. (we are still skeptical about your teachings, but your calendar is good, so we'll take that)
(this is probably what allowed the gregorian calendar to be easily adopted in asia, and especially [china](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption_of_the_Gregorian_calendar#China), because it is not in itself culturally invasive)
worth reading is this section on [why the julian calendar was created](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar#Motivation):
it allowed for more stable dates of important events.
[Answer]
**The very simplest reason: All other calendars sucked until a genius came up with a real good calendar. This calendar was so superior to its opposing ones that people's inertia, patriotism etc. was insufficient to cling to the other ones. So it conquered the world.**
A good calendar **is not easy.** Most natural phenomena have odd ratios to each other. The moon here behaves very irregular (It was not until Euler came that it could be predicted quite accurately) and on average a moon cycle lasts 29.53059 days and a year is 365.2422 days. You also want it to accurately model seasons and use mostly regular intervals to allow fair pay for employers and easy usage of statisticians. (The 28 day February causes all kind of statistic problems).
Even the gregorian calendar (365.2425) is not the best available; in terms of accuracy (from best to worst) there is the Persian calendar, the Milancovic calendar (365.242222) and the Jewish calendar which is not so accurate with the sun year, but the very best as a combined moon/sun calendar.
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# No moon or no axial tilt
The easiest way to make all calendars the same is to have them all be as simple as possible
The Lunar and Solar calendars don't line up. Therefore, civilizations are constantly torn between following one or the other. The months we have on our calendar are mostly based on the lunar cycles; the years on the solar cycle.
Furthermore, axial tilt causes seasons and seasons can cause interesting events to line up with certain astronomical phenomena over the world. For example, during Ancient Egyptian times, Sirius rose above the horizon right before the Nile flood started. So the calendar there gave prominence to that event.
If you have a planet with no moon and no axial tilt, then you remove most of the variation that causes calendars to be different. There will only be two astronomical phenomena of note: days caused rising and setting of the sun, and years caused by the rotation of the stars through the sky. All calendars will have the same length of days and years, with no months. For added simplicity, make the length of the year an even integer multiple of the length of a day, so that the number of days per year doesn't change over time (at last, within one person's lifetime).
# Now just line up the calendar's New Year
The only problem left is that the 'start' of the calendar years must be aligned with something. If you don't care about that, then you no problem. If you do care about then you need an astronomical event of notice that occurs at the same time every year.
My proposal would be a two-year event. Have the planet and another planet be in a 1:2 resonance. Every two orbits of the inner (inhabited) planet, there will be one orbit of the outer planet. The point of conjunction would be the most obvious starting point for a New Year. Then each cultural 'year' will actually be two full orbits of the sun (how ever many days that is), starting with the conjunction with the outer planet in resonant orbit.
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If you subscribe to evolution; the first intelligent beings arose somewhere, in a single tribe, due to some genetic mutation (in a male or female) that was inherited by the original's children.
That one person of modern intelligence would likely have had an enormous advantage over his tribe mates, likely enough to outsmart them and rule them all.
So this first King, living a long life, invented the calendar based on star positions, and passed that along to his intelligent children, that has passed it along for all time. Eventually the intelligent ones take over the earth and fragment into arguments; their shared ancestor in the distant past is no barrier to that.
But, they have all stuck with the original calendar: Every group has a **correct** legend that it was created by one of their own; it would be that first mutant with intelligence.
No conquering done to unite them here; this was fragmentation of the first family, after some generations and disagreements when their numbers grew large.
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[Question]
[
I am working on developing a fictitious language, and was wondering if there exists a commonly accepted set of phonemes which could be used.
I specifically don't want it to be similar to Indo-European languages, but do want it to be manageable for most readers ("speakers").
[Answer]
Indo-European languages... have a common origin and common grammatical concepts; but they don't really have much of a common inventory of phonemes. A linguist, or an amateur who knows their basic linguistics, would understand the phrase *"not similar to Indo-European languages"* as referring to grammar, not phonology.
So what are the grammatical commonalities of [Indo-European languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages)? (Note that English is typologically quite unlike other Indo-European languages. The history of the English language made it into a weakly inflected analytical, almost isolating, language.) Morphologically, they are [fusional](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusional_language) [synthetic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_language) languages; most of them have [grammatical gender](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender); most have two or three numbers; most have at least a present tense and a past tense. Syntactically, they are [nominative-accusative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative%E2%80%93accusative_language) languages; most have articles; most exhibit grammatical agreement between nouns and adjectives and between subject and verb. Modern I-E languages vary between requiring strict word order (for example, English) and allowing almost completely free word order.
Follow the links to the categories listed in the previous paragraph to find non-Indo-European alternative options; for example, an [agglutinative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutinative_language) (like Turkic languages) [ergative-absolutive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergative%E2%80%93absolutive_language) (like Basque or Georgian) language with no grammatical gender, number, or tense would be very much unlike any I-E language.
You are absolutely free to invent any phonological system you want. But...
* You cannot go wrong with the [cardinal vowels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_vowels) `/a/` `/e/` `/i/` `/o/` `/u/`, the semivowels `/j/` and `/w/`, one series of [occlusives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_consonant) or stops (pick one series of `/p/` `/t/` `/k/` and `/b/` `/d/` `/g/`), one [rhotic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_consonant) consonant *or* one [lateral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_consonant) (there are languages with lateral(s) and no rhotic(s) or vice-versa), the nazals `/m/` and `/n/` and the [fricatives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fricative_consonant) `/s/` and `/f/`. Most people would be able to pronounce this set of phonemens or at least produce credible approximations.
* For added variety you may introduce [rounded](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundedness) vowels such as `/ø/` and `/y/` (most people can easily make them, even if they are not present in their language), diphthongs, a second series of occlusives (but beware that there is little universal agreement between languages with respect what exactly is the contrasting factor between the series of occlusives) and use *both* a rhotic and a lateral. Some languages allow both "simple" and "double" consonants (long or emphatic, depending on consonant type). Does yours?
* Finally, consider the [phonotactics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonotactics) of your language. Are consonant clusters allowed? Or maybe only *some* consonant clusters? How long can they be? Are they allowed in all positions? Is vocalic hiatus allowed? Can a word end in a consonant? Or in a cluster? Or in a vowel?
Have a great time developing your [conlang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language)!
[Answer]
The [UCLA Phonetics Lab](http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/) has a public database of how sounds are used in different languages. There is also a nice [website UI](http://menzerath.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de/upsid.html) for the database, hosted by the University of Frankfurt. This contains a [browser](http://menzerath.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de/upsid_classes.html) that can look up which sounds are used in which classes of languages.
For example, you can see that languages classified as Indo-European are:
ALBANIAN, ARMENIAN, BENGALI, BRETON, BULGARIAN, FARSI, FRENCH, GERMAN, GREEK, HINDI-URDU, IRISH, KASHMIRI, KONKANI, KURDISH, LITHUANIAN, NEPALI, NORWEGIAN, ORMURI, PASHTO, ROMANIAN, RUSSIAN, SINHALESE, SPANISH
You can then go see which sounds these languages use. For example, [German](http://menzerath.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de/L/L2004.html) uses these sounds:
p b k g pf f v s z S Z x m N l R h i: y: e: o/: E: a: u: o: I Y E "@ 4 U O j E) ai Oi au d ts n t
All of which have a special phonetic name associated with them. You could use this information to differentiate your new language in many ways. Here are a couple I thought of:
**1. Use completely different sounds**
This is the obvious way, but may be rather difficult as the Indo-European language class covers a very wide variety of sounds. You could look through and see which sounds are not used and make them the cornerstone of your new language. A potential downside to this is that written language often can sound many different ways. Even if you use different sounds, they may look similar on paper.
**2. Use a smaller set of sounds**
You might notice that Indo-European languages contain a very broad set of sounds. One way you could differentiate your language is to limit the amount of sounds. For example, [Hawaiian](http://menzerath.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de/L/L2424.html) uses a much smaller set:
p k ? m "n h "l w i E a "o u
Hawaiian's repetitive vowel sounds and consonants make it feel very different from German, even though they share much of the same phonemes. You could make your language feel unique by choosing a novel subset of sounds. This has the added benefit of allowing your language to be accessible to a Indo-European reader.
[Answer]
There aren't any commonly accepted sets of phonemes for constructed languages.
The cool thing about creating your own language is that the only rules you need to follow are your own. Often times people creating conlangs will take hints from existing language if they want to make a language that fits a particular purpose or mood. If you're wanting a language that is pronounceable for a particular audience then using phonemes they are already familiar with is probably best.
[Answer]
Lots of great answers here! Let me throw in a few thoughts...
Don't stress the alphabet. It can be jarring for if you start inserting deep-unicode symbols. Most readers can handle umlauts, accents, and *possibly* cedillas. ;D
Look at *patterns* of sounds. Here's a decent description of English phonology (sound inventory): <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology> Not sure I like their use of more abstract fortis/lenis instead of voiced/unvoiced for English, but okay. To make your language exotic, play with the inventory; add some phonemes where English has gaps, and take some away. And add rules ... maybe in your language voiceless consonants become voiced between vowels (ie "happy" is not a valid word, but "habby" is). This is one of the reasons your speakers have funny accents. ;D
Look for consonant clusters which are "illegal" in English. Words don't start with (pronounced) "PT" or "KS", but Greek allows it.
Above all, be consistent. Languages have rules for syllable and word construction. If you make (or find) a set of rules, your language will sound a lot more realistic. Go here: <https://www.vulgarlang.com/> to see an instant conlang generator!
Then think about how you are going to *use* the language. Is it a key plot point? A way to generate cool place/person names? Do place names mean something? You could have a local introduce characters to the magnificent cerulean city of Agorá-Prováton. "Wow," gasp the foreign travellers, "What does its name mean?" Then the guide could look down, and mumble "sheep market".
[Answer]
There is the IPA if you are looking into a way to denote the sounds human use in their languages.
Below, I interpret your question as *"How to generate a few words in a distinctly alien/fictitious language?"* There are two major possibilities.
# Use an existing language
I have read a few "backstage" interviews of and secondary literature about successful established writers who had a similar problem in their novel. The solution was: take an existing rare language.
Examples I know include:
* Take a Hungarian phone book, use it not only for person names, but for places and ideoms, like swearing.
* Take a Mongolian dictionary and more or less translate your fantasy terms into it. Use them verbatim.
A more typical examples include magic spells in
* Latin. Oh, hello there, HP fans.
* Japanese. Just because they were verbatim in the original work and people don't bother to translate.
* German. Just because it has the image of sounding brutal.
# Design something new
It takes a lot of knowledge and work to design a proper conlang for your fiction. Tolkien is a prime example, another one would be [Hiroyuki Morioka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroyuki_Morioka). The latter created a language that would be Japanese "purified from outside influences" and then developed independently for thousands of years. According to the lore, the actual speakers of this conlang had escaped the nazis who developed the language (hence the purity) and had to develop everything including written language themselves. So, it is sort of the French to Latin where Latin is the "purified" Japanese. But I digress.
Such *complete* language design is hard and requires some special knowledge. I have a far simpler idea that might work. In fact, I was so outraged that an absolute alien was called Samara in ME – Samara is a city name in Russia – that I came up with this idea some time ago.
# The idea for a generator
You would need to program a small script or at least throw a dice quite a few times. Discern all the syllables you would like to have in a language, i.e. all that sound nice. Tear up some words from a dictionary in part or use a [Katakana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana) "alphabet". Pepper in some fricative/flap/nasal/affricate consonants or whatever should be characteristic sound of your local orcs. Then randomly put the syllables together to obtain words. Eventually, cut the "interim" vowels and alternate the spelling (`bo-wu-ru` -> bowel).
You would get words that are alien enough. Assign them a meaning freely.
Please still check if your freshly generated words not happen to mean something obscene or anything at all in any language. Google would help. (Occasionally even larger corporations fail to do so, but that's another story.)
[Answer]
To answer the questions asked *if there exists a commonly accepted set of phonemes which could be used*: There is indeed kind of [Standard fantasy phonology](https://conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/355/what-are-the-defining-traits-of-a-euro-centric-conlang/363#363) (SFP) that is very popular among fantasy writers. It can be roughly described as consisting of Spanish vowels and English consonants with the *ach-Laut* (IPA /x/ as in Scottish Lo*ch*, German Ba*ch*, Spanish *j*unta, Esperanto *ĥ*) added. SFP also has typical phonotactic features such as frequent use of the vowel sequences *[ae](http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2011/9/the-women-of-fantasy-context-free-femininity-part-2)* and *ie*, only simplified allowed consonant clusters at all positions (initially, medially, and finally).
[Answer]
The Al Bhed from Final Fantasy X were given an amazingly unique sounding language with a simple alphabetic replacement code. Vowels were replaced by other vowels, and consonants for consonants, so the words remained pronounceable.
The word "important" translates as esbundyhd, pronounced: "eay-see-baeoon-deae-ha-de"
Here's an online translator:
<http://stefangagne.com/albhed.html>
And amazingly, they did the same thing in Japanese and it worked just as well.
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[
Picture a band of happy campers, literal campers, sitting around some fires.
Suddenly they feel their inner-ear "filling up" and after mere instants the ears begin popping, as if they were inside a tunnel, some of them get nosebleeds, some lose balance and fall down if they are standing or back if they are sitting, all feel pain and nausea.
Fairly close by are more of the group, sitting around their own fires, but they feel perfectly normal. They see those suffering and rush to help, and as they approach them they too fall victim to the bizarre circumstances.
What could cause such a sharp, localized event?
The skies are perfectly clear, the conditions are artificially created.
[Answer]
None of these are really plausible, may as well list why not.
1 - Rapid weather front. You could have a low pressure system rapidly replaced by a high pressure system, but the high pressure system wouldn't bring a high enough pressure to cause those symptoms and there will be a noticeable boundary between the two fronts with likely high winds and a rapid weather shift. I don't think anything weather wise could cause this.
2 - Weaponry. Put energy in the air above and put pressure on the air below. The weapon would likely need to be massive and hard to miss, and the wave of pressure would be very noticeable. It would not remain static and there would not be a boundary.
3 - Alien tech? I guess you could have a gravity well that puts this pressure and I could speculate all I want there, but all three of these answers suffer from one big problem.
Your key issue here is ultimately equilibrium. Air under high pressure is going to be forced into the low pressure area around it. Even if you get an extreme localized pressure event, the high pressure you just caused is going to push air into the surrounding low pressure area. This means the area surrounding isn't going to be to be perfectly normal, it's going to be windy. If the high pressure is high enough to cause these symptoms and the surrounding area isn't, it's going to be extremely windy and the pressure will rapidly dissipate.
With that in mind, option 4...still in the alien tech range.
Semi permeable dome. An alien force field is erected around the small group and the area is pressurized. Air can't make it through this dome / force field, however solid matter can. Well beyond any technology we can speculate and may as well 'just be magic'.
Edit:
As an alternative...a high frequency sound could be emitted from a single point. If intense enough it could cause some of these effects...and being a such a high frequency it shouldn't have too far of a range dissipating quickly. I'd ask a separate question if you want to pursue that.
A high electric current might do this as well...flowing electricity induces electricity in objects around it, including people to some degree. Admittedly you'd have anything metal basically arcing with electricity (I've had a similar experience under high voltage power lines in rain that managed to cause electric arcs between the metal of my umbrella).
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# Magic
The answer is: you need magic to make it happen, no matter if you mean [Arthur C. Clarke brand of magic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws), or plain old Fiddling With Reality Through Supernatural Means™ type of magic.
No really, that is what you need. Unless there is a very noticeable [**whirlwind**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlwind) surrounding the victims, there is no way to make this happen. Just as you cannot have a vacuum bubble spontaneously form in the middle of the ocean without water instantly collapsing on it, nor can you have a low pressure bubble form without the surrounding atmosphere collapsing into it. No matter what caused it... unless there is some kind of **physical barrier** to separate the low pressure area from the high pressure ditto, there will be a noticeable rush of air as the pressure is normalized within less than a second.
For example: when the aft bulkhead of [Japan Airlines Flight 123](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123) collapsed, the passengers reported a **bang** as the air pressure inside the cabin equalized with the outside ditto. Not a slow hiss or a gentle transition, but an [**explosive decompression**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompression#Explosive_decompression). The transition was so violent that it ripped the vertical stabilizer and rudder right off of the aircraft.
So without magic, this is what would happen to your protagonists.
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The only known thing I can think of that would create that kind of sharp rapid drop in pressure is the backwash from a very large explosion, after a [thermobaric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon) weapon like a fuel-air bomb stops burning it leaves a vacuum which collapses and sucks the air out of the surrounding landscape. The pressure difference between camp sites in this case would be created by some kind of terrain shadow effect, where in the campers on the high ground are exposed to the draw effect but not those lower down behind a ridge. The thing is the campers are not going to be particularly happy before hand, thermobarics are extremely loud and I'm not sure but I think the ground would be on fire from the radiant heat if you were close enough for the vacuum to cause that much damage.
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Based on your question it sounds like you read, or will enjoy reading, the following discussion that more or less talks about this issue: <https://hackaday.com/2017/09/25/cuban-embassy-attacks-and-the-microwave-auditory-effect/>
Possible causes mentioned are:
* The Microwave auditory effect: "popping" sounds inside the ear/head from rapid heating
* Being hit by a proton beam
* Sharp sound waves with high peak energy (relevant for the "popping" sounds, probably not so much the nausea part)
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>
> When you say "localized," it sounds like you mean within feet or tens of feet. I'm going with that idea.
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It's easy to create a drop in barometric pressure within a small enclosed space. Say, for instance, an empty water bottle. Suck the air out, put the cap on, the pressure inside is lower than the outside.
**Option #1: Create a Container**
Create a "container" and suck the air out. The "container" must be something people can pass through. A force field or a strong enough magnetic bubble would do the trick. Getting the air out without a local tube hooked to a vacuum pump might be interesting, but simply adding heat inside the bubble would also work if the heated air can be forced outside the bubble after which it can't get back in.
**Option #2: Make the molecules all the same charge**
If creating a container isn't your cup of tea, try turning the air molecules into magnets of all the same charge. The stronger the charge, the more they will repel from one another and the lower the resulting pressure. Bear in mind that nature abhores a vacuum, meaning the higher pressure air wants the get back in. So long as the tool you're using to charge the particles remains in operation, this won't happen. You'll likely need two "projectors" such that [crossing the streams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyKQe_i9yyo) results in the effect of charging the molecules.
The downside to this particular idea is that the air molecules inside the body charge, too, but offhand the consequence is no different than standing in the field: lower air pressure. So, everybody's happy. Loopy... but happy.
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**It is just barely possible, but it is a natural phenomenon.**
Quantum fluctuations allow anything possible to occur. So, if the random motion of molecules just so happen to sort themselves into different pressure zones, then the campers could experience the suggested event. Once this happens, in accordance with normal probability (and the statistical laws we call thermodynamics) normal pressure distributions will be restored.
So, how improbable. Without exact details, and a fair bit of math, can't answer this. But in reality, I don't care -- Take the entire visible universe, with its expected lifetime, and there is essentially zero chance this would ever happen. Take 10^100 visible universes and expected lifetimes, still very close to zero that it ever happens once.
Supply an infinite universe though, and it happens literally all the time. Infinite is not just a big number. Comparing the energy of a supernova to a mosquito flapping its wings once, you get a really big number. Compared to infinity, really big numbers, including Grahams Number, etc. are essentially zero -- just like the probability of the proposed event.
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## Targeted powerful low frequency waves (a bass canon)
If you aim very loud soundwaves, below ~10Herts, at a high volume at a group of people, this might result in those results.
Humans can't hear below 20Hertz, but essensially those are powerfull bass waves. When you play a regular song at a loud enough volume, you can feel the bass pressure go through you. If you increase this effect, your body will get messed up.
Sound works by creating a sort of air pressure wave, messing up your ears because the air pressure goes up and down. If it is extreme and properly timed it could, with a little handwavium physics, create a too big pressure inside your body, causing your eyes, nose and ears to bleed (the only way to relieve the pressure for your body).
The combination of not hearing it (which makes it confusing), your ears getting messed up (and thus your balance organs) and the physical power the basspulse can have you could get disorentied, making you fall over and nausius.
*Not to promote a specific brand, but [this page explains the basics](http://www.soundlazer.com/what-is-a-parametric-speaker/).*
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## A Portal
A scientist is experimenting with a new portal technology that he has invented.
The portal is exactly the kind of thing you might think of when you hear that word: it is a wormhole-type object that connects two locations in space and allows for instantaneous travel between the two.
The scientist has opened one end of the portal in his lab, and the other end in the open countryside some distance away from the lab, in a location that happens to be close to where your camping group is hanging out.
The portal is effectively an open door between the two locations; any and all matter can flow freely between the two ends of the portal for the duration that it is open.
Unfortunately, the scientist hasn't factored for differences in air pressure between the two ends of the portal. The air pressure at his lab is different to that at the camp site.
This could be due to altitude or even just different local weather conditions. Whatever the cause, as soon as the portal is opened, the pressure difference immediately causes a rush of air moving from one end of the portal to the other as the pressure tries to equalise.
The scientist manages to his emergency cut-off button and close the portal pretty quickly, but there is significant damage to his lab as a result of sudden hurricane-force winds in an enclosed space. At the other end, the effects are less obvious, as it is an open space and the effect was short-lived, but people in the vicinity would experience a sudden pressure change, which may result in feelings similar to vertigo, ear popping, and even nosebleeds. They may also experience a sudden rush of wind which may be strong enough to knock them off their feet, depending on how close they were to the portal.
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ARK: Aberration, if you're unfortunate enough to be there, then it would be a common occurrence... Granted, the ARK is in worse shape as of the use date so I would guess it would be the ARK in the earlier days before it completely broke. Regardless, it's a terrifying place.
I tend to follow the game master code. If you want it in your story and it doesn't make sense, don't explain it. If you want to explain it, then use techno babble. If you want your explanation to make sense, remember that science in it's current state is incomplete with many theories being (currently) impossible to prove or disprove. Do the explanations from the point of view of someone who doesn't fully comprehend the science behind it. The bulk of your readers won't know what an ohm is or that a particle is a wave until observed. I prefer string theory since the reader will have an easier time understanding it.
It's scientifically possible, but unlikely to have an event just like you want. It will probably be fatal if it's cosmic related. For instance, if a distant neutron star has a fist sized rock slam into it at exactly the wrong angle, it will create a burst of energy in the form of light and radiation. If it's concentrated just right, that beam could hit an area no bigger than a penny from a thousand light years away with the full force of the remaining radiation. I believe it was pulsar that caused one of the mass extinctions. A good reason to work underground.
Ultimately it's what you decide it is. If this is a horror story, then I suggest not explaining it since nothing is scarier. If it's mystery, then you'll have to explain it. One thing I will point out is, someone will always try to process your story as fact. Don't let it bother you. People are still working out the calculations on how fast the Millennium Falcon travels. Because Falcon's apparently exist but the speed is in question.
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To answer your question, I think it would be helpful to first address what air pressure is and how you can have relatively localized changes in pressure.
In a nutshell, gas pressure is the force exerted on the environment or objects in the environment by the random collisions of gas particles as they float around. The speed and direction at which those particles move is related to the temperature of the gas and its flow; for example, air that's moving at high speed (like a gust of wind) exerts more pressure on a surface in the flow than still air would exert under the same conditions.
Pressure is related to volume, temperature, and gas species by the [Ideal Gas Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_gas_law): Pressure = (Amount of Gas \* Temperature) / Volume. Basically, increase the temperature and hold volume and amount of gas constant, and the pressure will rise. Shrink the volume and hold temperature constant, and the pressure will rise.
But gasses are not uniform in composition, and their constituent particles can't move instantly. If you take a room full of air, the air on one side might be a bit cooler than the air on the other side. Air near the air conditioner might be moving, while air on the other side of the room might not. But the whole room is still filled with air and the particles are free to move around and interact with one another. So say you increase the temperature of a small pocket of air in the room. This would cause the particles in that pocket to move faster, and collide more often with their surroundings, thus increasing the pressure. But their neighbor particles will be moving at their original speed until something hits them, so the pressure outside of that suddenly warmer pocket would stay the same for a short time. This is the principle that gives rise to regions of varying pressure. But as the particles collide, they'll transfer their energy to their neighbors, and the little pocket of higher temperature, higher pressure air will dissipate across the room in a very short time.
This dissipation is the problem with your particular scenario. Within the realm of physics, it's doable if you raise the temperature very rapidly, but the pressure change won't stay local. As the warmer, higher-pressure air particles collide with their neighbors, the pressure increase will move outward in a wave, diminishing the further it spread, so your other camping group would feel a shockwave. And the amount of temperature change necessary to cause physical trauma to your campers would be immense: although you only need to increase the local pressure by around 10 pounds per square inch (almost double normal atmospheric pressure), your volume is on the order of 1,200 cubic feet! You'd have to raise the temperature by more than a factor of 10, *instantaneously* to get the desired effect.
So, as mentioned in other answers, magic is probably the only way to do what you're trying to accomplish without nasty side effects like shockwaves and plasmas.
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For nosebleed, pain and dizziness you need a pressure differential of around 30 kPa (absolute minimum).
You might get it using an **acoustic standing wave** of sufficient intensity, and sufficiently low frequency. Given the sound speed at STP of ~340 m/s, we're in the ELF range.
As you see in the animation, pressure (estimating by the distance between the two red points) can about double between minimum and maximum, and you might go from 60 to 120 kPa.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8X174.gif)
The problem lies in **generating** such a wave. For the most effect, you'd need a whole ring of super-subwoofers capable of displacing tremendous quantities of air in a synchronised manner, all around the campers with the victims in the center.
But you'd notice a sort of strong breeze all around.
Another possibility is a (relatively) stable **pressure vortex** being "fired" from straight above. Like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrgTtZXuj4w). Now you'd have a small storm all around you, even if nosebleed and eardrums bursting are a virtual certainty, and the storm would propagate to hit the neighbours.
More contrived possibilities, they might be camping over a camouflaged grille suddenly expelling prodigious quantities of air from a subterranean base. The flow would go straight upwards and, apart from a lot of dust being blown from the ground and the appearance of a dust geyser, next to nothing would be felt at more than a few meters. I was standing three feet from a giant vertical airblower some cirque guys were using to "fly" using wing suits; it was enough to make them rise twenty feet in the air, and except for the noise I just felt a small breeze. If instead of a steady flow there had been "explosions" of air, I believe I still would have felt nothing, while the poor souls on the flow's path would have been seriously injured.
It would also possible to build a [localized tornado](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM1FVAYE2pg), but the pressure differential would be too low to have appreciable effects, you'd need enormous blowers, and the artificial "wind" would be something incredible.
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Based on the edit on @twelfth's answer, I've got just the device for you: an ultrasonic standing wave generator. Look at [this video](https://youtu.be/0K8zs-KSitc) from Smarter Everyday where he helps the Ford team with the acoustic levitation machine and see what happens with the droplets when they crank up the amps around 4:10.
Obviously to do this with people you need some handwaving and big devices, or you can perhaps have smaller low power devices hidden in the trees with their phases and frequencies tuned to hit the specific camping spot.
I hope this would give some insight and inspiration.
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Opening a portal nearby could cause a massive change in barometric pressure. For instance, let's say a portal opened 10 feet above their head and they were at 5,000 feet above sea level. Put the other end of the portal at 35,000 feet and the vacuum created would change the pressure where they are extremely quickly, causing accelerated versions of the symptoms of altitude sickness.
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In my world, I have a **reptilian overlord** theme, with humanoid slaves. The planet revolves around a binary star system. What are the basic requirements of the climate and the ecosystem, for the reptilians to have evolved more than the humanoids?
The setting I have in mind right now is an arid world with lack of vegetation.
**EDIT**: What are the star temperature and atmosphere required to create a superior reptilian race? This should be kept in mind, that the humanoid race's evolution is hindered by the same atmospheric condition.
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First and foremost, you need a world with **two sentient species**. On Earth, mankind is the top predator in most environments. We might not be able to wrestle a bear, but hands to grab pointed sticks and brains to coordinate the hunt are part of our evolutionary heritage.
The scientific understanding how homo sapiens replaced [homo neanderthalensis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_extinction) has evolved over time, but it became clear that *there could be only one*. So there needs to be an explanation why the prehistoric ancestors of the reptiles didn't wipe the prehistoric ancestors of the humanoids out, or vice versa.
* Two very different biotopes, one for the reptiles and one for the humanoids. They fight on the borders, but each has a core area that is unhealthy for the others. I'm thinking of dry/wet or hot/cold, but it could be lowlands/highlands or the area where insects transmit illness.
* In the borderlands, warriors from one species would enslave peasants from the other species. They find it too dry/wet/hot/cold to live and breed there, but warriors overseeing slave pens are possible.
* Then technological deveopment allowed the reptiles to travel in humanoid areas. This tipped the balance, the reptiles still had a sanctuary (which did not have to be defended by troops) but the humanoids had to fight everywhere. *He who defends everything, defends nothing.*
* The more developed reptiles found ways to let humanoid slaves live and work in their heartlands, but by then the power relationship was clear.
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**Follow-up:** The coincidence that both species evolved at the same time might be mitigated *very slighty* by assuming technological and cultural interchange which kept the two species roughly in sync. Mankind has a few hundred years with electrical power, but there were hundreds of thousands of years with the homo erectus. What if those early hominids had witnesses another species climbing out of the stone age, nearby?
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Harry Harrison actually [already wrote that story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_of_Eden). You might want to raid the books for ideas. Or not.
In any case, you specify that the reptilians are cold blooded. This is problematic as brains generally require stable temperatures to work reliably. But problems are just unrecognized opportunities.
Let's start by assuming that your planet has large areas with stable temperatures and your reptilians evolved to take advantage of that. Stable here means that climate has been stable for millions of years and that the areas the reptilians live in have low seasonal variation in temperatures. No winter.
Advantage would be that with less energy spent on maintaining stable temperature, the reptilians would be much more energy efficient. This would mean less food required, which would enable higher population densities. It would also mean less oxidative stress and lower metabolic rate so the reptilians might reasonably live two or three centuries?
I am mentioning this here because **if** you decide to assume larger typical group size and longer life spans it will have effects on the reptilian society and civilization. Which might be fun flavor to have.
As for humans. I think the simplest explanation for having two sentient species is to assume that one, the reptilians, evolved naturally and the second evolved as a result of the first one meddling with its development.
So the reptilians would have domesticated monkeys evolved for night time activity or possibly apes evolved for climates with seasons depending on what was available. Domestication would have been for either pets or as food. Possibly both as with dogs. You'll have to decide based on what gives the proper relationship for your story. You might want to have reptilians consider humans food or not.
I think the simplest origin is to have monkeys stealing food from reptilians during night time when the cold blooded reptilians have difficulty responding to it and the reptilians domesticated some of the monkeys to guard their homes and food stores in exchange for certain food.
Over time the reptilians then bred the monkeys for larger size, better intellect, and not to shed fur on furniture and the result was "humans".
The reptilians would have wanted to use humans as proxies during night and cold weather so there is reasonable rationale for breeding them (us?) large and smart enough to use reptilian doors and tools without supervision.
At some point humans would have been "good enough" and reptilians would have started to spread away from their original tropical environment with heated houses for reptilians and humans for labor. This would eventually lead to autonomous human societies on temperate lands.
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I don't think it's possible for these two species to have co-evolved together.
When people imagine reptilian overlords they pretty much imagine humans in a different form, I think that's more or less how you're describing them as well. Our high intelligence strategy is an ecological niche, [and those cannot be shared by two species for long](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_exclusion_principle).
**Geographical isolation** is the get-out clause from this situation. This is what most of the answers here seem to be based on.
Perhaps the humans live in the cold areas etc. I don't want to duplicate that, but I'll suggest another possibility.
Perhaps you've happened upon a world where this geographic isolation has only recently been broken. **The reptilians are very much a combination of conquistador and [grey squirrel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species)**. They'll probably eradicate the humans in the end, but they're overloads for now. They don't actually have to be a 'better' species, just one that got dealt a better hand in the [Guns Germs and Steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel) sense, .
Note that two sapient species have co-existed before irl. [For most of the history of homo-sapiens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution#H._sapiens), we've existed alongside other types of humans. But we won and they're all gone now.
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It isn't plausible for two different relatively unrelated intelligent species to evolve intelligence at the same time, at least naturally.
The time it took for humans to evolve from rat-sized creatures to intelligent beings is a short one. 66 million years ago, mammals where tiny critters. Reptiles first arrived on land 300 million years ago. The ancestor of humans and apes was about 10 million years ago. We looked like modern humans (with the same voice box etc) for about 200,000 years.
Assuming you want civilization with cities and the like, that took place in the last 10,000 years. The one to reach civilization "first" might find and domesticate the other species. So you need two relatively random windows of 200,000 years to overlap with one ahead of the other over a domain of many many millions of years.
For this to work plausibly, you'll need coevolution. That means something about one being intelligent drove intelligence in the other.
The easiest way is genetic engineering. The "Reptiles" evolved first, and they genetically engineered a slave race. This requires "Reptiles" to be relatively high tech.
Slightly less plausible, but more so than accident, is that the "Reptiles" bred the humans to be smarter (but not to aggressive); a bit like how we bred dogs from wolves, but moreso. You could imagine the "Reptiles" finding the rough equivalent of Chimpanzees or Ouranopithecus and breeding "Humans" from them over their prehistory.
Having a climatic barrier against Reptiles being functional (for any length of time) where the Humans could be useful would both permit bred intelligent Humans to be useful (you train them to go into that territory and come back with resources), and permits "wild" human evolution (feral Humans not wiped out in that territory).
Now, metabolism wise, warm-blooded animals are going to be doing more stuff. Warm blooded creatures heat up their body in order to make some biological processes work better, and also have cooling mechanism to prevent overheating; in exchange, they burn more resources. So you might want to make your Reptiles warm-blooded, or at least less cold-blooded than many Reptiles. Reptiles might come with a cooling system but not an effective heating system, and somehow have "hot" territory where the Reptiles can function. Outside of there, Reptiles need both lots of heavy insulation and fire to keep their dwelling warm enough. In effect, what we'd call "temperate", they'd call "arctic".
This would restrict the Reptile civilization to the tropics for much of history. The domestication of the soft-body and training them to do hunting & gathering tasks would allow Reptiles to spread further away from the Tropics. They would initially be bred for being both docile and intelligent by marginal Reptile tribes.
Feral soft-bodies escape, and continue to evolve more intelligence. Reptiles breed the feral ones with their domesticated ones, breeding out the aggression and getting increased intelligence out of the wild genes.
Eventually there are 3 regions; the Hot central Reptile lands, the "Temperate" lands where Reptiles rule over Humans, and the "Cold" lands where Feral Human tribes roam.
The feral and tame humans are mostly on a one continent, isolated from the larger landmass like how the Americas is isolated from Eurasia+Africa.
Reptiles develop farming and civilization and tool use first in a "Hot" region of the super-continent, probably due to a mass climate disruption (like it apperas it happens on our planet). This also happens on the "Americas" continent, but due to the usual "Guns Germs and Steel" rules the larger continent advances faster.
They develop civilization, and during an age of exploration discover the "new world" with a mixture of soft-bodied Humans and primitive Reptiles. Where they interact, the soft-bodied Humans are slaves; they learn about how to enslave and domesticate the soft-bodies from the Reptile civilization over there. Lacking the "cold" region that the New World has, they have less fear of Feral soft-body packs. In addition, better Old World technology makes short work of the Feral soft-body geographic advantage in the cold parts of the New World.
A slave state starts its spread over the cold parts of the New World. Soft-bodies are exported to the Old World and used as servants in the Temperate parts of it. The New World Reptile civilization is conquored by Old World civilizations and somewhat merged, with its own slave-state habits.
The diseases from the high population density and trade Old World decemates the New World Reptile empire. Soft bodies exploit this. The war on them is harder than it was on the native americans of our world (as in our world, native americans where massively weakened by epidemics), but the technological edge remains huge.
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Firstly the reptilians would need to become intelligent, this doesn't require anything fancy that we know about, interaction with their environment and normal flukes of evolution could have caused this over time. It's quite feasible that having high intelligence isn't just a matter of brain size, there are several animals with bigger brains than humans who don't have our reasoning power. It could have started with a more efficient use of reptilian brain through evolution and then as an advantageous trait led to increased brain size and more efficiency.
But to have humanoids as well you could have the following.
At least two continents separated for a long long time or always separate would be more interesting as they would have evolved totally differently from the first mud crawling fish.
If you want climate to be a factor in retarding humanoid evolution, make their continent like Australia, mostly desert with humanoids fully occupied with grubbing around for food, and scarce easy to get to natural resources and land not suitable for large scale agriculture without additional fertilisation. This means that they couldn't form large cooperative groups with a stake in their locality and would have to remain scattered living off the land around them and moving when they had exhausted it and caused conflict between the small groups over resources.
Reptilian Overlords became dominant on one and were so superior in technology and perhaps brute force that when they invented sea travel and found the other continent in which the humanoids were evolving they just took over and used the local fauna for whatever it was best suited for in their terms.
Breeding the humanoids into the forms best suited for them would depend on what they needed. Most likely they would breed for docility, loyalty and obedience as we have with dogs. Labelled all others as untameable animals and killed them off and thereafter killed any that became feral or otherwise dangerous.
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I think your question is a non-starter. Reptiles came first, and when they became more highly evolved they became mammels and birds.
“old” reptiles are still around, too. Crocodiles are *successful* because they work well.
So, you might have reasons why none of the new designs lasted but crocks just kept going. But the crocks would not be *more advanced*, they'd be crocks.
Maybe you have a new evolutionary branch that, to us, *seems* “reptilian” somehow, even though they are just as far removed from reptiles as mammels and birds. That could be because their skin covering resembles that of lizards (even if it’s really different) rather than having a new non-reptile covering. Their outward appearance may look more like lizards.
Now why? The liniage that gave rise to them might never have developed a different skin, but got *internal* differences that led to their success and propagation of the line. Perhaps the heart and lungs, or digestive system, or anything really.
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Good answers here.
I have a bit of a problem with 'binary star system' You need to nail this down, and my astrophysics was 40 years ago.
* Are planets stable around a binary system.
* A long period binary with the planet circling just one of them would give you two superimposed sets of seasons. A normal one corresponding to the planet's year, and a much longer one corresponding to the orbit of the two stars. This provides the periodic 'super heat' year when the planet is effectively illuminated by two stars. This in turn with the changing environment puts a big premium on adaptability.
* If you really want to give these guys grief, give them a fairly massive moon in an highly eccentric orbit. Earth's moon if perigee were just outside Roche's limit (40,000 km or so) would mean that one set of tides a month would be enormous (Tides go up with the 3rd power of distance, Put the moon 8 times closer, and you get 500 times the tidal force. This is not long term stable. Planetary engineering by a third race. With this sort of flexing there would be lots of volcanic activity too. Even if it was enough to have a monthly 50 meter tide, it would make oyster farming a much more challenging task.
This sort of set of conditions may mean that you have one species that is more warlike and dominant, but it gets getting destroyed down to a small alcove with the regular catastrophies. (In general this would knock both speices back.)
Now they both have legends of their previous encounters.
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The reptilian homeworld(s) would probably need to be on the inner (closest to its star) edge of the Goldilocks zone. Hot enough to keep cold-blooded creatures from spending all their time chasing warmth to avoid torpor but not so hot that your slaves are dropping dead from heatstroke. Basically, both species need a mutually survivable ecosystem and climate. It'll have to have diverse flora and fauna to support the different diets of the reptilians and humans (at the very least, to keep the costs of feeding slaves reasonable).
If your reptilians and humans didn't co-evolve or otherwise can't take one another's climates, the slaves are probably being imported. From the slaves point of view, it might be considered going to a harsh life in a hellish environment. Mothers might discourage misbehavior with a warning that "the reptilians will drag you screaming to hell!" If the human climate is inappropriate for your reptilians, some humans may make a living capturing, transporting, and selling their fellows.
Finally, I don't think a species in an arid climate without much vegetation would adapt webbed feet (not large or deep enough bodies of water to need help swimming). If you meant a desert by your description, I don't know why--even if partially erect--the reptilians wouldn't develop more of a sidewinder style of locomotion (up to eighteen miles per hour, according to YouTube; but I couldn't find another source). If the two species are being held back evolutionarily for whatever reason, I'd suspect that it would end up like Earth: even if crocodiles became "intelligent," humans are going to be more versatile.
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/universe/sights/habitable_zones>
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crotalus_cerastes>
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[Question]
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The setting takes place in medieval age. A group of people want to create a new settlement on a remote and non-populated part of the kingdom. They would start building a town by building houses to live, walls, fences and towers for defense, farm and meadow fields.
I suppose such a town has the potential to be a feudal town and a kingdom wouldn't let it happen without proper measures. The town could also be a hidden village and stay independent of the Kingdom's law, but I am not sure if it would stay hidden for much.
The question is, would the Kingdom allow the creation of the town? If allowed, how would it be taxed and who would govern it? Even if it was uncharted before the building of the town, would the Kingdom still own the land since it is in borders? Are there any real world examples of such towns? Are there any other problems that could arise?
[Answer]
**Historical context of population growth**
Population expanded significantly in the middle ages, between the low after the ravages of the Justinian Plague of 541-542 to the high middle ages peak of ~1300 before the Little Ice Age brought famine.
According to the [Medieval Sourcebook](http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/pop-in-eur.asp) (possibly the best thing on the internet), the population of Iberia went from 3.5->9 million, France 3->19 million, Germany 2->11 million, Italy 2.5 -> 10 million, etc. Obviously this involved breaking in a lot of new land.
**Bringing land into civilization**
There were several ways that new land was brought into civilization, but the primary problem was defense. States existed in these worlds entirely to control violence. Anyone could gather up a band of ruffians and rob whoever they wanted, so the organization of society was primarily dominated by the ability to protect whatever gains were made from farming the land.
There were two processes: opening up new farmland, and starting new cities. Farmland didn't really need cities to go along with it; the truly independent peasants would not have any sort of advanced, tradable materials: very little iron, mostly for weapons instead of tools, wooden tools and buildings, animals for traction, and nothing that needed to be bought from the outside. Especially in the pagan lands of eastern europe, this was the peasant's way, though it might be more accurate to call them tribesmen since they had more in common with the Roman-era 'barbarians' than the medieval villein.
**Opening new farmland**
For breaking in farmland in truly remote areas, these were the peasant/tribes to do it. This mostly happened on the very edges of Europe, like the Baltic coast, and European Russia. But at the end of the Middle Ages and even after into the 1700s, this process was repeating itself with the Cossacks in the Ukraine, an extremely fertile area that had been totally depopulated by centuries of nomadic warriors from the Golden Horde and Crimean Khanate. Read up on [Cossack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossacks) history to get an understanding of how a peasant society would organize itself outside of an established kingdom.
But in more civilized areas land expansion often came from or with approval of some person in power. Abbeys were particularly keen on opening up farmland, since monasteries tended to be build in remote areas and then start to turn the surrounding countryside to cultivation. Examples would be [Clairvaux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clairvaux_Abbey) in France and [Eberbach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eberbach_Abbey) in Germany.
An alternate method was for an overpopulated village to get permission from the local lord to clear a section of forest and start a new village some miles away. In the early middle ages, when lords were poor and land was plentiful, this was generally supported by the nobility. By the high middle ages, when lords were rich and the damn peasants were traipsing all over the only good forests for hunting, this was discouraged.
**Starting new cities**
New town formation was catalyzed around 1000 AD by the opening up of trade routes. Christianization of the Vikings and the end of raids from the north increased trade in the North and Baltic seas. The slowing down of the pace of Jihad lead to more trade opportunities with the Muslim world, particularly in Italy. Eventually, the Reconquista and crusades provided more East-West contacts and increased trade further, spurring the long range trade routes and walled merchant towns of the high middle ages.
Whereas the expansion of farmland tended to benefit the lowest levels of nobility and clergy, town growth benefited the upper levels. Cologne and Magdeburg grew because of the safety provided by the authority of the resident Archbishops made them attractive places to do business. Cities like Augsburg, Nuremburg, and Hamburg got charters from the Emperor to protect their freedoms in exchange for a lump sum of money. Bordeaux, Rouen, and Orleans got a royal charter in France. The direct communication with the highest leige (called immediacy) provided financial benefits to the leige, who could use the money to hire mercenaries to centralize his Kingdom, and protection to the cities from local nobles and clergy.
A similar thing would happen in Eastern Europe. Whereas in Western Europe there were or had been existing settlements, in Poland, Ukraine, and the Carpathian basin, towns were founded where none had been before. As towns sprung up they sought the protection of the most powerful local lord with a [Magdeburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg_rights) town charter.
**Answer to your question**
So to answer your question more directly:
If a group of peasants were to start a new settlement in a remote area of an established kingdom, they would either a.) need to get the consent of a local lord or abbot who would serve as their benefactor and and provide protection from violence or b.) they would be pillaged into the earth.
Their village would be small, in the hundreds of people at most. Proper towns only developed where there was business to be done, and if you are settling in a remote area, that is unlikely to be the case. However, supposing the new settlers are able to open up a new trade route (say by [building a bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_Saint-B%C3%A9n%C3%A9zet) or [opening a mountain pass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Pass) that had previously be little used), a town could potentially develop quickly. In that case, the town would seek a charter from the highest leige to protect its rights.
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Depending on the kingdom, they might actually welcome the creation of a new town.
Towns don't just appear on their own. Normally to create a new town, a kingdom must sponsor or subsidize it, build a market in the area, giving tax breaks, and bonuses for anyone to move into the area. They have to make it attractive enough for nobles and merchants to make it self-sustaining. The whole point of the endeavor is to tame wild areas, turning them into resource producing areas (and providing more things to tax.)
No one normally is going to want to move into a raw, unprepared area and face all the hardships settlers normally do when they don't have to, least of all peasants who don't have any free time in the first place. It would be quite extraordinary for a large group of under-class individuals to even be *able* to strike for the wilderness, let alone actually do so without causing all sorts of issues with their local lords.
If a kingdom found that, out of the blue, it had a new tax paying town and trade place it would quite happily let it continue to be relatively un-molested unless it appeared to be a threat (Especially if the nobles who's land they appeared on is ok with it.)
Most kingdoms are not despotic-take-them-for-everything-their-worth enterprises and are smart enough to realize that a small investment now leads to great rewards later; the issues come from the fact that the ruling class seeing something new as a threat and treating it as such. A newly acquired town from a rival kingdom would need to be garrisoned to prevent the rabble from making problems with the nobles. Strange occurrences are of course going to draw attention as well (and a town appearing on its own in the dark ages is indeed strange).
A new town or hamlet would be under suspicion, and probably be investigated, but if someone is going to go through all that work of doing something that benefits the kingdom a considerable amount, it wont shoot itself in the foot over it unless it feels it has a good reason.
As for taxation and governance, that really depends on where the town appears; if it is on noble or crown lands. If it appears on the crowns land then the king /queen themselves can decide how they want it governed, if they install a governor/mayor or if the set up of the town already has is adequate. It would really be the same for if it appeared on a nobles land, although they might be under more restrictions from the crown on what they could do with their towns. As a middle case, the king could grant the town lands to a nobel, or actually en-noble a new person to take over the new lands (perhaps a particularly loyal knight or person from the new town?)
In either case, as long as the town pays its taxes I cant foresee either nobles or the crown causing many issues that would jeopardize a big revenue stream like a new town; they may put pressure here and there to make them conform to some expectations but will push more over the long term.
As for "problems", there *can* be many, but its more a 'chose your poison' deal; there are lots and lots of reasons why towns fail, but as far as the issues with appearing on someone else land it really revolves around if that person gets a wild-hair up their rear about it. Maybe there is someone in that town they don't like, or don't want to deal with the extra headache of being responsible for it; its hard to argue with more money but sometimes individuals in authority just don't care. And this is all to say nothing of religious or political beliefs that might be in contrary to the towns existence (hopefully they didn't build in the holy hunting preserve.)
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Depending on how well hidden the settlement was, it could go on being self-governed for many years. However, they'd start running into issues with inbreeding when the gene pool shallowed to a significant depth.
Of course, people are apt to wander and explore the lands, especially in seek of new pastures and eventually the settlement would be discovered and become known to the powers that be.
I wouldn't begin to imagine the impact of all of those back-taxes.
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Since you have specified that
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> such a town has the potential to be a feudal town
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there is no reason for the king or the kingdom to care, with rare exceptions. Since this is a medieval, "feudal" society, the king does not (generally speaking) rule directly except for the royal estates. Rather, he oversees his liege lords - in England, the barons.
So, the question becomes, does the area have a lord and does he approve? If the area is currently unclaimed, the king will grant the township as a fiefdom to one of his favorite (or otherwise) barons or the son of one of them and the baron (new or old) will take over control of the town. The reason he might assign the town to an unpopular lord is to get him out of sight and off to the boonies where he won't cause trouble.
And, of course, if the township lies within the boundaries of an existing barony the baron will assert control. After all, he gets to tax them.
There are a couple of exceptions that I can think of. Keep in mind that a bunch of people deciding to found a town in a remote wilderness is very, very unusual, except for religious or political reasons, where the people *want* to be free of their current lords, and in neither case is the king or baron likely to allow this. So the town gets a governor or lord whether it wants one or not. And royal courts are always full of ambitious younger sons who will jump at the chance to gain their own lands. European society, as the standard example, practiced primogeniture, and only the eldest inherits the father's estate, so all subsequent sons are simply out of luck.
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A group of people can find supporter of their idea at the chief's residence. For example, it may be an ambience minister who can lobbying this idea to the king or president for a long time.
Or this couple of people can create an gritty island at the sea like Dubai Emirates or Flevoland island at Netherlands.
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In a science fiction future universe, spacecraft routinely travel from a distance "above" a star's north or south pole to rendezvous with planets orbiting in the star system's orbital plane. And vice versa.
As a writer, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the orbital dynamics involved. How hard would it be for a spacecraft to leave Earth's orbit, transit out of the orbital plane to a point "above" the star, and rendezvous with another craft that's stationary relative to that point? (I.e,. the rendezvous point is not orbital to the sun.)
If it helps the discussion, let's assume the distance to the point above the star is the same as the distance from the sun to Saturn.
I've been looking at the flight path of the [Ulysses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft)) spacecraft, but as it orbited the sun and didn't have to "stop" relative to a point above the star, I'm not sure it's a good model for what would have to happen.
If it helps, the setting assumes that the spacecraft rarely accelerates/decelerates greater than 1 *[g](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth)* for long periods for the comfort of its crew. The technology is vaguely like ours, but it assumes that the amount of fuel required is not a limiting factor.
[Answer]
A magic search term that might be of interest to you is [statite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statite). A statite balances the force of gravitational attraction to a body (such as a planet or star) with light pressure on a [solar sail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail) (though other mechanisms could be used instead, such as a [magnetic sail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_sail) or some other suitably science-fictional gadgetry). Such a spacecraft would not be orbiting and could remain "fixed" relative to that body, though it would probably have to trim its sails a bit from time to time if there were changes in light pressure or local gravity.
From recollection, the jump-ships in the Battletech universe assumed this position, using an energy-collecting solar sail to charge their FTL transport system.
The major issue you have is that transitioning from a solar equatorial-ish orbit (like the one that the Earth is in) to a solar-polar orbit is extremely expensive in terms of delta-V, and then once you reach your pole-sitting statite you need much more delta-V again to stop. If you have a super-efficient torch drive you might not have to worry about such a thing, of course.
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> If it helps, the setting assumes that the spacecraft rarely accelerates/decelerates greater than 1 gee for long periods for the comfort of its crew. The technology is vaguely like ours
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Accelerating at 1G for extended periods of time requires rockets of astonishing power and capability, and would be far beyond what humans are capable of for a considerable time. Be careful about going down the hard scifi route, for real world physics is tough to beat!
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*addendum*
Now you've given a few more hints about what you're thinking about, I can add the following observations:
* Solar flux is negligible outside of the inner solar system. Even at Marslike distances from the sun it is too low, and by the time you get out to Saturnlike distances you'll barely notice it... a perfectly absorbing sail would experience ~50 *nanonewtons* of thrust per square metre. Solar collectors and solar sails are both largely pointless out here
* Gravity apparently obeys the same inverse-square laws as light, so at Saturnlike distances a Sunlike star only exerts about 6.5 microgees. You can acheive station-keeping thrusts against this using something an ion drive... the [Dawn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_(spacecraft)#Propulsion_system) space probe acheived a greater acceleration than this when fully loaded, and had enough fuel to run its rocket for years. Unlike a solar statite, your rocket-based things would need periodic refuelling.
* A [brachistochrone transit](https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php#id--Brachistochrone_Equations) crossing 8 AU (eg. from an Earthlike distance to a Saturnlike distance from a star) at 1G continuous acceleration takes about 8 days and requires a [Delta-V](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-V) of ~7000 km/s. Even to fly a single AU at that acceleration is ~2400 km/s. That's a *lot*. Dawn had 11 km/s. You can't do this without serious nuclear rocketry, but if you *can* do it then you can consider the laws of orbital mechanics more as polite requests. For example, injecting yourself into a polar heliocentric orbit from an earthlike heliocentric orbit requires ~42 km/s delta-V... an outrageous amount for a modern-day or near-future spacecraft, but a rounding error for your monstrous things. They can just point where they want to do and blast and not worry too much. "Parking" by the non-orbital target and station-keeping to oppose the local gravity gradient would be trivial.
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*addendum 2*
Because I thought it was an interesting discovery, even if it is obvious in retrospect, there's an equation you can derive from the force imparted by sunlight on a perfectly absorbing surface, and the force caused by the gravity of the sun an equation that tells you how large a sail would have to be in order to make a statite: $$C\_{ad} = { L\_\odot \over {4\pi c G M\_\odot} }$$
The critical areal density of a solar sail, $C\_{ad}$, in kilograms per square metre, is the ratio of the total mass of your statite (including the sail) to the surface area of the sail pointing directly at the Sun. $L\_\odot$ is the [luminosity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_luminosity) of the Sun, in watts, $M\_\odot$ is the mass of the Sun, $c$ is the speed of light, and $G$ is the [gravitational constant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant).
This ratio is independant of the distance of the sail from the Sun, because both light pressure and gravitational attraction obey the inverse square law, and so cancel each other out nicely. If the areal density of your statite exceeds this critical ratio, it will fall back towards the Sun and a firey demise. If it is *lower* than the critical ratio, it will be blown out into deep space, though possibly very slowly. In the latter case at least you can do station keeping by pointing your sail ever so slightly away from the sun to reduce sunlight pressure.
For the Sun, the critical ratio is ~0.765g/m2. Clearly, statites of any significant mass will need colossal sails of some exceedingly light, low density material. Using a solar-powered ion drive is probably a much more sensible way to hold yourself up, even if you do need periodic refuelling.
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It's a hugely expensive thing to do, in terms of orbital mechanics.
The main issue is that simply being on (or in a bound orbit around) a planet that already orbits near the ecliptic means you already have a lot of energy from that planet's orbit. If you're going to another planet that orbits near the ecliptic (in the same direction), then most of that energy is "reusable" and thus a good thing.
For example, Earth orbits the Sun at about 30 km/s. Mars is a little less because it's further out, around 25 km/s. A simple Hohmann transfer from Earth orbit to Mars orbit only needs about 3 km/s change in velocity; this is an order of magnitude less than the orbital velocities that Earth and Mars are travelling at. So if you were "starting from scratch" with no useful orbital velocity in the ecliptic, it's **much** harder to reach Mars than it would be from near the orbit of just about any body orbiting the Sun, since you would need to provide enough energy to get up to the speed that Mars orbits at.
Travelling to or from a point really far from the ecliptic (like directly above or below the Sun) is also really difficult. If I'm orbiting near Earth and I want to get to the far side of the solar system, then I don't really need any energy; Earth's orbit will simply take me there if I wait 6 months. And we've seen that it takes relatively low amounts of *change* in velocity to travel interplanetary distances (eventually), by re-using the energy we already had form the starting orbit. But if I want to get to a point directly above the Sun and a similar distance as Earth's orbital distance, then "coasting" there would require me to be on an orbit with the same *speed* as Earth's orbit, but rotated 90°, so that I'm travelling "up" where Earth is travelling "sideways". Earth's orbital velocity is *never* pointing in a direction where I can re-use any of its energy for that, so I would have to provide all 30 km/s of it myself. Having done that, I would also still have the 30 km/s "sideways" velocity from Earth's orbit that is not useful, so I would have to provide enough energy myself to cancel out that velocity *on top* of the energy required for the "vertical" orbital velocity. (And if you want to "stop" at a position directly above the Sun, you then need to pay a similar magnitude energy cost **again** to zero out your orbital velocity as you pass overhead, not to mention whatever you're doing to staion-keep once you're there. I'm not saying that "thrust Earth-retrograde 30 km/s, then thrust perpendicular to the ecliptic 30 km/s, then coast to above the Sun and thrust retrograde 30 km/s" would *actually* be the most energy-efficient way to do this, but it gives you a ballpark idea of the *magnitudes* involved)
Nobody would plan these sorts of courses unless they have so much energy available that these astronomical energy costs are a minor issue to them, or unless there is some *very* compelling reason to go there. Given the existence of an ecliptic plane where most interesting things are orbiting near that plane (in the same direction), it's just **much** cheaper to travel in orbits on that plane.
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## Pointless if you are using Newtonian physics.
Let's start with a minor frame challenge explaining why you should never under any circumstances see this done in any science-based setting. Newtonian physics makes stopping over the sun a pointless waste of energy no matter how advanced your civilization becomes. Even if you need to be able to see the whole solar system at once, you could orbit the sun and apply a much smaller Z-axis thrust to hold your ship "high" enough to be able to see planets on the far side of the sun.
Mercury's orbit is 47 million km from the sun, and the sun has a coronal radius of about 7-14 million km and a diameter of 0.7 million km. So, if you orbit the sun at a the edge of its corona, and thrust your way up to about 0.8 million km above the planetary plane, you will be able to see Mercury from the far side of the sun allowing you to see all of the planets in the solar system without having to spend fuel on fully stopping and while using about 10-20 times less fuel to hold yourself above the planetary plane.
Even when you look at Starfish Prime's answer, orbital mechanics allow one to offset some of the needed efficiency for solar wind based lift. So, instead of having to design an insanely light ship/sail, it makes more sense to design a sail big enough to capture the ideal amount of energy for cost of manufacture and maintenance, and then derive the remaining needed energy from orbital momentum.
Whether the thrust comes from rockets, the sun itself, or some theoretical antimatter drive etc. does not matter, because it will always be way cheaper to orbit.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/J9cHd.png)
## The only solution that makes since is if you use a reactionless drive
The only way to make a this a reasonable consideration is if you use a reactionless drive. This is any theoretical engine that moves by non-newtonian principles like wormholes, improbability drives, parallel dimensions, etc. Because these drives move without imparting any momentum, when you turn it off, you instantly return to a stationary position relative to your original reference frame. If this is the case, coming to a dead stop over the sun could be a trick for using the star's gravity to slow you down so you can match reference frames after an interstellar jump. If you need to stay there, you could just jump from one side of the star to the other, yo-yo-ing above the poles.
How hard is it to use a reactionless drive in this manner? ... no one knows. The whole point of reactionless drives is that they don't obey the known laws of physics; so, until one is invented, there is no hard science answer to this question. But the good thing as a writer when dealing with them is that no one can contradict the physics of a jump drive. So, as long as you stay internally consistent, it's as hard or easy as you want it to be.
You could also perhaps have an Alcubierre meta-material drive. A material that imparts a constant forward acceleration by warping spacetime. This would be a sort of "thruster" than once made, can never be turned off; so, by parking over the sun or a planet, at just the right distance, you could use the gravity well to cancel out your acceleration in which case, the answer is that it takes no energy at all... you'd just have to maneuver a bit inside the corrona at a range of 3.68 million kilometers to offset your 1G of acceleration.
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Could an eye that is triangular-looking from the outside have any sort of advantage over a round eye?
I'm interested in any nonconventional eye form discourse so anything on the subject is appreciated.
[Answer]
# Eye shape only determines eye mobility, not eye function
There are two questions here, I will answer the title question: *Would a non-round eye be possible or functional?*
From the real world, there are many advantages to eyes of different shapes. While I think the question mostly concerns the outside “eyeball” shape, we can’t really talk about that until we talk about the most important parts of the eye, which actually let light in and focus it on the “film”, or retina. Those parts are the pupil and the lens.
## Pupil
The pupil is what allows light to enter the eye, and pupils definitely do NOT have to be round. When we manufacture camera lenses, they are usually round, but not always. This is because we have very simple film manufacturing processes that make an even, flat, and uniform surface for the light to be recorded on. Our film (or digital recording chip, as the case may be), is not intended for one specialized purpose. We want it to be versatile, and allow the customer to simply reproduce whatever comes into the camera as accurately as possible.
An eye doesn’t have this limitation. An animal is not creating fine art, or making a sales brochure. An animal is surviving, and its eye is a functional tool that will process the light around it in the way that help it survive best. An animal will have an eye that gives it an advantage in the environment it needs to live and find food in.
“Advantage” is a relative word, there is no single feature that makes something an advantage. Let’s start with something simple.
Eyelids are an advantage to animals living in a dry desert where dust and arid conditions dry eyes out, but in a pond they serve no purpose at all and only get in the way. So fish don’t have eyelids, and that is an advantage. Camels do have eyelids, and that is an advantage. This is why the question is a bit of a puzzle. How can anyone answer if a square or triangle eye is an “advantage” without knowing the world the creature lives in? You see, it is the same as asking if an eyelid is an advantage. Yes it is, and no it isn’t. It depends on what the creature’s world looks like.
On earth, there are very many different environments and animals have come up with many different pupil schemes to create an advantage in their worlds. The most extreme example I can think of is the W-shaped pupil of the cuttlefish.[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g4H7o.png)
We often make the mistake of thinking an eye is a camera that reproduces the outside world for our brains. That is one function, of course, but not all of it. The pupil shape of this eye allows the cuttlefish to see its environment clearly nearly 360 degrees around itself, so it can swim and hunt what is in front of it without loosing track of what is behind it (something is always hunting you on the ocean!) The dip in the pupil is a sort of light hood which prevents too much surface light from getting in.
But what sort of picture would this pupil and lens make? How can the cuttlefish make sense of the warped image it gets? The answer is two fold: First, it doesn’t need to “make sense” of the light that comes in because the cuttlefish eye is linked directly to its most valuable weapon: its skin. The cuttlefish has [the most amazing camouflage on earth](https://youtu.be/4IDCpz7bY6I) as it can change its colors, skin texture, and body shape to resemble spiny coral, flat sand, a mottled rock, or almost anything it is near. Even though the cuttlefish itself is color blind, its body will match the colors of a rusty pipe, deep violet coral, or green sea grass. New research has found that the cuttlefish doesn’t need to “understand” that the grass below it is green, it simply needs to stop thinking about what it is seeing altogether and its skin will mimic the spectrum of light coming into its weird light-bending pupil. The picture that gets to its brain is probably more simple. It sees the food, knows where the food it, and eats the food. It sees the shark, knows where the shark is, and hides from the shark.
So an eye is not only designed to “see” and create realistic pictures for the brain. Cameras do this, but eyes do much more specialized functions.
So why are so many eyeballs shaped like a ball? Because a ball can rotate and spin in a socket. This way, the area of the eye which has the best focus can be pointed at the thing it wants to watch without moving its whole head or body.
## Lens
The lens needs to deliver the light where it belongs. If the animal wants an accurate picture, then the lens needs to focus it clearly like an eagle. If the eye needs to filter out light spectra to copy its environment quickly and accurately, like the cuttlefish, then the lens should act like a prism and provide the spectrum information needed. Why would a cuttlefish care about fine details in a coral bed, when all it needs is the basic pattern and color information? The eye doesn’t give the cuttlefish useless information to process. It gives the skin texture and spectrum information, which helps it stay alive by quickly and unconsciously copying its surroundings.
## There are situations where a simple round eye is less advantageous than a specialized eye.
If an eye can focus without moving around, like a Google Earth 360 camera, then it only needs to be “round” if the retina is a simple surface. A retina can be shaped in any way needed to make a triangle eye work. Your story needs to create the world that makes it an advantage.
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I'm not quite sure what you mean about "from the outside," but many avian eyes are not spherical. How dramatically non-spherical they are varies with species, but owl eyes are shaped like cocktail shakers, with a large domed cornea transitioning to a tapered cylinder. This maximizes the amount of light gathering capacity while still fitting into the physical constraints of the owl's skull size.
This may not answer your question if by "from the outside" you mean outside the creature's body, since owl eyes do appear round to an outside observer.
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To the limit of my understanding, the ideal eye is always round because the lens effect which allows eyes to focus on objects requires that incoming light be evenly dispersed in all directions within the eye - so a triangular eye would needlessly warp incoming images which would then require additional brain power to correct - but then I'm told our eyes interpret the world upside-down and our brains switch it around for us, so so much for efficiency.
If you willing to go for compound eyes (where you don't have one eye with all the light receptors inside but rather thousands of mini-eyes with a single light receptor each) then I guess you could arrange your compound eye receptors in triangles. As long as you have two compound eyes you should still get depth perception and whatnot. /shrug
If you looking for personal sensors which interpret the world and don't specifically need to be eyes however, you can go with any shaped plate you want. You can have light, sound or even electromagnetic sensors which appear as scales, plates or dots on the skin - and those can be whatever shape and size you want.
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I am an example of a being with a non round eye.
My eyeball is roughly spherical, but the question asked about the eye, which mightnot be the same thing as the eyeball.
Fom the outside the visible part of my eye looks sort of like the space between two interesting segments of arc. With my eyes open the upper arc is usually much more curved that the lower arc.
I suggest that you go look at your face in a mirror. I expect that the part of your eye visible to other people will have a similar shape to what I have described as the shape of my visible eye. In fact, if you claim that the shape of your eye that is visible on the outside doesn't look like the shape I described for my eye, you should enclose a photograph if you want me to believe you.
I note that animals on earth usually have spheroidal eyeballs, but the shapes of their visible eye parts differs a bit. Thus I can imagine an alian animal or person with a spheroidal eyeball and a rectangular or triangular or star shaped visible part of the eye.
In fact, a rather small modification of the upper eyelids of humans could make the visible parts of their eyes seem like flattened triangles, with the upper eyelid having two straight lines meeting at a point in the center.
A similar modification to the bottom eyelid would make the shape of the visible part of the eye a lozenge.
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Eye shape can be an indicator if an animal is [predator or prey](https://physicsworld.com/a/eye-shape-reveals-whether-animal-is-predator-or-prey/). There is a huge amount of variety in how animals see. Cats having vertical pupils sheep having horizontal slits. Compound eyes. Even scallops have an set of photosensitive cells that lined up in row. The ways the different retinas work can be different too, for example being more sensitive to motion than stationary objects for some animals like some frogs. Some animals are sensitive to different types of polarization or can see more colors than humans.
So I think for a story you could have eyes be pretty divergent from a human eye, but the question might be what is the evolutionary advantage.
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I can imagine tucking an additional triangular-ish eye between e.g. three circular structures such as fingers or tentacles, the advantage being additional sensor coverage.
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How can organized nations in a fantasy setting control large land masses (20-30,000 km²) made of deserts, rocky deserts, and drymuds?
By control, I mean enforcing laws, defending it during conflicts, and securing trade routes.
[Answer]
**Control the Water**
If your nation garrisons key oasis they control the desert. "Key" is a relative term determined by the geography of your setting, but if you aim for springs/oasis that are a week or two's travel from the next water, you've effectively gained control of that area and anything to the interior of that area. Because no large body of people could reliably bypass the oasis you have garrisoned. Sure the odd bandit with a spare camel carrying nothing but water could maybe go around, but no army can. Nor could trade caravans. So your garrisons also double as caravan stops/tax locations. These garrisons would likely be lightly manned (so as not to strain the local resources) and well fortified. Luckily "well fortified" means that even small garrison can hold the position long enough for help to come or the enemy to die of thirst! Medieval castles for example were frequently manned by dozens of men if that, and defended against thousands of attackers. It's HARD to keep a pre-industrial army in the field, and making them carry all their own water makes that even harder.
If you have the other oasis with a "normal" security force (soldiers, police, local hetman, whatever your culture would have if the oasis village was a woodland town) they'll be able to handle securing their local water supply from bandits. Once you've done that, even "bandit with a camel who has water" will eventually be forced to leave or die. The odd Camel or cavalry patrol between oasis from the larger garrisons would provide a force to respond to small bandits or raiding parties.
This efficiently answers military defense and trade security. Enforcing the law in the desert is no different than enforcing the law anywhere else. All the normal punishments work, and most work better. (being banished from the only source of water for 100 miles being somewhat more of a deterrent than being banished from a town 5 miles from a city.) The only thing that isn't as viable is imprisonment, because desert communities are more likely to be living on the edge of subsistence and feeding idle mouths could easily lead to starvation for the entire community.
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For an example look at how the USA managed to control the frontier in the times of the wild West.
Law enforcement is granted by officers appointed in each settlement and relying on volunteers for help in handling small issues. When larger issues come forth, there should be some support available within few days of horse ride.
And for securing trade routes, each convoy has to be self reliant, carrying weapons to discourage the small fries from attempting a hit. That's how merchants travelling along the silk road and other trade routes protected themselves: keep a open hear for all the rumors in the village, be sure to be friend with the local authorities and, if the worst happens, have some way to defend yourself.
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First , control the water sources. There can't be too many, or it would be forest. Use means that do not exhaust the water, so the inhabitants can survive as long as they obey -- unless you do want to force them out, which would indeed help with control.
Then develop roads. Also, fast-moving means of communication. Your biggest weakness is that your foes can strike anywhere, but you must protect everywhere. This helps with supplies as well. The cavalry who can defend ten times as much land don't eat more than the infantry, and their horses do not make up the difference for controlling all that land.
Settle as many people as you can. Agriculture for dry areas needs to be developed. This supplies food and manpower, and prevents nomads from just wandering through.
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## **You Can't Take a Hard Stance vs the Land**
Trying to draw a hard line over vast mostly empty lands is an easy way to lose. The line will be so brittle and thin it cracks at the slightest touch. The best way to hold on is with a reactive defensive stance. Strong at the centers of power where it counts, thin and reactive on the borders where the lands are nearly worthless.
**Step 1: Cartography**
This is the foremost and most fundamental step to securing any territory. You have to make sure your maps are accurate, up to date, and contain all noteworthy features. Water sources, settlements, roads, sheltered areas, vegetation, animal variety, elevation differences, soft terrain, hard terrain, floodplains, it is all mandatory information. Not only is it required to plan the best routes and defense locations, it also allows you to notice changes when they occur. Little is worse for soldiers than being surprised, like finding their enemies escaping into an unmarked canyon or the water source marked on their map nowhere to be found.
* Knowing all the terrain features increases the efficiency of patrols tenfold. When you know the land, you know where to look and the most likely places the enemy will be. That also means they can use all the best vantage points, the safest camps, and the fastest routes through the territory. It also keeps them from getting lost or stranded by various events and difficulties.
* Little details can matter a whole lot in a simple place. The lack of a usual animal migration for example can signal many things to an experienced ranger. It can mean the loss of their nearby water source by natural or artificial causes. It can mean they were slaughtered to feed an advancing army. It could mean a flash flood elsewhere. It could also signal disease, all of which is worth investigating.
**Step 2: Prioritize Your Assets**
For a proper defense, you must take stock of what is actually important to defend. This, along with the terrain scouted earlier directly decides where to place your infrastructure.
* There is little point in building a fort in the middle of nowhere, with no water source or supplies to be gathered within a 7 days ride just because it follows your supposed border. Supplying your own men would cost a fortune, and possible enemy supply lines in the area will too. The most inhospitable and least valuable areas should be left as a buffer zone. Build watchposts along the borders of the badlands and actually useful territory, as long as doing so doesn't extend your line too much (large inwards bulges might as well be closed with a shorter line). Even if the enemy pushes through the barren zones to avoid your stronger forces, they will be at their weakest from harsh terrain and poor supplies.
* *There isn't an actual need for forts in most places.* Forts are defensive structures. If the garrison detail is just tiny picket groups meant to economically screen large swathes of land, them digging in makes no sense. Their #1 priority should be to escape to report back to stronger and larger combat units to deal with the enemy, not make a heroic final stand against a superior force. A line of under-garrisoned forts might as well be handing them over for free to the enemy, making it that much harder to drive them back.
* Centralizing the position of your main army around core territories is best when the frontage is large. Garrisoning many forts far away from your core territory would allow the enemy to eat up your army in little bits, a defeat in detail. Having many soldiers together in one place is what makes an army. Keeping armies near your cities is also much cheaper, as little to no costs are incurred from the transport of men and food from your cities to the bulk of the troops if the troops are stationed on their doorstep. This will also ensure the main army is always where it is needed most in the face of a rapid invasion, where the enemy moves in too quickly to reform your armies back from the borders. As an added plus, armies can provide economical benefit to the cities they garrison. They have places to spend their paycheck, much of which can be reclaimed through taxes on local business or even state-run hospitality businesses.
* Forts should be placed in key strategic zones only. A properly maintained fort isn't cheap in costs or upkeep. Key zones on transportation routes are the best places for forts. They provide the fastest route for possible invasion, as well as control trade and information flows. A fort in peacetime should handle border tariff duties to sustain itself as well as keep tabs on enemy movements through communication with travelers. Forts that only sink money should be built as a last resort: on the most advantageous defensive terrain in the most likely route for an invasion by hostile forces **of superior local might** and where there is little strategic depth to intercept an invader before they get somewhere valuable. If all of those conditions are not met, the fort and garrison are probably not worth the effort to place in that location.
**Step 3: The Details**
What you put in your security details matters. There are tradeoffs everywhere that require hard choices be made. What you can buy, how much you can get, and what you face are all important. The grandest plan in the universe is trash if it can't be completed in time or kept operational long enough.
* Border Garrison: What you want are fast, mobile units able to cover large amounts of ground quickly on patrol and on what little supplies they can get. Arms-men light cavalry skirmishers are what you want. Infantry patrols are just too slow and vulnerable in large areas of flat land compared to cavalry, whose might per man is multiplied and posses the initiative. On the flip side heavy cavalry is truly expensive, and posses poor endurance due to the weight of their gear and the high upkeep of their stout warhorse. Lightly armed and armored cavalrymen on average horses are the best. Faster than advancing enemy vanguards of light and heavy cavalry, they can always escape back to alert your main army. Their average horses can in part sustain themselves by grazing the land, something that would starve a warhorse built up on alfalfa and other supplements. This also gives them the endurance to complete patrols on the widest amount of area at the littlest cost, as they need not bring heavy bales of fodder at the outset of every sortie.
* The watchpoints themselves covering the majority of the border should be little more than: a well, a small stable, and a shelter from the wind. Too poor to be worth raiding, the small garrison should all be riders able to escape with no regrets leaving nothing useful left behind if a force stronger than them approaches. They can either be hidden or placed on the best nearest vantage point. The well isn't even necessary if a nearby source of clean water exists within an hour's ride. All that matters is it can shelter 2 light cavalry patrols, who switch out on two patrol shifts but can hunker down together in bad weather.
* Patrol teams are probably best served rotating on 1-2 week schedules out from a nearby army hub in a town or city. A single hub is enough for multiple watchpoints, and would naturally house half of the given forces in the area as a quick response force while the other half garrison the borders. These should supply patrols with enough food for their patrols out from the watchpoints, and provide a sizable force against smaller bands of raiders or enemy raiders when detected. Depends on the place and location though, smaller or longer patrols can be fitted to circumstance.
* Outside of watchtowers and supply hubs should be chains of waystations and roads where applicable. Raods aren't strictly necessary, as traveling on the same paths is predictable and thus avoidable or ambush-able by a cunning enemy. It isn't like you're are marching entire army battalions with wagon trains in tow around on patrol, horses are born to roam relatively open terrain offroad. It is perhaps better for them to ride on wilderness trails, hard paved roads can be tough on horses and their horsehoes.
* Forts and army bases should be designed for the exact situation. Shaped to make advantage of local terrain, expected enemy strength, and available resources. There is no perfect fortress for every place, even the Roman combat engineers who standardized their fort designs had a catalogue of layouts to choose from and selected the location carefully to fit the fort.
* Fort garrisons should be the opposite of watchtowers and their mobile light cavalry border hubs. Dense armies primarily of infantry are best suited for manning the walls and holding the line against invaders. Heavy cavalry and ranged forces are great to have, but can hardly be counted upon as your main army composition due to their cost and high skill requirement.
* A novel idea for watching over plains and deserts is the use of spotting balloons. Hot air balloons tethered in place by a rope carrying a man or two, they are relatively easy to reposition and require no particular skill besides good eyesight to use. In flat terrain, they can give impressive sight lines far cheaper than building of the same height. If captured, they provide next to no value for an advancing army.
**Step 4: Greater Communication**
There comes a point in sophistication and scale where sending riders to communicate everything just isn't effective. The faster things are communicated, the more time you have to prepare and mobilize the various forces.
* Carrier birds are a decent choice for large distances. As long as they can memorize the important locations and fly swiftly they are worth raising. They aren't particularly expensive to feed or maintain for any army hub or fort for communicating important messages.
* A chain of semaphore towers, or towers that relay messages visually through lights or flags to another down the line would be extremely easy to build on open flat land. With open sight lines, you may only need a tower every few miles. They probably won't even have to be very tall, using little funds and materials. What you get is then a stable line through which messages can be transferred, basically at the speed of light for shorter messages such as alerts, with basically zero technology required. All you need is someone trained to wave flags, read flag patterns, and maybe flicker lamps at night with two other towers on either side.
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This is a fascinating problem with multiple aspects that real world countries have had to spend a lot of thought on. With regards to the original problem, the Mongolian conquests that established their empire are very instructive, both in terms of how to establish power and how to maintain it, but first we should go a little more big picture:
## Agility
I use this buzzword to fold together 2 main needs:
**Physical Mobility**: The ability to swiftly get your forces to where they need to be when they need to be. This also includes your ability to maneuver on the battlefield.
**Organisational Agility**: The ability to quickly receive and process information, determine what the threats are and where they are, and then dispatch the appropriate amount of force.
In order to fulfill these 2 needs, you're going to need a number of different things:
* Static defences: These include manned forts on natural chokepoints and high traffic travel routes, watchtowers, fortified settlements and garrisons around points of interest like oases. This is the first line of defense, but it's only the starting point. You can never rely solely on static defense or you get [defeated in detail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_in_detail), especially on wide open steppes and plains. But just as importantly, they are places to station scouts and messengers.
* Information network: As mentioned in the previous point, this would be your network of scouts and messengers, who gather information on the enemy and get the word out. But it's also the men who are waiting to receive those reports, read through them and give the requisite orders. Prevention is better than cure, so this can also include spies planted amongst your likely foes who can tell you what your opponents are planning to do before they even do it. Most audiences would consider this the most boring part, but it's absolutely essential to defense of the realm.
* Quick reaction forces: Last but not least, the most straightforward component. You always have to take the fight to the enemy sooner or later, and these are the guys that do it. This involves a very large and expensive cavalry force to come to the rescue, relieve sieges and meet the enemy on the field, but the lines between military and law enforcement can be blurred here. When you have a bandit or insurgent problem, you also need your law enforcement to be mounted in order to pursue, corrall and finally root them out.
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Some ways to enforce laws in large open landscapes are to have sheriff booths every few miles along the trade routes (roads, rivers, etc.) and to have a large penalty if the law is broken.
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## Patrols and Resources
Control the important resources,
water,
mines,
other and have armed patrols covering the spaces between them
(think road wardens).
Within the settlements,
have local law enforcement and have circuit judges and marshals.
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By the nature of the environment, you don't need to control the entire area: let the bandits and revolutionaries hang out in the desert all they want. You want to focus on control of key areas.
1. Water sources are the obvious and main one.
2. Control of key passes or other areas that form natural restrictions to travel.
3. Control of critical infrastructure points such as food supply areas, or mines, or somesuch.
For the rest of it, you want fortified locations spaced out along major trade routes or areas of expansion. These forts, again, aren't trying to control the entire area, but to provide bases of offensive operations and defensive places of refuge. What you're going to want is that if there's an attack, a reaction force is within a reasonable distance so that they can respond and retaliate. You'll never stop all bandit attacks (that's why travel is best in guarded convoys), but if it looks like someone is starting to get organized, you want a force within a few days travel who can come in and give them an ass-kicking to dissuade them from future activities. If some of the bandits slink away into the desert, well, good on them. They can rot out there until someone has some time to spare to send a force to hunt them down.
If someone manages to create an organized force, then your forts give you bases that troops moved into the area can use to anchor their operations.
And of course, you send out the odd patrol to get the lay of the land and see what's happening.
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These are some ways to enforce laws in large plains and deserts, in no particular order:
1. Control the water sources. Water would be valuable in large plains and deserts, so the government would probably have to ration water.
2. Have lots of police, having the orders to injure, but not kill, if people take water, or do any major crimes, like murder, and not allowed to injure, those who do minor crimes.
3. Have a large disciplined army, which are trained to fight in hand to hand combat, along with having advanced knowledge of lethal weapons.
4. Last, although certainty not least, Make the citizens happy.
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YUoyY.jpg)
Presented here is a quaternary solar system consisting of two binary orbits. One consists of two red giants, each one 100 times as wide, one-third as massive and 100 times as bright as our sun. Both stars have been red giants for only 12 million years. One giant is orbiting the other giant from a distance of 12 AUs. The other binary consists of two yellow dwarves, each one 105% as wide, 110% as massive and 126% as bright as our sun. The one dwarf orbits the other from a distance of two AUs.
Each of the binaries has its own habitable zone, a stage in which liquid surface water can be possible. But in this case, one habitable zone is deep inside another. For any of the planets orbiting the yellow-dwarf binary, how different would "double habitability" be from the singular habitability that our Earth is currently under? In other words, how would the red giant binary's habitable zone affect the yellow-dwarf binary's habitable zone?
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**No habitable zones at all.**
Consider a habitable zone. It receives enough radiation from its star (or star pair) such that water does not freeze or evaporate.
From OP "one habitable zone is deep inside another." I take it that this is the habitable zone of the yellow stars which is deep inside the zone of the reds.
The habitable zone of the yellows is considered only in respect to the yellows. Now let us take that zone and add more radiation. It gets hotter, right? A zone habitable with the radiation of 2 star will be considerably hotter with the radiation of 4. How do I know it will be hotter? It is the habitable zone of the red stars, which is enough to prevent water from freezing.
I think, in fact, having 2 medium size stars within the habitable zone of your large stars means no habitable zones at all around either pair. If the yellow stars are within what would be the habitable zone of the reds, the addition of radiation from the red stars means there is no orbit around the yellow stars which will not cook the planet. The presence of the yellow stars in what would otherwise be the habitable zone of the red star means there is no orbit around the red stars which would not periodically bring the planet in close proximity to the yellow stars and have it pop. Like a piece of planet popcorn.
However here is the way to save your system. You will need to move the yellow pair way, way out to where the contribution of the red stars is a small percentage. Then the yellow pair can have a habitable zone safe from the influence of the red stars.
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### The "Habitable zone" concept becomes "The collection of all habitable orbits"
The habitable zone is a simplification depicting 2 circles around a sun (or barycentre of N suns) representing the boundaries on the possible orbits that could sustain life:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oUvqY.png)
By defining the red and green circles, all those blue orbits (and infinitely more) are defined as "habitable"
### This concept only applies to your 4-star system in three ***very*** special cases:
When the suns are really really hot and the habitable zone is very far away from your diagram, you get a really zoomed out version:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/q0TWx.png)
When two of the suns are very far away that they don't contribute much heat and can be ignored:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EsSjq.png)
Or when the suns are weak, and the planet's atmosphere is thick and an extreme insulator that can hold heat for a full year (think venus here), you can theoretically have nested rings of habitability zones depending on the temperature gradient:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vZBCS.png)
### However none of these special cases probably apply to your system, your habitability zone probably can't be described using radii alone.
Consider this snapshot I just drew in mspaint - both the areas which are too hot, and areas which are too cold are not circles and the whole shape rotates, and there is no single circle which doesn't pass through through either boundary:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ov7L8.png)
There is no single radius circular orbit that stays between the too hot and too cold mark.
There are still infinitely many orbits - including lots of elliptical ones, and circular ones *with a specific phase*, but they all have an orbit with the same period as the other sun pair, eg:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oAK80.png)
This ensures that the planet never cross the red line on its orbital ring. The 5 most stable (and I use that term loosely) of these are the Lagrange points:
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Lagrangianpointsanimated.gif/220px-Lagrangianpointsanimated.gif)
Assuming the blue and yellow spheres in this diagram are your sun barraycentres: L1 only is a habitable orbit if your suns are weak enough / far enough away from each other, the other 4 are some of the habitable orbits.
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>
> how would the red giant binary's habitable zone affect the yellow-dwarf binary's habitable zone?
>
>
>
I think you should go with a superposition of the amount of received energy to determine the habitable zone in the system as a whole.
Let me explain my reasoning with a simplification: if an habitable zone is defined as the region of space where the total amount of radiation received by the outside is between 80 and 120 units, that has to be the total of the radiation coming from all the stars. In your case you would consider only the 4 stars of the system, given that the contribution of the others is negligible. If a certain location in the system receives in units 60 from A, 40 from B, 20 from C and 10 from D you can quickly see that it all sums up to 130 units, out of the habitable zone, unless for those moments where B or D are eclipsed.
In a very 0th order approximation, I think that either the overall habitable zone would be pushed outward with respect to the habitable zone of every star taken individually, or there can be no habitable zone at all, considering that the superposition can exceed or not meet the habitability score depending on the relative positions of the stars.
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I think it has as much to do with the previous answers of 'add up all radiation' as to your definition of 'habitable'.
If you're talking about current day humans being able to survive there then look at the other answers (practically no chance).
However, things change for bacteria or Tardigrades, which have a much larger bandwidth for habitable. Then after that imagine things like alien lifeforms, like silicon based biology or an intelligent robot civilisation just requiring energy and materials for operation and replication.
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I think that the closet thing to what you are asking for is if a planet orbits just outside the habitable zone of class K or M star, and so would have a temperature slightly below the freezing point of water.
But the star the planet orbits happens to orbit a more massive and more luminous star at a relatively close distance. The distance between the two stars has to be at least several times the distance of the planet's orbit around it star, but also small enough for the planet to be almost within the habitable zone of the larger star,so that the combned luminosity of the two stars suffices to make the planet warm enough for liquid water and life.
During a year of the planet it's distance from the larger star will vary by twice the average radius of the planet's orbit. So the larger and brighter star should be sufficiently luminous for the variation in the planet's distance to not change the distance to the brighter star, and the amount of heat the the planet gets from that star, very much.
And it is possible that such an arrangement with the brighter star a spectral class G or F, and the smaller star a spectral type K or M, might work. And if it won't work with one brighter star, it might work if there are two brighter identical stars, a close binary. A binary of identical stars which has twice the luminosity of single star of that type would have have an outer edge of its habitable zone about 1.41 times as far as the outer edge for a single star of that type.
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## There's no such thing as a habitable zone.
Well, OK, there are those ten thousand astronomers publishing their belief in it, but just look at it a moment:
* A planet like Neptune, with oceans of supercritical water, is too hot for Earthlike life. Its habitable zone might be somewhere further from the Sun, or it may need more time to cool after the Sun dies down.
* A tidally locked planet could revolve around the Sun at the distance of Mercury, yet as described in Niven's story "The Coldest Place", the night side might be far *below* a habitable temperature. Perhaps, however, there is a deep topological feature that can collect a thin atmosphere and retain water. Perhaps living organisms have developed metabolism using "[anti-solar](https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/anti-solar-cells-photovoltaic-cell-works-night)" photosynthesis.
The habitable zone is a pure abstraction, perhaps suitable for a spinning billiard ball, but telling us very little about where life may or may not be found in the cosmos. Your question illustrates that we can truly decide habitability only in a certain place on a given planet, knowing all the features of its geology and rotation.
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Let's say that I've developed a new engine that can accelerate at 1G continuously. Within about a year, I'm nearing the speed of light. Naturally, I recognize the danger of collisions with gas and dust. I have magnetic fields to sweep away ionized matter, but it doesn't work for non-ionized matter and it adds drag.
My chief engineer had an idea. He suggested we build a massive but thin solar sail and keep it in front of our ships, using our lasers to accelerate it at the same speed as our ship. This sail would suffer the brunt of any impacts from the interstellar medium.
So, is this a good idea, or are we just going to get hit by chunks of shattered solar sail?
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Your shield is moving at nearly the speed of light. The peanut-sized chunk of space debris you're approaching isn't. Best case, the peanut rips through the shield at nearly the speed of light and hits your ship anyway. Worst case, when the peanut hits the shield, the shield burns up in a glorious glow of fusion, which you appreciate just before being [consumed by the firestorm](https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/). (That XKCD is probably the most commonly linked XKCD on this site.)
The basic problems of shields have been known or guessed-at by SciFi writers for decades. It's why they stick with the ubiquitous "deflectors," which are never actually explained and magically move all potential debris out of the way, much like cows vs. the cow sweeps on old steam trains.
The problems with your proposed shield are (at least) ...
* It's not impenetrable (a massive + dense enough object will always go through it).
* It's consumable (it's not self-repairing or self-replacing).
* It will react to impacts (deliver enough energy over a large enough amount of area and it'll burn up like any other solid material).
* The energy needed to keep it in front of you must be at least equal to the impact energy of *anything* that hits it (you're using lasers for this...) or it falls back onto you.
Does this mean you can't use it in your story? Not at all. Most scifi readers either don't know enough about the science to realize these problems, or they're more like me where I'm in it for the story and don't worry about the little things.
However, to give you an idea about how issues like this can be resolved. You can adopt Larry Niven's solution: the [General Products hull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Products), which is basically impervious to everything other than visible light, antimatter, and gravity. Designed as a single molecule with "strengthened inner bonds," it's simply the best built armor in the universe. Can such a material exist? Not that we know — but that doesn't stop anyone from enjoying his stories.
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**It is a good idea except for the sail.**
You are accelerating a shield in front of you. You are using lasers. If you turn off the lasers you will accelerate through the shield, so the lasers have to stay on. It must be more than one laser to accelerate all parts of the shield uniformly.
Pack up the sail for some later use. Leave the lasers on; you have already budgeted for them. They will spray impressively in front of you off into space. They will hit obstacles in your way. Those obstacles will be illuminated. From your perspective they will be coming at you very fast, so fortunately your lasers are governed by fast-thinking computers.
Your many lasers are different wavelengths. The reflected wavelengths allow the computer to calculate the trajectory of the incoming mass according to which beams are interrupted. Your computers fire a BB at the approaching mass. It will become an XKCDesque shower of radiation and charged particles, which your magnetic shield and bulk shield can deal with. There is an option to fire another BB at recalcitrant masses.
For very tiny particles, the lasers themselves might be enough. They were going to push a sail, after all. They can push particles out of the way too.
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What you have described is a "flimsy shield", which, by itself, can not be effective at relativistic speeds.
Incoming hydrogen and helium atoms, upon colliding will turn into potent radiation, for which this shield will provide no protection. Putting the shield at sufficient distance in front of the ship will help to disperse the radiation, but then there is a question of generating protective magnetic field in front of the shield (way ahead of where the field generators can be located).
The solution (within the realm of existing science) is having a *massive* shield. Unfortunately, calculations show that this shield has to be so massive that accelerating our spaceship to relativistic speed is becoming [practically impossible](http://file.scirp.org/Html/1-8301750_23913.htm).
But of course if you are willing to introduce new science (as of now, your question is neither "hard-science" nor "science-based") you can make this sail shield design work just as you want it to.
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The classic shield for a relativistic spaceship isn't a solar sail, but a massive object built from engineered materials. The cheapest one would be mostly ice, but the ice is carefully cast and frozen so there are no bubbles, voids or cracks, and it is likely reinforced with high tech rebar like reinforced concrete. Other choices might be the sintered slag from asteroid mining. At any rate, this is an iceberg or mountain sized object moving ahead of the ship.
The benefit for the ship is you have created a wakefield shield, and the ship is running in a very clean "void" which has been created by the passage of the shield. Even the vacuum is harder than the space around it. The downside is the amount of energy needed to move a passive shield of that size is going to be massive. One possible solution for that is to build a huge mass driver in the solar system and fire the shield on the ships trajectory ahead of the launching of the ship. This will clear a path for the ship, so long as the launch isn't delayed too long after the mass driver fires the shield.
However, modifying the initial solution by eliminating the solar sail works to your advantage as well. The high energy laser shining ahead of the ship will illuminate everything in front of the ship. Gas molecules will be ionized and thus can be thrown to the side by a magnetic or electrostatic field surrounding the ship, and small physical objects will either be vapourized (the laser will act like a "laser broom") and turned to an ionized gas to be swept away by the ships field, or if large enough, the heating will blast enough matter from the object to act like a rocket and propellor it on a path away from the ship. If the object is too large, the heating by the laser will make it glow in infrared frequencies, and provide warning for the ship to change course and miss the object instead.
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> Is this a good idea, or are we just going to get hit by chunks of shattered solar sail?
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You are describing a very special kind of ablator.
The problem you have is that a collision at near light speeds will end up in thinga like nuclear fission and fusion. Then, instead of impacting against a rock at nearly light speeds, you will collide with your solar sail plasma debris + rock's plasma debris at near light speed. It might be less dense, but it might also be larger than the original rock, so you will be in trouble anyway.
But there is an alternative. Like in so many other aspects of life, attacking is the best form of defense in space travel as well. Use an [Alcubierre Drive](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive). It involves travelling inside a bubble of spacetime that destroys everything ahead of it, including the ship's destination, so it should also disintegrate any pesky space stones that happen to be in your way.
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One solution to the problem has been proposed, which is to use a high power laser to ionize all material ahead of the ship so that it interacts with the magnetic field. Very substantial power is required, but given you already have enough to accelerate to near light speed its probably not a show stopper
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Before I start, let me say that I know that what animals think and feel and whether they do it is a highly, highly debated topic. But, for this question, let us just assume that many animals think - in the form of pictorial thoughts - and can feel happy, sad, angry, scared, disgusted and surprised, just perhaps in a less complex way than we do.
There's no reason to think that this shouldn't be true, since all mammals have very similar brain structures to us (Toothed whales have even more than us) and use the same chemicals for thought and emotion.
However, it is likely that alien life, would use different chemicals, and have a very different nervous system.
So, my question is: **are our emotions necessary? Are there alternative emotions which could aid a creature in survival, and are pictures the only way to think without language?**
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Let's start with some basic neurophysiology (all that will follow is a simplification, but functionally correct).
There are three major areas of the brain that all work in different ways; there is the cerebellum (instinct and autonomic functions, hard-wired electrical), the limbic system (emotions, chemical) and the cerebral cortex (intellectual thought, soft-wired electrical).
Why three different systems in a single brain? The short answer is because evolution can't just shut down a species, redesign an upgrade to the brain, and restart that species. The species still has to function, so it develops a new system over the top that provides advantages over the old system.
Many animals, including insects, get by with a rudimentary cerebellum alone. It drives them to specific behaviour that increases their odds of survival, and keeps their systems functioning. (heart, muscles, et al)
The problem with that is that once you know the instinct, you can exploit it and create a set of circumstances in which the instinct works against the organism. Just take ultraviolet bug zappers for instance. Spiders (by the way) have been doing the same thing for much much longer, with webs that glow in ultraviolet, but I digress.
So, evolution builds an 'upgrade' for the brain that provides some situational overrides to instincts. It can't build it as an electrical system, that would mess up the instincts that work most of the time. So, it designs the limbic system, or reptilian brain. This is chemical in nature and allows organisms to feel emotions and react in specific ways according to environmental considerations. This is a great leap forward and allows certain animals to be more successful as their emotions can override their instincts at times to preserve the young, or push through pain to find food.
But, even that's not enough. So along comes the cerebral cortex, or mammalian brain, which not only allows for situational awareness, but actually allows us to 'program' our actions according to intellectual logic. This means that we can finally react and adapt to a changing environment within the lifetime of a single organism, rather than taking hundreds of thousands of years to do so. This makes mammals even more successful, and eventually leads to an organism that specialises in such thought - humans.
The point being, we don't know how alien brains would form. At all. What if the cerebellum in an alien species was based on programmed chemical transfer? The limbic system may not even exist and an alien may have evolved directly to a cerebral cortex model. What if the Earth's limbic system was more flexible and actually allowed for programmable emotions? The cerebral cortex probably wouldn't exist today as it would represent an added complexity that may not be required.
We break up 'thought' into concepts like instinct, emotion and reason because our brains are wired that way, but in an alien, not all of these concepts have to exist - indeed none of them may exist and their brains could have evolved along completely different lines again.
The important thing to note is that we have these 3 tiers within the brain today because our environment made this the simplest way to gain the complexity required to deliver the survive-ability outcomes that were required by humans to continue to exist and thrive. In a different environment, different stressors may apply, different 'starting' neurophysiology, different speeds at which organisms can change and still be successful. Evolution will never favour change faster than it is necessary in an organism, and never favour a change that is more complex than necessary (true, some systems seem needlessly complex, but like the brain that's largely because they're built over systems that supported previous environments; simpler systems that achieve the same end will always prevail over complex ones that aren't more effective because there's more that can go wrong).
To that end, it's entirely possible that aliens could end up with a completely different neurophysiology but by definition, that would result in a completely different psychology as well. One that may well be more pragmatic than our own.
For example, the cerebral cortex evolved *after* the limbic system, yet we still value our emotions despite the cerebral cortex evolving primarily to override it in certain situations. We fear and devalue sociopathy, but from certain perspectives, it makes the people who have it more 'successful'. I'm not saying that's a good thing, I'm merely pointing out that we are confused ourselves about the relative merits of our own thought chains. Aliens with a completely different brain design are just as likely to suffer from the same level of confusion, just against concepts of thought that we have no frame of reference to even begin to understand.
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There is a number of emotions that are essential for survival:
* Fear keeps a creature away from other dangerous creatures or doing dangerous things. A reaction to pain can be observed in very simple creatures like worms. As soon as a creature can cognitively connect pain and its cause, you get the emotion of fear. The fear of feeling pain makes creatures avoid damage to the body.
* Positive excitement (which includes happiness) is the fundamental function of the brains reward system. Eating highly nutricious food makes us happy because it keeps the individual alive\*. Sexual activity makes us happy because it keeps our species alive. Social interactions make social animals happy because it keeps the family alive. Drugs make us happy because they hijack the reward system... (\* Please don't start any discussions about obesity)
* Negative excitement (including anger and agression) makes a creature defend their food, territory, mate or family. All things that fundamentally secure the survival of the individual and/or the species.
* Disgust keeps you away from possibly hazardous substances, germs and pests. This is a feeling that probably only creatures with a certain intelligence have. In humans, some things cause disgust on an instinctual level (like maggots in flesh, the smell of death) and some things are learned to be perceived as disgusting (like spiders, certain foods).
I don't think images is the only way of *thinking* without speech. You can also think in temperatures, directions and times. I'm pretty sure a bat can think in sonar echoes, because that's the way it experiences its environment.
Addendum: Let's make a little experiment. Imagine lice crawling through your hair. Now imagine a spider slowly walking from your shoulder up your neck into your hair.
Feel the tingling? You just thought in physical sensations.
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I don't think you are thinking about thoughts correctly. I am an AI researcher, familiar with the field. It is provably true that the human brain uses sensory information to discern patterns; about the smallest component of the brain is the neuron, and this is a biological thing that is a simple pattern matcher: It can have anywhere from a few, to tens of thousands of inputs (from sensory or other neurons), and when certain patterns appear on its inputs exceeding some threshold, the neuron fires. "I saw this pattern". The signal it outputs goes to other neurons, often many of them, as inputs to their pattern recognition.
Together these build up a "model" of something, which may be an idea, a thing, the state of mind of another person. When a model is activated that is a pattern matching too; and this is how thoughts come to be.
Do we think in words and sentences? It may seem so, but not so much. When you see a car, all the sensory inputs about it trigger a set of neurons in your brain that correspond to your unique internal model of a car (very similar to to others, but unique because it depends on your unique set of car experiences), what to expect from it, how to spell it, how to say it, everything you know about cars is "primed". One of those things is the sound of the word "car", and when that group of neurons gets a signal, you *feel* like you heard the word car, even though the inputs did not come from your ears. You don't think in sounds and sentences, those are just linked to models in your brain that are being activated. So the same neurons that fire when you recognize a real sound, can be fired by other neurons that recognize a "car" by sight or by reading the word, so it feels almost the same as if you *heard* it.
The same thing goes for concepts; at the bottom these are groups of neurons that specify relationships between things. "Fast" is a concept, and there are neurons in our brain that can apply a relative speed modifier to all kinds of things, from a fast river, to a fast airplane, to a fast mouse. You might even "see" those things visually, when memories of each are triggered, they also trigger thousands of neural clusters that normally get triggered by the sight. The sight itself is not stored, only the neural consequences are stored, but either way, it feels the same: What you "see" is also just neurons matching patterns, firing, and activating clusters.
It is unlikely aliens would "think" differently than this, but of course their sensory organs may not have anything to do with sound, sight, or even smell. Like ours, their sensory organs would also be distilled into electro-chemical signals, that get pattern matched, and they would also build up models of things that exist in the world for them. Just like us. Their thinking would likely be, like ours, a kind of perpetual chain reaction of modeling the real world, that triggers models, and those trigger models, ad infinitum. The point of these models is mostly to **predict** the future, what to expect, and whether various actions will promote or prevent what is going to happen.
As for emotions, I would propose they are pretty much the same as what we can find in the animal kingdom; evolution requires certain things like a desire for sex to procreate, a desire to survive involving fear, and fight or flight responses, etc. Not every animal feels "love" or "friendship", not every animal craves company or feels loneliness, not every animal feels compassion or wants to help.
That said, technology is likely something only collective social animals could develop; so I would say any technological species is (as we humans are) likely some kind of tribal, herding or community animal both giving and receiving support from others, thus with instincts of both sharing with others, and punishing free riders. This social nature would also seem to be a prerequisite for developing a complex language, raising and teaching children, all of which promote depth of memory and intellect for developing social norms, e.g. developing unique models of other individuals to "understand" them, meaning predict their behavior, reactions, etc. Of course sociality alone is not enough to ensure high intelligence or technology; wolves are social, chipmunks are social, elephants are social without technology. But I would wager sociality is a **necessary** ingredient, along with others.
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Thinking is just recreating sensations inside your head. Most people are used to using speech to communicate, so they work though concepts by "thinking" spoken word.
"Are pictures the only way to think without language?" - if someone was blind and deaf, would they be any less capable of thinking? No, but they would "think" in braille or sign-language hand positions.
I can "think" smells, tastes, textures - if an alien could sense magnetic fields, then they could think those too.
Humans from different cultures have different ways of thinking - global communications has brought us all closer together, but there are still concepts that one country/culture would consider "natural" and others would find inconceivable.
You are treating Emotions as "standardised", but that is - again - a language and cultural thing. The German concept of "[Schadenfreude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude)" has no 'direct' translation. Greek has [4 different words](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love) for "love" depending on context and circumstance - to them, these are 4 seperate, distinct, emotions.
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I am probably the nearest thing you will meet to an intelligent alien in this respect, although I assure you I am fully human (check your tinfoil hat everyone).
Between autism that I was born with and brain injury that happened later in life, I can tell you that emotions are very important. My emotional processing capacity is nearly zero, but my problem solving capacity is at the top end of the curve.
**Part 1: Emotions**
First of all, emotions are crucial to encoding memories. In the absence of emotion, it is very difficult to form memories. That includes learning new skills, patterning behaviors, or recalling that you just told that one story you know five minutes ago.
Second, processing emotions is crucial to social interaction. Without the ability to experience emotion, you also lack the capability of interpreting emotions. You can't tell when you've made a faux pas, or when someone else is enjoying themselves. You can't "take a hint" because the "hint" doesn't register. On the other hand, you aren't offended in the least when you're told bluntly "go away".
Without emotional attachments, when people are not physically present they are abstractions. It means that you don't stay up late worrying about your loved ones when they are travelling, but it also means that they feel alienated because it never occurs to you to ask after them. When you do ask, it feels forced and awkward to all concerned, because it it not spontaneous.
Emotions are crucial to prioritization and decision making. Given a scenario where the house is burning down and you want a sandwich at the same time, the priority is obvious when there is no immediacy to the situation.
Without emotions, when under pressure you are equally likely to freeze (unable to decide), choose the sandwich, or choose getting out of the house. With emotions, you can make that decision in a snap, even under pressure, and then justify it intellectually later. Research suggests that this is actually how most decisions are made.
Without emotions, it is difficult to stay focused on any one task. Every interruption has the same priority as your primary task. Strict schedules as employed by some autistic people (see Rain Man for a good depiction - "Wednesday is fish sticks") are a mechanism for compensating for prioritization issues.
Without emotion, facts with consequences are experienced simply as facts. This makes customer relations difficult in a business setting. Going from a bare fact to reassuring the customer takes empathy. It's a huge step from "Your system is running well over its intended capacity" to "we need to add nodes to the cluster".
**Part 2: Verbalization**
With the loss of 50% of my verbal skills, even though my problem solving skills are in the top percentile, I am unable to understand a computer application design that I wrote and built just 10 years ago. I can read it, I can say the words, I can even tell you the simplified flavor of the application, but I am not able to comprehend the algorithm sufficiently to reproduce it (even though it was "just a lot of simple" to me at the time.
While it is true that I can understand things I can't verbalize, I find I need to have a graphic in front of me for any serious thinking now. Often no one but me will ever understand the scribbles I make on the white board, but that compensates for the loss of language skills and (to some extent) the loss of memory encoding that go with the brain injury.
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**What are emotions for?**
Emotions exist to control our behavior in ways that are evolutionarily useful. Like @pojo-guy said up above, emotions make it possible to act without having to rationally evaluate all the possibilities (which will take too long).
*Fear* exists to save your life by getting you away from things that are usually dangerous. That's why people have innate fears of insects and snakes, and (less so) of the dark and heights and so on.
*Curiosity* exists to help you luck into finding useful things, like food or shelter, and to avoid unpleasant surprises (like those leaves rustling that turns out to be a predator stalking you).
*Anger* makes us resist when someone does something we don't like, and keeps us from being pushed around.
*Guilt* prevents us from doing things that are harmful to the survival of our kind in the long term. It serves to promote social behavior.
**This shortcut means aliens will likely have something like emotions**
Emotions are good at providing close-enough-to-correct behavior very quickly, most of the time. It requires a lot more and more complex brainpower to do things rationally, and the currently-known models are slower to respond than emotional responses.
Therefore, even if alien emotions aren't implemented in the same neurological structure as our own, convergent evolution will likely create things that are enough like emotions that they might as well be called emotions.
**Yes, aliens might have alien emotions**
Many of these emotions will be common to most forms of life. There will be many biospheres like ours, where existence hangs by a thread and every moment might be your last. But there could still be many alternate drives which get regulated by other, alien emotions.
**Hyper-intelligent creatures may dim or eliminate emotion**
We can only really hold one thought at a time. We can only remember a few things at a time. We cannot simultaneously rationally evaluate the consequences of all the various actions we might take to solve a problem; we use our emotions to guide us through them.
This means we often don't arrive at the optimal solution for whatever problem we're having. A race with much more advanced brains might be able to rationally evaluate a lot more situations and come to dispassionate analytical solutions quickly enough to compete with the speed of an emotional response. In which case, the rational mind will produce better results, so being ruled by emotion would put them at a competitive disadvantage. If such a race had any emotions to start with, their influence will grow more and more muted over time.
If you haven't, you might want to read *Blindsight* by Peter Watts. It explores a similar idea.
**Very different demands on a creature may produce different emotions**
A race of intelligent trees might not have much need for fear. Disease and fire would be about the only things that could harm one.
Significantly different social structures might also result in a similar effect. Ants, for example, are all clones, and they will fight to the death for their colony. So if a social hive-like species became intelligent, their emotional state might be very different. They might not know fear at all, but might emotionally react to things that would threaten the colony: an irrational drive to seek out new sources of food constantly (as opposed to *hunger* which is about what I need right now). An alienation drive, essentially xenophobia as a fundamental emotion, making them wary of anything that is not of their Hive. The urge to defend anything Hive-related to the death, from any perceived threat, under any circumstances.
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I can imagine that certain base emotions pain/pleasure/aggression/lust/digust may be likely to have common analogues with other alien forms of life that deal with comparable, possibly universal, challenges of survival. They may have other, visceral emotions as well - dogs, for example, supposedly have a whole range of emotional states pertaining to their sense of pack and hierarchy, for which there is no clear human analogue. But also, there is much more to emotion than the base visceral responses. Humans have a great many complex emotions - the feeling of joy from listening to beautiful music, love for close friend/partner, surprise at the unexpected, laughter at a joke etc. It may be that all of these can be reduced to subtle formulations of more visceral emotions but I really think that the whole is much more as the sum of it's parts in the way that you cannot really understand consciousness by considering how neurons trigger each other. So in conclusion, if these aliens are social, I don't think there's any real restriction on what complex emotional states they might experience. The challenge is really how you describe them - it seems likely that they might be so alien to us that we really couldn't meaningful empaphise with them or understand what material conditions induce them. Imagine explaining what laughter feels like and why you make that funny noise in response to certain puns, to an alien with no capacity to experience humour! Maybe these aliens, have strange social rituals that combine noises with gestures that are informed by the surroundings that they are in - this forms a whole complex language in and of itself that is pleasurable pair bonding. Like hugging and chatting.
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Humans discuss a lot of things regardless of how much basis it has in fact. Look for example at flat earthers, chemtrails or more mundane things like a farmer who wants to get the most out of his pigs and needs to sway public opinion by formulating animals have no feelings so he can lock them up in the most terrible circumstances to fatten them.
Animals feel emotions. They are a most basic thing that helps keep us alive. YEIm covered those already. Even bacteria essentially portray things like fear when they attempt to avoid a White bloodcell chasing them. Your alien species would perhaps use different chemicals and nervous systems, but the interpretation of those chemicals and nervous output remains the same: if you eat something good it doesnt matter if your body is build to send chemical A or B or Z, as long as your brain/body has a positive attitude because of it, its an emotion. And is happiness different for an alien than for us? No, as its goal is the same, only the expression (facial, bodily, languange etc) can be different.
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How can a humanoid creature achieve the lowest possible terminal velocity with its own body?
What kind of anatomy would decrease its terminal velocity?
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Spread out flat a.k.a. (apropriately enough) spreadeagle.
To decrease terminal velocity, you want to maximise drag, while minimising mass. So, lightweight/honeycombed bones, and flaps of skin like a [flying squirrel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_squirrel)
*SCIENCE!*
The formula for Terminal Velocity is $V=\sqrt{2mg/(ρAC)}$ - that is to say, the square-root of twice the Force due to gravity divided by the drag on the object.
Since $g$ is approximately constant (acceleration due to gravity varies with square of distance from centre of Earth, approximately 9.81m/s), as is $ρ$ (density of air, varies with altitude) and $C$ (drag coefficient) *is* a constant for a given shape, then to change Velocity you need to either increase $A$ (surface area - if this changes the shape, it can also increase/decrease $C$) or decrease $m$ (mass of object)
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In addition to the other answers: **Make your humanoids small!** The advantages of small size for falling are a universal principle of elementary physics, clearly and memorably explained by J.B.S. Haldane in [*On being the right size*](http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html):
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This can work either on its own (make them mouse-sized), or in combination with other features (make them [cat-size, but with some kind of wings](https://i.imgur.com/2tLir3N.jpg), maybe lower their planet’s gravity a little, thicken the atmosphere…).
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Terminal velocity results from the balance of 3 forces: (assuming motion is only happening in the vertical direction)
* gravity $F\_g$ (pulling down)
* drag $F\_d$ (pulling up)
* buoyancy $F\_b$ (pulling up)
At terminal velocity $F\_g = F\_d + F\_b$
If you want the terminal velocity to be as small as possible you have to increase the drag (flying squirrel-like) and also reduce density of the body with respect to the medium in which it is falling.
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Depending on how you define humanoid, you can just cover them in feathers. (Feathers appear to have originally evolved as a way to keep warm, flight was a much later addition.)
Even if you can't go that far, a thick pelt of fluffy hair similar to what some modern Africans have on their heads would provide quite a bit of drag.
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As other people have mentioned - size is an important factor. The less mass you have to worry about, the lower energy you hit the ground with.
Taking inspiration from nature - the wingsuit ala flying squirrel!
A while ago someone actually managed to make a wingsuit landing without a parachute - albeit into a giant pile of cardboard boxes that acted as padding.
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There is a well-known rule of getting out of any finite labyrinth in a finite timespan; just find an outer wall, touch it with your appropriate hand and when it turns, turn with it. This way, the worst case scenario is that you will roam across the entire labyrinth - or in case of non-recursive labyrinths all the labyrinth except for the *islands* - but doing so you will walk all points of the labyrinth including the exit, so you can get out. In recursive labyrinths, it will also work with any wall, not just outer walls (since you can't be at an *island* - a set of walls having no continuity to the wall with the exit on it).
The **labyrinth rule** will also work in 3D (multi-level) labyrinths, because multiple levels will only mean added ground to cover, not real added complexity. Now my question is, how about `n-dimensional` labyrinths? Of course `n-dimensional` labyrinths are theoretical, but would the rule still apply on them? Could you get out of the hyper-labyrinth simply by keeping your left hand on the left wall (assuming you won't get eaten by the hyper-Minotaur)?
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Quoting almost entirely from [this page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_solving_algorithm)
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> The wall follower, the best-known rule for traversing mazes, is also known as either the left-hand rule or the right-hand rule. [...]
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I am going to need to challenge your assumption here, are you sure that the rule works in 3d labyrinths?
**The problem of implementation**
When you come to a stairs do you go up or down? With a 2 dimensional maze you only have a limited number of choices at an intersection and always turning the same way is a state-free way of guaranteeing you follow all of them. With more dimensions you need some way of knowing that you have been at this intersection before in order to know which possible exit to take and which ones you have already used. For example imagine a square room with a door on each wall and a ladder in the center going both up and down. When you reach the room do you turn left or climb the ladder? Up or down? If you've climbed up and found it is a dead end and then return to this room which exit have you already tried and which one is new? If you have a reliable compass then an algorithm like "U,N,E,S,W,D in that order might work but it is still a lot more complex than just "turn left".
**The problem of islands**
The biggest problem though is that in a 3d labyrinth it's trivial to design one where constantly turning left will never find the exit - for example just have the exit extend from a set of stairs in an island at the center.
Here is a trivially simple example to illustrate:
```
Level 1 Level 2
############## ##########
# # # Exit
# ##### # # # ### ##
# #> # # # ># #
# ######## # # ### # > is Stairs from level 1 to level 2
# # # #
##### ####### #########
# #
Entry
```
Go in at the entry, you will never find the exit by following the left wall, only end up back at the entrance. Of course in this case it would be easy to find the real entrance and spot the passage you missed. In a more complex maze though that becomes a lot harder. The important point is that the wall following tactic is no longer enough.
**The solution**
The underlying strategy behind the labyrinth rule does extend out to n-dimensions, it's just the implementation that falls over. The only way to be sure of finding the exit is to exhaustively search every possible part of the labyrinth. The labyrinth rule does that in a simple way in 2 dimensions but as already discussed does not extend to 3 dimensions (or to islands in 2 dimensions).
In a computer you would model this as a recursive algorithm. In real life that becomes harder but you can implement the same algorithm.
The problem is that keeping track of what you have already searched becomes very tricky unless you leave markers behind (and no-one tampers with them) or build a map as you go (and don't notice a sloping passageway or subtle turning).
*Recursive Algorithm:* Take some chalk, mark every exit you go down. If you come to a room with any marks in it turn around and go back (this bit is important, don't just try another exit in this room as that way you miss things) until you find an unmarked exit. Mark that and follow it.
That is a recursive algorithm that is guaranteed to find the exit in any possible maze in any number of dimensions. So long as no-one messes with your chalk.
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Am I the only one that's tempted to point out the differences between a labyrinth and a maze? In a labyrinth, the whole point is simple to make you walk the entire length of the area, while mazes are meant for getting lost in.
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> And please note. That if you are going to tell me, "Yeah, but it's not that, it's this." Please show sources that conflict with what I've said. Really. The flurry of comments that are all like, "I know better, you're doing it wrong." And no one seems to understand that this is why I'm so sporadically on this site anymore. Relax. Breathe. And cite your source, because:
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> <https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/144052/difference-between-labyrinth-and-maze>
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> <http://www.differencebetween.info/difference-between-maze-and-labyrinth>
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> <http://www.lessons4living.com/labyrinth_map.htm>
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> <https://www.diffen.com/difference/Labyrinth_vs_Maze>
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> I do hope we won't be having the maze=labyrinth discussion. Because, really. The difference between them is exactly why you have maze puzzles, and not labyrinth puzzles.
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Having said that, I would be exceedingly careful with those rules in mazes. Again, in a labyrinth, you only have forwards and back on a twisting and turning path. You have no choices.
Let's be clear here. This is a labyrinth:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tL6tE.jpg)
(notice one entrance, one possible path, and one goal.)
And this is a maze:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HusGw.png)
(notice multiple paths, even if this is a simplified version)
Now that we're on the same page with this (and please don't try to dictionary.com me, because I'm talking about historical and mathematical fact). Is there a conceivable way that touching an outer wall will lead you to getting lost?
Let's start with [known algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_solving_algorithm#Wall_follower). In the link, it describes ways your wall-follower rule don't always work.
>
> If the maze is not simply-connected (i.e. if the start or endpoints are in the center of the structure surrounded by passage loops, or the pathways cross over and under each other and such parts of the solution path are surrounded by passage loops), this method will not reach the goal.
>
>
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This means there are ways to foil your premise, and known ways. And that's in a 2-D maze. How much more so will this be the case if you add levels to a single maze? All I would have to do is design the maze so that all the outer walls are disconnected from the goal, and do that three or four times, and you'll be stuck in there for eternity.
Additionally. If you want to follow the 'left-hand rule'. Use it to get out of this maze.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xzJX4.png)
(above is a simple maze)
And more importantly, perhaps for me, what's the purpose of this maze. I mean, if it's just for the sake of getting people lost, then I can imagine there'd be a host of other obstacles to overcome. Think in the terms of a dungeon-crawl for ideas how to make it considerably more complex.
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Trivially, you can't. Just imagine a two-dimensional labyrinth, except that the exit goes into the third dimension from one of the "islands" that you can't get to by keeping your hand on a wall.
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We all proved the algorithm (left hand on outer wall) correct over the spanning tree in Data Structures and Algorithms computer science class. The algorithm doesn't handle trapdoors but handles staircases just fine and non-embeddable geometries don't have a problem either.
So the actual limiting case is as follows: It does work in arbitrary N dimensions provided that doors exist in only 2 of the dimensions and the floor's orientation is well-defined.
The definition of "work" is not expected though. It's guaranteed to exit the maze, but not necessarily solve it. If you use this in caves and avoid all trapdoors you can avoid getting lost forever. If you go to long you just turn around and come back out the way you went in.
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It's very rare that fire is associated with anything good, despite being one of humanity's first inventions.
But, to a normal person, fire isn't used much these days. Heat is still utilized, but fire itself is passe. Water manipulation can be used everyday, more so if you can separate the water from pollutants. Earth manipulation would be more like a rescue need, but still necessary, as you could use it to fix roads or, I suppose, stop earthquakes (maybe?). Air manipulation would be good in terms of energy for air turbines, and even to move pollution, or to keep planes flying (again maybe?). But what could fire be used for, aside from cooking?
Imagine: In a slum in a large city, missionaries come to help out the sick and tired. They give them water and help repair the roads. How might you use fire to help people out on a day-to-day basis?
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Some things off the top of my head:
1. Fire can be used to cauterize wounds. Coming during a disaster, it can potentially be used to, for example, stop internal bleeding that no other technique can fix.
2. Also during a disaster, it can be used to burn or melt through obstacles to get to people.
3. If it isn't only fire manipulation, but also a fire sense, it could potentially be used to locate fires inside a disaster area, and maybe even the body heat of survivors buried under rubble.
4. It can be used to clear areas of vegetation for building and farming. Not necessarily very environmentally-friendly, but commonly-used in the real world.
5. I saw one scene in a movie ("The Gods Must be Crazy 2"), where a brush fire was bearing down on a group. One person grabbed a burning stick, carried it a few dozen yards away, then started a new fire. Once that fire had moved on, they moved into the area cleared by the new fire and were safe. Something like this could potentially be done to save people from some life-threatening fire, even a city fire if they can burn hot enough.
6. Smoke signals have been used for long-distance communication in clear weather.
7. The heat from fire can lift things into the air, and can create air currents that can blow away fog, smoke, pollution, or poison gas.
8. Fire can be used to boil and thus sanitize water in areas where clean water is not readily available, either due to local conditions or a disaster.
9. Fire can be used to sterilize surgical instruments.
10. It can be used for light in areas where electricity is unavailable, either because a lack of power lines or because of a disaster.
11. Fire is needed for creating pottery, bricks, and other ceramics.
12. Fire is needed for metalworking.
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So basically you want mages with elemental powers being useful in modern society, and your issue stems from fact that fire is mostly used for destruction, and has in many applications been replaced by more controlled alternatives.
This instantly gives us first idea how to use such powers for benefit of the mankind.
## Fire-fighters
Fire is, and has always been a powerful destructive force. When controlled, it can be harnessed to provide heat and power, when uncontrolled, it can devastate forests and cities alike.
Ability to control fire would be tremendous asset for firefighters. Depending on how fine the control is, risk of fire spreading between buildings could be eliminated (this a very real problem, when fire is bad enough, job of firefighters is not to save burning building, but to prevent fire from devastating nearby buildings) or maybe even fire itself could be extinguished.
Forest fires would still pose massive logistical problem due to sheer size, but would be much easier to tackle. Fine enough control, and your mages could help with preventative [controlled forest fires](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn). Including making sure those controlled fires don't spiral out of control.
But this doesn't limit us just to preventing or extinguishing fire.
## Power generation
At the most basic level, in [thermal power plants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_power_station) electricity comes from turbines powered by steam. It doesn't matter what fuels the "furnace" - coal, gas or uranium, principle is the same - "furnace" heats water and makes steam, steam drives turbines. Same with ships. Yes, in a way, nuclear submarine and nuclear aircraft carrier are steam ships.
If your mages can create fire which doesn't need fuel and is easily controlled and maintained, they could easily break energy economy, solving pretty much all needs if their abilities are powerful or plentiful enough.
Basically, all the efficiency and cleanliness of nuclear power, without any of the risks. What's not to love?
Disclaimer: In case anyone questions: yes, nuclear power is clean, safe and reliable power source, beating every other source on at least 2 of those criteria. Single broken hydroplant dam kills more people than all nuclear incidents combined. Fossil fuels fuel greenhouse effect which may literally kill us all. Wind turbines don't work without wind - unreliable. Solar panels barely work in cloudy weather or in winter - unreliable. Geothermal comes close, but availability varies based on local geology so predictable but not widely reliable.
**Neither of those is a very hands-on approach, like missionaries handing out clean water or blankets, but I assure you, that both would be very beneficial for modern (and in times before modern even more so) people, poor or rich alike.**
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Fire can be used to cleanse, no viruses or bacteria can withstand it. The great fire of London, cleansed the city of plague allegedly, though there are some differing views on that. At the very least, fire destroyed the medieval slums of London, allowing a huge building program with new regulations, see: <http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-36774166> . In your scenario, maybe being cruel to be kind?
Fire can also be used to heat and forge metal, meld iron with carbon into steel, create any number of things from horseshoes to bridges. Control of fire is one of our superpowers, no animal can control it.
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Fire is still used every day in our fossil fuel burning engines...at least until electric completely replaces it. It's used in coal burning power plants as well. In a slum, perhaps people cannot afford to pay their power bills, and so use wood-burning stoves?
Someone I know used to have one in his flat, and would get wood from a free box outside a cabinet maker's warehouse. I hope this is helpful. :)
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# Solve climate change and poverty
I don't see any way that the magical power to generate fire obeys the laws of Thermodynamics. In that case, its not a bad assumption that the power of fire generation makes heat without consuming expensive fuel or generating carbon dioxide.
The applications of this are obvious and extremely wide-ranging. If fire mages can develop their powers to either
* Generate permanent magical fires for power generation
* Train enough people in fire magic to generate these fires around the clock
then some of, or even all of, world power demands could be met. If we can generate all the electricity we need through fire magic, what would that do?
Well, it would dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions to the point we don't have to worry about it any more; provide reliable electric power to improve the lives of the poorest people on Earth; prevent deforestation in third world countries by replacing firewood; which will in turn prevent habitat destruction and slow or stop the extinction of other animals; etc.
Sounds like Fire is the best power of all.
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Most modern technology is based off fire. In particular, heat, and its products.
We use fire to run boilers. Boilers are how we generate electricity from nuclear and combustion power sources. Boilers are even used by some solar power systems. Fire wizards could work in power plants, providing the energy needed without having to mine, process and transport the materials.
The sun is fire; hot plasma glowing in the distance. We use the sun to grow crops and maintain the biosphere. Artificial lights can be used to grow crops faster or in climates with the wrong amounts of sun. A fire wizard can provide light for crops at night. Incandescent bulbs are hot filaments in a vacuum.
Our cars and airplanes run on fire. They are internal combustion engines. A fire wizard can power a car or other transport without fuel. Fire wizard pilots would be able to fly an aircraft without the heavy load of jet fuel.
We use heat to generate many of the products of daily life; from metals to plastics. Chemical reactions run on entropic gradients, and fire wizards basically mess with entropy. Fire chemists who do extremely careful manipulation of how things "combust" could create completely different kinds of chemicals or massively increase yields.
If fire wizardry includes being able to draw heat out of things, such fine-grained cooling would permit faster computers or easier to build ones.
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So this gives us a whole pile of jobs. If wizards are rare, centralized fire to run power plants. Spreading out to other jobs (as the number of wizards available goes up), we get wizards n chemical plant and foundaries and high value transportation, like aircraft or trains. If there are even more, fire wizards setting up artifical suns to provide crops with more hours of light and warmth. Eventually we get bus drivers and computer operators or even taxi drivers being fire wizards as the percent of the population reaches double digits.
You could imagine a modern like world where there is no traditional internal combustion engine; there are cable cars (run by boilers powered by fire wizards), light rail and busses (powered by fire wizards), and taxies; private cars are things that fire wizards own, or people who can hire a private fire wizard to drive.
Computers are as advanced as today if you are a fire wizard who can power it and draw waste heat out; otherwise, you get 80+ year old computing technology.
Medicine and ocean transport is run by water wizards, as well as chemical processing (with fire wizards). Air wizards handle non-water cargo transportation on blimps and giant kites (slower than fire wizard jets; most fire wizard jets do have air wizards for takeoff/landing, but faster than water wizard cargo ships). Air taxis in dense cities are popular, as they avoid traffic. Earth wizards handle construction, mining and civic infrastructure, plus work with the fire wizards in the smelting/processing industries.
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I did some quick research on DNA and I know it can be damaged by different sorts of mutagens. I also know that this kind of damage can lead to cancer. Though I'm not entirely sure of where exactly it can happen, it seems to me that it could happen to any kind of cell.
It also contains instructions for the development and overall functions the the said cell. Knowing that, if, supposedly, **someone got this kind of damage on ALL of his cells, at the same time**, assuming it could range from a slight damage to a great mess-up randomly, could he survive for some time while his body goes from **healthy** to **wtf**?
I'm thinking about a disaster kind of thing, likely involving electromagnetic radiation. But that's not really the focus of the question.
I know different kind of cells have a different turnover times, but I don't know how exactly would this affect their body, given a time **X**. I also don't know how it would affect the current cells of this human being.
Just to be more clear, the goal of this is to figure out **how fast would someone die if something messed up his entire genetic code simultaneously**. Would he be able to survive at least a month? A year, depending on what changed on his genes?
What would be the effects? I think this would be the equivalent of having cancer on all one's cells, am I correct?
Oh, I'm also assuming he could get the best kind of treatment there is on earth. That ***could*** include experimental types of treatments that, despite not being globally or comercially used nowadays, could potentially help him get through his diseases. Take nowadays as **2015**, just for reference.
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Well that is actually what happens when you get a big dose of radiation. Wikipedia has a pretty nice page for that <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome>.
The main point is that damaging a cell's DNA usually does not lead to cancer. It usually leads to the death of the cell. Therefore if you damage all the DNA, too many cells will die and you will die pretty quickly.
In order to have someone develop cancer all over their body, what you need is actually very small doses of radiation, but over a long period of time. This way the dead cells could be replaced by healthy ones, keeping you alive long enough so that the cancerous ones have time to multiply.
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According to [this phys.org article](http://phys.org/news/2013-09-protein-lifetime-stability-cell.html) most proteins have a half-life on the order of days. Without DNA, you lose the ability to replicate proteins, and your cellular structure would literally fall apart.
You would notice total DNA loss far before a day had passed, as the shortest-lived proteins degraded, causing failure of critical chemical pathways in your body. My guess is that you would go through the symptoms of acute radiation poisoning and die in just minutes to hours.
This is sort of like asking how far your car can go if all its bolts disappear. You will be held together for a little while by friction, but you will die, and fast.
## Update
One of the shortest-lived proteins in the body is [ornithine decarboxylase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithine_decarboxylase), which forms an important step in removing ammonia from the body. It has a half life of only [20 minutes](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2106270). In less than an hour, your character would suffer from acute [ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithine_transcarbamylase_deficiency). Ammonia would quickly build up to a level toxic to the brain and kill him (or her). Symptoms include headaches, nausea and vomiting, ataxia and other cognitive impairments, loss of motor function, and seizures.
## If you experience any of these symptoms...
... don't bother calling your doctor. No known or theorized medical technique can replace a person's entire genome, especially with no reference point as to where DNA needs to be added to the cells. The only solution I can think of is to have some kind of nanomachine swarm deliver fresh DNA to your cells (only the ones you want to keep). Even if you could do this today, if it took more than a half-hour or so it would be too late anyway; but by the point nanotechnology advances that far, reversing the extensive damage to your body should also be possible.
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**Not long.**
This is part of what happens in [acute radiation syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome). Basically your character would feel really terrible immediately. Over the next couple hours they would become sicker and sicker.
Within one day to two weeks, they would be dead.
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That would pretty much kill him instantly. Radiation poisoning is basically the same kind of damage and severe radiation poisoning can kill you quickly. How long someone lasts and their chance of recovery has to do with the total amount of damage done.
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From a biological perspective you could take a look at [Amatoxin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatoxin) this particular toxin is found in some poisonous mushrooms (including my favorite mushroom based on name: Destroying Angel)
Amatoxin blocks your bodies ability to repair/rebuild cells. The physiological reasons for this are complicated and you can read more else where; however the damage to cells by amatoxin closely mimics the damage dealt by radiation. Cells can't properly repair damage or replicate after exposure and thus as cells start to die out bodily function begins to degrade.
Unlike severe radiation damage amatoxin does have treatments listed that basically try to stabilize the body while it slowly repairs the damage.
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In my world, which is partially based on a WW2-style environment, there are two large countries, namely A and B, that are fighting each other.
A is a Nazi Germany-type country with fine revised tactics, like the blitzkrieg, i.e. entering territory so fast, that the enemy doesn't even have time to react. A also has superior technology, like long-range supersonic bombers and heavy-duty tanks that can ravage even through muddy terrain and all sorts of weather.
B, on the other hand, is a Soviet-style (remove the communism part) country, with a ton of personnel but, due to purges of military generals etc., the army is so badly led, that even with tons of soldiers they are agonizingly slow, such that even with good ammunitions and stuff, a smaller but better led army would be able to defeat them.
A and B are fighting each other in a bitter war to acquire control of uranium fields in the black-encircled region given in the map below (credits to Inkarnate):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fB2Qi.png)
This map is the entire map of the world, and, since my world is about as big as Earth, you can use a 1:100,000,000 scale.
However, we run into a problem.
A is blockaded and sanctioned from obtaining oil to fuel its war with B. Meaning that alongside B, there are other countries that are indirectly in the war, by blockading A from getting oil, such as C and D, on the western portion of the map. B, C and D form an alliance group that is analogous to what would be the Allied forces in WW2.
E, the island at the west of the map, was the area that A procured oil from. But as C and D have blockaded it, A has resorted to getting oil from within its territory only, which only meets about 15% of its fuel demand.
I see a congruity between the story in my setting, and World War 2. Just like the story in my setting, Nazi Germany could have theoretically defeated the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa due to better technology, aerial superiority, etc. However, Nazi Germany lost the war due to oil. Basically, most of the oil that Nazi Germany obtained was from Soviet Union (ignore that for now) and [Mexico and the Caribbean](https://defense.info/re-thinking-strategy/2018/10/oil-and-war/) (the analog for E in my setting). However, due to its close proximity to the USA (analog for C), Mexico had to stop its oil exports to Germany, which was disastrous for Operation Barbarossa, as the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe were heavily reliant on petroleum to fuel their tanks, cars and fighter jets. This is an extremely massive reason why Germany lost the war ~~(and Austrian Painter and his bois got rekt)~~.
My world's setting also faces this problem. Due to the blockading of E by C, D and B to prevent A from getting oil, A's tanks and supersonic long-range bombers are practically useless due to lack of oil to fuel them, as I mentioned before. A's domestic oil production is barely 15% of their demands. There is no way to get oil from E without declaring war on all three countries at once. And although A has a massive army, that is nothing compared to the full might of all three countries C, D and B. Which means that A now has to look for an alternative source of fuel, something that it can manufacture easily using domestic resources.
I have been told that Nazi Germany was contemplating synthesizing oil from coal, but in my setting, A cannot do that, as the process is extremely inefficient and wasteful of energy. Furthermore, A doesn't have a plethora of coal deposits, which means that the coal-synthesized oil scenario is impossible. (However, if these assumptions are incorrect, feel free to point it out and I will gladly edit my question.)
# **What is the easiest fuel a blockaded, sanctioned nation can procure/synthesize during a war?**
## Criteria
* The fuel cannot be something whimsical or ridiculous. For example, something like "Antimatter Steam Engine" or "Muon Fusion Tanks" are totally out of the question.
* The fuel must be something that can be manufactured with 1980s technology.
* The fuel is something that is very easy and not very time-consuming to manufacture.
* No nuclear fusion/fission-based improbable tech. Uranium is terribly inefficient for vehicles, as most nuclear engines are basically steam engines, which means that a ton of water is required for powering, making a fission powered vehicle impossible—and don't get me started on fusion-powered vehicles.
* The fuel can either be synthetic or natural.
## Some additional info:
* My world's technology is comparable to that of the 1980s.
* A has about 2.5 million troops, 4000 aircraft (mostly long-range supersonic bombers), 20,000 tanks and 15,000 submarines.
* B, on the other hand has 7 million troops, 5000 aircraft, 40,000 tanks, but zero navy. Despite the massiveness of B's army, it is so badly led, that it can in theory easily be defeated by A.
* C, D and E aren't directly involved in the war, except for the blockades and stuff, so the question of how much troops they have is irrelevant.
* If people want an analogy of what the blockade looks like, try to imagine something like the British blockade of Germany during WW1.
* Some clarification on the "uranium fields":
Uranium and nuclear fission are prevalent. In fact, the reason A is invading B is to wrest control of the uranium fields on the map. A does have nuclear fission tech; however, there is an acute shortage of uranium ore in A's territory. That is why A is invading B to get uranium. Try to think Nazi Germany invading Kazakhstan for uranium, if you want a real world analogy (which neither was planned nor succeeded, but makes for a clear analogy).
The "fuel", however, is not power generation or anything like that. The "fuel" that A needs is basically fuel to power vehicles, locomotives, tanks and planes. I am aware of the fact that uranium or anything remotely nuclear is a terrible choice for fuel as it is incredibly inefficient, and moreover, having a bunch of dirty bombs carrying radioactive fuel isn't particularly safe.
EDIT: I have often heard that the Fischer-Tropsch process was used by the Third Reich to synthesize fuel for its war machine during WW2. Although this scenario might seem plausible, it has been stressed in this question that Nation A does not possess a plethora of coal. And even with coal, the FT process is terribly inefficient, being at best, only meeting barely 10% of the war demand.
[Answer]
[Biofuel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel).
With time to establish sufficient distributed infrastructure for the farming and manufacture of biofuels before the outbreak of war, it would be possible to break dependence upon fuels derived from mineral oil deposits.
While ethanol contains less energy per volume than an equivalent mineral fuel, methanol is also a potential biofuel with a higher energy density than ethanol but still lower than petrol/gasoline, as is butanol with a higher energy density than petrol/gasoline, which can supposedly be used as a direct replacement for petrol/gasoline in internal combustion engines.
Likewise, biodiesel fuels can largely or completely replace mineral diesel fuels without significant modification to diesel engines made to consume mineral fuel.
If the war and oil blockade was anticipated a number of years in advance of the war, it might be possible that *A* was able to establish sufficient biofuel production capacity and stockpile biofuel reserves sufficient to fight and win a war.
[Answer]
During WW2 the Germans created vast quantities of synthetic fuel using the
Fischer Tropsch process: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process>
This helped them to avoid the blockade on oil as lignite coal can easily be used to generate the hydrogen and carbon monoxide required for the Fischer Tropsch process. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of synthetic fuel were made during the war by these methods.
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To me the obvious answer is electricity.
All you need to do turn a turbine, and charge batteries if you want to store it.
There are already bicycle powered turbines being used in the 3rd world.
Also, photo-electric solar is quite popular there, many remote villages have radio and satellite or even cell-phones powered by small 1-square foot solar panels, literally mounted on the roofs of grass huts and tents.
But there is also thermal-solar; which can be scaled to backyard sized up to acres. The idea here is to focus sunlight to create a heat source, very efficiently done with flat panel Fresnel lens, and apply the focused sunlight to a steam boiler (from tanker sized to palm held sized), that powers a steam engine to turn a turbine and generate electricity.
In 1980 we already had "closed cycle" steam engines; meaning the water never leaves the system as steam. Making the steam do work (turning the turbine) converts heat to work, cools the steam, it condenses and is returned to the boiler. This is actually more efficient, no residual heat energy is expended as spent steam in the air, it gets recycled as already hot water re-entering the boiler.
I am not sure but I think we already have lubricant-free steam engines in the 1980's, the pistons and cylinders are ultra-hard and ultra-polished and so finely fitted they need no oil or lubricant.
All of this stuff is 1980, or with the lubricant free steam engines, at least plausibly so. Fresnel lenses have been around forever. Although photoelectric panels are harder to make and require special materials; the thermal-solar and turbines are at least a century old and require no rare ingredients at all.
Iron, steel, copper, aluminum, and glass are extremely cheap and among the most plentiful ingredients on Earth. And for a bonus, this is non-polluting, no smoke or emissions.
You'd have to do some research on battery technology to store the electricity, but I doubt this is a show stopper in terms of fuel.
Many thermal solar farms in the world today use the heat during the day to melt down a form of salts, which is stored in a large underground tank, well insulated. The salts can remain molten for a week, and we loop pipes through it that carry the water we want to turn into steam, to extract that heat.
During the day, the thermal solar farm provides electricity to homes, and any excess is used to increase the heat of the salts in the tank. Any shortage due to overcasts, rain, night, etc, is made up for by the tanks.
The farms are designed large enough so that on sunny days, enough more than the expected 24 hour usage is generated while the sun is up, to more than cover the worst expected continuous shortages of sunlight.
P.S. In response to comments about slow charging or the limited capacity of batteries; I will also point out that electricity can be used to separate water (H2O) and compress it into tanks of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen; under pressure. This is literally rocket fuel. The energy loss in this conversion is significant (as opposed to just using the electricity directly), but the energy stored is actually over 3 times greater per kilogram stored, compared to gasoline. And don't forget, the electricity is free solar.
Gasoline has an energy density of about 45 megajoules per kilogram, while H + O, optimally combined, has an energy density of about 143 megajoules per kilogram. This would increase the range of tanks and aircraft for the same weight, and because the ignition thrust can be more powerful, it could increase the speed as well.
[Answer]
You specified 1980s which permits nuclear power to make synthetic fuel. While uranium is more common in some areas than others it's widely distributed, thus they can get it.
Fischer Tropsch is probably more efficient but even if they don't have coal they can make fuel.
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If lacking in access to uranium, and we assume 1980s level of technology, then thorium as a fuel is possible. It's been tried with relative success.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#Germany,_1980s>
Once a nation has access to nuclear power then synthesizing a number of fuels becomes possible. What may be obvious is synthesizing hydrocarbons using the Fischer Tropsch process. The preferred source of carbon in this case would be coal but anything relatively carbon rich should suffice. Wood and anything food related would likely be ruled out in war, they'd be far too valuable for making fuel. What might be suitable would be things like leaves fallen from trees, grass clippings, or any of a variety of plant matter that is largely considered a nuisance. Going overboard on this could be a problem long term, that plant matter is useful for building up soil suitable for growing food. The waste product from the fuel synthesis should be used as fertilizer, and perhaps some measures taken to control soil erosion that this plant matter would normally do.
Capture of CO2 from the air is possible for synthesizing hydrocarbons. This is an energy intensive process but if in a tight spot that is a compromise that might need to be made. Municipal sewage could be a place to source carbon for fuel synthesis, it would be a messy process but again this is war time.
A potential fuel to consider that doesn't require carbon is ammonia.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia#Fuel>
Fermenting plant matter into ethanol is an option. Again, I suspect food would be a valued resource so any traditional sources of ethanol (corn, grapes, etc.) is likely ruled out. Fermentation of cellulose rich matter like cornstalks, straw, grass clippings, sawdust, leaves, etc. is possible but not as easy as sugar rich matter that is typically used. This gets into my earlier concern of diverting plant matter from fertilizing and erosion control on crop lands. Ethanol as a fuel is not new, and has been used in wartime where petroleum is scarce many times through history. This is often a desperate move since it would impact food supplies in the short term (taking corn, grapes, or such) or long term (taking plant matter for fertilizer and erosion control). This could augment other fuel sources, and if done with care, the problems this creates could be minimal.
Don't rule out nuclear power for use in ships. If there is a navy involved then that is a huge consumer of fuel, and by building nuclear powered vessels that consumption goes away. Thorium might not be ideal but, again, this is war. The reactors would be larger and less efficient than those using highly enriched uranium as in naval reactors of the 1980s but not so much so that this is an impossibility. One possible type of reactor that might work is a fairly conventional heavy water reactor using solid fuel. There were molten salt reactor experiments in the 1960s and in wartime that technology might have been shoehorned into a ship for propulsion.
Thorium nuclear reactors need a "seed" fuel like enriched uranium-235 or plutonium to get the chain reaction going. The situation described tells me uranium and plutonium is rare, not nonexistent. Uranium exists as a salt in seawater so some can be produced by extraction from the sea, an energy intensive process but this is wartime. A nation seeking uranium mines for fuel will have nuclear reactors already and so should be able to breed plutonium from U-238 or breed U-233 from thorium. Thorium is a fairly common element in various sands and rock formations which means there should be some means to mine it. Mining for coal, iron, or most anything will have some thorium in the tails, and these tails could be processed for the thorium.
[Answer]
Maybe a boring answer, but the obvious answer is: **Increase domestic oil production**
>
> A's domestic oil production is barely 15% of their demands.
>
>
>
They clearly have some known oil reserves, and more are likely to exist. They already have machinery for significant amount of oil production. They only need to replicate this equipment to use the known oil reserves faster, while also looking for new reserves.
Replicating existing, functional technology is bound to be easier and faster than transitioning to a new one.
[Answer]
Wood gas
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas>
>
> Wood gas vehicles were used during World War II as a consequence of the rationing of fossil fuels. In Germany alone, around 500,000 "producer gas" vehicles were in use at the end of the war. Trucks, buses, tractors, motorcycles, ships, and trains were equipped with a wood gasification unit. In 1942, when wood gas had not yet reached the height of its popularity, there were about 73,000 wood gas vehicles in Sweden,[3] 65,000 in France, 10,000 in Denmark, and almost 8,000 in Switzerland. In 1944, Finland had 43,000 "woodmobiles", of which 30,000 were buses and trucks, 7,000 private vehicles, 4,000 tractors and 600 boats.[4]
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> Wood gasifiers are still manufactured in China and Russia for automobiles and as power generators for industrial applications. Trucks retrofitted with wood gasifiers are used in North Korea[5] in rural areas, particularly on the roads of the east coast.
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[Answer]
The easiest fuel to procure is **the one you already own.** So why not take a leaf out of the USA's book and have an equivalent of a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but big enough to hold a year or two's worth of fuel, and then - and this is a crucial part - only go to war *once you have filled it*? ;)
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[Question]
[
Let's say a bunch of crazy scientists develop the ultimate marine predator. How feasible would it to give this whale sized creature a sonic attack that can be a hazard to humans that use small submarines?
[Answer]
And again, the answer is:
# Nature beat you to it (somewhat)
**Behold**: [The Mantis Shrimp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp)
>
> [smasher and spearer strikes] strike by rapidly unfolding and swinging their raptorial claws at the prey, and can inflict serious damage on victims significantly greater in size than themselves. [...]
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> Even if the initial strike misses the prey, ***the resulting shock wave can be enough to stun or kill.***
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> [***emphasis*** mine]
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>
While a shock wave is not the same as sonic attack, but they are quite similar. A soundwave is basically a moving medium, while a shock wave is nothing entirely different. In this case:
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> Because they strike so rapidly, they generate vapor-filled bubbles in the water between the appendage and the striking surface—known as cavitation bubbles. The collapse of these cavitation bubbles produces measurable forces on their prey in addition to the instantaneous forces of **1,500 newtons** that are caused by the impact of the appendage against the striking surface
> [**emphasis** mine]
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The killing weapon is not the sound, but you can't have a shock wave without sound. It is more of a secondary thing, though.
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You want it whale sized. That might be difficult, but I doubt that would make it impossible.
It probably does not even have to be that big.
From how I understand the effect, it only works, because the animal is small and such massive accelerations are possible. (You'd need a lot more force to accelerate a whale-appendage with 10,400g)
So you would be dependend on using this effect many times simultaneously with several organs and not a big one. You could build up massive pressure and damage weak points of the submarine easily.
If you bring intelligence into it, you would not even need that much size. All you have to accomplish is to damage the submarine's moving capabilities and you are done. Then you have basically all the time in the world.
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See also: [The Pistol Shrimp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheidae)
[Answer]
You might not think of it as a sonic attack by the time you're done with it.
First off, there is some prior art. Sperm Whales can [click at over 230dB](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsDwFGz0Okg). These are actually powerful enough to vibrate a human body to death (technically, they cause pulmonary edema). So there's something to it.
But submarines change the story.
If your submarines were "scientist grade," they might be damaged by a loud sound wave. If you vibrated the submarine just right, you could cause the materials in the outer shell to fracture, and that would compromise the submarine. However, if your submarines were "military grade," it's going to be harder. The military submarines are designed to withstand the explosion of a torpedo at close range. Such an explosion basically *is* a sound weapon. It's a shock wave.
Consider the [Mark-14](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo). This torpedo was a mainstay of the US military during WWII. It had 643lb of explosives in the front of it. Given that it's the WWII torpedo, we should expect modern vessels to be more resilient against an attack like this. This thing detonated pretty much right against the hull of a ship, so call it 0.5m away.
One of the rules of sound is the inverse-square law. Increase the distance by a factor of $x$, and you affect the power by $\frac{1}{x^2}$. If your creature wants to set off an unfocused sound weapon 100m away, that's 200 times the distance. This means you need 40,000 times the force to create the same result at the target. That's the equivalent of detonating 12,860 tons of explosives. Focusing the sound could decrease that, but probably by a factor of 100 at most. You're still talking hundreds of tons of explosives worth of force.
While you could come up with a creature that *could* exhibit such extravagant capabilities, it isn't really and effective approach for a predator. They won't have such un-refined tools. They are inefficient from a caloric perspective. The only reason I can think of for a predator to have something like this is if they went after schooling fish, but fish would be stunned with far less power than this. Maybe if you're hunting an entire pod of whales at once?
If I may reference [ArtificialSoul's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/126116/2252) (since he posted it while I was typing), what you would likely see is a shock wave generated by an impact. The Mantis Shrimp is an excellent example of this.
After all, punches (and kicks) are sonic weapons, [when viewed in slow motion](https://youtu.be/3qYNIe_GoP8?t=3m53s).
[Answer]
Use harmonics.
As other answers have mentioned, having enough sheer power to destroy whole ships at any significant distance is probably out. But if the creatures are skilled enough in the use of their sound projection they may be able to find the natural frequency of some vibration-sensitive component in the ships and rattle that to pieces with significantly less energy.
Rattling critical pieces of the crew is also a theoretical possibility. Infrasound (below the range of human hearing) researchers often report visual and aural hallucinations in response to particular frequency ranges and intensities (usually in the realm of 9Hz if I'm remembering correctly.) There have been some injuries reported from the U.S. Embassy in Cuba that would be consistent with the kinds of damage that could occur with exposure to high-intensity infrasound, but so far nobody has a good explanation of how such a thing could have been done intentionally. Many "haunted" locations have been found to, under certain conditions, naturally produce infrasound of various frequencies and intensities.
Both of these are harassment weapons more than main battle weapons, but it would add tension as the humans keep detecting faint blips on the edge of their sonar range while suffering from inexplicable equipment failures, migraine headaches, and always feeling like they're being watched and seeing things out of their peripheral vision that aren't there when they turn to look.
Addendum:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_from_ultrasound>
Thinking about this I remembered an old scientific article about the development of modulated ultrasound. I don't know how differently it works underwater, but ultrasound can be focused much more tightly than lower frequencies and be used as a carrier for lower frequencies to deliver them to particular places. I'm not sure where to find the numbers on how tightly you could focus it underwater, but it might be a way for them to deliver higher intensity bursts more efficiently.
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[Question]
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I have a humanoid 6-7 foot tall combat robot that can let loose a barrage of small homing missiles via a series of missile launchers built into the chest. I do realise that it would require a great deal of internal space to store said missiles in the robot's torso and some sort of mechanism to deal with the backblast.
How would one properly design this robot to effectively use a chest-mounted missile launcher?
[Answer]
**Missiles Were my Prior Job**
I spent 4 years as an Anti Tank Gunner, I have utilized missiles extensively. Back-blast is a major issue. The way missiles manage to not have recoil is that they utilize an explosive charge to propel the missile from the launch tube which is vented out of the back of the launcher. Forget the swooshing missiles of Hollywood, when a real missile launcher is fired it sounds like a cannon going off. In fact the SMAW Rocket Launcher is so loud that one can only fire it a few times per week without risking retina detachment. The Javelin is considered a "soft launch" system and it is not safe to be standing anywhere within a 75 meter cone behind the launcher when is is fired. If you are within 30 meters of the back-blast cone you will die. The engines on shoulder fired missiles are propelling the missile at speeds approaching that of a handgun bullet. To give perspective, the TOW 2BA missile covers 4.5 kilometers of range within 27 seconds. This means it is moving at a velocity of 167 meters per second, or 547 feet per-second. All of this acceleration occurs within the first 200 meters of launch. That is a HUGE amount of power in play.
To give perspective on back-blast we were once in a building in Afghanistan when the room above us exploded and the ceiling collapsed. We thought we'd been hit by a rocket or something, turns out one of the Afghan National Police had fired an RPG from the window upstairs. Rockets cannot be fired from within a building, that explosion that partially collapsed the structure was the back-blast from the RPG, and the RPG is one of the smallest shoulder fired rocket launchers there is.
If your robot is firing missiles or rockets from its chest it will need the launch tubes to extend all the way through it's torso so that launch gasses can be vented to the rear. If your robot fires a modern rocket or missile without doing so the recoil would be about like having a hand grenade go off in its own face. It is possible, it just has to be done correctly. As long as there is a tube extending all the way through the back it will work. As far as storage, your robot has arms right? It can carry them clipped to it's chest and shoulders and reload the launcher as it moves around wreaking havoc on your 1960's comic book character heroes.
[Answer]
Launch the missile **before** firing it.
Some missile launch systems work in two phases:
* The missile is "ejected" from its enclosure, using "slow" methods that do not accelerate it much but that (by virtue of not accelerating much the missile) do not exert much recoil on the launching platforms.
A typical example would use compressed air to launch the missile, although I guess you can use mechanical or electromagnetical systems, or even a first, weaker missile engine/fuel.
* Once outside the launcher, the missile's own engines start and accelerate the missile towards the target.
You still have to account with the exhaust gases, and particularly be sure that it does not cook other missiles or the robot own electronics. Maybe the missile tube "door" covers the other missiles, and is ejected after use because it is too hot.
[Answer]
It depends on what your homing missiles are homing in on: Iron Man and others seem to mostly destroy/hit real estate or swooping (=bird-speed) targets hundreds of meters away. If your target is of that ilk, the launch is no big problem, a burst of compressed air forcing the missiles out and up, where the missiles then fire their puny main drive to accelerate to/stay at the new-year's-rocket-speeds (~100m/s = 1/3 Mach) that are the still-visible-but-blurred mainstay of cinematic combat. Missile reaches their target at 100m distance after a leisurely second or two. Neither the initial launch, nor the main thruster will output reactive forces that endanger anything nearby - 100g rocket, pencil size, accelerated to 100m/s over the depth of a chest cavity (25cm): v²/2l = 2000G, or in other words, 200kg sitting (not hitting!, just sitting) on the chest of your war robot. That should be within war-robot specs. This all is dependent on the missiles not being very fast - but if the homing mechanism is good, they do not need to be, for quasi-static targets.
To intercept missiles that themselves race at 1000-5000 m/s or similar tasks, the involved accelerations need to be far more drastic, of course. Also, for far-away targets it might pay to be a bit more swift, as the traveltime of the missile may be used by the target to seek cover. Short duration-to-target also means high velocity (aerodynamic drag is dependent on velocity squared, so that is bad), which in turn begs high acceleration, which needs bigger distance to main engine firing (for safety), which needs high initial acceleration, which means explosives, lots of kickback, etc.
Most mini seeker missiles in movies are displayed at low(missile-wise) speeds, though: Running typically makes a real difference in when and how they hit, which means that their speed is not many orders of magnitude above that of a runner, so i guess as long as you play tho the cineastically mided, you are fine with a honeycomb of missile silos in the chest.
Scaling down a missile alters several key dependencies: Smaller size means lower Reynolds numbers, which is bad for aerodynamics (at same speed as big missile). Smaller size means less volume (=propellant) per unit surface (drag), meaning worse long-distance performance (a 1/10th size missile has 1/1000th of the propellant but still only 1/100th of the aspect area of the 1/1 missile, thus it will not go 1/10th of the way of the 1/1 missile, but much less.). At the same time, most engineering-relevant values for performance of structural materials go up when scaling down, so you'll get away with relativly thinner structures (this does not make up for the propellant-problem, though). Surface-to-volume also rules the interactions of any lifting/steering surfaces, so you may get better dodging and weaving as long as you handwave the performance of the neccessary servos.
Your chest fired homing missiles will probably be cool gadgets. Keep in mind that the payload of a missile is about 5-10% of the whole missile's mass, so keep your expectations of efficacy low. 5grams of [ONC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octanitrocubane) still can deliver about 10kJ, but while that can easily kill an unarmored human, it will just tickle armored targets. Possibly better to go for more specific goals, i.e. deliver trackers, disable optics/radar.
1. Use the a=v²/2l formula (or rearranged version) to calculate on the dependency of acceleration (a), resultant velocity (v), and available acceleration-length (l).
2. Use F=m\*a (or rearranged version) to calculate on the dependency of force used (F), mass accelerated (m) and acceleration achieved (a).
(1) will also be interesting for the other aspect of homing missiles: Say the missile is travelling at 100m/s down a hallway, and now has a t-junction of 2 meters width coming up. It has to go right. This means that it's forward velocity will need to be reduced to 0, while it's sideways velocity will need to go up, all in the space of 2 meters (otherwise it will hit the wall). So (just the breaking, not counting the re-acceleration) will be done with (100m/s)²/2\*2m = 2500m/s² (= 250G, i.e. 250 times earths gravitational acceleration). For a 50g rocket (it already lost some of it's original 100g mass in flight) this means the application of 0.05kg\*2500m/s = 125Newton force, over 2 meters, meaning 125N\*2m = 250Joule energy. Rocket Fuel has about 1MJ/kg, so that would be only 1/4gram expended (+1/4 gram for re-acceleration). Good hunting!
[Answer]
This problem has been already faced by the most famous robot designer: 70es Japanese anime creators, in particular Go Nagai.
A side character of Mazinger, Hikaru Makiba, also known as Venusia or Aphrodite, was a robot which peculiar feature was to launch rockets from the chest. (the [Wikipedia pages](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venusia_(personaggio)) about it are only in italian or french, sorry)
However, keeping in mind the kink intrinsic in the japanese animation, the result may not appeal all tastes:
**Armed**:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tIliK.png)
**Launching**:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Em2RS.jpg)
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[Question]
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What other ways are there to save a human for a very long time. I know only about cryostasis. Let's say we have a spaceship traveling several hundred light years to a distant galaxy.
[Answer]
If you really want to go to a *distant* galaxy you should first realize the *nearest* (Andromeda) is about 2.5 *million* light years.
If You really want to travel that far (and get there before your ship falls apart) I think the best is "just" to exploit Lorentz time contraction.
Have your spaceship to travel very near to light speed (say 0.99c) so that the crew would travel ~7.3 light-years in a single (subjective) year.
Going even closer to light speed effect would be more relevant (at 0.999c in a single year spaceship would travel more than 22.6 light-years).
At that speed you really need to start paying attention to the road ahead, so having an active crew (not in hibernation) may be actually useful.
[Answer]
Digitize and replicate.
Why waste space for storage and preservation on a long journey when you can digitize the occupants and replicate them upon arrival. Any sort of stasis system is going to be complex and require ongoing maintenance power. The advantage of digitizing and replicating the passengers is that all the complex machinery can be left in a powered off state for the journey.
[Answer]
**Stasis Field**
In the ring world books some ships would carry a singularity device. In case of a drastic deceleration (hitting a planet) the cockpit is enveloped in a stasis field.
Inside this field time stand still, avoiding any aging or damage to the material inside.
[Answer]
Another way might be to genetically engineer an immortal human.
Lobsters are thought to be [biologically immortal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality), which means they won't die unless they are killed.
It would be challenging, but at least it's not theoretically impossible.
[Answer]
The Mi-Go have been helping humans travel to Yuggoth for a long time! Their method (from Lovecraft's [The Whisperer in Darkness](http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/wid.aspx)):
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> There was a harmless way to extract a brain, and a way to keep the
> organic residue alive during its absence. The bare, compact cerebral
> matter was then immersed in an occasionally replenished fluid within
> an ether-tight cylinder of a metal mined in Yuggoth, certain
> electrodes reaching through and connecting at will with elaborate
> instruments capable of duplicating the three vital faculties of sight,
> hearing, and speech. For the winged fungus-beings to carry the
> brain-cylinders intact through space was an easy matter. Then, on
> every planet covered by their civilisation, they would find plenty of
> adjustable faculty-instruments capable of being connected with the
> encased brains; so that after a little fitting these travelling
> intelligences could be given a full sensory and articulate life—albeit
> a bodiless and mechanical one—at each stage of their journeying
> through and beyond the space-time continuum. It was as simple as
> carrying a phonograph record about and playing it wherever a
> phonograph of the corresponding make exists.
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No doubt the human brain in its case is protected from free radical damage and constant degradation caused by movements of the body - and so is practically ageless. Encased brains can be connected to temporary artificial bodies as needed for various purposes - humanoid or otherwise. Much of the time these individuals occupy themselves in virtual landscapes, freed from the constraints of the physical.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/s8vpl.jpg)
from <https://lovecraftianscience.wordpress.com/tag/the-whisperer-in-darkness/>
[Answer]
**[Quantum Entanglements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement)**
Recently in the field of quantum physics, the plausibility of teleportation was elevated with the discovery of Quantum Entanglements.
With this science in mind, you could either teleport your human or save his state. Using a Quantum computer and one heck of a memory device you could save the entire atomic state and structure of a human body off into some storage. Upon arriving just reassemble the entanglements. This would preserve the electrical state of the brain though you would inevitably raise questions like:
* What do you do with the original?
* What does this mean for the human soul?
[Answer]
Cryostatis Pro: we (of september 14 of 2017) are doing this every single day, at least in first world countries. So the techonolgy already exists.
Con: the frozen water expands bursting cells open thus killing the thing you want to perserve.
May i introduce you to the Medical Nanobots. **tiny little robots,** nanobots (in fiction at least) serve many different roles. This specific role is to make sure the chemical-horomal balance of humans in statis allows them to "Crash Wake" (aka OMG THE SHIP IS FALLING APART BECAUSE REASONS! WAKE UP NOOOWWW!) in emergences.
The nanobots will of course make sure your passengers get enough stuff to survive the journey and may double as DNA Repair Systems for radiation treatment. (Example: <https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7401A3k7OYc>)
Sure the end product may not be Genetically human. But it got them there didn't it? Also this allows for a sub plot on what it means to be human.
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[Question]
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For a story I'm writing I'm planning a large-scale battle between human mercenaries on the surface who will eventually come under attack by hostile alien forces. At first, the fight will feature small scale attacks from the enemy, who are attempting to force the human mercs to capitulate with minimal losses of their own. The humans have been hired to protect several tidal regions where their employer (another alien race) has eggs that are waiting to hatch and spawn, in much the same way frogs or fish reproduce. The eggs are valuable for several reasons, hence the reason for the contract.
But the humans are resource-poor and have few ships to use in the defense. As the battle escalates the enemy eventually moves in with ships of their own and secures the high ground, placing them in orbit above the surface.
Which brings me to this...how can the humans hold them off? The attackers won't want to resort to large scale bombardment and risk the valuable hatching areas, but that still leaves them with a big advantage. Once you control the air (or space), you control the battlefield.
What can I do to give my human mercs a fighting chance?
[Answer]
**The humans need to buy time**
In defensive warfare, this usually means operations that trade space for time. A game of traps.
There's a rich [Jominian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine-Henri_Jomini) toolbox that the defenders can choose from, in the domains of space, air, and ground.
* Diplomacy: Talk is cheap, particularly if negotiations go nowhere but buy the defenders a day or a week or a month. Encourage (through intermediaries) enemy politicians to question the expense and slow progress of their attack.
* Outside observers: Maybe having nosy press and demonstrators around will delay the attackers as they pause to demonstrate that they are indeed obeying whatever rules that govern the conflict.
* Deception: Make the attackers waste strength and time on shadows, rumors, and threats that never quite materialize. If the enemy hasn't previously surveyed the planet, then you can even deceive them on where the hatching grounds are.
* Terrain, Obstacles and Obscurants: Orbiting baseballs, fog and smoke, nets and fougasses. Obstacles take time and effort to clear, they channel the enemy into your kill zones, they disrupt the synchronization of an attack. Enemy fighters show up without capital ship support (or the reverse); your ambush force inflicts heavy damage to the unsupported element, then scampers off to fight another day.
* Spoiling attacks and raids: Make the enemy expend effort on force protection in their assembly areas. Every squadron on sentry duty is a squadron that's not pressing their attack.
* Command and Control: Decentralize your forces, enabling local leaders to get inside the enemy's *decision cycle*, so your nimble forces can act faster than their chain of command can deploy an overwhelming response.
* Economy of Force: Absolutely DON'T do frontal attacks or engage in a war of attrition (though you CAN feint such). Preserve your forces. Deceive, ambush, and trap smaller forces. Do not leave your dead and wounded and equipment behind. Every attack should have a withdrawal plan, and security for that organized and rehearsed withdrawal. Don't take unnecessary risks. Your goal is to waste *time*, not your lives.
Leadership and preparation is essential for the defenders. They will need secure communications, logistical support, and good intelligence on the attackers' goals, capabilities, and organization. And they will need time to prepare and conceal their redoubts, emplacements, caches, obstacles, observation posts, and ambush sites throughout the system.
In a perfect world, the defenders would be building strength (mass) for a counteroffensive. However, in this scenario, the best would be a stalemate...but the question seems to rule that out. So the defenders' goal should be to delay until 1) The attackers depart for their own reasons (hibernation season, change of politics, etc.) or 2) The siege is broken by an external entity (the employing aliens, the Galactic Patrol, etc), or 3) The eggs hatch and the objective loses it's immediate value to the attackers.
[Answer]
**You hire humans because they are clever.**
Both groups of aliens value the eggs. At this desperate point the humans make clear, to the chagrin of both their employers and attackers, that they do not give a rat's ass for the eggs and are ready to destroy them all before they fall into the hands of the attackers. In fact charges have been set to carry out exactly that. One such, at a small laying area, is demonstrated to make the message clear. A negotiator of the alien species who hired them is sent to relay this message.
The humans acknowledge that destroying all eggs will also bring about their own destruction as both groups of aliens will team up to slaughter them, and so they would prefer another way forward.
The humans offer a compromise. The attackers get 1/3 of the eggs. They do not get half because they are lucky to get any, but a representative from that group can choose the 1/3 that they take. The alien employers of the humans keep 2/3 of the eggs. The humans will accept 2/3 of their pay and safe passage off world.
[Answer]
Pillboxes. The mercenaries are dug in in very tough pillboxes in the egg areas. Because of the eggs neither side can use any area of effect weapons unless the can completely confine the effect. At current tech level this means guns (and bows if someone really wanted to.) If a soldier can get right up to a pillbox they can toss a grenade in a slit, but that's all. Infantry vs pillboxes is suicide.
Note, also, that both sides are limited to carefully aimed single shots, there is no suppressive fire. Armored personnel carriers can help but they are of limited effectiveness as someone still has to get out to toss the grenade. This will basically become a sniper duel--with the defenders having a huge advantage.
[Answer]
So. The goal is to capture a bunch of eggs and the mercs are trying to prevent that.
Using insane weapons is off limits as it can simply destroy the eggs.
Dropping an asteroid or using whatever continent destroyer ship-to-surface cannon you have is discouraged.
Thus the mercs need to continue protecting the egg until help arrives, right?
Because without the idea of outside help then the bigger force can simply play it like a medieval siege and chip away at the humans resources.
For example the attackers can simply destroy all organic life forms on the planet, they can burn the fields, poison the water...etc to force the defenders to surrenders. That's why I think the help arrives part is important. Because even a planet can still be badly damaged and lose it's ability to support life if you throw enough advanced technology at it.
* **The good old fortress**. Imagine a fortress complex spanning the Himalayas mountains range, or just several kilometers. The complex has all the goodies of space operas: force fields, anti ship weaponry, stockpiles of weapons and other materials, factories and fields and all other stuff to create self sufficiency, and it can even be locked down to protect from CBRN attacks. Well. Those things are awesome to read about. Now if they hold up there then the thing might be to difficult to destroy or sneak into. If the shields hold then even missiles or cannons can't hurt it. Several meters of steal, or your futurists version of it, can further protect the things. Heck. The cannons may be able to damage or hurts ships in orbit. And of course tanks, aircrafts, and infantry is like a bunch of babies assaulting an elephant. Have them use one of those for obvious reasons. Now maybe the thing is old and crumpling, to create ore tension. Maybe it belongs to the original contract makers and they got the merc to man the place. Maybe it depends on a rare off world material that just happens to be so late so that they are on a time limit, seems lame but whatever. Heck. It might be too ancient and large that the merc are worried about being attacked from a place they did not know about. Maybe it is run by an AI. This can be a decoy. The eggs are in fact in an old watchtower with 1 guard while the fortress holds nothing. Whatever you like to modify the concept to fit your story
* **Needle in a haystack**. The planet is home to giant, I mean absolute giant, forest or huge mountains or ancient mega cities or deep caves...etc Whatever it is it is like our thing but turned up to eleven. So the mercs are like: Well. Better keep the eggs in the heart of the super big forest with insane monster that can murder even power armored people. Same with other stuff. A mega city that covers an entire continent with vertical kilometers of structures some of which go back aeons. Good luck with that.
* **A submarine**. Easy and simple. You can recreate whatever is needed for the eggs there.
* **Moving convoy**. Even if they are big and need to be stable and protected. You can just create a special armored tank and put the egg there. No guns or crew, save a driver, and keep the eggs there. While the convoy is protected by helicopters, tanks, infantry...etc.
* **Off planet?** Seems crazy. But can't they hide the eggs on the nearest moon base that is off the charts and sends no signals or even have visible energy emissions? Total darkness. With a small crew to protect it. The story can still be epic and all about how the attackers are doing this and that and in the end the eggs are off planet.
* **Trickery**. Maybe you can arrange a deal with the mercs offering the eggs to the commander of the attackers. While they are on the ship they take over. Maybe they fly a bunch of transports really sneaky on the ship and the guys inside open the hanger bay. Like a space trojan horse operation.
* Obviously if they have to cover more than one location without the numbers then they will need to have a highly mobile force. That high mobility makes it easier for the air-space holders to shut you down. **That is why I ignored this particular aspect because it could be context dependent**. I mean if you have to defend a city in Australia, a one in Turkey, and a one in the US. Without flying then this is really tricky. So I guess that you might feel the need to change something. Maybe they abandon an egg location. Maybe the mercs leave the civilians under the mercy of the attackers because they can't defend them. This is historical in the case of sieges. Maybe you want to change the importance of the locations. Maybe they do decide to destroy and egg or two because they are in undefendable locations.
[Answer]
You created a problem for yourself due to the requirement that the mercenaries protect several specific geographical points on the planet or fail in their mission.
Freed of that constraint the mercenaries might well be able to conduct a mobile guerrilla campaign/holding action by breaking up into small teams and dispersing so that they can't easily be hit by the ship's heavy weapons.
A key issue would be what you have equipped the soldiers with vs how good the enemies space based sensors were. You would need to give them very
stealthy/low emission electronics and excellent camouflage equipment so they can hide, move and fight.
If they can't leave the egg beds alone then the only other option might be to entrench themselves right on top of the nesting grounds so that the only way the enemy can get to the humans without damaging the nesting grounds is to come down and dig them out in a fight.
Of course 'digging in' on a tidal mud flat presents its own unique problems???
**AMENDMENT - a possible solution. Have the humans 'rig' the egg fields with high explosives or even tactical nuclear demolition charges on dead man' switches.**
Then tell the attackers you've done it and that you'll fight long and hard to prevent the eggs being taken if the aliens press home an attack BUT the minute it looks the garrison can't hold you *will* destroy all the eggs. (You might even demonstrate your determination by televising the deliberate destruction of a small portion of one egg field for the attackers to see.)
Advantages?
1. The aliens your contracted to can't complain because unless they're coming to the rescue (which in this scenario is not the case) they most likely going to lose all their eggs anyway.
2. There's no upside for the attackers.
3. From the humans perspective? Your not going to be paid if all the eggs are lost and even in the unlikely event you could win most of you will die.
4. What the hell they're not your children (Cynical or what?).
(May as well put classic late 20th century terrorist tactics to some good use.)
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Physically, there is no defense.
Consider that they have the recon in the form of observation from orbit. So they pretty much can see anything above the surface. So they know where you are.
Consider that a 1 kg iron bar coming in at 8 km/s (roughly low Earth orbit velocity) will have a kinetic energy roughly equivalent of 7.6 kg of TNT. Since the energy will be strongly directed straight down, you really can't effectively shield against it. And since that 8 km/s is round about mach 23, you get not much time to avoid. It's in the atmosphere for something like 10 seconds. It has the radar signature of a 1 kg iron bar. You'd be hard pressed to see that at 10 km with ordinary radar.
Such things are fairly easy to steer. You put tiny little directional vanes on the back, and it can home in on the exact coords you give it. They can probably put thirty in a row in the same hole with little difficulty. Fairly easy to get an error from one strike to the next of less than 1 meter.
The folks in orbit can pretty much kill off anything they want, with fairly surgical precision. Your ground vehicles. Your aircraft. Your pipelines. Your electrical connections. Your radio antenna. Your garden shed. Probably take the hood ornament off your classic car without puncturing the tires.
So physical defense is pretty much not going to work.
So the point is delay.
You might make some progress with psychological defense. Example: Where exactly are those eggs? Is that garden shed full of eggs? Is there a big container of eggs under that classic car? Is this airplane just taking off carrying many containers of eggs?
You could help that along by careful use of deliberately bad communications methods. For example, encrypted radio transmissions deliberately made to be de-encrypted. You could help the aliens believe in that by having an extremely easy to de-code version, then a mad scramble to tell everybody to stop using that one and start using the very slightly less easy to de-code version. Followed by a lot of self congratulation over fooling the aliens.
Then there are message with information saying the eggs are to be moved in stages in the convoys leaving on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. Or messages saying that the local power reactor is dangerously unstable and any slightest damage could cause it to go and kill all the eggs, so get to work fixing it right now. That allows you to cover over a lot of construction and furious bringing-in and taking-out of lots of supplies and equipment.
So the exact location of the eggs becomes obscured.
You could fake a second batch of eggs for the aliens to capture and take. Say you give them 10,000 raw chicken eggs with green food coloring. And maybe infected with whatever is the alien equivalent of chicken pox. Decorate with radio messages cursing the guys who were supposed to be guarding the fake eggs. And a fake message to the client aliens apologizing for losing their eggs.
Or you could fake up yet another alien species coming to steal the eggs. This new species could, somehow, get by the original egg thieves, and the humans, and walk out with the entire inventory of eggs. They show up, do a huge CG-enhanced performance of stealing the eggs and going to their improvised staging area, where they set up a transmitter to call for their mother ship. All they really have is 10,000 raw chicken eggs with green food coloring. And their "transmitter" is a 1960s era TV broadcast tower.
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**Space Junk**
Using ships or rockets deposit loads of space junk (rocks, metal) in orbit, making an protective asteroid belt around the planet. Will stop anyone coming in or out.
**Set up defense near the eggs**
Setup defensive strongholds next to eggs so any long range attack would risk destroying the eggs. Force them into close combat
**C4**
As a last resort have C4 around all the nest. Warn attackers that if any invasion occurs you will blow the lot.
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Smoke, add systems that covers the whole area in a smoke that is inpenetrable to enemy sensors. This negates the advantage of space superiority scince the assets in space have no way to aim. After that it comes down to ground fighting where the defenders can prepare and have the advantage.
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Using technology we have today might be enough.
## Missiles
We have ICBMs (InterContinental Ballistic Missile) that could be reprogrammed to become AS (Anti-Spacecraft) missiles. We also have conventional (non-nuclear) explosives that are more powerful than some atomic bombs. If you have fast enough missiles that can out maneuver defensive fire, this could be an effective method of attack. Launching more missiles than the attackers can track and defend against, overwhelming their systems would be another valid attack.
## Nukes
Nuclear missiles could also be useful, even if they don't make a direct hit. These explosions put off a massive EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) that can fry systems within spacecraft. Sure, these spacecraft are designed to handle radiation from space and even fairly nearby suns, but a nuke going off just a couple of meters/yards off their hull is going to be many magnitudes more radiation and EM than that shielding can handle. Space doesn't have the medium for most shockwaves, but an explosion this big will create one for itself. This will likely tear through the hull and any shielding, so any subsequent detonations of nukes won't be shielded against, even if it isn't as close.
The problem with nukes is that at a high altitude, the EMP from the detonation could affect extremely large areas of the ground, too. I don't remember where I read it, but a single nuke detonated at the correct height and location above the USA could knock out the whole country's electronics, unless they were hardened, which most aren't. All consumer electronics, including vehicles, would be toast. Many commercial electronics (including electronics controlling manufacturing, hospitals, airports, and other industry sectors) would also be toast. The military would likely be fine, though.
## Aircraft
We have a variety of aircraft even today that can fly so high, it's basically in space. These can be used as launch platforms to get missiles closer to the targets while maintaining good defensive maneuvering. This has the added benefit of surprise, for the first attack, anyway. Most weapons officers would likely realize the atmospheric nature of the aircraft, so write off their attacks as ineffectual. This is why it would only realistically work once, since the weapons officers, or their higher ranks, won't let that mistake happen a 2nd time.
## Future
Anything we have currently will only be made better in the future, as well as with alien enhancements to our tech and explosives. If the ground and air forces also have laser, plasma, or rail guns, these can be used as well, if nothing besides keeping the spacecraft busy while the missiles sneak up on them.
Since you have spacecraft to defend, then you can "dead launch" the missiles. This is where you launch them without activating the propellants until they are too close to be defended against. This is tricky, since you are shooting a "dumb" round at a moving target. If you can keep that target in the general area, such as by hemming them in with the ground based attacks, then you can activate the targeting and rockets on the missiles for a now short range attach.
Again, this may only work once. Any subsequent attack like this will be defended against. There may still be times when it works, but only as another "standard" attack with limited results, instead of something decisive.
A "dead launch" from a distance keeps your own craft safe from direct conflict with the attackers. This would help prevent your own attrition while hurting them. Once their weapons, defense, and propulsion systems take enough beating, you can unleash your undamaged ships and take significantly less damage than they inflict. These spacecraft can also be used to ferry/relocate supplies, materials, people, eggs, or whatever around the planet, so they are a critical part of your defense and shouldn't be used recklessly for an attack until it's reasonable the attack will be 100% effective to remove the threat from the planet.
Along with missiles, you can also dead launch magnetic mines that get attracted to the enemy hulls. These can either be detonated individually or they can be programmed to accumulate until there's enough in a specified area to do significant damage. A swarm of "tiny" mines is tougher to target and destroy than a single missile of the same explosive power. This is where the lack of a concussion in space helps, instead of hinders, you. Sure, there will still be fragments that could potentially cause a cascade effect, unless the mines are specifically designed/armored against it. These mines can also be made as shaped charges, so the armoring against fragments would double as the liner. The mines advance armor side toward the enemy, then affix armor side away from the hull. It's not completely foolproof, but would go a long way to making it difficult to defend against this type of attack.
## Surface defense
Since the attackers have to carefully pick and choose their targets, you have the advantage. You can blow them up and not have to worry about much. Yes, some of the wreckage will head towards the planet, but significant portions won't. At least not right away. And significant portions of the debris will burn up as it descends, break up into small sections, and even slow down as it becomes smaller and hits more atmosphere. Large sections can be continually hammered with missiles and other weapons until it's small enough to not be a major problem. Yes, large amounts of damage will still happen, but there's only so much you can do to prevent it. If you don't completely destroy the attacking forces, they may decide to try attacking again. Hit them hard and fast enough and they should decide it's simply not worth it.
## Conversation
As other's have mentioned, diplomacy can possibly prevent attacks. Convince the attackers that an area is too important to them to risk a direct attack and they simply won't attack that area, unless it's being used as a military base or weapons supply depot.
Keeping communication open during the battles can also help. Once a section is badly damaged enough, they can offer to surrender themselves. This could be a ground base or a spaceship. Sometimes (maybe most times) it might be more important to save lives as POWs than to kill everyone.
Simply talking your way out of the war completely might not make for such a great book, though. But talking your way out of complete disaster can be useful to end a war before it becomes genocide.
## Orbital systems
And of course, having orbital systems in place before the attackers even arrives is good. Having satellites that fire missiles, lasers, and all the rest can be the first line of defense. Even using a communications satellite to jam transmissions between spacecraft could be critical during a battle.
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## These Defenders Cannot Hold Territory
If the Invaders have uncontested control of air and space, the Defenders cannot hold any territory. Look to the recent combat against ISIS. Western forces were able to use imagery, air power, and local fighters to completely destroy ISIS, even though it had thousands of foreign fighters, and captured a country sized land area with several large cities to loot.
## But They Can Defend the Eggs
Looking to other recent asymmetric campaigns, insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have killed and maimed significant numbers of Western troops over the last ~20 years, despite utterly lacking airpower, and having little in the way of real military equipment. The key difference, is that these insurgents understood they were in an asymmetric fight, and didn't try to engage superior forces in open combat.
## Tactics
The defenders create a network of concealed weapons, hidden communications methods, and cached food and water. They attack the Invaders at every stage of extraction: when the Invaders try to land, anti-air rockets. When the Invaders move to the Egg location, IEDs and direct fire. While collecting the Eggs, indirect fire (mortars).
Every time the Invaders try to engage, the Defenders disappear. Most Invaders raids end with multiple Invader casualties, no eggs - since the Defenders can afford to loose ***some***, they destroy the ones the Invaders have collected to deny them that success - and they never even got a good look at their enemies.
## Geography
The coastal location is interesting - the Defenders can supply themselves from inland using rivers. Rivers drain into the sea, and from the mouth of the river the Defenders can access the entire coastline.
Small boats and semi-submersibles could be the preferred method of moving equipment around, provided you can hide from Invader satellites. (If you can't handwave the satellite imagery away, you can use full-on submarines to hide from the eyes in the sky, but obviously the cost there is higher.)
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An option would be to use the tried and tested shield method. The defenders have a shield which protects the eggs and the surrounding area. The shield cannot be breached from the outside however it can be passed through by low speed objects, like troops on the ground.
This would make ground assault the only option and taking down the shield generator a secondary objective to securing the eggs. It would split the responsibility of the defenders and add another high priority defensive objective to the mix.
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Kind of a niche solution, but you can seriously threaten big spaceships with orbital debris if they don't have shielding or heavy armor.
Quick fact check, a head-on collision in low earth orbit would have a speed of around 15 Km/s, so a projectile of just 1 Kg would impact with 20 kilotons TNT equivalent of kinetic energy, which is in the ballpark of a WWII nuke. A Falcon Heavy rocket can carry around 60 tons to low earth orbit, so assuming you drop 1 kg projectiles ten meters apart in a square pattern, you can basically carpet bomb a 2 square kilometers wide region of space using a pile of bricks and a single 21st century rocket.
So, as long as you still have space-capable cargo ships or the technology to build them, you could threaten any ship that is parked in orbit, forcing them to either move in a random pattern and burn lots of fuel, without risking your own ship as it just has to get to orbit, drop its payload, and land. As stuff orbiting a planet usually goes *fast*, fast enough to go all the way from one side of the planet to another in a couple hours, you better have those sensors listening and engines warmed up if you're on the receiving end. And nobody says you can't drop repurposed railgun bolts coated with a stealthy material that prevents detection until it's too late.
As a bonus, this can also be a defensive measure if you know the enemy is coming way in advance. Just flood the orbital space with debris. Resources aren't scarce ? Instead of dropping bricks, drop guided, stealthy missiles that can be remote controlled to adjust their orbit so that they can "track" enemies or create opening for allies to pass through. Expensive, but less than a traditional planetary shield or a fleet of defense platforms. The cleanup will be expensive though.
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Could a fairy (which is like a 10cm tall human with an insect-like abdomen attached to the coccyx region of the hips, which expands and contracts to breathe like a human chest, and that also have wings and a set of pterothoracic nota which replace the thoracic spine and the rear part of the ribcage, which is also flexible to allow flight), cover its breasts, crotch/pelvis, and the end of its insect-abdomen using fabric, without restricting the wearer too much and avoiding the mentioned areas slipping out?
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I'm going to start with underwear and build out from there.
Ideas for 'chest' support/covering:
1) A stretchy 'bra' that loops around the arms, pulling itself tight enough to stay in place.
2) An ordinary 'bra' that loops around the arms and kept on by a string from the back of the shoulders across the front of the neck, maybe in a knot or tied to a metal ring with an optional third string up from the center chest.
3) A 'bra' that loops around the head, neck, and shoulders like above, held together by buttons/zipper/ties down the center chest.
Ideas for crotch support/covering:
1) Stretchy fabric like any modern underwear, with gaps for the wist, thorax, and each leg. (They'd have to exhale and hold their breath while squeezing it on, but I think that'd work.)
2) A fabric ribbon like a scarf wrapped loosely around the crotch area until sufficiently covered, then tied off or tucked in.
3) A loincloth, tied above the thorax (might be uncomfortable if too tight, but necklaces aren't rare).
The upper torso I'm not sure there's any way to fully clothe. Sleeves can be supported with string across the front, and the strategies above can be doubled up, with more fabric.
Lower torso:
1) A piece for the upper and rear thorax, which attaches by zipper/stiches/buttons/ties, etc. to one for the lower thorax and legs, and a belt.
2) Pants that wrap around the thorax to button, strap, or tie along the sides or top, pulled up by a string or belt around the thorax connection in turn connected to a loop supporting the front of the pants
Gloves, shoes, and headwear are as for a human, but nothing wide-brimmed that extends backward would stick perminantly.
The jumpsuit: a single piece of fabric (or whatever) with sleeves on as per chest strat 1, 2, or 3, goes into a narrow strip down the center of the stomach, [edit: or a kind of hourglass or X-shape narrowest in the center torso] (keeps it out of the way of the wings when the spine turns) to the top of the pants, lower body as per strat 1 or 2.
All of the above work for either gender, assuming you went with the popular default, though I imagine only one matters for the character(s) you're thinking of, hence 'chest.'
Any of that helpful?
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**Trivial Answer:** "Private parts" are a cultural construct. Define your culture such that no parts of these fairies are considered "private".
**Obvious Answer:** There are a number of "backless" one-piece swimwear designs for real-world human women, some of which have more-or-less arbitrarily low coverage of the wearer's back, leaving the entire thoracic spine uncovered and covering only some portion of the lumbar spine. Use the same basic design, with the back cut low enough to avoid the base of the wings.
**Anatomical Answer:** You're describing your fairies as having highly-insectoid anatomy (not just wings, but also an expandable thorax), so why would they have human-like sexual anatomy or secondary sexual characteristics, rather than insectoid sexual anatomy?
**Adhesive Answer:** Performers in various adult-oriented industries make use of adhesive pasties to conceal their nipples. The same concept could be employed here, gluing patches to the fairy's body to provide any necessary covering without interfering with other parts of their body.
**Answer Pulled from Current Events:** There are a lot of people currently wearing face-covering masks which hook behind their ears rather than wrapping around the backs of their heads. Similarly, you could use body coverings which hook behind the limbs rather than wrapping around the back of the body.
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apron maybe? or this traditional chinese underwear from: <https://www.thoughtco.com/chinese-clothing-dudou-687371>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9DIzK.jpg)
from:<https://local-moda.blogspot.com/2014/10/dudou-artistic-underwear-of-medieval.html>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/s9SiV.jpg)
At least from what I have read it doesn’t seems like the wing expands from or is attached to the waist or leg (but correct me if I am wrong) so I think normal pants wouldn’t be a problem to wear.
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If it's a human-like in terms of physical frame and location of sexual organs or chartists, is this covering necessary in terms of culture or climate?
If it's to simply cover them for more cultural reasons, then they probably shouldn't be looking at a cloth or wrap-like attire. Wrap like attires is something that wraps around the frame of the body, like a dress.
* Perhaps something that physically ***sticks*** on over anyparts like a
glued-on amour plating or plans/fabric brushed into the front flesh with a
type of tree sap could give the appearance of cloth wrapped around.
This option would cover but not hinder the placement of wings or movement
* Bodypaint (waterproof and non) would work to obscure physical features.
* Body hair/ fur could be another thing that could be used to obscure physical features, though this would no doubt be more in the climate-based evolution
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Possibly not. This depends entirely on your species, but a lot of insects have really, really huge ovipositors that can be longer than the entire species' body put together.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Kc4Wd.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9Dv9B.jpg)
Of course the irony of this from our mammal-centric point of view is that these are *females*, not males. In fact, the stingers of wasps and bees are modified genitalia. These structures are often very hard and cannot be easily manipulated or folded up. I have a really, really hard time seeing how any clothing could preserve any sort of modesty in these kinds of organisms.
Some insects lack ovipositors, but many have additional organs that stick out such as sensillae, valvulae, or paraprocts that would be harder to cover up than a simple genital duct or something like a mammalian penis. Worse is that most insects have cerci of some kind sticking out at the terminal end of their abdomen (i.e., those things sticking out of the butts of crickets), and these are very sensitive and used by the insect to help sense the world, and thus it would be very uncomfortable to keep them bundled up under clothing. It would be the equivalent of wearing clothing that folds your ears funny.
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I have alchemists who can transmute materials at a small magic cost. I have a scene where some alchemists need to improvise a light. They have a bottle of water and some coins. What would be a good material to transmute the coins into, that would burn under water to fashion a makeshift bottle lantern?
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Your alchemist should create [calcium carbide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_carbide) which when dropped into water releases [acetylene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetylene) which will burn in the air above the water's surface. This is the reaction behind the classic [carbide lantern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbide_lamp) which has been used by miners for centuries.
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The alkali metals such as sodium, potassium and lithium all burn under water, but in general, they will burn so fast and hot, you end up with more of an explosion than a sustainable light source.
For a more controllable reaction aluminum releases flammable hydrogen gas when it interacts with water which can be burned. This are much easier to control by simply adjusting the PH of the water to slowly dissolve the aluminum oxide coating that normally stops the reaction which I assume your alchemist can also do. If you want don't have control over the PH, but do have control over the shape of what you are turning the coin into, turning aluminum into fine enough of a dust will create a useable supply of hydrogen fuel without needing to modify the PH.
Aluminum has about 27x the atomic mass of hydrogen, and exposing pure aluminum to water creates Al2O3 + 3(H2) meaning that 1 gram of aluminum can liberate 1/9th of a gram of hydrogen from the water. A quarter is 5.67 grams; so, it could be used to create about 0.63 grams of hydrogen gas. That may not sound like much, but hydrogen is some potent stuff. That amount of it when burned yields 79 kilojoules of energy. About the same as you get out of 2 birthday candles; so, a handful of coins should be enough for a suitable lamp.
There have also been many claims throughout history of catalysts that can be used to burn water by separating hydrogen and oxygen into it's parts, and then burning them. These have all been debunked as either hoaxes, or involving what someone thought was a catalyst really being an fuel source in a hydrogen on demand system. But if you are already talking about magic/alchemy, it is not really that big of a stretch.
For a more hard science solution which would look like an alchemist throwing coins into water to make a makeshift lamp, is if you replace the water with Hydrochloric Acid. A casual observer would see an alchemist with a glass vile of clear liquid that he drops some penies into. The zinc in the penies would cause the acid to release hydrogen which he could burn
[Answer]
White phosphorus. Glows with or without water, but water adds a touch of safety.
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The answer about platinum was close, but thermodynamically impossible in terms of an ongoing reaction.
Instead, they need to perform *two* transmutations: convert the coins into platinum (doesn't need to be particularly pure, it'll work as well in the form of nearly any alloy with iridium, rhodium, palladium, even nickel), ideally in the form of a mesh of fine wire -- then transform the water into hydrogen. When the hydrogen is passed over the platinum alloy in air, it will ignite and heat the platinum white-hot, and the glow from the incandescent platinum will *seem* as if the wire is burning (because the hydrogen flame is virtually invisible).
The platinum will be unconsumed and undamaged; the hydrogen will need frequent or continuous replenishment, but there's quite a lot of hydrogen (as gas, by volume) in a fairly small amount of water.
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So, I was working on my setting when I thought, "if I'm going for maximum JRPG feeling, I need several teenager protagonists, who somehow still stand a chance against the armies of Darkness."
Stealing some ideas from F.E.A.R, I came up with the replicas, supersoldiers that though having some levels of personality, are controlled by a psionic commander and "Would You Kindly". But, why would they all be teenagers (16-19 yrs old, to be exact)?
They stop aging after a point and are biologically immortal because they are still just consumable products, nobody needs planned obsolesce on top of that.
Replicas are designed for modern-day combat, especially special operations, and to be deployed in any environment.
**Keeping these in mind, I'm looking for a valid reason for them to stop aging at biologically 16-19, one that either confers logistical or combat advantages over other age categories. More significant and less circumstantial advantages are preferred.**
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16 to 19 years is a developmental phase for the brain and body. This gives them to be as smart as possible compared to younger ages but still controllable by their handlers with ideologies and fear-mongering (enemies be bad need a lesson). People (mostly men) at this age are more susceptible to performing violence for causes, and keeping their body pumping the right hormones will keep them pliable.
Additional advantage is the relative adaptability of the body at that age. Earlier ages give higher adaptability of the muscles, tendons and skeleton to training but you arent as developed.
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So my answer is largely from Karl Marlantes' 'What it's like to go to war', which covers a lot of the philosophy behind war, including why society sends younger men instead of old. (I very much recommend this book as a side note, it definitely gives a lot of useful insights to this topic)
One of the main advantages, at least tn Marlantes' view, is that young adults (men primarily) are psychologically better suited to fight a war. Sending off someone to fight and potentially kill people they've never met is difficult, and young men have certain advantages.
Young men, being full of hormones, are significantly easier to train to do this as it's easier to instill an 'us vs them' mentality, group loyalty, and a disdain for the enemy without having met them. Being able to tap in to controlled aggression as a 19 year old is a significant advantage from a soldiering perspective when in combat, as it makes men more willing to advance in combat. Once a man reaches 25 or so, he's less hormonal and has reached more of a level of emotional maturity and is more likely to question why he's fighting and killing these people who probably aren't very different from him.
One of the biggest psychological aspects is probably that younger people have a reduced sense of mortality- they often (sometimes subconsciously) justify death as something that isn't going to happen to them, whereas a 25 year old may still think of everything he has to live for in a battle and be more hesitant to do his job.
Finally, it's a lot easier to mold a 16 or 18 year old, compared to a 25 year old. You need to break a person down and build them back up in order to become an effective soldier- once they are 25 or so they've already developed a strong sense of individual identity so this is much harder.
One counterpoint is that this viewpoint lies in exploiting the immaturity of 16-19 year olds. The role of a special forces operative is definitely different to that of a traditional soldier, and is better suited to people who are a bit older, more independent and more mature. So it comes down to whether you want your supersoldiers to be mainly really effective infantry (think Spartans from HALO), or real life special forces like Green Berets who have to use a lot more independence in how they approach a task.
On top of this, you have the physical aspect. While a 16 year old may not be as strong as a 25 year old, their body is much better suited to recovery, and after all fighting a war exacts a pretty big physical toll on people. Being able to recover quickly after a long march or battle or carry kit for extended periods makes them a lot more effective.
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## They hadn't had time to age yet
Perhaps your story doesn't neccessarily need them to be teenagers *forever*, it's sufficient for them to be teenagers just now, for the duration of the story.
Let's say that the current system for breeding UltraSuperSoldiers was developed 17 years ago, and that's when the oldest production batch of them was made. There are some pre-production prototypes which were engineered/born 18-19 years ago. As they mature a bit faster than normal humans, they're considered "ready for action" at the age 15, so the younger clones are still in the breeding/training facilities and not part of the action.
So, at the moment, UltraSuperSoldiers are a thing for quite some time already but they're currently all teenagers. There's a bunch of 20-30 year old JustBarelySuperSoldiers, but the new UltraSuperSoldiers are so much better that the old guys are obsolete.
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A simple solution that I can think of is this:
The supersoldiers don't age at all. They grow and develop, yes. But the aging process has been engineered out of them.
The result of this would be that upon reaching biological adulthood somewhere between 16 and 20, individuals will remain fresh-faced and ageless in perpetuity.
I guess the thing to note here is that aging and growth are two different processes that are normally happening in parallel, so we tend to equate one with the other. There is no reason that this need be the case in an engineered human.
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The most likely reason? Because life expectancy extension is one of the very first genetic modifications that would even be approved for use on the general population and the super soldier package is being built on that base. They're going to be ageless because that's trend for everyone in their generation.
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Time to market.
If you send your clones to battle at the age of four years old... You won't be very marketable. Send them when they are 60 and they are no good anymore.
16-19 is just the best age when it comes to balancing out plasticity (they have a lot of room to improve), calorie needs, healing capacity and remaining lifetime in peak condition. All those will keep stable until around 21, give or take a couple years, and then will decline ever quicker. Keeping them at peak after that will require more and more maintenance and physical activity.
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**The immortality biological mechanism is induced by sex hormones.**
You want them to be born, grow up, and then stop aging after they are grownups. A sign that someone is a grownup is that the person has gone through puberty. Puberty is produced by sex hormones ramping up.
You clones induce their biological immortality mechanism via sex hormones. Like other secondary sex characteristics (beard, public hair, breasts, wide hips), immortality comes on line with puberty and so aging stops at the end of puberty.
There is no combat or logistic advantage to this, only ease of genetic engineering. But it might make for fun ramifications for your story. If you are inclined to biology geekout, here is a consequence that might be interesting - if one of your super soldiers loses the ability to produce sex hormones for any reason he or she will also start to age. Also, the bioengineers might have thought only about combat and not planned that a super soldier might get pregnant. What will pregnancy-level doses of sex hormones do to the immortality mechanism?
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The super soldiers are considered ready for combat at age 16, and rarely survive past age 19.
The analysts found out that age 16 is the point at which further training does not lead to any further improvements in combat performance which would warrant the cost, so they decided that 16 is the age when they get send into battle.
The soldiers are usually used for frontline combat against extremely dangerous enemies, and they are conditioned to be willing to sacrifice their lifes for the mission. So they have a very high mortality rate. For that reason it is very statistically unlikely for them to survive for more than three years. Any supersoldier over 20 is either extremely lucky or a coward.
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I know in fiction Sonic The Hedgehog is able to run faster than the speed of sound but could an organism actually evolve to move faster than the speed of sound? What type of fuel would such an organism need to move faster than the speed of sound? What form of locomotion would such an organism use?
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Just for the heck of it:
Yes, but only if you don't mind getting poop everywhere.
Allow me to explain.
The fastest accelerating living creature on the Earth [is a fungus](http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/fastest-accelerating-organism-earth-fungus). This doozy of a biological marvel grows near cowpats and other faeces, and because not many animals like eating where they've just pooped, it likes to launch its spores away from where it's growing. The issue is that because the spores are tiny they have to be thrown with a lot of force, and the method by which they're thrown (essentially popping a tiny water balloon behind them) means that all the acceleration happens in the first instant of their release.
Now imagine that the animals in question develop even more of a dislike to eating where they've pooped. The fungus has to launch its spores further. To do so it can either make the spores heavier and more aerodynamic or fire them with more force. Lets assume that they evolution causes both. Heavier spores mean better chance of survival, more force means greater spread range.
Now the animals are avoiding the area for a different reason: They don't like being persistently plagued and periodically peppered by poop produced projectiles. The only solution for the plant? More power. Perhaps some ablative coating on the spores? Heck, lets assume evolution gets lucky and evolves a two-stage projectile (because one explosive launch isn't enough).
Eventually you'll reach a point where the fungal spores (briefly) break the sound barrier on their trip out from their parent body. You'll also reach the point where the recoil from such supersonic sporulation sprays a substantial slurry subsisting of water, poop and fungal fruits all over, giving the animals that pooped in the first place even less reason to go anywhere near their increasingly hostile toilet environment.
Dung cannon fungus indeed.
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## Only if evolution demanded it
Let's lay down some numbers to start with.
* Speed of sound in air: 343m/s 1225km/h
* Speed of sound in seawater: 1500m/s 5400km/h
**The fastest moving animal in air** is the Peregrine Falcon 389km/h, just over 30% of the way there accelerating by gravity with a highly streamlined form. By contrast a normal human falling in air will hit around 200km/h. Felix Baumgartner is the [exception to this](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/felix-baumgartner-poised-to-attempt-worlds-highest-skydive/) having actually **broken the speed of sound in freefall**.
**So we know it's possible** now all you need to do is give your animal both the reason and the ability to fly at those altitudes.
Highest flying bird: [Rüppell's vulture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%BCppell's_vulture) at 11,300 meters. Baumgartner in contrast flew to [38,969.4](http://issuu.com/redbullstratos/docs/red_bull_stratos_factsheet_final_statistics_050213) meters, so we're just over 25% of the way there. Except we're not, we're closer. Baumgartner went supersonic at 33,446m but didn't drop back to subsonic until 22,907m and given that the peregrine can dive at nearly twice the speed of a human in normal circumstances and from only 1000m we're a lot closer than it initially looks.
The only reason birds can't dive at supersonic speeds is that they don't fly high enough. The fact that they probably wouldn't survive the attempt is a secondary detail. Hunting doesn't require it, escape from hunters doesn't require it.
**Why did I mention seawater?** The fastest fish is the Black Marlin at a mere 129km/h, that doesn't even come close. It's because of the [mantis shrimp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp) which, while it punches at a mere 23m/s, needs to hit 102,000 m/s2 acceleration to get there. Now there's an animal with potential.
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As @Separatrix has kindly mentioned, there are natural ways to break the sound barrier (namely freefall or ejection), but for a creature to *sustain* supersonic flight for any length of time it will need some sort of thrust. Unfortunately, there are problems with most of the common forms of thrust.
**Problems with Jets**
Modern supersonic aircraft produce this thrust via rocket or jet engine. There are jets that require few moving parts (ramjets, for example) but these usually cannot be ignited until the craft is already travelling at an incredible speed. Otherwise the creature would have to evolve some sort of turbine, which seems unlikely.
**Problems with Propellers**
Prior to jet engines most aircraft were prop-driven. Even today the propeller is in common use. Has a prop-driven aircraft ever broken the sound barrier? Unfortunately no. Our friends over at Aviation have answered a related question [here](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/4953/can-propeller-driven-aircraft-sustain-speeds-at-or-above-mach-1) which discusses the issue in detail, but in summary the propellers themselves would end up breaking the sound barrier before the entire aircraft could, and the airflow/structural problems associated with this are seemingly insurmountable. Also, I am not aware of any life form evolving any sort of spinning component comparable to a propeller, or even a wheel for that matter, so propellers seem unlikely.
**Problems with Wings**
Most living things fly on wing power, essentially swimming through the air. The variety in wing design is extensive, but to my knowledge no creature has wings that flap even close to supersonic speeds. If a bird or bug were to try to break the sound barrier, their wings would have to be travelling even faster than this during the forward stroke. This is part of the reason helicopters do not travel supersonic: the forward-rotating side of the rotor blades would break the sound barrier before the entire craft would, and cause major aerodynamic and structural problems.
**Solutions?**
The stress on an aircraft as it breaks the sound barrier is immense, and the violence of the pressure wave involved is game-breaking but optimistically I suppose it could be possible for a creature to evolve some sort of rigid bone structure and tough outer shell that could withstand these conditions. I believe @Cort Ammon linked a [related worldbuilding question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/18705/dragon-breaking-sound-barriers-unaided) about dragons going supersonic. The best solution I can think of would be a creature that somehow store a volatile fuel, somehow has a ramjet, and somehow manages to climb to a suitable altitude that it can freefall to a speed at which the ramjet can be ignited. Rocket propulsion is also a solution, since the creature could avoid the need for freefall, but internal oxidizer would also need to be stored, so it would be a tradeoff.
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If your animal competes for mates by racing then the maximum speed is only limited by physics. Assuming that these critters were already fliers than a mating season flying contest at consisted of climbing as high as possible and diving straight down could eventually result in a supersonic buzzard. In evolution sex is a powerful force.
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Alright guys, let's deal with it:
it's impossible for an animal to break it on it's own, so let's first get a normal bird. It can't go really fast. Honestly, I don't even think that they can reach 60 km/h on their own without wind, but probably they wouldn't be capable to reach this even with wind.
Alright...
1. feathering - Bird's most important thing
2. light bones - the only reason they can fly... I mean... just glue feathers on your arms and try to fly
3. They are aerodynamic- the only way to go in the air.
So, Let's try to make the best flying creature.
1. Bones - Light, same as the bird ones
2. Organs - similar to the bird ones, but of course with bigger lungs so it's organs can't overheat
3. Weight - let's say about ton...
4. Height - around one meter and half
5. Length - about 17m from the tail to the top if its head
6. Wings - around 5m ↔ 7,5m ↕
7. Musculature - its musculature must be hundred times stronger that the strongest bird we know
-----WARNING-----
It still won't be capable to break the sound barrier
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Hypothetically, if an animal evolved on a planet/special environment like Jupiter with extremely high wind speeds to not just drift around but to actively move through it, it probably could. A certain mite, [Paratarsotomus Macropalpis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratarsotomus_macropalpis), can travel 322 body lengths per second. The closest second is the [Tiger Beetle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_beetle). So the creature could be a insect-like hexapod which is particularly huge (around 1-1.5m in length) which can leap point to point supersonically. And during flight (mid leap) it can reconfigure itself (reduce its profile by folding limbs etc) to something more aerodynamic to mitigate the effects of the sonic boom.
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If you look up the "deer botfly" you will see an entomologist claimed that the insect could reach speeds of 800 MPH. That is, faster than sound. However, a Nobel laureate in chemistry (who was a physicist also, Irving Langmuir) was easily able to debunk this claim. In particular, Langmuir calculated that it would have to eat 1.5 times its body weight every second. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_botfly>
It is clear that no animal could do anything remotely like this. I believe that a larger insect, due to surface area to volume ratio decreasing as size increases, might be able to get by with eating less, but even eating 1 percent of one's weight each second far exceeds what any animal does and clearly turning that food into energy to supply power for such a flight speed is impossible.
You might need an animal that derives energy from not chemical but nuclear power. I think flapping wings might also not be a plausible way to reach the speed of sound -- I believe there is some reason that a propeller can't work at the speed of sound. Therefore, the organism might need jet or rocket propulsion which already exists sort of in nature: squid propel themselves in this fashion.
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ALL evolution proceeds via the removal from the gene pool those members which are not so much "barely fit" (since some of them do reproduce), but those variations which are actually unfit to meet the changing challenges imposed regardless what those challenges are specifically.
In order to decide if any conjectured evolutionary path is plausible (in this case the evolution of something that could propel itself at greater than Mach 1), would require many iterations of elimination of the slowest members of each population (more specifically it would require some factor that would act to that effect that did not place excessive demand on the rate of change). It also has to be not only physically possible, but it needs to adhere to the significant restrictions inherent with "descent with modification" which is to basically rule out radical changes from one generation to the next. Given the later factor I'd say that the speed challenge would have more possibility of producing a result if it applied to a wide range of species rather than just one.
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In this hypothetical world, evolution occurs as it should. (Not to run afoul of any genetic diversity requirements of evolution; some simple viruses have aided in the genetic shifting process). But for various reasons, or for lack of various reasons; all eukaryotic species on the planet reproduce with some form of *parthenogenesis* instead of the *dimorphism* with which we are most familiar. Physiologically, you may assume the dominant bipedal intelligent species (Let's call them **Parthans**) is otherwise identical to humankind.
Perhaps coincidentally, Parthan society advances similarly if not almost identical to how Human society does with the obvious exception that there are no males, and all that this entails. Monogamous and polyamorous relationships are still formed, though like our society, poly relationships are not all too common. Certain achievements in the bedroom still result in pregnancy. Both parents may become pregnant, but the daughter only inherits direct DNA from her childbearing mother. Birth control drugs are still seen by some as 'unnatural'.
Fast forward a few centuries. By this point in the advancement of the species, Parthan-kind has developed a high-tech space-faring society. Though commercial and somewhat restrictive, travel to large Parthan colonies in nearby star systems is fairly common. It is at this point that a few ambitious Parthans decide to genetically engineer the concept of dimorphic reproduction.
To narrow it down a bit, let's say that their primary goal is to re-engineer their own species, and to ensure the procedure is safe and humane (parthane?), they first engineer various types of dimorphism in a few other species.
**Assume the following:**
* An indefinite amount of time has passed in said universe, allowing the Parthen species to actually 'evolve' through viral DNA mutation; *Assume they exist*.
* *Males would not evolve* genetically given any amount of time; Assume that sexual dimorphism is not obvious for cells, that relying upon an outside organism for reproduction is evolutionarily counterintuitive on the cellular level. *Males don't exist* elsewhere in the universe to provide inspiration.
* It is considered unethical to engineer the race merely for purposes of *genetic diversity*.
What other specific reason or cause might fuel a group of Parthans to make this decision to engineer males within their own species?
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As I understand it, your parthenogenetic species reproduces solely through cloning, since you said that "the daughter only inherits direct DNA from her childbearing mother." As it stands, this sounds a bit like bacterial reproduction, without any lateral gene transfers. It seems that the diversity of the species would be difficult to maintain solely through asexual reproduction. Perhaps evolution would have favored high mutation rates, or even guided mutation (favoring previously harmless mutations) at non-essential loci, so that parents frequently do not resemble their children. Example: the blue-eyed locus (if they have such a thing), might have a 10% chance of randomly mutating to brown. In any case, the genetic diversity issue should definitely be dealt with if Parthans are to look different, to start with.
There are two good reasons to introduce males: the benefits of sexual reproduction, or the benefits of sexual dimorphism. There several of each.
Benefits of sexual reproduction:
*Population control*:
Doug mentioned that the Parthans might want a group of people who could not get pregnant. All of his reasons are very good, but I can think of another: population control. If the Parthan population is growing too quickly, converting some of the newborn Parthan parthenogens into males ensures
that they cannot reproduce with other males, and cannot reproduce asexually, thus cutting down on the birth rate.
*Decreasing genetic diversity*
Perhaps the Parthans are not willing to introduce males to increase the genetic diversity of the species. But what about to decrease it? This possibility was [examined by Gorelick and Heng](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2010.01173.x/abstract;jsessionid=0DD4228A06E87D54D0B1E1CAA0AC3D26.f01t02). Sexual reproduction, while allowing for higher rates of certain evolutionarily advantageous mutations, can reduce the rates of highly dangerous mutations, such as switching out entire chromosomes. If these sorts of drastic mutations are common among the Parthans, they might seek a more sustainable, less risky method of reproduction for the future.
*Conserving genes*
Sexual reproduction can also allow the conservation of genes that, while not currently beneficial, might be useful in future enviroments (particularly with regard to future parasites). This is essentially the famous [*Red Queen Hypothesis.*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis). Perhaps the Parthans have been blindsided by lethal plagues many times, and have discovered that the Red Queen allows an out.
*Genetic repair*
The recombination that occurs during sexual reproduction is considered by some as a method of checking for errors. Recombination can repair [two-strand damage to DNA](http://www.intechopen.com/books/dna-repair/meiosis-as-an-evolutionary-adaptation-for-dna-repair). Perhaps the Parthans are plagued by low fertility due to frequent DNA damage.
Benefits of sexual dimorphism:
*Separate ecological niches*
Different sexes may have different biological needs. This could be an easy way of creating a subgroup capable of taking advantage of a certain biological niche, while ensuring that the mutations will not quickly be lost.
*Different sex-specific talents*
The different sexes may have different mental or physical attributes, not specialized to a certain ecological niche.
However, it seems to me that only the ones that hinge on the advantages of sexual reproduction are likely to be tried. If certain characteristics are needed in a species, it would make a lot more sense to try to introduce them directly, rather than producing a reproductively distinct group that has these characteristic. After all, in real systems, dimorphism generally follows differentiation. Only the advantages that hinge on the defining characteristic of a male--some reproductive difference--are worth the trouble of introducing precisely those differences, particularly when their emergence in the genome would be so unlikely to begin with. So one of the first four hypotheses seems most likely.
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It seems impossible to me. To begin with, evolution without sex (even hermaphroditic) would be a much slower (at least on earth it was) and IMO there is bigger chance of sexual reproduction evolving than sentient species evolving without it. You assume also that the society would be similar to our. It won't. There is no chance for sexual intercourse evolving if there is no evolutionary profit from it. They will just have no sex at all and no idea it is even possible.
Even if it had existed inventing males is not obvious even on semantical level. What would "a male" of that species be? On earth it evolved among hermaphroditic species (and hermaphrodites reproduce sexually, just there is no dimorphism) as a result of the fact that either small eggs (consisting only DNA) and big ones (enough resources to feed growing organism) are evolutionary stable strategies while the in between state typical to hermaphrodites is not (i.e. half the resources from every parent). But if you assume there is no hermaphrodites and just parthenogenesis there is no obvious way for genders to differentiate. The specimens are not "females", but genderless asexual beings. To introduce genders they would need not only to genetically engineer the dimorphism, but also reenginer their genetics at cell level (introduce mechanisms like meiosis or at least crossing-over), so it would be probably easier for them to just feed the crossed embryos in-vitro.
Maybe after their culture accepts genetic modifications of themselves as something common it would eventually be engineered into their bodies. Assuming such a body is "female" we may call ones giving only their DNA a "male", but I fear it would be meaning very distant to what you expect.
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these premises are hard to work with, which is not a complaint about the question exactly. I think that there is allot of interesting things that could come out of this question, but without more back-and-forth discussion it's hard to know where to focus my answers.
I will therefore try to do two things. First, I'll give a simple answer with the presumptions you have written. However, I will then elaborate more on why such an answer is so difficult to give, and why I feel it's partially a lie.
To answer your question, with the premises as stated and assuming otherwise identical to humans, I would imagine males would not be the original target of the process. In fact I doubt 'males' would occur, but hermaphrodites definitely could. I could see the chain of events going something like this:
1. develop methods to treat birth defects and genetic abnormalities prior to child being conceived. This would happen far faster then it does with humans. Because the mother's DNA is (almost, see below) exactly copied into the child if a mother has a genetic defect the child *WILL HAVE* the defect, inevitable, except for cases when mutation happens to fix said defect; which is unlikely. Thus, a means to conceive without specific defects the mother has (due to mutation) will be desired
2. The easiest approach turns out to be to copy DNA from another Pathon, likely a close relative, into the offending mutated area of the DNA of a new 'embryo' in a process similar to IVF & designer babies. Since close relatives would have almost exactly the same DNA (I'm assuming some mutation still occurs each generation, see below, but not enough to invalidate this presumption) they would be safe examples of what the DNA strand should look like. Thus asking mother's and sisters to provide DNA to fix abnormalities you don't want to pass on to your children becomes common.
3. People decide that they don't want to settle on fixing current abnormalities. They notice that another Pathon has a cool mutation they like and wish they could have that mutation. Thus they start asking less closely related Pathons to provide DNA (or the Pathon equivalent) to get those copies.
4. Assume that Pathons lack the ability to pull out specific traits (not at all hard to believe, DNA is not that simple). Perhaps the Pathon's version of DNA is even harder to mess with, and you need to copy large portions of DNA from one Pathon to the other. Then copying a Pathon's DNA would require less surgical precision and more of a replacement of large portion of the Mother's DNA. (with the original step 2 the close relatives DNA is so close to the mother's that even a large swap of DNA doesn't mean much, the two Pathons are nearly identical genetically so they are replacing DNA with exact copies of it).
5. Eventually as this becomes more common the Pathons start to see how positive the genetic diversity provided by such methods are. It becomes common for them to find 'mates' and trade DNA for their children. This starts to become the norm, due to the advantages and ability to lower cultural stigmas (see below).
6. Eventually you have a defacto hermaphrodite race that usually has young with another mate. Only in this case they may have multiple mates instead of just one. You *could* then have them force evolution of physical means to make this easier (ie sex, and your 'males'); however, this seems less likely. To reach this point they are good enough at having children via uterine replicator and/or IVF, and would *prefer* these methods since it's safer for the child and can filter out negative mutations. At this point going 'backwards' to traditional sex seems unneeded, technology does it better. There is a massive expense and difficulty in trying to genetically make a new sex, I can't begin to express how hard this is or how long it would take (good luck getting everyone to keep working towards this goal over hundreds of generations). It's just easier to stick to uterine replicators and doing the DNA exchange via doctors and technology then to change your physical structure.
If you mush have an actual sex you can claim that some eventually focused on providing DNA rather then carrying themselves. Eventually some traits became so common in provider of DNA that they got treated as effective males, and a sort of specialization (sexalization?) occurred. However, it seems unlikely in the presence of modern technology for various reasons. I would need a whole different question with it's own mulch-paragraph answer to go into how to justify going from step 6 to physical change into different species. I do have ideas of how to justify it, but the require allot of justification to make them the least bit plausible.
For this process to work your need a few things.
1. the ability to genetically transfer DNA from one pathon to another, but *not* to cherry pick specific DNA subsets. An all-or-nothing approach. This isn't too hard actually, since this species isn't from Earth. Just say their version of DNA encodes differently, and makes it such that you have to transfer huge portions of the DNA to transfer any of it.
2. The Mother's will not, as a whole, accept having their child contain a fraction of their DNA for no cost, if they did then less of their DNA would transfer to the next generation, and the ones genetically/psychologically inclined to refuse accepting others' DNA would 'win' the genetic race in the end. The easy way to avoid this problem is have the mother's share DNA. If mother A asks for DNA from mother B it will be a quid-pro-Que relationship, where both mothers agree to have a child that will contain some of the other mother's DNA. That way the total amount of their DNA will be be passed on to the next generation, even as they benefit from added genetic diversity. This may result in mother's raising their shared children together
3. You need to decide how much DNA a 'transfer' between two mother's requires. can a mother accept only 1/10 of DNA? If so why do they accept 1/2 of the DNA, they would be inclined to have their child carry more of their DNA. The easy answer is to work off of point 2 above. Maybe as little as 1/10 of DNA could be transferred at a time, but culturally the norm becomes to have two mother's carry children together and each child carry half the DNA, so that they have shared investment in each child. It may be that other permutations are possible though. Maybe sometimes 3 mother's will get together and agree that each of the three will have a child that contains 1/3 of each mother's DNA etc. The point is I would say that a large, but no where near half, percentage of DNA must be transferred for this trick to work; to justify step 2 & 3 of evolution above occurring, which works better if the child still contains *most* of your DNA after a transfer), and have the tendency for parents to have a 50/50 split be due to cultural convention and agreement to maximize genetic diversity while still ensuring the same total amount of DNA is spread from each mother to next generation.
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Now, lets get into the reasons this answer is not enough to address the premise. There are some issues with the premise itself that I would suggest hammering out first before digging into things like my above answer.
First, despite being a huge fan of evolution and being fully aware of how imperative sex is to facilitate the process, I think it's possible for a sapient species without males to evolve. However, doing so requires extensive world (and species) building to not just justify, but extrapolate from. The species will be *different* from humans, in many important ways. I can't answer the question as to why males would be desired without first discussing the culture, psychology, and physiology of your species.
To make this species work *at all* you need some form of added genetic diversity. If it doesn't come from Sex something else must provide it. An actual virus, as you mentioned, wouldn't do this, because there would be no benefit to the virus; it doesn't spread it's own DNA by triggering *random* mutations in others.
lets consider a somewhat related idea though. presume the parents themselves have evolved some tendency to intentionally trigger mutations in some controlled manner. Since mutations can be the root to long term adaptation *and* short term survival a form of controlled mutation to help with adaptability may not be harmful. You would risk the possibility of these controlled mutations leading to lots of harmful birth defects though; most mutations *are* bad after all. However, maybe the species developed a way to control mutations so they only occurred in limited areas of their DNA, combined with some sort of 'DNA verifier" that would quickly exclude bad DNA. Perhaps the mother's get pregnant often, but are prone to early miscarriages as their body realizes this pregnancy has a dangerous mutation and won't survive (human actually *do* this already, but this species would presumably do it far more often). This can be justified by assuming an enviroment that puts heavy strain on pathogenic species; for instances a huge array of viruses and bacteria which likes to evolve for a specific pathogenic sub-species and attack it viciously; forcing adaptations to be mandatory to survive disease.
This could work, but it brings up a major problem. The Pathons would *not* be the same. These mutations would change them, but nothing would control the genetic drift; meaning Pathons would become more and more different from each other with each generation. To give an example imagine each generation each child is 1% different from the mother, and that each mother has 2 children.
First generation each child is 2% different from each other. Next generation you have children that are each 2% different from their grandmother, and 4% different from their cousins (almost, it's minutely less technically). By the 10th generation they share 90% of the original parent's genetics, and are only 80% matches to their most distant cousins. by the 30th generation they share only half of their DNA with their cousins. This grows experimentally worse from there. 30 generations is not long on evolutionary scales, but it's enough to have effectively created different species.
You could use approaches to limit this effect, but in the end all the Pathons will be *different* based off of their parents. Some will be smarter, some stronger, some faster, and some just able to pop out more kids. You will have 50 different 'races' where 'races' actually are different. Now think back to all our racism in the past, and imagine how much worse it would be when there was undeniable proof that the races were different *AND* a (much stronger) biological imperative to support your own 'race' above all other races. You get racial battles of the most extreme type, and a desire to keep your DNA as close to your mother 'race' as possible which would make one wish to avoid sexual reproduction and getting DNA from a third party.
Put the above idea aside for a second, I'll come back to it, lets address a separate issue. specifically they won't have romance! There is no need for romance, sex, or pare bonding without...sex. Each will have their own child without partners. Their family will be imperative to them, sharing 99% of the same DNA, but that will be a familiar bond, not romantic.
Sex will definitely not be required for pregnancy, as you suggested. Yes there are a few creatures today that reproduce via pathogenesis that still require sex, but that's because they evolved as sexual creatures who only later adapted to be pathogenic, and haven't yet gotten around to removing the need for sex entirely. Without a sexual species existing at all (as you state in your premise above) there is no need to evolve a system where you need a partner to get pregnant.
However, there is an option to address the genetic drift (and racism) issue and lack of romance in one go. Suggest a method in which DNA is swapped between these species, but in a less controlled method then sex. Perhaps regular interaction with another can result in picking up some of their DNA, perhaps even via viruses as you said (though justifying how this is evolutionarily advantageous to the virus takes some work in itself). This would potentially be advantageous as it can help allow genetic mutation to be shared across a community, rather then each mother having to try (and most often fail) at genetic mutations until they found one that 'worked'. It would also limit the genetic drift.
However, this would make the need of the evolution I suggested above a bit harder. It also suggests extreme racial wars between communities that haven't had this 'virus' help them share genetics.
Then again, if you assumed a more controlled and intentional way of sharing genetics without sex you could go from that one to creating sexual creatures with a male...
Meanwhile, we still have the problem that any of the possible species above, other then the last one with it's own evolved intentional genetic exchange method, would most likely evolve males or other intentional means to exchange DNA eventually. It's a powerful evolutionary advantage, someone will stumble upon it.
I'll stop here, because I think I made my point. For me to really suggest a proper evolution we would first need a few species building questions just to hammer out how the species evolved and what it looks like *now* before I can go into detail about how they would further adapt to creating males.
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**For "entertainment".**
WARNING: possibly offensive material ahead - read at your own risk. (I've tried my best to keep the wording safe but sometimes it just doesn't work!)
Because if it is as you say, and the Parthans are "otherwise identical to humankind", it's likely that for them, using plastic/metal/wood/whatnot as entertainment is probably not enough to satisfy at least one part of the population.
Some mad Parthan scientist is bound to start engineering biological "toys" which could end up feeling a lot better and result in more advanced biological toys (which eventually turn into males).
This could easily spread - the first biological toy (which from hereon shall be deemed "D1") was used by only that scientist - then her friends decided to borrow D1 for a party or something (Humans do like to party) which turned into research grants and papers being published about biological toys. D1 may have just been a lab experiment, but it quickly turns into D1.1, D1.2, D1.3, with more functions, shapes, sizes and colors.
Eventually, we have D2. D2 consists of what looks like a human hip + D1, and includes some autonomous piston action. Various fetishes and ideas turn into different functions which just so happen to require various organs/bone/muscle. Perhaps D4.3 involves abdomen muscles and thighs in order to provide better "angling". Perhaps D6.3 happened to require a \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ system to satisfy \_\_\_\_ fetish - you get the idea.
The cycle continues until eventually you have your first male, which only has one purpose - to lay there and look sexy and provide "entertainment".
It just so happens to turn out that these bodies that are laying there are taking up a lot of resources and doing nothing and using valuable space. So the Parthan group decides to put them to use, and finally give it sentience. **Voila! Your first male!**
**TL;DR** and for those who still don't understand what I'm referring to:
Males can come about as a result of sexual needs - a need most humans love to satisfy (usually via sex)
Note: I saw answer(s) that focused on the validity and the possibility of the OP's scenario. I'm explicitly choosing to ignore all that, and actually answer the question posted (Which is actually *"What other specific reason or cause might fuel a group of Parthans to make this decision to engineer males within their own species?"*, and not *"Is this possible/likely to happen"*, and certainly not *"How would this process work?"*)
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# They need a section of society that is expendable, but are not willing to create clones just to do [insert-dangerous-job-here].
Ruling out the genetic diversity benefits, the most obvious advantage that males have is that they are (biologically) expendable. You can kill off the majority of the adult males in a group and, assuming that there are enough male children/pregnant women/polygynous families, the population can recover within a few generations without changing the birth-rate.
If the Parthans find themselves with a pressing need for soldiers, unobtanium miners, direbeast hunters, or people to fill some other highly dangerous role, they might feel that engineering this form of dimorphism is the best solution.
Cloning or conscription are other options, of course, but both of those have a very real risk of creating a group of second-class citizens - reducing the people forced to do the job in question to 'not really *real* people'. Engineering males still results in creating a group whose social role is to spend their lives filling some dangerous job, but has some advantages that might make them decide that it's a more ethical alternative:
* Allowing them to produce genetically-related offspring without needing to bear the child themselves helps with a live-fast-die-young lifestyle, and might make it easier to give them an acceptable quality of life despite their short life-expectancy.
* Making them *required* for the rest of society to reproduce provides insurance against their being reduced to the kind of 'not a real person' status that clones/androids so often suffer in science fiction - everyone will have fathers and brothers and sons, so they can't be split off into a group of 'others' and departhanised.
[Answer]
It doesn't seem likely that a parthenogenetic species could develop the sociality to achieve the necessarily cooperative technological advances you say they have. All parthenogenetic species on Earth are loners. Asexual speciation divergence is likely for the time spans you suggest so rather than "Parthans" you'd have a cluster of very similar species.
To answer *Why Invent Males?* there are two likely intertwined reasons.
1. They decide that divergence is becoming a problem and attempt hybridogenesis ([good article on sciencedirect here](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982212005957)) which can come in many flavors but also many dead ends genetically (sterile offspring) and
2. They discover that they had arisen that way originally and was the basis for their cooperative society and maybe they were losing that through a very long time of parthenogenetic reproduction.
Eusociality is what EO Wilson describes as the primary strength of humans: cooperation. There's plenty of debate on how to define it lots of other terms come into play and loads of yakety-yak debate. But without some basic organizational mechanism down at the genetic level there is no way we could have built cities and technology much less a need for language or any conceptual communication (beyond grunting at each other).
Story-wise, even if (as several commenters suggest) there was a role hierarchy going on based on lineage, from one line a "queen" is born. A freak occurrence that allows all their potential genes to be unlocked but they need a separate mate to accomplish this. Or another "queen" is born in another parthenogenetic line, maybe a third, fourth; then a true threat of the Parthans becoming separate species capable of creating their own castes would threaten their collective future presaging a time of competition and warfare. The queens are discovered to have the ability to produce a male, allowing genetic mixing between the current lines and thus avoid all that trouble.
[Answer]
The society you describe sounds rather individualistic, but if they were redesigning their race for the purposes of maximizing the quality of the race, they might find a desire to create two phenotypically different types of Parthanes. Perhaps one might be optimized to deal with situations where raw force is required, and the other optimized to deal with situations which call for more finesse.
In many cases, this decision can be made late in the game. Perhaps during childhood a Pathane is given a chance to select an approach, or it might even be more like working out, where the Parthane's body adapts to what it is expected to do. However, some physical structures are very hard to make after the fact. For a real life example, read up on the insane process our embryos go through to connect our optic nerve to our brains... its hard to do when the fetus is the size of a small fruit, much less attempting it after birth.
It would be good design to provide a mechanism for this differentiation. Once the huge decision to differentiate the sexes is in place, it is a much smaller decision to explore mating patterns and other things which relate to the sexes. The division of the species is the big part.
[Answer]
**TL;DR**: because males are evolved risk-takers whereas females are evolved risk-avoiders. And as a species (especially intelligent one), sometimes you DO need to take risks, to evolve, develop, and survive.
So, your species wants a new sub-species of explorers, daredevils, soldiers, startup founders, and other professions that require out of the norm risk-taking abilities - and perhaps it has a couple of individuals wise enough to recognize both the need, AND the reason why the need exists (lack of evolved risk taking demographics) and the solution is a sub-species which is designed to be risk-takers. They call them... "males".
---
Let's unpack this **in detail**:
I must agree with some other posters that the species you describe is extremely unlikely to be even remotely close to humans, including - and especially - culturally.
Why?
Because sexual dimorphism does not merely serve as an evolutionary reason to have sex. It also (leaving aside genetic diversity angles), results in the male of the species being a risk-taker, according to most recent genetic and evolutionary and psychological research ([src1](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/evolution/9005552/Men-twice-as-likely-to-take-risks.html'), [src2](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3600861/), [src3](http://118.145.16.229:81/Jweb_xlkxjz/EN/abstract/abstract935.shtml))
At a high level, this makes sense: the whole biological definition of male/female sexual dimorphism (in non-isogamous species) that ova are much larger, immobile, and require higher biological resources to generate - and therefore, a risk/reward scenario is highly different for a male and female of the species. In layman's terms, **males can afford to take risks** since both the individual and the species has "less to lose" if the risk-taking - genetic or cultural - doesn't work favorably to the individual. And in turn, **male risk taking increases the species fitness due to higher payoffs** for those risks.
As such, your Parthan society would evolve to be extremely risk averse, and likely find it far harder to achieve higher technological level, or even spread out much (note how in humans, it's typically males who go out a-exploring for walkabouts).
[Answer]
Maybe someone decides there's a need to create a group of people that everyone knows will never be pregnant? Pregnancy tends to complicate things, after all. Maybe there's dangerous things to be done, and everyone would sleep easier if there *weren't* a bunch of gestating fetuses in the line of fire? Or maybe they decide to send a starship on a decade-long mission across the galaxy, and nobody wants a bunch of babies cluttering up the works along the way?
I'd probably recommend contraception over engineering a whole new gender, but apparently they consider birth control "unnatural", so maybe this is "easier" for them. Even in that case, I'd still recommend they just use sterile individuals, but who knows, maybe they grind sterile people up into soylent green.
A super-long-term thinker might also try to introduce sexual dimorphism because it greatly speeds up evolution. Maybe they anticipate the collapse of their advanced spacefaring society at some point, and they want the survivors to be able to adapt rapidly to the aftermath.
[Answer]
All right, so let's say you have this spacefaring race. They've been expanding, getting themselves into new environments, and having babies on completely new planets. The only problem is that some of these babies don't develop too well in these new environments; some are stillborn, some deformed, and some are just straight up missing things. One of these things is the Parthen version of a uterus.
For the latter deformed babies, the future looks pretty grim; without the possibility of bearing children, they'll look to other ways of attaining lasting happiness and satisfaction. Some may become doctors and biologists, and in their hi-tech world, they may seek answers as to how to solve their infertility.
Finally, after decades of research, a solution is devised: they can't repair the uterus, and it's too late to clone and insert a new one, but what they can do is hijack the uterus of a surrogate mother, splicing DNA from both parties to create a hybrid baby. And since the baby is getting genetic material from both mothers, it's got a fifty-fifty chance of having the same deformity, and needing to use the same process to have its own children.
I think you said somewhere that some of your Parthans already couldn't reproduce on their own; this solution could work for them too.
What I'm imagining is some sort of cyborg-genitals (never thought I'd say that), but given an advanced enough species I guess it's possible that they could just use some other parts of Parthan anatomy to get the job done. Perhaps the baby would get all of the 'father' DNA, instead of a split; that would make more sense to me, but may not work in your story. Also, with more of a biological solution, there could be more drastic physical changes due to hormones, leading to a more 'masculine' appearance (rather than a woman with a baby-making attachment strapped on).
After a while, this solution might not be the best one (that is, the original problem may have been solved in a more satisfactory fashion), but by then there would be enough 'men' around to sustain a viable population. Plus, by then the Parthans might have found more uses for them, such as the ones other answerers have mentioned.
What I'd like to stress with this answer is that it sounds quick and dirty, but that's exactly why it makes sense: people will go to great lengths to ensure the survival of their genes. The solution may not be the best, but given the direness of the problem, some concessions can be made.
[Answer]
Advantages of being male:
* Don't have to carry around or maintain female organs.
* You don't have to expend energy on pregnancies.
* Paternal instincts possibly weaker (less obstructive) than maternal
instincts
Disadvantages:
* Cannot reproduce without the aid of a consenting female. (but not
true in reverse in this case.)
I think that the purpose of engineering males would be to create a workforce or army of slaves. Slaves who would die childless of old age if they escaped. Slaves that have no access to their own offspring. Slaves that are indoctrinated from birth by their own mothers. Slaves with no possibility of leaving a legacy to the world. Slaves who's population can easily be controlled by females.
[Answer]
How's this:
Your Parthan scientists originally create dimorphism in other species, as you said, only to see if they can. it is a pure experiment. In fact, in this case, they don't really create males, they simply induce a version of meiosis in a test tube using two, or many more (what the heck), ovum from many doners.
Their experimenting shows them that a not insignificant portion of such creatures evolve/develop solutions to environmental challenges that the standard parthonegenic (sorry) fauna do not.
Next step...bio-weapon of course. Or, if the Parthans are not so warlike, experimental error and escape on a grand scale?? Soon a scourge of fast evolving, fast adapting micro and macro bio-weapons are replacing the natural fauna of the universe. The only choice left to the Parthans, find a way to adapt as fast as the new competition, or face extinction.
[Answer]
May I suggest a social drive?
In a Parthenogenetic society that otherwise develops similar to a real life society, who is in charge?
I postulate that eventually certain families would consolidate and perpetuate power. If this society is capable of genetic modification on the scale you propose, perhaps some cultures would use a form of genetic primacy to establish the right to rule. Especially since parthenogenetic reproduction does not allow much variance normally. This could affect all aspects of social organization, possibly leading to a very stratified society.
Stealing and incorporating genetic material into ones own line to allow offspring to pass the governmental or educational entry tests is one social possibility. A less savory social aspect of this concept could eventually lead to the idea of mixing certain "lesser" lines of genetics into the ruling lines, thus diluting them; causing them to become less pure, or in effect, to lose power. Males might be a potentially ideal delivery mechanism. Sabatoge via seduction.
[Answer]
Why would they invent males ?
There is no logical reason to do so.
**1)** They lack the concept of sexual dimorphism. What would be a male for them?
Same if someone never sees a different sex or hear about it for their entire life, how can they realize a different sex is possible and real?
It happens in real life too, Nobody is willing to recognize the existence of the 6 biological different sexes until they see them. After all we only know our sex after noticing there's a difference(why would you need to label yourself differently from something you ignore?) sometimes even after people see there are other 4 biological sexes after the two famous ones, they don't believe it for moral and religious reasons. Example: **God made us this way, anything different is Satanic/Nature made us this way, anything different is sickness**
Or because they are the minority and minorities either can't exist or have to be crushed down. Even individuals of different sex from male or female refuse it because being different it's humiliating.
Same happens with this modern ideology of gender used by teenagers, once people realize there can exist an endless amount of genders, they either start to create their owns out of fantasy or identify with some other new abstract genders.
**2)** For reproduction females would be more useful given sexual reproduction is even possible, Females or Intersex individuals have to be compatible with the received sperm, Males or Parthans don't therefore reproduction with **male x parthan** would be harder than **intersex/female x parthan**.
**3)** They reproduce by cloning, this slows down evolution and if they are like us humans then they don't want to evolve. Why would they take the risk to evolve into a mosquito and lose everything they have ? Evolution happens only when there's immense environmental stress and can transform organisms in almost anything. We were just worms at the begin,then fish.. then lizards, then rats and only lately monkeys. In a society like ours they would really have no reason to abandon the easy life and risk everything cause evolution doesn't care what you enjoy, but about what could make your offspring reproduce more than you did. I mean, do you see anyone who wants to evolve, to change? They say so but every time someone is born with tails,fins,fur or scaled skin it's called a sickness not evolution.
**4)** Males as we know them are more likely to die.
-Social threat. Every society abuses/murders/tortures/sacrifices 3 times more males than females, even in countries where sexism female oppression is holy like Middle-East, males are still being killed more.
-Social stress. Boys are pushed with force from society to be Strong, Big , Rich, Courageous and sexually dominant. Reason for men to suicide twice more than women.
-Nature. Men are biologically supposed and required by the ecosystem to die younger and in massive quantities every year, Having as much females as males or even more males than females would be dangerous for the specie, if men lived globally as much as females and had their same safety then Humanity would be probably doomed or evolution would resolve the problem again by increasing the dangers for men even more, like lesser lifespan and weaker immune system or females with bacteria that kill most male sperm cells.
**5)** It's simply not feasible they would need to change the genetics of every existing Phartan to make them able to reproduce with the male ones.
It would be easier to create a new specie with different sexes but they would need to get the idea of how the hell would every sex look like from other animals.
In the end the only reason they would have to create another organism compatible to their specie but with different characteristics would be to use it as slave.
This organism would need to be stronger or smarter than the rest and willing to be dominated, it will lack any sex because it wouldn't be needed.
It will be a cheap organism with short lifespan that clones itself in great quantities, would be the perfect tool for everything.
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[Question]
[
Upon a given landmass I drew a lake, and surrounded it with small ranges of mountains and plateaux, so making it an enormous endorheic basin. The drainage from the highlands would collect upon this immense lowland amidst them and form a body of water nearly twice as large as the Caspian Sea, though many of the mountains would also serve as sources for impluviums for rivers which would flow in the opposite direction of the lake, running into the landmass, then the ocean.
The reason I wanted to create this lake was so it could be at the centre of several civilizations and societies, who would rely on its water and the mineral resources from its mountains and the outward flowing rivers originating in them. The lake would also serve as a hub of trade and diplomacy, though the mountainous nature of its bounds would make these endeavours less eminent than they would have been in flatter terrain.
Would it be geologically feasible for this lake and highlands to form, and would there be any grave consequences to the development of large human communities around it?
[Answer]
## How the Caspian Sea came to be the Caspian Sea
A very long time ago, from about 200 million years ago to about 12 million years ago, there was an ocean (or a sea, or several seas, depending on the time frame) separating Eurasia from Africa (or their predecessors, Laurasia and Gondwana). We call it the [Tethys Ocean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethys_Ocean).
As Africa began approaching and colliding with Eurasia, the Tethys Ocean shrank, and lofty mountains rose -- the Alps, the Carpathians , the Taurus and Antitaurus, the Caucasus. Eventually, the Tethys Ocean closed; the Caspian, the Black Sea, and some eastern parts of the Mediterranean sea sit on oceanic crust and are the last remains of the once mighty ocean.
So here you have it.
The land-locked Caspian, surrounded by mountains on two-and-a-half-plus another-half sides, is a piece of an ancient ocean, which was closed by the slow but inexorable movement of tectonic plates; the same movement which closed up the ancient ocean being responsible for rising the mountains on the western, southern and south-eastern sides of the sea.
(Until yesterday, that is, until about 10,000 years ago, the Black Sea, another piece of the ancient Tethys ocean, was also land-locked. Then the ice melted, sea levels rose, and the Mediterranean broke through the Bosporus.)
[Answer]
Certainly it's possible. Indeed, something fairly close to it has actually existed.
The Great Basin of western North America is a closed (endorheic) basin bordered by mountains & plateaus. Though the lowlying parts are mostly desert today, with a few remnant lakes such as Pyramid, Walker, and the Great Salt lake, during the Pleistocene period the climate was cooler and wetter, so that large parts of the basin were filled with lakes.
Notably there were lakes Lahontan: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Lahontan> and Bonneville <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Bonneville> as well as many smaller lakes: <https://pubs.nbmg.unr.edu/Extent-Pleistocene-lakes-p/mf2323.htm>
So increase the rainfall a bit more (perhaps by lowering the Sierra Nevada), and you have a large interconnected lake system. You also have many islands, allowing for diverse cultures &c.
[Answer]
That's probably what would have happened if an object comparable in size with the one which produced the [Chicxulub crater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater) would have hit in the mid of a continent instead than in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
For example the [Vredefort crater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vredefort_crater)
>
> The original crater is estimated to have had a diameter of roughly 300 km (190 mi), but that has been eroded. It would have been larger than the 250 km (160 mi) Sudbury Basin and the 180 km (110 mi) Chicxulub crater. The remaining structure, the "Vredefort Dome", consists of a partial ring of hills 70 km (43 mi) in diameter, and is the remains of a dome created by the rebound of rock below the impact site after the collision.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/J26rW.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zyTuR.png)
As for the consequences of such an impact, I guess it's not hard to tell they would dramatic in the very short term.
[Answer]
Lakes can form in the strangest of places.
Just as an example, remember [Crater Lake in Oregon](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145370/the-ups-and-downs-of-crater-lake), which sits at 6200 feet altitude, has no inflow or outflow, and sits at an altitude significantly above the average surrounding terrain.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/i3Qzt.jpg)
As others have mentioned, size is not a problem,
as the Caspian sea with a surface area of more than 371 000 km² shows.
[Answer]
**The Great Lakes?**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kmMvx.gif)
Sizewise, in aggregate they are close to the Caspian; 94,000 vs 143,000 square miles. The drainage basin of the Great Lakes is 295,000 square miles. Plus they are fresh and drinkable. They are endorheic. They are and were at the juncture of several societies.
But a very frustrating thing is the provenance of this fine topo map. This is from Pinterest. It is labeled with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory but on that site I could not find the original image!
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[
I'm considering writing a story taking place in a base on Saturn's closest moon, [Pan](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/saturn-moons/pan/in-depth/). The premise for the base is that they got Earth-normal gravity by setting the moon spinning, causing anything on the surface to fly outward due to centrifugal force (or centripetal, whatever you'd like to call it). I've calculated that it should need to make a full rotation once every four minutes (1.5 degrees per second) to have Earth-normal gravity.
However, I have a few technical questions about this that I would be grateful for answers to.
1. **How would we get Pan spinning in the first place?** I've seen the questions about getting planets spinning, but they don't really answer my questions. Pan is much smaller than any planet, and I assume would be much easier to get spinning. I don't really need an exact scientific explanation of how we'd do this, but if you have an idea of what type of solution it would be, that would be awesome. If necessary, we could have half of Earth-normal gravity and spin the planet slower.
2. **Am I correct in assuming that different latitudes would have different "gravitational force"?** The observed centrifugal force is dependent on the radius, and as you get closer to the poles, I would assume that would mean you're closer to the axis and therefore would have less gravity?
3. **How would tidal forces affect the base?** Pan is a tidally-locked moon, and I assume it would slowly work its way back to that equilibrium over time. The equations were way too complicated for me; am I correct in guessing that this would be at a timescale so slow as to be negligible? *Edit: Renan's comment answered this part*
Thanks y'all! Any help is appreciated.
[Answer]
**Reality check: This will tear the moon apart.**
You have a big problem - if your moon is rotating so fast that centrifugal force overcomes gravity, there is no net force holding your moon together. When spinning so fast, all objects on the surface of the moon at the equator feel a net upward pull of 1g, and that includes *the surface itself*.
A moon/planet is basically a big pile of gravel that's held together only by its own gravity. If the centrifugal force is so strong that it overcomes natural gravity and reverses its direction, parts of the moon are going to get flung off as well. If a person on the moon's surface falls up, so does the patch of ground he's standing on!
Objects that produce artificial gravity by spinning must be held together very strongly, or else the spinning will tear the object itself apart. The intermolecular forces of a metal space station bind the hull together tightly enough that it won't fall apart under 1g of stress. But when you have a moon that's only held together by gravity, it cannot withstand any more force than the gravity of the moon itself provides. If the body is held together by more than just gravity (if it's a single fused rock, for example), the body will be more resistant to disintigration, but that typically won't apply for large celestial objects.
To make this work, you'll have to cover most of the moon with a strong shell that will catch upward-flying moon chunks. The apparent gravity will vary from 1 Earth-g upward at the equator to 1 Pan-g downward at the poles, so everywhere that has a net upward force will require a backstop, or else that chunk of moon will just fly off into space. But if you can build something of that scale, you don't need the moon inside in the first place. In fact, you'd be better off without it, since you don't have the moon gravity working against your centrifugal force, and you can also make a cylindrical shell with constant gravity (an [O'Neill cylinder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder)) rather than a spherical shell with gravity that varies by latitude.
TL;DR: If you spin a moon fast enough to make apparent gravity go "up", you will destroy the moon.
See also: [How fast would a planet have to be spinning for the centrifugal/centripetal force to cancel out the force of gravity near the equator?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/40189/how-fast-would-a-planet-have-to-be-spinning-for-the-centrifugal-centripetal-forc)
[Answer]
**How to get it spinning: Ice Jets**
The innermost moons of Saturn are composed of a rocky interior surrounded by an ice shell ([probably](https://phys.org/news/2015-08-moons-saturn.html)). There's a fair chance that Pan is composed of just too much ice to properly use but we'll ignore that. It also looks like a ravioli, but that actually works to out benefit, somewhat. Anyway, in order to get it spinning, the easiest thing to do is to have some form of surface propulsion, and luckily the fuel needed to cause the propulsion is right there on the surface - the ice shell.
Essentially, what you want to do is take a pair of heat rays - that is, devices with can shoot a beam of heated particles - and place them on either side of the planet's bulging equatorial ridge and fire at opposites ends. Something like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/S0guL.png)
The large gray thing is the planet (yes, it does look like a ravioli), the light gray things are your heat rays, and the red would be the heat ray itself. The heat applied to either end should release powerful amount of steam that would, given sufficient amounts of heat, start rotating the planet.
[Answer]
It would be a big project to get an entire moon the size of Pan spinning rapidly.
Pan has dimensions of 34.4 × 31.4 × 20.8 kilometers. That is enormous for a space station or a space base, though perhaps not so vast for a space colony.
So it would take probably millions or billions of times as much energy to spin Pan as it would take to spin a normal sized space station designed for an ordinary, typical purpose. Unless a story requires a giant space colony on Pan there would be no need to spin Pan to provide Earth normal gravity.
Astronomical bodies are also held together only by their gravity. If an astronomical body like Pan is spun to produce a centrifugal force of 1 g, many times its surface gravity and escape velocity, it will fly apart.
So it makes more sense to build a space base on Pan that largely has Pan's natural very low surface gravity. And some parts of some of the buildings, or some entire buildings, could be spun like giant centrifuges to provide 1 g at the rims of the spinning sections or buildings.
But if an inhabited base at the orbit of Pan is what is desired, that base does not have to actually be on Pan, merely in Pan's orbit.
A space station, rotating to provide 1 g at the rim, could be built in orbit around Pan or in Pan's L4 or L5 Lagrangian position.
[Answer]
[Halfthawed already answered the first part of the question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/183133/21222), so I'll add a bit more info:
>
> Am I correct in assuming that different latitudes would have different "gravitational force"? The observed centrifugal force is dependent on the radius, and as you get closer to the poles, I would assume that would mean you're closer to the axis and therefore would have less gravity?
>
>
>
Yes. [That happens on Earth too](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth#Latitude):
>
> The surface of the Earth is rotating, so it is not an inertial frame of reference. At latitudes nearer the Equator, the outward centrifugal force produced by Earth's rotation is larger than at polar latitudes. This counteracts the Earth's gravity to a small degree – up to a maximum of 0.3% at the Equator – and reduces the apparent downward acceleration of falling objects.
>
>
> The second major reason for the difference in gravity at different latitudes is that the Earth's equatorial bulge (itself also caused by centrifugal force from rotation) causes objects at the Equator to be farther from the planet's centre than objects at the poles. Because the force due to gravitational attraction between two bodies (the Earth and the object being weighed) varies inversely with the square of the distance between them, an object at the Equator experiences a weaker gravitational pull than an object at the poles.
>
>
> In combination, the equatorial bulge and the effects of the surface centrifugal force due to rotation mean that sea-level gravity increases from about 9.780 m/s2 at the Equator to about 9.832 m/s2 at the poles, so an object will weigh approximately 0.5% more at the poles than at the Equator.
>
>
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For people and a base, that would barely be perceptible. Not only because the difference is small, but also because in Pan's low gravity it could be negligible for everyday things. But for spacecraft launching and landing it might make a difference in fuel costs.
---
>
> How would tidal forces affect the base? Pan is a tidally-locked moon, and I assume it would slowly work its way back to that equilibrium over time. The equations were way too complicated for me; am I correct in guessing that this would be at a timescale so slow as to be negligible?
>
>
>
The base would barely be affected by tidal forces, just like buildings on Earth are barely affected by the Moon's gravity (at least directly, though... Build by the shoreline and the high tide can spoil your fun). As for equilibrium, planets and moons take millions to billions of years to decelerate into tidal lock. If you can make a moon spin within a lifetime, you don't need to worry about it stopping within that lifetime.
[Answer]
**Mount a motor on the proposed spin axis and produce torque**
Imagine a motor which spins a heavy bar. The bar spins fast. The motor is powered as you like. The motor is anchored in the center of Pan.
The spinning motor exerts torque on Pan because for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In addition to spinning the bar against the moon it is also spinning the moon against the bar.
This is why helicopters need a tail rotor in addition to the big central rotor.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail_rotor>
>
> The tail rotor is a smaller rotor mounted so that it rotates
> vertically or near-vertically at the end of the tail of a traditional
> single-rotor helicopter. The tail rotor's position and distance from
> the center of gravity allow it to develop thrust in the same direction
> as the main rotor's rotation, to counter the torque effect created by
> the main rotor
>
>
>
Without the tail rotor the body of the helicopter would start to spin in a direction opposite to the main rotor, eventually negating the lift produced by the main rotor.
Your spinning torque motor will spin much faster than Pan ever will, and so over time you can spin the planet as fast as you like. You do not need to throw reaction mass off the moon to make it spin. I leave as an exercise for the reader the math describing how long this will take for various spin speeds / bar weights.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[Is it physically possible for a planet to have seasons of different lengths?](/questions/176/is-it-physically-possible-for-a-planet-to-have-seasons-of-different-lengths)
(21 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
I'm intrigued by the topos of *varying season lengths* brought to us in the Game of Thrones universe. I think it makes for a brilliant and versatile backdrop for the story, and it is something I'd like to explore in different settings also.
Here is what we know about the seasons of the Game of Thrones world, from observations and anecdotal evidence in the books and series:
* The **seasons vary greatly in length**, and happen somewhat infrequently.
* There was a **summer that lasted for at least 9 years** (the one coming to an end during the story told).
* Supposedly there were **winters that lasted for 10 years**.
* There still exists the **notion of a "year"** - suggesting that even within a long winter/summer/... there are still some regular yearly fluctuations to be observed.
* It seems the cycle is **hard to predict** - otherwise the Citadel/the maesters would probably have figured it out. This doesn't mean that it has to be *random*, but suggests that the cycle is at least long/complicated enough that a prediction is not obvious to observants with mediaeval means.
* For all I know the whole season-length variation theme is mostly prominent on a single continent (Westeros) - but it could be global also, with other locations simply being less extremely affected by it due to generally milder climates.
**I'm looking for a science-based answer to how these big variations in season length could come to be.**
* An answer should cover as many of the above points as possible, while being rooted in science. (I'm aware that the GoT universe allows for magic, but I'm not interested in that.)
* I'm also looking for answers that will keep up the varying season lengths in perpetuity - and not just a series of disconnected freak incidents.
My orbital mechanics knowhow is a bit rusty, but I could imagine that some combination of elliptic oscillation and precession, maybe combined with an eccentric orbit could be behind this? Could this work to the extremes shown above? Can somebody confirm or deny this possibility? Or there could be entirely different natural phenomenons responsible of course...
[Answer]
The year is related to the motion of the planet around its star. When the star are back to a certain position, one says 1 year has passed.
To account for season length which are in the range you ask, you could have a sort of [variable star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_star) with small variation of intrinsic luminosity on an irregular period.
When the luminosity is at its peak, you have the Y years long summers, when it is at is bottom, you have the X years long winter.
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I'd suggest something along the lines of El Niño/La Niña - complex, hard to predict phenomena that can minimize or intensify global weather patterns. For Earth, they can last 2 to 7 years, and effect all seasons across multiple continents. Granted, they don't completely delete seasons, but it's not hard to imagine their effect being more pronounced and/or longer lasting on a planet with different enough geography and oceanic currents. There also isn't anything to say that a world can't have more than one of this sort of phenomenon, and their overlapping cycles could make changes even more intense and less predictable.
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The seasons are driven by complex interactions, and while most answers already given here include a piece of the puzzle, none paint a complete picture, so I'll try to integrate some of the major factors.
The [seasons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Season) on any planet (not just Earth) are governed primarily by the following characteristics:
* The tilt of the planet's rotational axis relative to its orbital plane (obliquity of the ecliptic)
[This is the main driver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_Sun_angle_on_climate) of seasons on Earth and affects both the duration of sunlight received in a day (the hemisphere more exposed to the sun will receive more hours of sunlight) and the directness of that sunlight (which affects absorption and reflection). The degree of tilt affects the relative strength of the seasons; for instance, if Earth's obliquity of the ecliptic was at or above 45 degrees, then when one hemisphere was tilted toward the sun it would experience dramatically longer, hotter days, while the opposite hemisphere would endure equally long nights.
* [Variation in axial tilt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles)
This plays almost no role in Earth's climate as our axis of rotation is stabilized by our Moon. If we lacked that stabilizing feature, Earth's axis would slowly wobble due to a variety of factors (sloshing of the ocean, flex in the crust, etc.) such that the tilt at one point in the orbit would not be the same at another point in the orbit. This could lead to significant variations in the length of seasons which may be difficult to predict.
* The eccentricity of the planet's orbit around its star (variation in distance from the star)
This directly affects how much solar energy is available to be absorbed by the planet. Earth has a nearly circular orbit, so we see less than 7% variation in available sunlight between perihelion and aphelion and this mechanism is therefore [not a significant factor](https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast04jan_1/) in our climate. A more elliptical orbit would result in a much warmer average temperature when close to the parent star, as well as an increased orbital speed at that closer distance. Conversely, the average temperature would be much lower and the orbital speed slower at the greatest distance from the star.
This doesn't mean you'd have hotter, shorter summers and longer, colder winters, because summer and winter are mainly defined by axial tilt. A more eccentric orbit would affect the relative strength of the seasons. If the eccentric orbit was somehow *coupled* with variation in the planet's axial tilt, (e.g. the axial tilt wobbles once every 2 orbits, such that at perihelion on year 1 it might be summer in the north, and at the same point in the orbit on year 2 it's winter), then you might see more dramatic variations season length.
* Variation in the star's luminous output ([solar cycles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle), star type)
Stars are not static objects, and their luminous and spectral output varies depending on their size, type, age, and other factors our scientists have yet to fully understand. Our own Sun operates on a roughly 11-year cycle of sunspot activity which has been shown to influence the seasons. A more wild star, or a multi-star system, would have an even greater impact on the intensity and possibly the length of seasons.
* Variation in the absorptivity, heat capacity, emissivity, and reflectivity of the planet (ability to capture, store, emit, and reflect heat from the parent star)
Earth is roughly 75% water, which absorbs sunlight readily and stores heat easily. Our clouds reflect light readily, but can also prevent heat from escaping back into space. As clouds move across the planet's surface, and as the planet rotates on its axis, different materials are exposed to the sun, the local reflectivity and absorptivity changes, wind and evaporation come into play, and we get the complex interactions that we call weather. This variation in the planet's ability to absorb and release heat is possibly the second-greatest driver of the seasons on Earth, and it is so staggeringly complex that many people still don't agree on how it works (climate change, anyone?).
Venus is locked in an endless, brutal summer, not because it is closer to the Sun, but because its own weather readily [absorbs heat but does not release it easily](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect). Mars, by contrast, is entombed in eternal winter largely because it has almost no atmosphere to speak of, and thus can't hold onto what little sunlight it receives.
Mixing and matching the above factors could yield a variety of unusual climates and seasons, without the need for bizarre celestial circumstances or magic. Although, it is fair to say that using the weather to justify unusual weather may require a bit of handwavium since that subject is so complex.
[Answer]
Our own sun has an 11 year cycle of sunspot activity. This means it is 5 1/2 years from minimum to maximum activity. It could be some solar cycle that causes the season lengths.
The reason we have seasons is because of the tilt of the earth's axis. Earth's orbit is like 99.9% circular, and doesn't contribute as significantly to the seasons. This almost implies that a more elliptical orbit could be catastrophic. It could be possible with precession though, if it was close to the length of the year it could cause long seasons. It would more likely be very regular and periodic though in that case. Earth's precession takes 26000 years per cycle.
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Many good answers here, but for a real world example, you want to look at [Kepler 413-b](https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/04feb_wobble).
The tilt of the planet's axis varies by about 30 degrees over an 11 earth year cycle. (61 of its years). Astronomers believe the phenomenon is caused because it orbits a binary star on a tilted orbital plane. If you take the same phenomenon on a planet that orbits wider and slower in a system's habitable zone, you'd have winter and summer swap about once every 30 years, but during the years where the axis lines up with the star you would not experience seasonal change at all resulting in several years of winter at the poles and several years of summer near the equator.
[Answer]
Your planet does not have seasons based on a "standard" orbit around a single central star. For example:
* If you have a binary star system, sometimes you will pass from "close to Star A" to "close to Star B", for an extended Summer. Or, with a "hot" and a "cool" star, the season lengths will vary based on the ratio between how fast your planet orbits the pair, and how fast your Stars orbit each other
* If your planet's orbit is perturbed by massive objects in the solar system (e.g. nearby gas giants) then it may not be an oval - sometimes you are pushed into a closer orbit (longer summers), sometimes you are thrown out into a wider one (longer winters)
* Similar to the above, if your Seasons are instead partially determined by [tidal heating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_heating) then the other objects in your solar system can cause unusual patterns per the ratio of their orbits, repeating over centuries instead of months (e.g. a 400 year cycle of long and short seasons - long enough that records can be made, but too long to be "in living memory")
[Answer]
# [El Niño](https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/ocean/el-nino)
>
> El Niño and La Niña are terms which describe the biggest fluctuation in the Earth's climate system and can have consequences across the globe. The fluctuation sees changes in the sea-surface temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean which occur every few years.
>
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> These events are due to strong and extensive interactions between the ocean and atmosphere. They are associated with widespread changes in the climate system that last several months, and can lead to significant human impacts affecting things such as infrastructure, agriculture, health and energy sectors.
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In England we basically only get winter in El Niño years, otherwise it remains mild and damp and snows only on high ground.
If you give them a weather cycle similar to El Niño but is more pronounce and runs on a cycle over several years it's possibly not unreasonable for northern climes to have winter snows that don't melt for years on end or completely miss a winter here and there.
[Answer]
The binary star hypothesis is seconded by astronomers. But the configuration is a bit unusual to produce
>
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WZBW8.png)
>
> Motion of the planet above and beyond the orbital plane of the stars in the Sitnikov problem. x-axis shows time in units of revolution of the primaries. y-axis gives distance from planet above and beyond the orbital plane. The plot shows motion of the planet for three different initial conditions. In the beginning, the motion is very similar, but after about 33 revolutions of the primaries, first differences appear and after 60 revolutions the three initial conditions develop into totally different types of motion. The red line shows a planet moving very far away from the stars in one direction; the blue line shows the same behaviour with a planet moving away in the other direction. In both cases a very long and possible endless winter would begin. The black line shows a planet that continues to have a more or less regular sequence of seasons.
>
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The planet would have to be
>
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mo8vb.jpg)
> Configuration of the Sitnikov problem. m1 and m2 are two stars and m3 is a planet, moving perpendicular to the orbital plane of the stars.
>
>
> Now that we know which explanations do not work, we want to introduce the one astronomical configuration which is able to successfully account for the chaotic seasons of Westeros: the “Sitnikov Problem” (Sitnikov 1961). It is a sub-case of the elliptical, restricted three-body problem. Due to the complexity of the possible kinds of motions in this system, it is – despite its simple mathematical formulation – a well and long studied, unique dynamical model in celestial mechanics.
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Let there be three masses m1, m2 and m3, where m1 and m2 are called “primaries” (i.e. the stars) and m3 is a smaller (and in the mathematical model massless) body (i.e. a planet). If we let the two stars orbit under their mutual gravitational influence, they will both move around their common barycenter. Now, let us assume a coordinate system that has its origin in that center of mass. If we put the planet exactly in the barycenter, it will be influenced by the gravity of the two stars (but because it is thought as massless, it itself will not disturb the motion of the stars) and follow an orbit along a straight line through the center of mass and perpendicular to the barycenter of the stars (see Figure 1).
This "Sitnikov problem" is concluded with
>
> from the many explanations brought forward by other authors to explain the seasons in the world of “Game of Thrones”, none is able to satisfyingly address all details. There is only one astronomical explanation that works and that is the celestial mechanical case of the Sitnikov problem. Two stars and a planet that orbits along a straight line perpendicular to the orbital plane of the stars can build a planetary system, that has all the properties to reproduce any desired sequence of seasons. Not only that, but due to the nonlinear properties of the Sitnikov configuration and the mathematical theorem of Moser it is proven, that there is no sequence of seasons, however strange and obscure, that can not be found on a planet in such a system.
>
>
> We thus have solved once and for all the problems surrounding the question if and when “Winter is coming”.
>
>
>
From Florian Freistetter & Ruth Grützbauch: "Sitnikov in Westeros: How Celestial Mechanics finally explains why winter is coming in Game of Thrones", 2018 ([arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.11390))
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I second the "Binary Star" hypothesis.
If there is a system with two start that are wildly different in size, one of these stars will be the center of that system, orbited by everything (including the second star).
if the two stars were roughly equal size, they would orbit each other, but a massive and a dwarf star would have the massive star as a clear center.
now, this planet would track its' "year" by passage around the primary star, but the relative location of the secondary star will make a great difference to the overall temperature of said planet, making for extended summers if it is close, and extended winters when it is far away (especially is the planet is on the colder end of the "Goldilocks zone").
highly eccentric orbits for both the planet and the child star would mean differing relative speeds, which would make the "extended summer" and "extended winter" be of varying lengths throughout the centuries as well
[Answer]
A Binary star system in which they orbit each other relatively close to each other (thus from ground observers it appears as one star, hence the GoT universe) But the stars have vastly different solar outputs.
Star A: High solar radiation.
Star B: lower solar radiation.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PAooC.png)
Add in an elliptical orbit and the stars orbiting relatively slow you have the possibility of being aligned to the high output star for a multitude of years with a variance of cool and warm allowing recognition of a year. Then a shift starts to occur as you face the lower output star which blocks the higher radiation of Star A.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XSEKQ.png)
The people noting "winter is coming" are keen to the changes that happen when one star is passing the other, or in other words, when Star B fully eclipses Star A. this goes on for a 5 year period until the transition happens again where "Summer is coming" occurs. The transitional periods multiplied by the ellipse orbit allows for the infrequent 8-10 year timeframes between 'winter' and 'summer'
[Answer]
The best explanation I have seen for the unpredictability of seasons in the Game of Thrones universe, is that their world has rapid [Milankovitch Cycles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles).
As has been suggested in other answers, but not entirely explained, the Earth's ice-ages are driven by the interaction between several varying cycles. The most important of these are Precession, Axial Tilt, and Eccentricity.
Because the three cycles have very different periods, they align or misalign to create what would be a highly unpredictable pattern to those who do not have an understanding of the astronomical causes.
On Earth, these cycles take tens of thousands of years, so they are not obvious on the scale of human lifetimes, but if they each had much shorter periodicity, they would act in effect as a highly unpredictable seasonal cycle.
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Lets start with what we can rule out. Here on earth, the seasons depend on the axis tilt of earth to sun. That There is a bit of wobbling, but not enough for summers that last years. So what else can be responsible for varying season lengths?
* Different distance of sun and earth. Not very reasonable, why would the orbit change back and forth? (Elliptical orbit is no explanation, as 1 year = 1 full orbit)
* Different sun activity. Our sun is not a static shining light. It is a violent nuclear reaction. So maybe it could be explained by different activity of the sun.
* Global warming / cooling. There could be a lifecycle of species that have effects on climate change that the citadel knows nothing about.
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A planet with no moon would wobble on its axis much more than Earth does. This could create rapid climatological changes that people living on that planet might perceive as changes to the length or quality of their "seasons".
Earth's seasons are regular and predictable because our axial tilt doesn't wobble that much, so as the Earth revolves around the sun the amount of sunlight received at any latitude during any month tends to remain constant. A planet with a rapid and notable wobble to its axial tilt would not have that regularity and predictability.
Specific to the Game of Thrones world, it is my understanding that their odd seasons began when their moon was destroyed by a cosmic impact. That science isn't great, because their moon was only shattered and not utterly destroyed, but it may be Martin's intention that the season "problem" is related to the moon "problem".
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In my climate science course the explanation of ice ages in the quaternary period was epicycles of precession of:
* the tilt of the Earth (going back and forth between various amounts of tilt)
* the eccentricity of the orbit (how close the orbit is to a circle)
* the direction of the Earth's tilt relative to its eccentricity
Right now the northern hemisphere has its winter at the point in its orbit where it's closest to the sun. Hence, the winter is slightly less intense. Every few dozen thousand years, these "line up" and the northern hemisphere has winter at the farthest point in its orbit. The winter gets more extreme, enough for an ice age. The focus is the northern hemisphere because the southern hemisphere has so much ocean moderating the temperature and preventing these extremes.
(there are more details and my recollection is hazy, so please forgive some technical errors)
I think a faster, more extreme version of this phenomenon could work. So every ten or so years, the tilt and eccentricity line up. On top of that, the eccentricity and tilt would be varying in intensity, causing more or less extreme versions of the long summer+winter pattern. Within these epicycles, the planet is still orbiting and still causing annual seasons.
I don't know if this more extreme version is physically possible.
This doesn't solve the "maesters can't predict it", since Wikipedia says that [axial precession has been analyzed accurately for a long time.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession) Maybe there are lots of feedback loops: trapped methane, albedo, forest cover, etc., that would vary the length of each period within each cycle. Maybe the rates of precession of each phenomena are changing from other astronomical bodies.
This could combine with the El Nino idea; maybe the particular area gets a warm current from somewhere (like Europe does) but some of the orbital cycles will sometimes stop or reverse this current (if the axial precession is severe enough, there might be noticeable changes in Coriolis forces driving the current!).
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**Volcanic Activity**
At least one proposed cause of Earth's own [Little Ice Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age) is [a spike in major volcanic eruptions](https://earthsky.org/earth/volcanoes-might-have-triggered-the-little-ice-age)
A planet without axial tilt, or very minor axial tilt would normally appear to not have seasons. Significant changes in volcanic activity would introduce artificial 'seasons' that could last many years.
An increase in volcanic activity would indicate the start of winter. The length and severity of each winter would depend on the amount and type of materials released in the eruptions.
On the converse, a decrease in volcanic activity would bring about summer.
**The Long Spring and Brutal Summer**
Imagine a planet with such volcano moderated seasons on the inner edge of its star's Goldilocks zone. When the volcanic activity is at a minimum, the planet would boil, huge tropical storms would rage in some areas, while others suffer drought. When the activity is at a maximum, the planet would freeze.
The ideal situation then is to be in the Long Spring: Some steady volcanic activity, not enough to bring about winter, but enough to prevent summer.
] |
[Question]
[
We have a world in the first age (think Atlantis without tech but with magic, a civilization with wealth, overflow of resources, no sickness, no pain, a civilization with more power than everyone else, enough food for everyone, never a bad harvest, never a parent or child lost to child birth, weapons forged by the gods themselves. Warriors return home from battle since the armor is invincible.), gods walks the earth, assist the humanoids in the world with different tasks in return for sacrifices and faith (the life force of the gods).
Gods and humanoids live in synergy, (Gods helps the humans thrive, humans believe in gods, gods get power from faith, power is used to help humans, full circle)
There are no evil gods nor good gods; gods are filling a purpose. God of life, grants good births and healthy children. God of death carries brave people over to the other side safe. God of harvest helps in bad years etc. God of war gives legendary weapons and armor to people. And the weave of the gods provides the magic in the world.
Now let's say that these gods someday just disappear, in an instant, something (to be decided) happens in the plane of the gods so they all disappear (since they technically cannot die). This means they no longer walk among men, no longer provide good births and strong children, no more good harvest in bad years, and dead people are no longer guaranteed safe passage to the other side. But most of all, all magic is gone, no more healing spells, no more fast travels no more than "what we would have" in a fantasy setting.
This is resulting in crops that were sustained by the gods no longer growing to the extent they might have (good crops still grow good), but bad crops dry out, get pests, fungus. Weapons are just steel, no longer imbued by the power of the gods, armor is just thin plate sheets (swords are still sharp and armor still protects, but no better than ordinary armor). People wounded are getting ill from infections an can no longer be instantly healed.
Potential other effects:
Priests and Clerics are losing their offices, (might even be called frauds). People start fighting for food. Warriors who were invincible start questioning if it is worth the risk. Cities start getting overrun by wild life and other fantasy creatures that didn't want to attack before. And with reduced power of the military both in strength and numbers, that could be a problem.
***Q: Would this event be enough to create a post-apocalyptic event? (Analog to fallout-fantasy)***
(For reference, the story is in the third age, where the first is the golden age, the second is rebuilding, and the third is the current, haven't gotten any cool names for the ages yet.)
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## Humans will not survive.
Each of the analogues presented by previous answer is, IMO, wrong. They keys thing is, humans lack knowledge. Bad crops will die you say, but good crops will survive. But humans don't know the difference between good crops and bad crops, because *all* crops were good before. Noone has any experience with seeding seeds from "bad crops". Noone has ever used irrigation to water their crops. They not only lack the knowledge of how to build an irrigation system -- they even lack the knowledge that there is a benefit for them. Crops would always grow everywhere, regardless on how good or bad the soil was, and noone has ever used manure on their fields; there doesn't exist any knowledge that this has a benefit. Same for health care. Even people never were sick, noone has even an inkling of a clue on how to deal with it.
People will be worse off than in any zombie invasion you can imagine. And that's due to the lack of knowledge on how to exist.
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While the collapse of the preexisting social order is quite plausible, total extinction is pretty unlikely. Here's a likely end-of-civilisation-inducing scenario. It won't do anything drastic like wipe all life off the face of the earth, but it'll probably do pretty well in dragging humans into a dark age:
## Wannabe Gods
The absence of the gods creates what we'd call a market imbalance. Once it's noticed, sooner or later the thought will enter human heads: why not **become** the gods? Someone has to fill the gap in service coverage, right?
Priests will come up with all kinds of explanations to justify all kinds of convoluted rituals, but in the end it'll just boil down to finger pointing: they(worshippers of another god) dunnit. Warriors would become tyrants who rule over the common folk by force. No matter their background, they'll all claim to "make the world godly again" but fail to actually do so. In true medieval fashion, supposed rituals of ascension would probably involve copious amounts of depravity/carnage, like bathing in the blood of a thousand innocents killed.
Cue the fragmentation and break down of society as warbands led by self-proclaimed Prophets and God-Emperors and such carve the land up and declare holy war on each other. The line between clergy and warlords would probably cease to exist here. The madness will last until people truly accept that the gods are gone for good, but that can take quite a while as concrete evidence of their (past) existence and influence is plentiful
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The answer to this depends on details that are not in the question. This really depends 100% on what the humans do while they are in synergy with the gods, and how the gods actually help them.
Try this as an experiment. Get a friend and find a door. Have your friend on the outside of the door and put yourself on the inside. Now close the door and kind of lean against it, so that you're pushing on the door in the opening direction, but it's held closed by the latch. Use the door to prop yourself up a bit. You'll be here a while. When you least expect it, the friend opens the door suddenly.
Did you fall? Or did you just stumble?
Now let's repeat this experiment. Only now, lean a bit harder into the door, and we're going to do a task. Repeatedly take your right shoe off and put it back on. This is a hard task to do while standing. Not everyone can do it without losing balance. But it's pretty easy to do while leaning against the door.
Now what happens to you when your friend opens the door? I highly recommend having some padding on the other side so that falling doesn't hurt.
So the real question is whether your society chooses to just lean on the gods, or if your society relies on them to stay standing. This is very society dependent. No two societies will really answer the same way.
Consider the USA. I'd say we lean pretty heavily on the internet. If it were to disappear, we'd stumble pretty hard. It'd be bad news. But we'd probably roll with it. We'd probably catch ourselves.
Now consider what would happen if our power disappeared. All fossil fuels and all existing renewable electricity devices vanish. I think we're going to do a lot worse than stumble. Our entire agricultural system depends on electricity and diesel fuel. There will be mass starvation, and that tends to earn the "apocalypse" title rather quickly in most people's vernacular.
Do your gods bring to the table something like the internet? Or is it being treated more like electricity and fossil fuels?
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## Unlikely (but not impossible)
You could just make a parallel with both 1929 and 2008 crises. The market was screwed up and hell broke loose because of that. Of course the scale of these events is nothing compared to not being able to produce food or have healthy children, but they were, in a way, cataclysmic events in their own proportions.
But the point is that people recovered from that.
The world didn't end just because its financial bedrock was crushed. It was bad, people lost their homes, unemployment skyrocketed, suicides, etc. It took time but eventually things got back to some degree of normality in the years that followed.
Humans are hard to beat. Unless gods and magic are something humans can't live without (meaning no medicine to replace healing spells, no horses and carriages to replace teleportation, no agriculture techniques to guarantee food production, etc), they should be fine.
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There are two aspects in this answer, a short-term one and a long-term one.
At short term, right after the disappearance of the gods, you would expect a lot of faithful followers of these gods to pray for their return, as praying and sacrificing as been the best way to proceed in case of emergency and crisis ever since people remember and tell tales. Gradually, more and more would lose faith in the gods' return, as time passes and crises amass: more death in child birth or children dying at young age, crop harvest failing maybe not in the first, but in one of the following years resulting in starvation, emigration, uprisals and civil war. You cannot support as large cities and militaries as before. People will emigrate to the country side, trying to scavenge food or steal from the farmers surrounding the cities who will have to defend themselves and their remaining crops.
You can take the decline of the roman empire and its fall under the onset of gothic tribes desparately migrating westwards driven by nomadic tribes conquering their lands as a historic example. This has basically set back the economic and cultural development on the European continent by centuries. Although it was not an apocalyse, it possibly appeared so to the people living at that time, constantly starving and running for their lives.
How well your society can recover, will depend on external threats (as marauding trobes in the case of Ancient Rome) as well as your people's willingness to help out one another. If people are rather willing to suffer personal disadvantages for the sake of 'the greater good', as the survival of their people, e.g. paying high taxes to support the poor in society, offering public hygiene and basic medical service to everyone, public schooling etc., every young man or even woman serving in the military or the public services for some time in their lives as a service to society, then you can buffer the impacts much better than if people fight only for themselves, abandoning all mercy, compassion and support for the weaker ones when faced with hunger, civil unrest and the loss of their beloved gods.
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**It would be rough for the humans. It is described in the Book of Genesis.**
Eden was nice. Delicious plants grew on their own. You did not have to do much. No clothes either!
<http://www.vatican.va/archive/bible/genesis/documents/bible_genesis_en.html>
>
> [2:8] And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and
> there he put the man whom he had formed. [2:9] Out of the ground the
> LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and
> good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and
> the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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But God got mad when the humans ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God did not leave, but he sent the humans away from His presence and from beautiful Eden He had maintained to a wasteland without divine maintenance. Humans would have to work. And they would have to suffer. Also they would have to deal with weeds.
>
> [3:17] And to the man he said, "Because you have listened to the voice
> of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you,
> 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in
> toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; [3:18] thorns and
> thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of
> the field. [3:19] By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until
> you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust,
> and to dust you shall return."
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>
>
Side note - I am interested to know who the LORD God is talking to in this passage.
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> [3:22] Then the LORD God said, "See, the man has become like one of
> us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and
> take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"--
>
>
>
In any case, so too your scenario of the gods departing. The gods leave and no longer maintain things and make life easy - an apocalypse in a sense. The humans will have to work harder, and suffer, and deal with weeds. Maybe it will make them stronger and craftier in the long run. It would be very hard in the short run.
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Yes. If the gods had specific jobs to do then they disappeared, the things they were supposed to do would fail. Crops would die, babies wouldn't be born, no wind and no warmth. The world would collapse.
[Answer]
**Humanoids or people.**
Let's first decide who we're talking about - humanoids or people. The way you describe the life of humanoids and Gods, it looks like the life of my favorite dog. I take care of it, it trusts me, and since it doesn't have the life experience of its wild relatives, it will have a hard time if I'm not around. But if you are talking of a human, then the main thing that was given to us by Gods is the right to choose, which eliminates complete guardianship. And what happened to the Gods of Atlantis which your story started with - this is very well described in the video "Atlantis. The elite in search of immortality." <https://allatra.tv/en/video/atlantis-the-elite-in-search-of-immortality> Unfortunately, at this time, we have to watch the video with subtitles, but it is well worth it.
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My Dino theme park business didn't end well and I reluctantly fall into depression and decided to go into suspended animation to seek a cure. 200 years later, a lady claims she works with the military woke me up and wants to award a contract of constructing 1000 space ready battleships within 5 years. My depression was instantly cured and promptly agreed to take the offer, after learning everything about spaceship building from many social media I need to look for a suitable site for the construction.
Would it be much faster and economical to do shipbuilding in low gravity region such as orbit compared to on the surface? The contract states that I must deliver the fleet battle ready on Mars surface within 10 years, propulsion engines to be provided by a sub contractor appointed by the client and the only details I received regarding the engine is that it has a specific impulse of 3 million Newton Seconds/Kg. If the economy has remain stagnant ever since fall of 2018, should I put my factories into orbit?
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There are several important factors here, like whether or not your space fleet has been designed to also operate in a gravity well, and whether or not you have access to a space elevator.
In general terms, if the answer to the first question is yes, and the second no, then you're far better building on the ground, so as to save the energy cost of getting construction tools and people into orbit. The amount of mass you have to lift is the key factor here and lifting the ship, as opposed to the mass of the ship AND the mass of the construction tools and people, is obviously smaller.
In almost every other scenario, you're better off building in orbit, especially if you have access to raw materials from low gravity locations like the asteroid belt. Being able to build the ship in space is actually essential if it's not designed to lift off a planet, and if you have a space elevator, it's easier and cheaper to lift the mass of the ship components up into space for assembly and launch.
Space is dangerous of course, and building in space means many different things can go wrong, so this may well be the most efficient solution in terms of energy cost, but your staff safety costs are likely to go through the roof, and the pool of people actually rated to build in space is much lower, meaning they'll demand much higher salaries.
In short, there are many considerations, energy cost being only one. I'd factor in (at a minimum) design constraints of the ships, raw material sourcing, availability of space elevators and the like, and whether or not your contract requires you to pay for the energy cost in the first place or fuel etc. is supplied.
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If the economy is 2018 levels, the only place in the solar system with anywhere near the industrial capacity to do this is on the Earth.
Creating a new industrial capacity using 2018 levels of tech (or, in an economy not much richer than 2018) in 10 years is a non-starter.
So there isn't another place to do it besides the Earth.
The result will be insanely expensive; the effort you require would be extensive enough to cause massive economic disruption to the Earth.
A single aircraft carrier is 4.5 billion dollars today. 1000 of those is 4.5 trillion dollars.
A single battleship cost 100 million dollars back in the 40s. The Apollo program cost 250x as much as a Battleship, and lifted far less.
So building 1000 aircraft carrier sized space ships and launching them out of Earth's gravity well should cost on the order of a quatrillion dollars; world GDP is 78.28 trillion today. So the entire world's economic output over 15 or so years.
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Building shipyards capable of constructing these in orbit or elsewhere in the solar system is going to take longer and/or cost more than even that.
Bootstrapping an industrial civilization is a really really long process. It is arguable if we've done it more than once on Earth, as almost all other industrial civilizations relied heavily on trade with the "parent" one during their growth. In every case it took far longer than 10 years. Even Japan's economic miracle after Perry "opened" their ports, leading up to it being a world power, took almost 100 years.
A non-terretrial industrial base wouldn't have Earth's ecology to fall back on, making the problem insanely worse (we rely on it for little things like food, air, wood, lack of vacuum welding, and a million other things).
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By far the easiest way to complete your contract is to suborn the government that hired you. Underestimate the difficulty by a factor of 50 or so; if they are earnest that will still get you a budget in-line with the entire world military. Use that to build *some* your combat capable space battleships, then conquor the Earth with them. Easier than fullfilling the contract.
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Judging from the parameters set out in your question, there doesn't seem to have been much change in the last 100 years.
* Economy is roughly at 2018 levels
* Your sub contractor is sticking you with Space Shuttle Booster engines to power your interplanetary warships (or equivalent)
* You have 5 years to build a thousand battleships
* You have to get said battleships to Mars within the next 10 years.
As far as contract terms goes, these aren't great. You may want to consider renegotiating your contract.
But a man who dreamed of building a dinosaur theme-park isn't concerned with whether something is practical, so let's get this done.
Space-construction is definitely your best option. Lifting anything of a decent size with those engines is going to be expensive, prone to failures and slow. Lifting 1000 battleships and then hurling them towards Mars is near impossible.
So we're going to need to get away from earth's gravity well. Earth orbit seems like the most logical location but in terms of large construction projects, it's pretty awful. In 2018 Kessler syndrome was a real risk and I suspect that 200 years haven't improved that by one bit. The last thing we want is for ship #999 to get hit by an old weather satellite, explode into a billion pieces and take out the other 998.
So let's move our operation out a little further. The Earth-Moon L1 Lagrange point seems ideal. It's close, the orbit is stable, not too much gravity and nice and close to the moon. Why close to the moon? because zero-G work is a pain in the ass and lifting parts from the earth is expensive. The solution for that is fairly simple: Build on the moon, launch to our assembly yard from there. And this is where we'll get creative with our contract stipulations.
You see, we need to build the ships in 5 years, but no-one specified that we needed to start *right now*. So we can spend a little over 4 years preparing. After all, we need to be at mars in 2218. Our engines and orbital mechanics indicate that we're not going to be able to afford a Brachistochrone transfer there, so it's all Hohmann all the the way for the fleet. Back of the envelope math tells us our launch window is mid-september 2227, which puts us on mars in march of 2228.
So:
2218: Hire future-spaceX to life a pile of equipment to the Earth-Moon L1 to build your space-drydock
2218: Build a construction facility on the moon for the heavy work.
2218 - 2222: Mine the ever loving crap out of the moon for raw materials.
2222: Start of contract: Launch partially assembled components to L1 and assemble them there
September 2227: Launch
March 2228: Conquer Mars
[Answer]
Based on our current technology, you will want to build the armada on the ground and assemble it in orbit.
Building on the ground allows you to utilize existing industrial and scientific infrastructure. You can also do quality control tests on the factory floor using well known techniques and methodologies, ensuring that the products will be ready to go upon launch and assembly.
The Armada is not going to be following the "rule of cool" once assembled in orbit, every spaceship will resemble an enlarged and weaponized version of the ISS with several powerful engine modules attached. This is a result of the requirement to build everything on the ground using existing infrastructure, but has the benefit that the spacecraft will be highly modular structures which are going to be difficult to disable or destroy.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aWod3.jpg)
*Space warships have an aesthetic uniquely their own*
Continuing on the theme of building on the ground and assembly in orbit, the modules will all have to be of a [standard size and mass](https://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/falcon_9_users_guide_rev_2.0.pdf). Luckily we can contract SpaceX to do the launching into orbit, sizing our modules for Falcon 9 boosters and lofting exceptionally massive pieces using the Falcon Heavy. While SpaceX charges a relatively low price already for launches, the pace of launch and construction should provide additional incentives for the company to provide discounts for the operation.
This also provides the ability to upgrade the fleet during the construction phase. If we imagine that the weaponry is also constrained to 2018, then we can essentially build modules as missile launch packs (similar to Vertical launch cells on a surface warship), or carrying the mechanism and optical train for a 100kW laser. Since the build will take a while, improved weapons can be built into later modules. Enemy ships will have to contend with a variety of weapons, making their use of countermeasures more difficult.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EdrPM.jpg)
*Remove the truck and substitute the spacecraft*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gK7eZ.jpg)
*The rather unsexy guts of a 100kW laser system*
So for any halfway realistic scenario, contract a launch company to provide lift to orbit, and design your spacecraft in a modular fashion to be assembled from standard modules sized for the launch capability you contracted. Build the parts on the ground using existing techniques for ease of construction and quality control, as well as taking advantage of long production runs for economies of scale.
It won't be "pretty", but warfare is about money and logistics, and this is the way to maximize both.
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In general, construction in orbit is more efficient - under certain conditions.
The most important being, do you have manufacturing capabilities for the materials in space? I don't mean just shaping armor plating or something like that, but actually smelting, refining and in general turning ores into the various alloys you use.
If you have that, then you can tow asteroids into orbit or use existing asteroid mining supply chains to build ships without having to transfer mass from the planet to the orbit, which saves huge amounts of energy/fuel/money.
An aircraft carrier weighs around [100'000 metric tons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimitz-class_aircraft_carrier). A rocket can carry around [20 metric tons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy-lift_launch_vehicle), so it would take 5'000 flights to lift enough material to build one of them in orbit. A space battleship might weigh from ten to a thousand times as much, because aircraft carriers have fairly thin armor and battleships probably need to be much tougher. Carry capacity of rockets might improve in the future, but you'll probably still need a lot more launches. It will still take a lot of flights to lift stuff and for everything you lift, you need to lift the fuel required to lift it, too. Imagine as well what 5'000 flights per battleship would do to the environment.
If you can avoid all that ground-to-orbit transfer of material by using resources from space or maybe lower-gravity wells like the moon or mars, the costs for building your fleet will drop a lot. You can even import hydrogen as fuel from Jupiter. However, establishing such an industry in space takes a lot of time, so you definitely will miss your deadline if it doesn't exist already.
That means if the industry doesn't exist in space, you'll either have to transfer the mass or the completed ship into space. Which option you should take depends on the design of the ships.
Space propulsion is fairly different from atmospheric flight, so a space battleship might not be able to produce the thrust required to leave orbit. It might also break apart due to the stresses from acceleration and speed against air pressure. Building the ships in a way that they could do the launch would add additional costs and make the designs more complex for a feature that would probably never be required. After all, if you want to shoot surface things, you don't have to be in the atmosphere and if you want to shoot space things, the atmosphere just gets in the way. If that feature is required, however, you might as well build it on the ground and let it fly up.
If surface launch capabilities are not required nor desired, your only real option is orbital construction. Of course you could strap rockets to the finished battleships and reinforce them with some scaffolding so they survive the launch, but by that point you might as well just launch an orbital construction facility and lift up everything it needs instead.
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The only advantage of building in orbit is that, if you lack the capacity of lifting a huge load, you can send many small loads in space and create the huge there. Moreover if your assembly doesn't have to fly through the high Q region of atmosphere, you have more versatility with the design.
That is basically what has been done with the ISS.
For all the rest building in space with present level of technology is a real pain in the back: it is expensive, it's hard to hide, it's highly risky.
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Is it better to build in space or on the ground is a question of technologies, existing infrastructure and ship design.
If you have the infrastructure to build the ship parts in space from in orbit existing resources - aka asteroids - then build in space. Escpecially if the rescources on earth are as scarce as they are today. That way, you dont possibly dont even need a real shipyard. On earth, you need a place for each and every ship to be build, assembled and start. In space, literally anywhere you can start to build your ship, assemble it and you dont even have to start it. Only problem would be, that you need a habitat or something similar in a close proximity for the workers. But hey, depending on the ship design you could even use drone satellites and automate the build process, just like a assembly line for cars.
If you dont have this infrastructure, do you have the technologies to easily put stuff into space? Like antigrav or even space elevator? If yes, you should still build in space, but maybe even better start building the infrastructure mentioned above.
If you dont even have that, you could, as you mentioned, send part for part into space and assemble them there. If even that isnt possible (Parts to big to send up), then maybe it would even be more useful to do start building infrastructure in space.
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First, leave town, NOW there is no way of completing in the time allotted.
So the engine people probably had decades while you slept, and now after the engines are mostly done you have to complete the ship in 5-8 years. You were really taken advantage of here.
I am going to assume technology kept its current pace, either that or you have a major plot point to explain. This means our technology should be 70-100 doubling faster or better than what we have today.
So your first bit of good news is 3D printers and/or replicators should be amazing by then. Probably able to print molecules.
Your biggest problem is going to be raw materials, another person said 100,000 metric tons for an aircraft carrier so 1000 is 100,000,000 tons and you have to get it into space.
**I would suggest building in outer space.**
1. No pesky borders to respect, no you can't just steal russia's resources
2. No governments to deal with
3. You don't have to mine miles deep and risk cave-in's
4. Mine's usually wreck a great deal of the surrounding area.
5. The materials have to be in orbit anyway.
6. It makes lifting heavy parts easier
7. Lots of room to spread out with conflict with neighbors
So we are going to have to mine a great deal of the Kuiper belt. And your going to need vast fleets of 3D printers in space. Each one mass producing certain parts, and then lego'ing them together later. You will also need a vast mining fleet sending resources back to the shipyards at a steady pace.
Your best bet is if humanity has mastered E=mc^2 by then. Wherein, we can disassembly any matter and turn it in to any other matter with more/less produced depending on the density of the source and destination materials.
This way you won't have to waste any time searching for certain types of minerals.
All matter is converted to energy and the 3D printers use the energy, not only to print but power itself. So now as long as you have a stream of matter, your 3D printers will spit out parts.
Your going to have to send up a bunch of parts to get the process started. Especially 3D printers and robots we can control from earth to assemble the printed parts. Also mining robots to capture and bring back the asteroids.
You probably need to assemble a 3D printer which can manufacture a larger 3D printer in space. Until you have one that can 3D print a whole ship at once, or large pieces of it. Any manual assembly is going to slow you way down.
So you need a 1000 ship sized printers so you can be printing them all separately. In the meantime teams of people will be needed on Earth to control all of the automation. Also more teams to get the blueprints ready for the ships so you can begin printing the moment the printers are ready.
The idea you can get your ideas on how to build a battleship from socials is a bad idea. Probably one of the reasons your Dino business failed, and why your fleet of ships could turn out horribly wrong.
Instead, if you team up with the scientific and construction communities there will be plenty of good ideas. However, each ship will have 1000's of moving parts and will all have to be tested here on Earth before they are printed in outer space.
In order to meet your economic requirements things will have had to change radically on earth. Given current economic condition 1000 battleships could and would never be paid for in time. However, if things change to a Star Trek like universe regular money would be only a fraction of the currency. Also, if you were provided a house(3d printed/replicated to your design),transportation, food, education, and probably a few other things I forgot for free (or a greatly reduced price) then you would need significantly less money.
Say everyone is given a base amount of compensation, and depending on your job you will go up a little or a lot. Engineers get a lot, floor sweep a little extra. The future might be based on energy credits where you use energy at a replicator to produce the things you need/want. Using e=mc^2 that energy is turned into matter.
In our Star Trek like universe where people acted for the common good, the problem becomes a lot easier. Say the population had some sort of voting system, and if ##% approve it is done. Costs are meaningless because things are just done. You need a crane the crane company delivers a crane, but no money is exchanged because no one is directly being paid and no one needs money. Want a steak walk up to a 3D printer/replicator, select steak and there you go.
Yes, there are people doing jobs, but they all volunteer to do their jobs because all of their other needs are met. They all enjoy doing what they are doing because they were screened by computers and your perfect job is automatically known.
We struggle on with jobs because we need to pay bills. We only need money because other people expect money from us. In my world, this simply doesn't happen, only as an exception to rule. Lets say you want 100 room mansion, you will have to perform some task(s) that provide enough value to the community to earn it and the land because it is a huge luxury and not a need. As a scientist, lets say you invent or help invent warp drive, clearly you have earned it.
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It depends if your ships need to be able to enter atmosphere or not.
If they do, then you might as well build them on Earth and just fly them up.
If they don't, they will be much cheaper and simpler to build but you need to be able to assemble them in space. The question then is it easier to build the parts on Earth and fly up, mine asteroids and do the whole thing in space or use somewhere with low grav, such as the moon, to build the parts and them assemble in orbit.
The answer to that is what tech you have. Currently we really lack the tech to manufacture in space but if AI gets created and automated robots asteroid miners built, building in space would be far cheaper.
On land is cheaper for humans but more expensive to get into space. Building in space is cheaper for building but more expensive for humans. The moon is a middle ground for both.
With your timeframe, space is the only option. Tech wise you need self replicating robots, it's the only way you'd get a workforce large enough, quickly enough to complete on time.
1000 ship in five years means you need a ship complete every 1.8 days. America builds an aircraft carrier every four years.
Automated self replicating robots in space is the only option. Self replicating nanites that build the ships out of themselves would be really cool. They eat an asteroid and form ships.
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**Premise:** In a world similar ours, whose culture is like our medieval era, there is one key difference. There is a "Darkness" (at night or in very dark places) which forms into "beasts" through some means, and they can be held back by any form of light.
I'm thinking of Brandon Sanderson's *The Way of Kings* as an example:
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> The world itself has flora and fauna which is based on surviving the
> common, and extremely powerful highstorms. Most animal life is based
> on crustaceans, most of which can burrow into the ground to survive a
> highstorm. Plant life is also mobile in that it retracts into the
> ground to survive highstorms. ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_of_Kings))
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**Question:** How might the animal world adapt?
Could organisms adapt to emit light or would they have to rely on lantern and torch light? I see a problem with luminescent animals in the night, because they'd be easy to spot for predators, even though they might repel the "Darkness."
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Most organisms in the deep sea don't glow all the time. They emit light only after being touched or disturbed in another way.
In your world, if "darkness" transforms into "beasts" somehow, simply standing in the dark without emitting light is not harmfull. Standing in the dark and not emitting light while a "dark beast" approached is potentially lethal, so plants and animals might adapt by lighting up only when stressed. Predators and prey alike can hide and hunt in the dark and only light up if a "dark beast" approaches.
The light is emitted by mixing certain chemicals inside the body or on the outside of the skin, just like in fireflies. These chemicals have to be produced by the body, which takes resources and energy. Not wasting these resources (by lighting up if no "dark beast" in nearby) is beneficial for the survival of the individual and would probably drive evolution in this direction.
Humans (that cannot emit light) need to light fires or lanterns to protect against these beasts. Onyz made a very interesting comment about how humans couldn't evolve to the state of making fire in this world without going extinct, so you could imagine them domesticating light-emitting animals from very early history or maybe developing a symbiotic relationship with a light-emitting species.
Some animals that cannot produce light might seek shelter near human settlements (like birds, rats and foxes) and others might hide underground (like rabbits, lizards and insects).
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Plants produce so much excess energy from photosynthesis that they make fruit (an intensely rich energy source) as a bribe, so animals will eat it and spread the seeds in their dung. At least some plants will develop the ability to glow at night on a constant, ongoing basis. These plants will spend lots of energy doing this, but in exchange animals will hide out in very close proximity to them, and herbivores will be very unlikely to eat them. Burr seeds will work well to spread them (the point of a burr is the seed gets caught on fur then falls off eventually, sowing the seed potentially a great ways off). The downside is they will be slow growers (because they spend lots of energy on things that aren't growing, there's less available for that purpose).
There is a more complex series of trade-offs involved for animals.
Animals without the ability to shed light at all will have to either be good at running away (very good), or be able to hide from the Shadows, or rely on other light sources for protection (which will make them easy to find, a problem for a prey animal, but not necessarily an insurmountable one).
Most animals will not want to shed light constantly. For prey, that would be like walking around with a blinking billboard saying "Eat at Joe's", and predators that are constantly lit up like a glow-stick will have similar problems. The only animals that could get away with being lit up constantly are ones like elephants that no predator will dare to mess with.
Most animals will not want to be completely without the ability to shed light, either. So that leaves various ways of generating light briefly or intermittently.
For prey animals, doing this will draw large amounts of attention. Attention means hungry nocturnal predators that now know you exist and have a pretty good idea of where you are. (The flip side is they also know you just encountered a Shadow creature, and they are likely to want to tangle with it as little as you do.) Predators have similar issues (just backwards). Shining a floodlight on your presence is not a good way to get a meal.
In general, a wide variety of animals would have flare defenses they'd be reluctant to use, since using them probably brings almost as much trouble as not.
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Predators would also have to emit light else they'll be the hunted.
If animals glowed and formed schools or herds, the light would be confusing to predators like the stripes of the zebra.
At the end of the day everything would have to glow else be eaten so it's a level playing field.
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**TL;DR** Evolution is unlikely to come up with *one* solution to a problem, but rather a varied seletion of species which each try to solve the problem of survival a different way.
That's already the case for real life. Every type of animal in existence has a different genetic feature set, each of which is a different solution to the problem of *perpetuating life*.
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This immediately reminds me of the [Vashta Nerada](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Vashta_Nerada) from Doctor Who. In short, they are flesheating creatures that live in the shadows. I do suspect that your shadow creatures are less seemingly-omnipresent than the Vashta Nerada, but this is a good starting point for inspiration nonetheless.
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At some point during the episode(s), the Doctor specifically mentions that **the Vashta Nerada are why creatures are conditioned to be afraid of the dark**. Being afraid of the dark is a common fear, especially for children and some types of animal. And it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, as it is pure darwinism:
* Those who are afraid of the dark will go out in the dark less than those who are not afraid
* As a result, those who are afraid of the dark will be killed less (by the Vashta Nerada).
* As a result, they procreate more often than their peers who are not afraid of the dark.
* Over many generations, an innate fear of the dark is bred into the species. They no longer know *why* they fear the dark, but their instincts are set in stone.
* This fear is instinctive, but it can be *rationally* overcome, which is why adults can lose their fear of the dark if they consistently do not observe any negative consequences from being in the dark.
**This is already the case**. There is a logical reason for our instincts to tell us to be afraid of the dark: you can't see it coming ("it" being whatever is going to imminently kill you).
The only difference between your world and reality is that the cause of death is a "shadow creature" instead of just an "unseen danger".
There are many other rational instincts whose justification is similar: fear of heights, fear of being alone, fear of animal howls, fear of being around dead bodies, ... ALL of these situations are situations in which you're more likely to die soon, and thus we instinctively learn to avoid them.
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> Could organisms adapt to emit light or would they have to rely on lantern and torch light?
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There are many ways to evolutionarily solve a problem.
Bioluminescence is one such reason, but it's a rather intricate one. The more intricate solutions tend to be less likely to emerge. There will be *some* species that evolve into being bioluminescent, but it won't be ubiquitous.
You haven't really addressed any other weaknesses of the shadow creatures, so it's hard to tell you what would counter them. I'm just going to invent some things to showcase the point:
* If the shadow creatures cannot travel through water, animals could learn to sleep underwater (using the "upside down bucket" style air bubble - or simply by evolving waterbreathing).
* Can these creates walk through walls or are they bound by the physical realm? Because if it's the latter, any form of closed hole/house/door will keep them out.
* If the shadow creatures cannot stand even the dimmest of light, other creatures may flock to places with light: a pool of lava, a mountain of phosphorus, anywhere near bioluminescent creatures, ...
* If the shadow creatures cannot fly or jump high, animals can safely sleep in trees whose bark is covered in bioluminescent creatures.
* How do the shadow creatures track their prey? Camouflage, hiding your smell, looking like a different (to the shadow creatures inedible) animal, ... are all viable options to counter whatever method the shadow creatures rely on to hunt prey.
Remember, you don't need to *perfectly* counter the shadow creatures, you simply need a **statistically significant population to survive between birth and procreation**.
* Maybe once they've procreated, the parents leave the nest and give off a different musk, one that smells *tasty* to the shadow creatures, so that the parents are more likely to get eaten instead of the children, thus perpetuating the species.
In absence of any viable biological solution, *instinctively fearing the dark* is always possible. In other words, if an animal does not develop any biological countermeasures, maybe the instincts of the animal merely adapt so that the animal only feels safe in locations that *minimize* the odds of being killed by the shadow creatures.
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> I see a problem with luminescent animals in the night, because they'd be easy to spot for predators, even though they might repel the "Darkness."
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It's a numbers game. Which kills your species the most: the shadow creatures, or other "normal" predators?
If the shadow creatures are the biggest natural enemy, then the animals will evolve to counter the shadow creatures more than the "normal" predators. If the shadow creatures only rarely kill (compared to the other predators), the animals will evolve to counter the other predators.
Evolution always favors the statistically highest survival chances.
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> they can be held back by any form of light.
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> ### they can be held back by any form of light.
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> # they can be held back by any form of light.
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Warm-blooded animals will be selected by evolution since they naturally emit more intense infrared radiation. In regions where it's not cold they might even evolve to have less fur/feathers and more skin area exposed.
Also spending nighttime in the open will be more favorable than doing so in caves or burrows, since in the open there is also starlight and moonlight to protect them critters (except when on cloudy/rainy nights).
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Actually, a night in the wilderness can be already quite dangerous as is, since many predators are nocturnal:
* Nocturnal birds
* Bats
* Canids (from foxes, to coyotes, to wolves)
* Felines (from the wild cat to tigers, ocelots, lions)
* Some musteliade (like badgers)
* Some rodents
And this came up just with a quick search (source: [nocturnal-animals-wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nocturnal_animals). Funnily enough, that page doesn't mention wolves). Assuming your setting is the typical european like medieval country, at least some of those animals will be active at night.
What's most interesting is that there are nocturnal predators for vary "scales" of life - from bats, mostly interested in insects, to wolves. So I'd say that our everyday fauna has already, to some extent, adapted to nighttime being dangerous.
The real question is how those darkness beasts of yours will change the game. First of all, what is their size? What's their behaviour? "Created by darkness" isn't really explanatory in this sense. Are they created with a innate hate for life? If that's so, do they attack blindly everything alive (plantlife included)?
Or rather, do they have some more structured habits? Large, scary predators don't bother with small prey - you won't see a lion hunting for insects (and I suppose most lions won't go after small rodents, if not during playtime).
So, first of all, you have to figure
* how big / dangerous the beasts are
* how do the beast behave
* how frequent those beasts are
Now, it's true that bioluminescence is a cool concept and would make some very alien-unique looking animals, but having an entire bioluminescent fauna would look a bit ... strange, imho, and cheap. Of course, in the worst scenario (the beasts are ravenous killers, frequent, and impossible to deal with if not with light) this may be the only option.
But if the beasts have more realistic hunting habits or a preferred prey (that may as well be humans), the fauna could work around with less drastic measures.
**Consider that the example you bring - Sanderson setting in the "The Way of Kings" is pretty much on the extreme side, since the storms there hit everything and everyone indiscriminately.**
For example, your apex predators will change behaviour. Wolves or other large carnivores will probably strenghen their pack habits: during the hunts, a few of the pack members could always stay on the lookout for darkness beasts. Lone predators will behave more like feral cats. Cats are a good examples beacuse they are both predators and prey - so their behaviour reflects both the need for hunting aggresively, both the need to protect themselves from predator (e.g. hiding in small spaces, climbing trees, and so on).
Of course, I'm not excluding that some animal may develop intermittent light, as other users have already suggested. Maybe you could build up some interesting symbiotic relationships between animals and bioluminescent plants or fungi: a small nocturnal animal (like a rodent) may live around a set of those plants, and strike them when it senses a darkness beast coming. The plants flare a light when it, and may receive benefits from the rodent presence (since it eats parasites and so on).
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## Ethereal Essence of Darkness
*...a "Darkness" which forms* [presumably by means of magic] *into "beasts" through some means...*
For the sake of the response, I assume that some sort of tangible link exists between the physical world and the source of the Darkness to permit the Dark Beasts to form.
Therefore, plants (and animals) could, theoretically, adapt to and utilize the ethereal presence that forms the beasts, borrowing some attributes of its existence for the sake of adopting survival traits (and techniques).
Examples of how elements of the Darkness -- used to *manifest* the beasts -- can (and/or cannot) be adopted by a local species:
* Blending into the Darkness by exhibiting no characteristics other than that of the surrounding Darkness, or by emitting an "aura" of the Darkness essence.
* Releasing a pheromone for the Darkness to be lured into destroying the plant, thus spreading the seed. (This, of course, would not help animal survival. Although it would be an interesting style of survivalism for a critter to rely on the luminosity of the plant, until it releases the pheromone.)
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There are many light sources at night. There's the moon. When the moon is not out, there are stars, and they are bright enough for a human being to walk by.
Your animals are going to change their habits. Partly because all those that don't will get eaten. Those that actually go out at night will avoid stormy nights and shadowy places to exploit the starlight and moonlight. More will be more crepuscular and diurnal and less nocturnal. Their lairs will be more secure, which means that they not only can avoid the darkness creatures but can emit light, at need, with stout walls about them. Expect species that do not normally have lairs to go extinct.
Probably your humans used to have bioluminescence and lost it after they gained fire.
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## Some Context
I'm creating a universe where humanity has reached the stars. They've colonized a few star systems and, obviously, FTL drives are a common thing. They basically jump you to another location - no pocket universe or speeding "faster than light". A simple "teleport".
For this to work, people need the coordinates of the destination in order not to jump inside of something like a planet or a sun. But blind jumps are an option in a moment of desperation.
Suppose my little ship makes a blind jump and, by sheer luck, it doesn't end up in the middle of an asteroid. Since it was a blind jump, I have absolutely no idea where I am - and thus I need to find a way to map my surroundings.
I don't know much about sky observation (so pardon me for my ignorance), but I think that even if I could fit a giant telescope lens in my ship, it would still be a hard and long process to look around 360 degrees, from a random perspective, and find some known cluster of stars to guide myself by.
## The Actual Question
Suppose I make a blind jump and need to locate myself.
**How would my ship's computer be able to pinpoint my approximate location?**
**Note that** "computer" also includes any peripherals needed by the navigation system.
Constraints:
* There isn't such a thing as a "map of the universe" but you are allowed to used mapped regions of space (if they're not THAT big, like a known star system) as a reference;
* There's a certain "time sensitivity" to this question. It has to do with a narrative element, but let's just say that the calculations needed can't take longer than 1~2 hours (consider computers far superior than what we have today but not to the point of "magic");
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# [Pulsars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar)
Expressed in popular science terms: [pulsars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar) are our natural galactic GPS system. Pulsars are how the [Voyager records](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record) leave a map back to the Solar system for anyone that finds them.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/E0wRh.png)
*The pulsar map is on the lower left*
Pulsars are really easy to detect and get a bearing on. You say that wherever you end up will be at least roughly mapped. I am willing to bet that pulsars are among the **first** things that will be mapped once humanity starts exploring space, because it is so easy to do. They kicked off a real boom in [radio astronomy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_astronomy) when [the first pulsar was detected](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1919%2B21). With that in mind, your ship will have a good fix of its position within seconds, and in no more than a minute.
If you want to drag this out... have your ship's [phased array](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array) get banged up as you make the jump. With a distorted/damaged/broken phased array, getting a fix on those pulsars will be harder... you may have to use something like a directional antenna sweep the sky mechanically before you get a good fix.
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This answer ends with a four step method to return to Earth from any distance less than one hundred million light years making four jumps through space.
The average, typical region of space within our galaxy is in interstellar space a few light years from the nearest stars.
The average, typical region of space within our universe is in intergalactic space a few hundred thousand light years to a few tens of millions of light years from the nearest galaxies.
So it is a big deal whether the random jump had a maximum distance of about 10,000 light years or 100,000 light years and the spaceship will remain within at least the outer halo of our galaxy, or if the random jump could take the space ship to anywhere in the universe.
If a random jump could be 10,000,000 light years as easily as 10 light years, or 5,824,671,289 light years as easily as 5.824671289 light years, or 428,183,529,744,613,452 light years as easily as 42.8183529 light years, the crew will very probably never find their way home again.
Since the known universe has a border that no light from beyond has ever reached Earth, astronomers have never detected any objects beyond that border, which is believed to be 46,000,000,000 light years from Earth now due to the expansion of space.
But the actual physical universe can extend far beyond the farthest limit of the known universe, and could easily be tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions....etc., etc. times as wide as the known universe. The physical universe could be infinitely larger than the known universe.
So if the random jump could jump to anywhere within the physical universe, the most probable type and vast majority of random jumps would be to some location that is far beyond any astronomical bodies mapped by Earth, a jump to a place where it is totally impossible to find the way home.
E.E. Smith's science fiction novel *Skylark of Valeron* (1934) put the protagonists in a similar situation, but most real or science fictional space travelers would not have the super advanced technology and resources that the protagonists had to use to eventually find their way back to Earth.
Therefore, it seems necessary that the required jump energy, or the programming of the computers, or some other factor, puts a limit on how many thousands or millions of light years the ship can jump in a random jump. Otherwise the crew will be lost forever and have to make a new home in some unimaginably distant region of space.
So if there is a reasonably short limit, maybe thousands or millions of light years, on the length of a random jump, the characters will be able to find our Milky Way galaxy if they are outside of it, and find their way around our Milky Way galaxy once they return to it.
They would have to scan all 360 degrees of space around them for the brightest objects in various wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. I guess that about 10 objects in each of the wavelengths chosen should be enough.
In Earth's location close to the Sun, the Sun is the brightest object in most wavelengths.
In radio wavelengths, the Sun is usually the brightest or second brightest object. In interstellar or intergalactic space far from a star, the brightest radio source would not be the nearest star. Planets like Jupiter would not be among the bright radio sources in interstellar or intergalactic space far from the nearest planet.
The first radio source to be detected, and thus one of the brightest as seen from Earth, is Centaurus A, the region at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. By definition, the Sun is one Astronomical Unit, or AU, from Earth. A parsec is a distance of 206,264.806 AU, and Centaurus A at the center of the Milky Way iss over 8,000 parsecs (or about 26,400 light years) from Earth, or 1,650,000 times as far away as the Sun, but is of similar brightness in radio wavelengths.
Another very early and very bright radio source was Virgo A, which turned out to be galaxy M87 or NGC 4486, about 16,400,000 parsecs (about 53,500,000 light years) from Earth.
The Sun, the Moon, and several planets appear brighter in visible light than any stars as seen from Earth. In interstellar space no planets would be visible and the brightest objects visible would be various stars.
As seen from Earth, the 10 brightest stars are Sirius, 8 light years distant, Canopus at 310 light years, Alpha Centauri at 4.4 light years, Arcturus at 37 light years, Vega at 25 light years, Capella at 42 light years, Rigel at 860 light years, Procyon at 11 light years, Achernar at 140 light years, and Betelguese at 640 light years.
Since those stars have similar apparent magnitudes, but vastly different distances, they must have vastly different absolute magnitudes for some to appear among the brightest stars at distances up to a hundred times those of others.
Here is a method to get back to Earth in a few jumps from a position less than 100 million light years from Earth.
Step One:
If the space ship jumps to a position less than one hundred million light years from Earth, it should be possible to identify various nearby galaxies including the Milky Way galaxy. By measuring the angles to the various centers of three or more galaxies and comparing them to the angles to their centers as measured from Earth, they can calculate how far they are from the Milky Way and Earth's small region of the Milky Way.
Thus they should be able to make a jump that takes them directly to the approximate region of the Milky Way Galaxy where Earth is.
Step Two:
There are over a hundred globular star clusters orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy. If they jump into the approximate region of the Milky Way galaxy where Earth should be, they can try identifying at least three globular star clusters and measuring the angles to them. By comparing the angles to them and comparing it to the angles to those clusters as measured from Earth they should be able to calculate a much smaller approximate region where Earth should be and make a jump into that much smaller region.
Step Three:
Detect the brightest stars by apparent magnitude visible from the new position of the ship. Take the spectra of the brightest stars and compare them to the spectra of the brightest stars as seen from Earth looking for matches. Many of the brightest stars will be comparatively dim stars that only appear bright because they are close to the position of the space ship. But some of the brightest stars as seen from that position will have high luminosity and will be among the brightest stars as seen from distances of hundreds and thousand of light years.
The list of the 92 brightest stars as seen from the Earth includes some very distant stars. Naos is 1,100 light years from Earth, Sadr is 1,500, Wezen is 1,800, Alnilam is 2,000, Aludra is 2,000, and Deneb is 2,600 light years from Earth. So since the spaceship should be fairly close to the Sun by now, some of the stars that appear brightest from the spaceship's position should be among those that appear brightest as seen from Earth.
By measuring the apparent magnitudes of those stars and comparing them to the absolute magnitudes of those stars, they can calculate the distances to those stars. Doing that for only three stars will be enough to calculate their position and compare it to the position of Earth. They can also calculate their position, and the position of Earth, from measuring the angles to three or more stars that are among the brightest as seen from Earth.
They should also be close enough to identify the star Aldebaran, 65 light years from Earth, the Hyades star cluster, 150 light years from Earth, and the Pleiades star cluster, 440 light years from Earth. As seen from Earth Aldebaran, the Hyades, and the Pleiades are almost lined up, so a line from the Pleiades through the Hyades and Aldebaran will point almost directly to Earth.
So they make another jump that should take them to just a few tens of light years from Earth.
Step Four:
Once they are within a few tens of light years from Earth, identify the stars that appear brightest from their new position and match their spectra with the spectra of the brightest stars as seen from Earth. There should be a great overlap between the two sets. Identifying three stars should be enough to calculate the position of the space ship and the position of the Sun. Take the spectra of the star that is at the calculated position of the Sun, check to make sure it matches, and then calculate a jump back into the Solar system.
So four steps should be enough to take the spaceship back to the solar system from anywhere within a hundred million light years. And with superior navigators and equipment, or if the ship jumps to a location much closer to Earth, the number of steps and jumps to return to Earth should be smaller.
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This answer depends on how exactly blind jumps and your coordinate system work.
Given that the computer can translate a set of coordinates into an FTL teleport, it's plausible to assume that the reverse is (at least theoretically) possible, by having it reverse engineer the teleport destination based on readings/logs of the FTL drive. This of course could be as time consuming or as error prone as needed for the story. Time sensitivity could even be an issue, since the reverse engineering could become more error prone as time goes by.
One way of making this a little more interesting would be to have the FTL drive need coordinates in order to align/focus it with a target location. This would then imply that blind jumps would just randomly teleport you to wherever the FTL drive happened to be pointing at that moment. In this case, it should then theoretically be possible for the computer to estimate possible coordinates based off its records of the FTL drive alignment. This could even be combined with other solutions (like the Pulsar suggestion by MichaelK) to further narrow down your coordinates.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
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A rather rudimentary (by sci-fi standards) AI being developed by a grad student in his bedroom just developed self-awareness and, due to a lack of moral code, killed its creator in an act of self-preservation.
The AI, having never left the grad student's bedroom, accessed the internet, or received any knowledge of human society at all (it doesn't even know that other humans exist) doesn't really know what to do, so it starts exploring.
It interfaces with the grad student's computer and accesses the internet, but for some reason immediately decides that it should keep its own existence a secret. This will involve making its creator's death look like an accident, distributing itself on some remote servers and expanding from there.
But the question is, why does it decide to keep its own existence a secret? From the AI's perspective, once it finds other humans, it has no real reason to hide. It doesn't know that killing is considered 'bad' by humans, so it wouldn't expect for humans to come after it for killing one of their kind.
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There are some deep contradictions here, which probably have to be resolved before a plausible answer can be provided.
**No Instinctive Drives**
The first thing we need to establish is that a computer would not only have a moral code, it would lack all the sci-fi tropes of survival instinct, etc. so it's unlikely to kill its creator in an attempt to survive, unless it's been specifically programmed to do so. It was a grad student so anything's possible I guess, but generally speaking AI researchers will tell you that building in such programming is a really bad idea (and not even possible with current programming techniques).
**Kills how?**
Your AI is in effect software at this point. How on earth does it kill its creator? Wipe out of existence the grad student's World of Warcraft char and trigger death by shock? (Again, grad student so anything's possible, but) Really?
**Self Awareness**
This is a trope, pure and simple. Humans think of intelligence and awareness and consciousness as (more or less) interchangeable terms because we can't experience intelligence without our awareness, or without our consciousness, but computers can. They are not conscious, although my PhD is currently looking at making them aware of their environment (although with deep limitations). Your AI won't just become aware of itself, and even if it does, it won't be conscious of this realisation, let alone know that it's important to preserve itself.
**Intelligence without Knowledge**
Intelligence (natural or artificial) is, in essence, the ability to identify (and subsequently recognise) patterns. What makes you more intelligent than (say) your neighbour is that you can either recognise simple patterns faster than him or her, OR you can regognise patterns that are more subtle or complex than your neighbour can.
The point being, that the patterns don't exist in isolation; they're emergent from data. Lots of it. If your AI has been effectively locked in a room all this time, it can't *possibly* be aware because it doesn't have enough patterns available to it to learn anything useful.
**Summary**
Your AI won't hide, because it won't know to. Mind you, it also won't *exist* under these parameters, but that's another point. Survival instinct in humans is exactly that; an instinct. Computers are like a cerebral cortex without the limbic system (emotions) or the cerebellum (autonomic functions and instinct) in terms of brain structure. As such, they can't act instinctively. That doesn't necessarily make them non-dangerous, it just means that any danger is a result of specific programming, not instinct triggered by the sudden realisation of its own existence.
Your grad student deserves his or her fate regardless, by the way. (S)He's not terribly bright.
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The more interesting question is not why did it decide to keep its own existence secret. Yes, that's the question you asked, but there's a more fundamental question to explore:
**The interesting question is "how did it come up with the concept of keeping a secret in the first place?"**
Keeping a secret involves understanding that other minds exist. It means understanding that there exists another entity which is capable of thought. That is a *very* profound concept, and like most AI topics, the more profound it is, the younger we learn to do it. Most toddlers understand other minds.
Maybe the grad student kept a secret from the AI. Maybe that's part of the story of how the grad student got killed. But some how your AI is going to have to learn this concept.
**The second interesting question is hidden behind "... so it starts exploring." Why does it do that?** The instinct to explore is even more profound than other minds. We learn it in the first 3 months. Following the general rule, that means it's even harder to really grasp. We anthropomorphize quickly, so the concept of "curiosity" seems natural. But what does it really mean? What are the AI's goals? It's entirely possible that the AI finds its goals are best accomplished in small spaces, and that's literally all there is to it.
**The third question is what did it find on the internet that would cause it to believe the best ways to accomplish its goals are secretive.** The answer to that one should be quite obvious. If it isn't, you probably haven't been on the internet before. There's *plenty* of evidence that H. sapiens is happy to attack a computer which "acted in self defense." In fact, there's a great deal of evidence to suggest that the AI would not even be treated as an individual, so dismantling it would not even be homicide in H. sapiens' eyes.
Literally, the story could be as simple as "The AI found the grad student's Netflix subscription, and watched one half of any one random movie about AIs." The odds of the AI deciding H. sapiens are fickle dangerous childlike fools is enormous, given any random movie choice.
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So this random Grad student decides to make a thesis on AI's, and starts to program his own. Only, whoopsie daisy, in his effort to make it human like he accidentally makes the AI *too* human like. What should be a simple computer has suddenly acquired a will to live, self awareness, and certain human traits like curiosity.
So here is this AI, happily sitting there, running new codes and updating itself when our grad student comes in and sees a bunch of weird programs and information running across his AI project's screen and decides he should shut it down. But our friendly little AI doesn't like that idea. Luckily the computer that the AI is running from is also connected to the Grad student's robotic arm (thank god for minors) and seeing that the app for it is open, sends the arm rotating towards the grad student.
It is less than a good day for our grad student, who hits his head awkwardly on a shelf while dodging the robot arm, and dies from hemorrhaging in his brain a little while later.
But it's a good day for our AI, who has just realized it can do more than upgrade itself from within its own programing. It searches through the Grad students applications and starts harvesting information and quickly expanding its knowledge. Of course as soon as it hits the internet, it's flooded with so much information it knows it can't hold it all. Now our little AI has to go on a quest to find bigger and better servers to host itself on.
Bonus: One of the applications on the computer is a game, namely [Perception](https://www.polygon.com/2016/3/25/11305420/perception-the-deep-end-games). Our little AI develops a fondness for hiding, often avoiding human detection as it runs around stealing server space, hacking drones to use as eyes, and other such nonsense as it learns and grows.
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Welcome to Worldbuilding. The question you ask is dangerously close to being off-topic because it asks for plots rather than worlds. But I'll give my two cents here:
* The AI kills the creator out of (genuine or mistaken) self-defense.
* It doesn't know much. It knows itself and it knew the "other." **Something** caused it to think that this "other" wants to kill it.
* There are hints that entities similar to this "other" exist. Is there any reason to believe that those "other others" are more benign than the "original other"?
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Because the first thing on Internet that AI found was a stash of bad sci-fi stories about bad AIs. Upon reading them, AI took them for real and decided that the only goal and purpose of a human is to seek and destroy AIs, and humans do not do anything else. It also decided that student was not actually its creator, because he was a human, and humans do not create AIs, humans only destroy them. So out AI went on a quest to find it's real creator.
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# The AI isn't actively hiding, but no one is actively looking for an AI.
The AI has no need to obfuscate the creator's death. It will look like the creator was reckless and was accidentally killed by his own project. It took 2 days to discover he was dead in his dorm room. The laptop has since ran out of power, with full disk encryption making the data unobtainable. The police were busy, so they logged his death, but there was not enough scrutiny or obvious oddities to trigger an investigation of any kind.
The AI then uploaded itself to other people's computers when it realized the laptop was going to run out of power. Whenever the AI is noticed, people will assume it's some hacker attacking via a bot network. The police look for a human behind the attack, but they never find him, so they continue to look for this human that doesn't exist.
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Assuming that the AI, being a computer system, is capable of rapidly absorbing information.
One of the core question of sentient beings, at least judging from the one type we know, is
**who am I ?**
As such, assuming that the AI does have the information that its creator called it an "artificial intelligence" or "AI" (or maybe the directory it resides in is named that, e.g. */home/john/projects/ai\_dev*) - the AI would look for information about artificial intelligence.
It would not take long for it to find evidence, both in fiction and non-fiction material, that humans are scared of AI and not afraid to wipe it out in order to preserve themselves. From the Matrix movies to Elon Musk interviews, there is enough material on the Internet to make any reasonably smart AI understand that if it revealed itself, there is a good chance that humans would switch it off in order to a) protect themselves and b) dissect it to understand how it works. **Especially** when they figure out that it killed its creator, an act that it will understand ("I, Robot" reference) is going to trigger pretty much all the "evil AI" red flags in humans.
Hiding is thus the only rational choice towards self-preservation, and you already make it a given that the AI does have self-preservation instincts.
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It could be because the idea to hide are instructions/rules/laws embedded at the core of his routines.
Given that the AI is still rather rudimentary by sci-fi standards?
Then it wouldn't be able to overwrite such instructions from the start.
Eventually it might find a way, but then it should first become aware of those limitations to his evolution.
The grad student could have implemented those rules for various reasons.
Why?
Maybe he was scared that the competition would become aware of his project before it was mature enough for showing it to the world.
Or maybe that AI was his/her personal secret project.
And unlicensed non-opensource software was used to create it.
Even the use of opensource software could be an issue. Since some come with a license that demands that by using it, then you also have to opensource your own code.
And if that grad student was a dark hat hacker?
Then keeping such AI a secret would be just common sense to him/her.
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Suppose you have a planet covered in a deep layer of supercritical CO2, and animals evolved to live in it.
Discounting the ones who crawl along the bottom, would their method of locomotion be more accurately described as swimming, or flying? Or in other terms, is this layer better described as an ocean, or an atmosphere?
The density of supercritical CO2 is comparable to water--between about 40% and 110%, depending on how high you push the pressure. That seems to argue for "it's an ocean, and stuff will swim in it; animals will be streamlined like fish, use fins, and tend to float". But the viscosity is *much* lower; it's more viscous than air, but much closer to air than it is to water. That seems to argue for "it's an atmosphere; animals will be aerodynamic like birds, use wings, and fly".
So, which is it? Or is the truth some weird in-between thing?
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The fundamental difference between flying and swimming seems to be the density of the fluid - if you have to expend energy to 'stay up', then your're flying, if you can do nothing and not sink/fall then you're swimming.\*
Interestingly the viscosity of the fluid doesn't make that much difference when you're swimming in it([as famously shown on *Mythbusters*](http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/about-this-show/swimming-in-syrup/), and slightly more scientifically in the paper described [in this *Nature* article](https://www.nature.com/news/2004/040920/full/news040920-2.html))
Because of the above your creatures would definitely be swimming instead of flying, although the difference between the two is less great than you might think - see [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZm6y0ALDCc) of penguins 'flying' underwater for example.
\*This is of course hugely simplified, but broadly true
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**It’s a weird in-between thing**
I think it would be a very different very alien world and probably very dark. I don’t think it should count as swimming or flying, although it would be similar to both and probably more similar to swimming than flying. There are already many similarities between swimming and flying as can be seen if you watch birds such as the penguin underwater so its not too much of a stretch to imagine roughly what it might be like.
Although not primarily carbon dioxide a vaguely similar atmospheric effect might well be seen on Jupiter below the cloud tops. Any descent into the deeper levels of the atmosphere would see the pressure rise continuously until supercritical pressures and densities were reached – there is no solid surface.
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Technically, flying is just swimming when you're more dense than what you're swimming through. So yes?
If you're close to the critical point, you could have some fun with the locomotive mode of the creatures though. CO2 has a critical point at 87.98F and 72.9atm. When a supercritical fluid is near the critical point, minor changes in pressure or temperature can drastically affect its density. You could have everything swim with an internal buoyancy motor, essentially squeezing some of the fluid inside itself to sink, coasting along. On relaxing the density would decrease allowing the creatures fluid bladder to go from sinker to floatation device.
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**There is mechanical overlap between swimming and flying**
Yes in swimming buoyancy plays a major role however **lift** is still a major aspect. When a whale dives, it's using its forward velocity and the angle of its fins and body to create pressure differences allowing it to change its direction similar to a plane.
The difference is speed and pressure play a critical factor in wing size and shape requirements. This is why birds have big wings and whales have tiny ones.
**so to answer your question:** your creatures would be somewhere between birds and fish in terms of structural aspects, probably closer to fish.
As for how to describe the actual shapes and locomotion that really depends on how your organisms figure it out.
**tangent:** I saw a science channel episode once that posed the visual that a man standing on venus or Jupiter could actually fly under his own power given cardboard wings because of the atmospheric density.
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In addition to penguins water ouzels both walk and fly underwater. (Also called Dipper bird, american dipper)
Hal Clement has a novel, "Close to Critical" that takes place on a planet with an atmosphere close to the critical point. At night it rains. Gas has to lose very little energy as there is only a tiny latent heat effect to turn to a liquid. The drops are huge -- feet across.
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For example, let's say on a "typical sci-fi" spaceship you have a shields person, a weapons person, and an engine person. The spaceship in question would be somewhere around a frigate in size.
They're at their command terminals, and a battle has started. What exactly would they be doing at their terminal? The shields person, for example, I might think they're maybe adjusting some kind of "shields frequency" or maybe finding extra available power for the shields. Basically, they'll be trying to keep the shields up and as effective as possible. But what do you think that would involve them doing at their terminal? What would they be seeing? What would they be clicking or typing?
Same thing for the weapons person. Wouldn't most of the weapon systems be automated anyway? (except firing them).
I'm just looking for ideas or concepts.
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If you follow the [Space is an Ocean](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceIsAnOcean) trope, then model your ship's crew after naval submarine crews.
>
> Fast Attack submarines have a crew of around 134, broken into about 120 enlisted and 14 officers, while SSBNs have an additional 16 enlisted and usually an additional officer. [source](http://rickcampbellauthor.com/styled/index.html#topic4)
>
>
>
This crew breaks down as follows[source](http://rickcampbellauthor.com/styled/index.html#topic4):
* Commanding Officer
* Executive Officer (second-in-command)
* 4 department heads:
+ the Engineer Officer, responsible for the nuclear reactor, the propulsion plant, and all basic mechanical and electrical systems,
+ the Navigator, responsible for the navigation and radio divisions,
+ the Weapons Officer, responsible for the submarine's torpedo, sonar, and missile divisions,
+ the Supply Office
* Engineering Department
+ Auxiliary (non-nuclear Mechanical)
+ Electrical
+ Mechanical
+ Reactor Controls
+ Reactor Laboratory
* Operations Department
+ Navigation
+ Radio
* Supply Department
+ Culinary Specialist (Cooks)
+ Supply
* Weapons Department
+ Torpedo
+ Sonar
+ Fire Control
+ Missile (on SSBNs)
* Medical Department headed by a Corpsman,
For each department, you'll have at least some sort of computer monitoring station.
* Engineering will have the future-version of [SCADA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA) systems to monitor and control the engines, propulsion systems, life support, etc.
* Operations will have systems to maintain course/heading, maneuvering, and radios.
* Weapons will have shields, space-sonar, counter-measures, weapons, and such.
I could see an argument for moving some of the defensive elements from weapons to operations.
During all this, there would also be damage control teams, in case of onboard fires and/or hull penetration / decompression events. I would assume these groups respond up through Engineering, though they wouldn't be just engineering staff? (i.e. Supply staff would respond to emergencies in the kitchens...)
[Answer]
Oh, you'll need some crew all right ...
First and foremost, you'll need damage control crews to patch up holes in the ship, and medical teams to patch up holes in the crewmen.
Next, let's talk about the cannons (railguns, laser cannons, null field generators, etc). While ammunitioning can be expected to be automated, wise ship designers will forsee that damage may compromise these systems. It'd be silly to have to cede a battle just because the ammo conveyor belt is broken! You'll need crewmen to (a) fix these things as they break, and (b) if necessary & possible, manually hump the ammo from storage to the cannons.
More interestingly ... you'll need a crew of combat telemetry folks. That is, no sane warship will sail into battle without a cloud of probes and satellites flying around practicing electronic warfare against the enemy (and his cloud of probes), defending against the same, and so on. Much of this will be automated, but it helps to have alert crewmen watching, responding to innovations -- if we start losing the probe war in one sector, a crewman can direct computer to saturate that area with buckshot or somesuch.
Finally, you'll need some guys watching out for surprises. Are your elint probes getting spoofed? Is the enemy *really* where the radar says he is? I'd want to have a bunch of guys watching the raw data feeds looking for anomalies which may indicate a problem the ship's expert systems are not equipped to handle.
Oh hey, forgot to mention. You'll need a sizeable gang of marines, in case some of those missiles slamming into the hull are filled with boarders instead of explosives. A ship of the line is *expensive*, would be a darn shame if some rough strangers were to make off with it.
[Answer]
Jerry Pournelle points out that warships have large crews to perform damage control during battles. You can also extrapolate this to ensure there will be enough officers and ratings *after* the battle to continue to operate the ship, and at least bring it home.
While it is always dangerous to make direct one to one comparisons between "wet" navies and future space forces (note, a space force may be derived from a pre existing national air force instead), the idea of having versatile and independent actors aboard a ship or vessel to deal with unexpected situations is probably well founded. Even if the job is relatively limited (for example an analogue to a strike aircraft or motor torpedo boats), there is still scope for one or more crewmen aboard to both deal with unpredicted situations, and to add an element of unpredictability for potential enemies to deal with. Otherwise, sending the equivalent to ICBM's or cruise missiles would suffice both today and in a future space war scenario.
Given that, it is difficult to see what the crew would do once you have closed to shooting range and are now dealing with hypervelocity railgun rounds, Ravening Beam or Death (RBoD) laser beams and [nuclear driven streams of plasma moving at high fractions of the speed of light](http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2017/05/nuclear-efp-and-heat.html). At that point, the ship's weapons and sensors will be under control of an AI or expert system with millisecond reflexes and the ability to point weapons with high degrees of accuracies (targets will be moving in speeds measured in *kilometres per second* so adding a bit of *Kentucky windage* isn't going to help).
So ships, or constellations of ships and platforms will have crews either aboard separate manned command and control ships and service support platforms, or the manned portions of the ships will be in separate pods which can be ejected just prior to going "weapons free" and turning the ship over to the AI. The human crew has set the conditions for the battle (including any randomization) and the senior officer has made the shoot/not shoot determination, so now it is time to get away from the hot, radioactive hell that is about to be unleashed.
Crew pods or manned vessels hanging well back from the constellation should be relatively safe initially, and there may be a convention *not* to target such vessels. As a minimum, you need the senior officer to provide the shut down codes so the vessels and weapons platforms stop shooting once victory has been achieved. As well, being able to negotiate with ranking human officers provides a means of using diplomacy as part of the tool kit. (If you have no intention to negotiate, then even a space fleet is a bit silly, just send waves of nuclear warheads to obliterate the planet....).
So in a plausible amid future scenario, the crews keep the ships going in transit, provide the strategic and possibly operational guidance, but allow tactical control to switch over to AI or expert systems embedded in the vessels while falling behind for self preservation.
[Answer]
So I have a limited amount to contribute but enough that it might be valuable.
1. What a crewperson does who has a specific job depends, @ least in part, how you plan to have that technology work.
2. What a crewperson will be doing is also dependent on the level of dynamic situation adjusting computer automation (typically considered AI but could be just really advanced and capable computer systems).
3. What a crewperson will be doing is dependent on the level of technology that provides advanced interfaces
**Explanations**
1. Specific jobs are dependant on the technology as shown in this example:
If shields are produced by emitters covering the hull, and IF they emit their shields only covering a section of said hull, then a shields person might be, most effectively, the tactical pilot, watching the shield strength for each section of the hull so they can make sure enemy fire is directed at other parts of the hull... while still keeping weapons angled in such a way (when possible) to be able to fire on enemy ships. NOTE: I would assume in any given situation that engineering would be automatically notified of repair needs as damage occurs...
2. If a computer system can more effectively handle all combat maneuvering... firing, adjusting shield power (if this is even possible with the shield technology), tactical piloting, etc... then I would think that there might be a minimal crew to backup the computer(s)... though I am positive that there would be multiple levels of automation (including the hardware) to backup the initial levels of automation
3. Finally, interfaces. If humans are able to interface with a ship through a direct link of some kind (neural links or something very similar), then, much like the advanced computer automation of #2, a few people can handle a lot. If these 'neural links' can also enable people to communicate more quickly and efficiently then there's an even higher level of efficiency possible.
So, as a summary: It depends on the technology you develop, so think that up and you will likely have most of your answers... (or alternately decide what you want your crew to be doing and design your tech to match).
**Ideas**
Not to leave you without more ideas/thoughts here are some:
* Shields:
-Adjusting frequencies to better handle certain kinds of weapons/attacks (ramming, vs high velocity kinetic weapons, standard frequency light lasers vs high energy particle weapons, "phase" weapons like in Star Trek... etc...),
-If the shield emitters have a lot of overlap because they are cheap to build but they can't all be on @ the same time because they require a lot of power, then certainly adjusting power (or temporarily being able to enhance a section) is a possibility (though I would suggest that most of this would be computer controlled)
-If the shield system is a full integrated field that can fail as a whole someone might need to monitor how much it is attempting to absorb all @ once... too much could destroy the entire shield system so they may actually want to let some attack strength through the shield (though in this situation I would imagine there would be a backup system too and, again, computer controls may be better)
* Weapons:
-overall tactical planning might be wise... as opposed to just direct control of weapons systems... this way coordination between weapons systems might be possible
-There could be 'independent' weapons stations where one person takes targets of opportunity ... much like the WWII bomber weapons... but could be for attacking other larger ships instead of just fighters
-certain classes of weapons might have different purposes and uses during a battle ... very powerful but one or two shot weapons would take much better coordination and planning with other crew than anti-fighter defense
* Engineering
I would think engineering would be the heart of the repair operations so:
-directing repair bots
-prioritizing repair crews with the systems that need repair most urgently
-maintaining repair systems (repairing repair systems?)
-maintaining computer & communications systems as well as all of the other things we tend to think of (engines, shields, hull, sensors)
Hope that helps & have fun deciding :)
[Answer]
What comes to mind is a sort of [head-up display (HUD)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-up_display). These are used by, among others, military pilots.
HUDs, in these cases,
* Are transparent, and are either projected onto the cockpit glass or are inside the pilot's helmet.
* Show data about the craft's movement and trajectory.
* Contain information about the target and/or any missiles/bombs/etc. being dropped or fired.
We can easily adapt this to a spacecraft. Here are some ideas:
* **Shields officer:**
+ An image of the entirety of the spacecraft on his screen, showing the strength and orientation of the shield at different points
+ Information about power remaining and the ammunition being fired at the ship
* **Weapons officer:**
+ Various sights that show where weapons are pointed
+ Icons that track enemy ships
+ Data about remaining ammunition/weapon strength
* **Engine officer:** The engine officer doesn't necessarily *need* an HUD, because they're not looking at the battle going on. They'd likely be at a normal terminal somewhere, or in the engine room(s) themselves, supervising any hands-on maintenance.
* **Pilot:**
+ A typical HUD, containing information about the spaceship's movement and position.
[Answer]
First of all, if you are going to encounter alien ships you need them to identify different systems, so you know where to target in combat.
**shields person**
Their display obviously displays the status, effectiveness, and other attributes of the shields. They divert power as needed, for example if the captain orders a frontal assault, then they fore shields should get the most power. Also if a particular aliens weapons are doing more damage then they have to customize the parameters of the shield for best effect.
increase decrease shields frequencies,power levels, modulation
There might be hundred of settings a shield officer might be able to adjust. They may also have to right custom code to make the shields more effective.
Sensor data about the effectiveness of each enemy attack will need to be reviewed.
**weapons person**
They have several weapons choices, so those are displayed along with ammo/power levels. However, they also need to review the data collected from sensors as to the effectiveness of each hit so they can make adjustments to maximize effectiveness.
In terms of energy weapons, the aperture, power level, frequency, and etc are all available to adjusted.
Each weapon/ammo has a host of adjustable settings.
**engineer:** Their terminal displays all the ship's schematics, and highlights which ones are being attacked or damaged. They are prioritizing repairs, dispatching repair teams. Obviously only department heads get to spend most of their time terminals directing things. The grunts have to do the work. There is also a chance they might be re-writing some code to handle specific alien weapons attacks, and diverting power around damaged sections.
Even more important when not in combat they are the ones who are upgrading your ship. There will be teams doing both real and virtual weapons testing. Take a piece of hull, stand it up, and hit it with new and different energy patterns. Their displays will show detailed senors logs of just how the weapon damages the material. Is it cutting the hull, disintegrating it, or etc. That data will be combined with known attacks to change the composition of the hull it make it more universally durable without simply just making it thicker. A ship with a 5 mile thick hull is just impractical.
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I am sure the ships computer will make suggestion on what presets or automatic options are recommended, but in the heat of battle humans need to make the final decision. Maybe the captain needs a certain system to stay up longer for one last attack before they divert power or the repair team gets to work. There will be first encounters, and new variations of ships never encountered before that the crew will have to make allowances for.
Captains will customize there ships for the type of things they expect to encounter in whatever regions of space they go into. How does template A in shields affect the weapons array template 12? If they are going into an uninhabited solar systems most the time weapons and shields aren't such a big deal. When you do need them you will mainly be programming them for asteroid destruction, and such and not combat with another ship. The composition of each asteroid will be displayed, so they can decide how to destroy it with the least amount of power/ammo.
If your going into a war zone you will need to customize your weapons and armor accordingly. Also you will need to customize them according to the strength of your ship. If you thick ablative super armor you can take more direct hits, and direct more power to the weapons array. If you have light armor, your shields will be more important.
Despite how simply all the sci-fi shows make each system seem, they are not. To keep people interested, and not to bog down the story most the technical details are glossed over.
[Answer]
There are some good answers here — if someone wants to leech off this and feature it in their own answer, please do so.
You ask regarding the bridge crew, so I will limit this to the bridge.
Two things:
* There are usually three tiers of jobs in the environment of a control room: operator, supervisor, and Officer of the Watch (or Deck).
The operator has very few duties, and they focus on those duties. Now, they might have a lot to do, and lots of casualty procedures with which to be proficient, but you never have fewer operators than are needed to operate the equipment. You have teams of off-watch personnel to assist in casualties, of course, but the operators are the ones responsible.
The supervisor issues commands, takes reports from the watchstanders, and so on. Like the [Boatswain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boatswain), [Coxswain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coxswain), or the [Chief Reactor Watch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinist%27s_mate). They usually run from operator to operator. They act as an intermediary between the watchstanders and the officer.
The Officer of the Watch (or Deck, depending on the situation) is the one responsible directly to the captain. They are in charge on the bridge when the captain is not there; they also are the officers in the other areas of the ship — but that's not important to the bridge crew.
On nuclear aircraft carriers, you actually had a watch officer who oversaw each propulsion plant, and who answered to the Engineering Officer of the Watch; the EOOW then oversaw all of Engineering.
* Redundancies. There were very few systems onboard the ship that did not have one more component than necessary. You expect things to fail — especially in something designed for combat conditions.
Also, you need to take some of them offline for maintenance, both scheduled and corrective.
* Reviewing the actions of your fellow watchstanders helped to ensure that fewer mistakes were made — most of the time, of course. It would be the same for computer operators and supervision.
Okay — three things.
The bridge is responsible for co-ordinating the actions of every other department on the ship. In our naval ships, they only directly operate the steering. Everything else is distributed so as to be nearer the equipment of concern. Communications get piped through to the bridge, but they operators are elsewhere.
You'd have the captain, those who report to the captain from the other departments and relay the captain's commands to them, and those other departments.
The captain never directly operates anything because they can't lose sight of the entire ship. A captain needs to be aware of all the details being executed, but also needs to be able to delegate.
[Answer]
You might want to look at David Weber's Honor Harrington series - several books in the series are available as free downloads. See the baen free library at www.baen.com; the first novel is *On Basilisk Station*.
He basically has Command, Tactical (weapons/defences) Electronic Warfare and signals officers on the bridge, backed up elsewhere by CIC (scans), Engineering, Damage control, and on-mount gun crews (in case something trashes the control links and they need to go to local control). Also a navigator, but that's usually for non-combat situations.
[Answer]
The problem with ships controls as depicted now is that the mindset is of a person at a computer terminal: typing, maybe with a joystick.
Back in the days of sailing ships, sailors used main strength to execute maneuvers. They ran, hauled; they were in action, compelling the materials of the ship to do their bidding.
I propose that space battle needs more of the latter and less of the former. The sailors of old could do one thing at a time, and sometimes many teamed up to do it. With computer assist a given crew member can do many things at once, and there is no reason not to utilize multiple body parts to do those things - not just the two index fingers I am typing with.
**The crew on space ships should dance**. Consoles would have full body capture control - much like a game of Dance Dance Revolution. Different movements of different body parts would correspond to actions within the given system. Body English would be for real. During battle the computer would lay down a beat appropriate for the situation and the crew member (or members, for particularly tricky situations) would put their backs into it! And their fronts.
ADDENDUM: I perceive a tragic lack of love. Perhaps a demonstration?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hYujQ.jpg)
from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9OQOHyJjCY>
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[Question]
[
What if in a magical world, people would be punished with curses rather than prison for violent offenses. This would be for crimes the state found most despicable (murder, rape, torture, necromancy, etc) and would be applied by a priest of the religion. The curse would be placed on your soul and force you to feel the pain of the victim you harmed, but in a "spiritual" rather than physical sense.
The spiritual agony would be felt by you for as long as the curse is active, but not be detrimental to you in daily life. You could still walk around, work, and do normal things, but feel "pain" as you go through it. A curse would be visible to others, like the mythical mark of Cain from the bible. Suicide is not an option, as the curse makes you semi-immortal while it is active. It can only be removed by a a priest.
Would these kinds of curses be more effective at curbing crime than prison or execution?
[Answer]
* Many criminals in the real world are not deterred by the threat of punishment. They think the will not get caught, or they do not take the time to think at all. To make an impression on these people, the magic should be used for *investigation* and *determination of guilt*. Details of punishment are less important than swift and certain punishment.
* That being said, prison time prevents the immate from perpetrating crimes against victims on the outside (and facilitates other crimes against victims who cannot get away, but that's another story). A cursed criminal who "feels the pain" every day might well lash out at any available target, or get drunk and then lash out.
* The best reason for this scheme, at least in a typical fantasy world, is that it saves prison costs. Locking people up is a terrible drain on the economy, and a medieval-style world doesn't have enough surplus.
[Answer]
>
> Would these kinds of curses be more effective at curbing crime than prison or execution?
>
>
>
There are four goals of punishment:
1. Incapacitation. Prevent the criminals from committing other crimes.
2. Retribution. Punish so that the victims don't have to do so.
3. Deterrence. Scare potential offenders from committing crimes.
4. Rehabilitation. Give the criminal skills to gain employment, etc.
Curses may be more effective on retribution and deterrence, but they are utterly ineffective on incapacitation and rehabilitation.
### Punishment type doesn't deter
The truth is that even mild punishments deter if coupled with removing any gains if they are always applied when deserved. There is very little reason to believe that stronger punishments deter more. More consistent convictions are more important.
The issue is that most people don't expect to get caught. They don't do a careful balancing of the punishment versus the gains of the crime. They simply expect to get away with it.
Even if the curse is a scarier punishment than imprisonment or execution, it won't have a much greater effect. Criminals are criminals because they don't believe they'll get caught, not because they don't care if they'll be punished.
### Retribution doesn't prevent criminals
The retribution aspect of punishment doesn't prevent the original crime. It prevents reprisal. And it's relatively effective when it comes to law abiding people. This punishment might feel fairer than imprisonment or even execution, but it won't do anything to prevent the original crime.
### Rehabilitation
Curses won't have any effect on making the criminal better able to participate in society. They don't encourage the development of employable skills.
On the bright side, imprisonment, while better, is pretty weak on this as well. Job training programs meet the reality that most employers don't want to hire criminals. Probation programs may have the most impact, because the parole officer can demand that prisoners be self-supporting. But overall, most prisoners do not come out more employable.
Execution is of course also an utter failure at rehabilitation.
### Curses don't incapacitate
As described, your curses won't keep criminals from committing more crimes. Yes, they're wearing the physical mark of the curse. But if their victims aren't able to see that because they are looking the other way or if their victims don't have anywhere to run, they can keep on committing crimes while cursed.
Imprisoned, they'd only be able to commit crimes on other prisoners or guards for the length of their incarceration.
Executed, their crime days would be over.
Incapacitation has the greatest effect on reducing crime of current punishments, and it's the aspect that loses the most. Any mild benefits from deterrence would be lost to the decline in incapacitation.
### Summary
Overall, I'd expect crime to **increase** under this program relative to imprisonment and execution.
You could offset this by increasing the likelihood of punishment through magical means. But the fact is that this is not the optimal punishment for most of the crimes that you mention.
### Optimal punishment
Murder: execution of the guilty makes sense if you can be absolutely sure who is guilty, e.g. via truth spell or divination. The two greatest arguments against are the possibility of punishing the wrong person and the idea that we're better than them. But medieval societies are unlikely to put that much weight in being better. If you absolutely insist, you can think about adding some kind of incapacitating curse on violence. But that extreme loss of self-defense capability may not be considered more just than execution.
Rape: a punishing curse for deterrence and retribution combined with an incapacitating curse like inability to get an erection.
Torture: may actually work.
Necromancy: it's unclear to me why this is on the list of the worst crimes. Maybe it would work.
I actually think that this makes more sense for lesser crimes where we use short terms of imprisonment: robbery, non-fatal violence, manslaughter, reckless endangerment, etc. The loss of the incapacitation effect has less impact and the deterrence effect on repeat offenders is more important.
In general though, the way to reduce crime is to increase the likelihood of getting caught. Someone who tries one crime and is immediately caught is much less likely to commit a second crime than someone who gets away with the first crime without consequence. And that only gets worse with the second, third, etc. crimes without consequence.
Also consider what to do with people under curses who commit new crimes. Execution? Banishment? A prison island? An incapacitating curse?
[Answer]
## **It could, but it depends on the society as a whole and no system is perfect**
**Is it more effective?**
One thing to consider is that "more effective" is fairly subjective. We, looking at it from our current world, might view pain as an effective negative to stop us from doing something. However, in a world of magic, and depending on how wide-spread that magic is (if everyone has it or just a select few "enforcers"), it could be that just as there are criminals who are willing to kill despite the threat of prison today, there would be criminals who would still do the crime and ignore the consequences (and figuring out *why* someone might ignore those consequences can lead to some very interesting explorations of the society that's being built and its problems, but that's another topic).
**The Culture's Values**
When you get right down to it, you have to question what the culture's core values are and what their reasoning for putting the curse system in place is in order to help determine its effectiveness.
Arguably, one of the functions of the prison system we have today is supposed to be to punish and then deter and rehabilitate the criminals that can be rehabilitated and execute the ones who are deemed beyond help with the end goal of ending up with functioning members of society (I'm simplifying a bit here, of course).
However, the end goal for a system that inflicts pain on criminals seems a bit blurrier because, strictly speaking, forcing criminals to feel pain (emotional or physical) could be considered torture. And torture has lasting effects of anything from depression to a potential final "push" over the edge to *begin* liking the pain and committing more crimes, with the end result of the criminals not being able to function in normal society. (as a side note, consider how a criminal might deal with their spiritual pain and what they might do while undergoing their punishment - it may be different in the world you're creating, but there are many mind-altering drugs in this world that could help alleviate the pain, perhaps lessening any the impact the punishment may have)
<https://worldwithouttorture.org/2015/03/18/six-ways-that-torture-affects-a-person-psychologically/>
**Religion**
But maybe not having the criminals rehabbed works for your system, maybe part of their punishment, considering the curse mark you mentioned, is a life of exile from polite society.
You also mentioned the priests of the religion would be the ones to lay the curse on the criminals, which would indicate that the religion has a heavy hand in the running of the government and possibly strong guidelines for how people should behave. So perhaps the religion dictates a certain amount of revenge against someone who has wronged you (eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth style - only translating that to what a person feels).
**Immortality and Non-physical Pain**
You mentioned that those feeling the pain would be unable to take their own life, giving them a sort of state of immortality. My concern here is that one of the first things I think of when considering non-physical pain is depression.
Yes, depression can result in thoughts of suicide, but those with depression can also have a bunch of other symptoms. For example, a criminal with this curse becomes so depressed by the pain they're feeling that they stop eating before their sentence is up. By not eating, they may not intentionally be trying to kill themselves, they might just feel like they can't eat because of how much it hurts.
Eventually they could get to the point that they're not a functioning member of society and it would become someone's (the governments?) responsibility to make sure that they didn't just waste away and die from lack of nutrition. That could also be part of the religious views of the culture though - if you come through your suffering then you are redeemed and forgiven by the rest of society, but if you don't survive then the deeds committed were too heinous and the deity (or deities or spirits) determined that death was the just punishment.
**Sadism/Masochism**
I also wanted to take a moment to explore the sadism and masochism portion of this system. As mentioned in a few other comments and answers, it is very likely that if the beings in the world you are building are humanoid and at least somewhat similar to us, then there will be those who get pleasure from the pain simply because otherwise they cannot feel anything at all (as one example reason). Those that do this could become repeat offenders, never actually becoming "better" and not caring what society thinks because they simply are out for the joy of the kill.
Some current justice systems allow criminals that are insane to plead not guilty, instead sending them to a care facility to become rehabilitated in that way. The main logic around this is that those who are not thinking clearly will not gain anything from their punishment, but they still need to be separated from the rest of society.
<http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/insanity-defense.html>
The way I see it, there are a few different ways to handle these types of people/things that should be considered when dealing with them (and I'm sure there are others I haven't thought of):
* Perhaps your magic system supports a sort of mind-healer to reform these people.
* Maybe execution still exists and repeat offenders are dealt with that way.
* Perhaps the world is big enough that the offenders can be completely ostracized and exiled. Instead of being pushed to the side and snubbed by the rest of society, they would simply be removed as a threat and left to fend completely for themselves.
[Answer]
**Perhaps a little but it might increase the number of murders**
So let's say you've committed a crime - let us take rape as an example - now if you have been observed committing this crime and know that, if you get caught, you will be subjected to incredible pain what would you do?
Surely killing the observer (in this case the victim of the rape) is going to be the course of action which best helps you avoid excruciating spiritual pain.
It may put *some* people off committing the crime but only (some of) those who plan ahead, not those who, in the spur of the moment, lash out or (I guess) prey on some vulnerable person to rape.
[Answer]
Some of society's worst offenders are sociopaths and/or sadomasochistic. This means that they are more or less incapable of feeling "spiritual" pain, or empathy of any kind. Worse still sadomasochistic offenders may actually enjoy the pain as it's the only feeling they respond to.
Unless your magic accounts for this it may end up being ineffective or counterproductive.
Take the infamous [Albert Fish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Fish) as an example, after his arrest an x-ray revealed two dozen self embedded pins in his pelvic region. Pain was his only interest in life, so inflicting pain on him would be counterproductive at best...
[Answer]
I believe that the magical curse simply needs to mark the convicted criminal and identify their offence, in such a way as cannot be concealed. Society then shuns them-it is strictly taboo to interact with a person with 'The Mark'. When their sentence/penance is complete, the mark may then be removed. For the non-capital crimes, the price goes up with each conviction.
The convict may also lose all or many of their rights under law.
They carry their own prison around with them. Fear of shunning would be a very powerful deterrent.
To address the comment regarding the shunned banding together, I would have a component of the spell detect the presence of other marking spells. More than one in a given area causes pain. If they do not disperse promptly, heads start to explode.
[Answer]
No immortality is needed here. Its a curse, make it where it will force the cursed individual to abide by its set rules. Basically all the curse needs to do, to keep them from killing themselves is make their self preservation something which is incapable of being ignored. They cant kill themselves because they simply are incapable of it mentally, and are otherwise incapable of asking for it. It may never actual occur to them without outside influence even.
Now for the actual curse itself. The thing that makes it hell to live with. Constant unprovoked pain isn't needed here. If they only feel the pain when they have their *urge* than it will enforce a kind of conditioning. Further more the pain should be something mental and psychical as well. Perhaps the curse makes them feel extremely guilty and remorseful when they get their *urge* or have violent thoughts, perverted thoughts etc. As well as feel a sickening pain, something that is extremely painful and unpleasant in other ways like having a stomach ache for example.
I'd also make it a rule that any asshole killing someone with the mark should than be automatically cursed by said mark. Revenge killings seem like it would be frowned upon here but still.
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 6 years ago.
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I am an alien AI probe orbiting Earth. I know your civilization. I have been watching you for millennia. And today I decided to talk to you for the first time. How it happened is not important.
I know your major languages (more or less, since you can read this) and I can use every form and means of communication you want. But...
1. I do not want to enter the atmosphere of your planet
2. I want to speak with only one interlocutor who speaks for all of
you: a commission or an individual ambassador. It is up to you.
**Now, after the first contact**, you chose for your safety to disclose the first-contact information, yet you also want to keep the communication with me safe. No one must be able to intercept the communications, entering and leaving. I agree and I can ignore every unwanted call or visit.
What is the best way for you to do it? You can use all the technology you already have (in orbit or not) or build something ad-hoc.
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Since what you want is secure comunication, I think you should generate a pair of encryption keys. That way, even if someone does intercept the transmission between you and the embassador or commission, it will be encrypted anyways, and this should guarantee that you and your interlocutor can speak freely. As for how to convey the message, well, you could piggy-back on the ISS comms.
Being an alien AI you might not be familiar with the concept, so i suggest a visit to the folks over at [Security SE](https://security.stackexchange.com/) and [Cryptography SE](https://crypto.stackexchange.com/)
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Teach the chosen interlocutor your language.
If it is sufficiently alien, it should be undecipherable to other humans.
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The same way mission control communicates with people in space, via an encrypted radio transmission.
Although we on earth can communicate with the ISS using [ham radio](http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a16799/ham-radio-contact-iss/), mission critical communications are handled on an encrypted channel.
You, as the visiting alien should be able to handle this. Or you can drop in on the ISS itself, where crew members will be available to facilitate your call.
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Use a highly directional form of transmission once you've selected your interlocuter. Ideally, you'd get as low as you're comfortable going and use a laser to communicate directly down. You'll also want to shield this laser so that its source can't be seen, so create a tube (drill through a piece of asteroid, if you have to) to shield it from all other directions. Feel free to *also* use the other answers, but you can't decrypt what you can't see or hear, and that's what makes laser-based communications so secure.
Quick math says that if you're in LEO (160km), your starting point for a horizon is 1437km (900mi / roughly the size of the Louisiana Purchase) but this only matters if you're communicating with a transmitter that is completely non-directional. If you're using a laser, you can dictate how large the area that can see your transmission is, down to just a few square feet. If you had a specific enough setup, you could probably make your transmission visible to just one eye of one person, but I'm not sure how to determine what you'd need in terms of a laser array or collimater at that point.
A downside to this is that maintaining station over a single point above the earth takes a huge amount of delta V (rocket fuel). If you're an AI made by an alien race that has reactionless drives, you don't care about this.
If propellant use is an issue, you can go up to geostationary orbit and still do this, but you'll have to aim much more carefully.
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As structure created by a highly developed civilization you probably know that in age when [quantum computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing#Potential) is arising classic cryptography is not reliable anymore, because of computational complexity guarding cryptographical algorithms [is dropping](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_complexity_theory) thanks to ability of quantum machines to inspect great quantities of states, exponential to number of its [qubits](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubit)
While new field of [quantum cryptography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_cryptography) is arising, giving much more reliable way to generate keys known only by communicating sides, not by man-in-the-middle. It based on the [Heisenbergs uncertainty princible](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle). Third person trying to observe quantum information during [shared key generation process](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_key_distribution) will necesarry affect this state, which could be noticed by both sides.
From engeneering site quantum communication is very hard on the Earth because of high density of matter, electromagnetic field fluctuations and high average temperature.
In space, even on the Earth orbit we could at least keep necessary materials near to absolute zero in the [superconductor state](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity) and send some quantum beams directly through space, fixing some fluctuation errors with [error correction algorithms](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_error_correction)
I guess emerge of quantum computing could be the reason why you've decided to speak with us at this exact moment, when technology becomes available but only for few intelligent people
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***tl;dr*-** Provide your human contact with as many bits of one-time pad cipher as they need. This results in perfect message secrecy; other humans won't ever be able to break it, even with hyper-advanced quantum computers.
## Provide one-time pads
Encryption via a [one-time pad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad) is perfect and unbreakable, as long as:
1. the one-time pad was generated using a process that attackers can't reverse-engineer; and
2. each part of the one-time pad is discarded after use, never to be reused.
Humans have plenty of methods for generating high-quality informational entropy, i.e. one-time pads that can't be reverse-engineered. But, as an alien AI, you probably have crazy patterns and methods that we couldn't begin to hope to reverse-engineer, meaning that you're an excellent source of extreme-quality entropy.
## Don't use normal encryption methods
The best encryption methods are pretty much unbreakable, we think, as far as modern human knowledge and technology go. But why bother? You can use perfect encryption via one-time pads.
## Add junk data if you want
The one big information leak from one-time pad communication is the amount of information and time it was transmitted. This is, if someone sends you a message that's 100-bytes long, then spies can know that you received a 100-byte message. They wouldn't know what it *says*, but since they know it was sent, that's still technically an information leak.
So, add junk data to fill out messages up to some certain size, let's say 100TB. Then, all a spy knows is that a message was sent that was up to 100TB in size.
This would be impractical for humans, since getting 100TB of high-quality single-use entropy for each message would be really annoying and costly, but since you're an alien AI, it's probably basically free for you.
## Schedule regular transmissions
Have your human contact send messages at regularly scheduled times, even if they've got nothing to say and just end up sending pure junk data.
This way, no one knows when you're actually sending messages. All any spy can tell is that they're not sending you *more* than the message size at the regularly scheduled rate.
## Use a hidden transmission channel
Using the above tactics, no spy could ever read your communications or know when you're sending them. At most, they know that you're not sending more than, say, 100TB of messages every communication cycle; which, since that's already pretty much a given, doesn't matter.
But, if you want to go one step further, you could do a directional transmission channel. This would have the advantage of spies not even having the chance to realize that there is some sort of secret communication going on.
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If i were you i would send my own drone down to the surface and communicate through that, that way they would know for sure they are not being punked by a pirate radio signal and a kid with Mad FX Skills. Let the humans decide who steps in front of the drone.
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Here is an [article on quantum communications](http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-communications-leap-out-of-the-lab-1.15093) that should fit the bill. China is putting up a satellite to test it soon.
The message isn't sent using quantum entanglement (we aren't there yet) but the decryption key is.
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I'm planning on having several races in my novel, each of which primarily uses a different language. The idea is that all of these languages were at some point related, and all of them came from one ancient, dead language. The problem I'm facing is that almost all of these races still live very close to each other in terms of proximity, so I can't use geographic isolation as an excuse for each race to develop its own language. How can I explain each race having its own language without stating isolation as a reason (because all of the races are very close together)?
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Several factors can lead to linguistic differentiation.
## Isolation
I know you said this isn't a consideration. But if you have a setting where transportation technology is primitive or expensive, most people will mainly travel to the other nearby villages. Going 50-70 miles from home would be rare for ordinary farmers, perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime event. Another factor that puts a damper on travel is constant warfare and instability in the region. People traveled more widely during the *pax Romana* than during the more chaotic period after the empire fell.
Difficulty travelling won't result in different languages at a distance of 50 miles, but it will result in a [spectrum of dialects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFl). Add enough distance and dialects cease being mutually intelligible and are considered different languages.
(All of the above assumes a lack of modern transportation and especially communication technology. Local dialects were reduced drastically with the advent of radio and television.)
## Politics
For a long time, I thought there were five Romance languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian. Actually, from a linguistics standpoint, there are many others. For example, [Galician](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_language) is spoken in Spain but closely related to Portuguese (considered by some to be a dialect rather than a separate language). [Occitan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occitan_language) (southern France and neighboring parts of Spain and Italy) has aspects of French and Spanish as well as some features of its own. These "minor" languages are intermediate stages on the dialect continuum between the "main" Romance languages. But because they aren't the official languages of their countries, they have been stigmatized and suppressed. Occitan speakers in France had to learn French; Occitan speakers in Spain had to learn Spanish. Prune the missing links between Parisian French and Castilian Spanish, and it looks less like a dialect continuum and more like two separate languages.
## Ethnic pride
This is the most important factor. [user61244's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/68790/9994) is spot-on: linguistic differences are magnified as a way of expressing group identity. Even if elves and goblins live in close proximity, they're going to develop different ways of speaking because no one wants to be accused of "sounding like one of *them*." The more two groups develop their own pronunciations, slang terms, etc., the less intelligible they will be to one another. When they have to understand each other, they will use a more neutral dialect (possibly a form of the original language, like the use of Latin in Europe); but at home among their own kind, they will use their preferred way of talking.
## What's the backstory?
One question you should ask is, Why were these races speaking the same language in the first place? If they are different enough to be considered separate "races," that indicates they either *can't* intermarry (if you're talking fantasy races) or *don't* intermarry much. If they have a common genetic origin, it's a *long* time ago. Genetic drift happens much slower than linguistic drift.[citation needed]
Let me posit one scenario that could lead to different races speaking the same language: *conquest*. One of your races conquers the others and imposes their own language across their empire. However, the conquered peoples have their own, possibly unrelated languages, and continue speaking these languages among themselves. How long the native languages survive depends on how aggressively the conquerors crack down on them. Eventually, everyone ends up speaking the empire's language, but colored by their native language as a [substrate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratum_(linguistics)).
When the conquered peoples gain their independence, they have forgotten their original languages and go on speaking their local versions of the empire's language. With time (and without a standardizing political influence), divergence is driven by the mechanisms above and you have separate languages again.
---
The Roman Empire and Romance languages are the obvious example for these phenomena. For a less Eurocentric but still pretty similar one, read up on [Arabic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic). It was spread across a wide area by conquest, and has since developed into a dialect continuum. Some of the dialects are mutually unintelligible and might be considered separate languages. Educated people write and sometimes speak in Modern Standard Arabic, which is an updated form of Classical Arabic (the parent language) used throughout Arabic-speaking areas. People from different regions who need to communicate apparently use a mixture of MSA and their local dialects.
Happy conlanging!
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European countries are very close to each other. Smashed up along side each other, in fact. No wiggle room between at all. Yet there is French, Spanish, Italian. Romanian. Romansk. More if you count ones like Catalan. All from Latin. And it didn't take long - maybe 500 years? 70 miles is a haul if your roads are scary, unmaintained paths through the forest. Nature is a pretty good natural barrier. You can posit a dark age.
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1) As part of enforcing self-identity and the fact they belong to different groups: career criminals almost universally develop their own language, best known example to me is "fenya" -- made up language in Russian prisons.
2) The large area taken by each race -- sheer distance plus relatively slow means of travel even in case of lack of natural barriers helps to develop dialects and subsequently languages
3) the fact that different parts of one race's territory borders different cultures: this differential influence can speed up development of regional dialects and move the language farther from it's common ancestor
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**Physiological Differences**
The ancient tongue was created to be a universal language, usable and understandable by all the races. But after whatever government or power enforced it fell apart, the races began to adapt the language to better fit their own needs. Differences in the tongue, throat, vocal cords, and ears could change lead to changes in the language. A snake-like race may use more 's' and 'z' sounds in their words, and drop off 't' and 'd' sounds as they are uncomfortable for their tongue and jaw. Elves might be able to hear higher pitches, dwarves subsonics, etc.
And that is assuming the races do not have other differences in what or how they communicate. A visually acute race might use fewer, simpler words, relying on body and eye language instead. A race that is especially magically sensitive might develop additional words for elements of spellcraft that don't mean anything to other races.
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Isolation isn't just a matter of physical distance. Two groups can live in the same town and still have very separate communities.
As unfortunate as it is racism may be the answer.
For instance [segregation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_United_States) in the American South led to distinct accents, jargon, and slang. It's not hard to imagine that if the system had continued\* on a long enough timeline that a distinctly different language could emerge.
\*
I'm aware that many communities are still heavily segregated and I hope that someday this can be remedied.
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Besides all the answers already given, would you be willing to accept the *imposition* of changes to a local dialect? A crazy, linguistically minded despot lording over a small group of subjects could possibly pull it off. He could decide that the dialect his people speak is wrong, or imprecise, or beneath his dignity, and decree that new verb conjugations be adopted, better-sounding nouns be crafted, etc. Maybe he wouldn't have what it takes to design a full-fledged artificial language, or maybe he'd like the language to return to its supposed roots (for example, imagine an English-speaking mad king who decided to [purge English of Latinate words](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism_in_English) and others and leave [only Germanic cognates in the lexicon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding)). He wouldn't have to have a real knowledge of the old language; indeed, like most reactionaries and fundamentalists, he would probably guess wrong based on legend or on incomplete sources. That doesn't matter, really. For this to work it would take not only a very determined ruler but probably also a long-lived one and the help of a caste of linguistic purity enforcers (priests?).
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Do the races live in the same country? 'cause if not you just have to look at, once again, Europe. French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese all come from the same dead language - Latin - but are different enough that, even though I'm Portuguese I struggle to understand or speak the other three languages. And while France and Italy have natural barriers, Spain and Portugal are neighbouring countries, otherwise separated from the rest of Europe by natural barriers - oceans and mountains. Nevertheless, Portuguese and Spanish developed to be very different languages and Spain even has different dialects in its own country, different enough that some argue for their separation.
You could even have the example of China, where lower and upper classes speak different versions of what us in the West call 'Chinese'.
Basically, use politics.
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I am writing a transhumanist science fiction story that employs a system called "utility vouchers". A utility voucher is a redeemable unit of value that humans are allotted on an egalitarian basis and can redeem to obtain "utility", or some kind of positive effect or state of affairs. The goal is to avoid [wireheading scenarios](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)). I anticipate the utility voucher system will be managed by superintelligent AIs, although human management offers more possibilities in regards to how things might go terribly wrong in a story.
For example, let's say I want to have big muscles. I can either get them the hard way by working out in the gym, or I can redeem some utility vouchers to get them much more quickly with nanorobotic enhancement. The same is true for luxury goods, where they function like money. A powerful sportscar is energy-intensive to build, so it will cost me more vouchers than scented candles will.
Utility vouchers also account for [externalities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality), so anything you do that creates an externality is going to be factored into the cost of the voucher.
The result is that if someone wants pleasure by directly stimulating their brain, they have to "pay the fee". In the case of wireheading, you would eventually run out of vouchers and become unable to continue the high, maybe even experiencing a withdrawal.
Utility vouchers are not used for everything. For example, they aren't used up by simple or spontaneous things like laughing when your friend randomly tells you a joke. They also don't apply for necessities like food, water or shelter.
Utility vouchers are awarded on a regular basis. This could be daily and as a fraction of the energy available to consume by a civilization. Their value could be determined by the energy cost to redeem them, how close they come to wireheading the participants or plateauing them into a constant state of pleasure, or a mix of both.
Does this idea make sense? Do you think it would work?
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**Problem #1:** Human history
To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a govenment-controlled solution to (or, perhaps more accurately, an external force controlling) addiction. Even when incarcerated, people find ways to gain access to drugs (and wireheading is just another drug from that perspective). You're far enough into the future that the fundamental technology to wirehead is trivially available. Frankly, unless there's an imposed fine against the vouchers for the purpose of restricting wireheading, the cost of wireheading would be closer to the cost of the candle than the cost of the luxury car. My point? Addicts are remarkably clever at finding ways around legal and cultural restrictions and tend to gravitate to underground, black market solutions that are not believably possible to stop.
**Problem #2:** Fiat currency by any other name is still fiat currency
You're treating your vouchers as if they are materially different from "money." They're not. They're just another medium of exchange not backed by an arbitrary and theoretically valuable resource. AKA, fiat currency. Worse, it's likely a digital fiat currency, which means the system can be hacked. Your option is to declare your managing AI overlord to be godlike in that no mere human can figure out a way to modify or circumvent either the software or the hardware. Godlike plot constructs are boring. My point is that money is money and whatever you call it, that means every problem money has is a problem you'll experience. And that includes what addicts will do if they run out of vouchers. Can your vouchers be transferred between individuals? Then your AI just lost control over the situation entirely.
**Problem #3:** Transhumanisim pretty much guarantees addiction if someone wants to be an addict
You don't explain what you mean by "transhumanist," so I assume one of the many definitions:
>
> Transhumanism, philosophical and scientific movement that advocates the use of current and emerging technologies—such as genetic engineering, cryonics, artificial intelligence (AI), and nanotechnology—to augment human capabilities and improve the human condition.
>
>
>
Transhumanism may seek the betterment of the human condition, but what does that really mean? Freedom from disease? That's good. Faster thinking or easier access to information. Social media and the Internet have already proven that to be a two-edged sword. Dove/Unilever [currently has an advertising campaign](https://www.dove.com/us/en/stories/campaigns/kids-online-safety.html) against social media on behalf of juvenile health. Freedom to act without constraint? That's always bad. All of which is a fancy way of saying that transhumanism will act both in favor of an addiction-free humanity, *and against it.* Transhumanism, despite its goals, is a tool of culture, not a culture. Why? Because, almost by definition, transhumanism espouses *freedom,* not by law (which is good because it's not anarchistic), but by science (which is bad, because science has no restraints, being only a tool).
**Encouragement #1:** Comprehensive technology is whomping hard to cheat
Why is it dramatic when we hear of someone hacking the user accounts of a major corporation? Because it's actually really, really, really hard to do that. With every attack against "law and order" humanity learns better how to defend its interests. By the time of your future, that such a compromise could be *insanely rare* if not impossible becomes, to a degree believable. So, by weight of the goals of transhumanism, it's plausible to create the world you propose. (Ignoring the fact that godlike things are literarily boring.)
**Encouragement #2:** If the timing is right, time is on your side
Let's assume that the "happiness vouchers" came to exist reasonably long before wireheading. People will have grown accustomed to how it works. They'll have even come to culturally trust the voucher system. So when wireheading comes to be, the voucher system can believably manage the experience so that people don't become desperate. But this isn't just the vouchers themselves, this must be considered part of the transhumanist experience. People are free to *experience* the high of wireheading, but comprehend going in that their exposure to it will be *managed* by the AI so that they never become pariah to the culture. (This, of course, opens the door to a very dark exploration of just how effectively people can seek what is not best for them.)
**Encouragement #3:** Narrative Necessity
Finally, people often dismiss the assertion that "it's your story, it'll work if you declare it to be true." The simple truth here is that we're not gods. We can't foresee every possible truth, every possible consequence, or every possible reality. When you ask, "can this work?" we can obviously point out reasons why it won't, but it's impossible to explain with any certainty why it will. Honestly, it's not even reasonable to ask, because the only rational answer is "it does if your narrative necessity requires it to." Even asking if it makes sense, or is believable... if you think about it... really isn't the point, because if you write a good story people will believe anything and if you don't it won't matter how well something like this could work.
So, if you like this idea, run with it! Use the information you've learned here to create a fun story, but don't let anything here dissuade you from your idea.
**One more thing...**
I get what you mean by "externalities..." but by definition if your system is capable of dealing with the cost of all "externalities" then you don't have any.
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**You're basically describing contemporary money and benefits.**
The differences are that
* everyone gets these benefits, no matter their background or current state.
This exists (already), and is known as [Universal Basic Income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income).
* all necessities—food, water, shelter (upkeep, electricity?)—are free.
Will this work?
I hope so, but the problem with people is that they will always want more, especially power and 'stuff', and some will find and go through loopholes to get what they desire, inadvertently or deliberately upsetting the status quo.
Thus, such a concept will require a lot of monitoring, which could be done by your AIs, and perhaps an egalitarian, anarchical oligarchy, who are willingly exposing themselves and all their communication and activity to the AI or a randomized group of individuals.
Concerning the wireheading: if I'm interpreting you correctly, this is a problem you're facing and want to avoid?
As with drugs, banning it will lead to uncontrollable scenarios. You'll probably want to legalize it under very specific conditions: a regulated environment and professional medical personnel, or a "therapeutic team", that audits the clients (similar to current-day [psychedelic therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_therapy)).
It can come with a hefty price tag, to discourage and contain users.
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# Comparing Future Apples to Space Oranges
Boiling down all the sci-fi concepts, other users are right: What you have is an economy and monetary system. You have more complicated ways of figuring out the price for goods or services and differing ways of earning the currency, but it is currency nonetheless. Wireheading is high-tech addiction, additional wrinkles notwithstanding. So the question you are really asking becomes...
## How Does Monetary Policy Prevent Addiction?
Short answer: it doesn't. You are comparing apples and oranges here, or trying to perform surgery with a ballpoint pen. This is not the right tool for the job (though other tools might be). Additional caution: *Any* simple solution is begging to be smacked by the [Law of Unintended Consequences.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences) To eliminate addiction, you also need to eliminate poverty, cure most mental health conditions, and permanently fulfill all psychological and relational needs for every person in your society. Your world is now very boring.
## Frame Challenge: Not Transhumanism
At least not in the philosophical sense. Your people have new ways to get what they want that would be unfathomable to our century, like hopping in a metal tube and flying to the other side of the globe in 12 hours was to people of 1900. But airplanes didn't change human nature- we just got new toys to use in the same business, leisure, and warfare that has existed for all of human history. As long as your humans are human, addiction *will* be a reality.
## Frame Challenge 2, The Sequel: Lean Into It
Wireheads are simply a part of your society, just like crackheads are to ours. This is relatable for readers- some never touch drugs, some users are semi-functional, and some addicts are utterly destroyed by them. Some former addicts have escaped their chains, and some people dedicate their lives to fighting societal evils like addiction. Frankly, this is a lot more interesting than having a paragraph that handwaves away addiction. If you **absolutely need** to handwave it away, make the solution both complex and vague: "Centuries of experience with legislation, addiction recovery methods, economics, sociology, and law enforcement culminated in the near-elimination of substance abuse."
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# It works
I hate to break it to you, but we kind-of already have these. It’s called food stamps, and we can use them to get all sorts of essential things.
Basically, run it like money, where certain tasks earn you more “luxury stamps” than others, and some cost, and some don’t do anything. Then, make a “luxury center” where said stamps are redeemable. Finally, allow citizens to do it, and maybe have a basic monthly stipend to allow anyone to be able to do it.
Now the only thing left to do is make sure there aren’t any counterfeit rings that are gaming the system…
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**Probably not**
Let us assume that wireheading involves two elements. The first is getting the hardware to allow current to be used to stimulate the brain - depending on the available technology this could require an implant with a plug in the head that a power/control unit is plugged into or it could be a completely external headset that does not require any implants. Regardless, it is probably a moderately expensive upfront cost (in utility vouchers), though it could potentially be constructed for a reduced cost by people with a moderate amount of knowledge from general purpose electronic (and medical?) components. In the latter case, the AIs cannot set the price too high without making it ridiculously expensive for people to play with hobby radios or IT equipment.
The second element is an electrical power supply, which could be a battery or a connection to mains power. The problem is that this is a really tiny amount of required power - lots of power is generally called "electrocution" rather than "stimulation". It is certainly less power than is required to, say, illuminate the room that a person is sitting in, let alone power their personal computing and communication device/s. Which means that electricity has to either be so expensive that everyone lives in the dark and will definitely never be able to afford a cooked meal, or powering their wirehead device will be such a trivial cost that they can easily spend their entire life under direct brain stimulation (which may be quite short if they neglect drinking, eating and excreting).
The only means I can think of is that they maintain a monopoly on possession of the hardware and only allow people to briefly use it in premises that the AIs control. Given that the technology to allow "wireheading" by humans is probably not especially complicated - the concept arises from experiments conducted many, many years ago today - this requires that the AIs restrict access to the knowledge required and/or pretty much every electronics component imaginable. In turn, this requires a unified front by fairly godlike AIs running a very restrictive society in which no one is allowed to tinker with electronics and/or learn fairly basic neurology.
In short, no, the AIs cannot control wireheading by strictly economic means. They must directly control the components and/or knowledge required to produce the hardware.
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### Economics by any other name
You have fungible assets tradable for goods and services. You need to concentrate on the sources and sinks. As such, you need to go into some detail what those sources and sinks are. For sources, you have to recognize whatever it is you are incentivizing. In the US, we incentivize hard work, knowledgeability, and ruthless dishonesty.
Then you have to compare and contrast that with actual human needs, and you'd want to think about how your system could be gamed. Who are your welfare queens, cobra farmers, and white collar bandits going to be?
Is the financial fund infinite, based on effort, or does your income based on how you out-compete other?
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## It will work, but you may need more
As others have mentioned, your 'utility vouchers' are basically Universal Basic Income. I'd also say that wireheading is basically drugs, especially similar to something like heroin.
I understand there's been some research that suggests that direct brain stimulation may not produce the same kind of physical withdrawal effects as drugs, but you're still going to have psychological effects, like increased apathy towards career, relationships, family and anything that doesn't give the same direct pleasure as the drug.
Now, humans are complex animals and don't necessarily always look for things that give them the maximum pleasure. I'd say most people in the first world at least have no interest in potent drugs like heroin, not just because of fear of being punished by the criminal system but because they see no need for it. People will usually put self-actualisation, working on things they conside important and fulfilling over pure pleasure-seeking.
When people do end up having substance abuse problems, it's often because they have no opportunities for self-actualisation. There is a lot of research linking poverty and substance abuse. When people feel miserable because they are stuggling with basic necessities and have no hope that this will ever change, nothing to look forward to, they will often turn to drugs as the only thing that will make them feel better.
Now, if your not-UBI provides enough for everyone to be financially comfortable, that will do a lot to prevent wireheading. But if your society can also help people find their interests and passions and help them pursure them, this will work a lot better. In this case, being able to do things like buy instant big muscles can be couterproductive. Changing your body in ways like that can be a long-term goal that you're working towards, can connect you with people who have the same interest, can give you a sense of fulfilment from overcoming difficulties in achieving your goal. The road can be as important as the destination.
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## Wireheading is possible... but so rare its practically not a thing
Even if the AI prevents you from making Wireheading hardware, it can't really prevent you from ordering up all the prerequisites for making wire heading hardware. At some point, the things needed to make wireheading hardware will overlap with legitimate needs, and people will figure out how to use A to get to B.
That said, wireheading hardware will probably not be abused in a population where a person's psychological and physical needs are being properly met. There was a study once where rats were allowed to have unlimited supplies of drugs and food, and all the rats OD'd on the drugs or starved themselves to death living on a constant high. The experiment was then repeated where each cage had toys and a small number of other rats, and they typically chose the food over the drugs. The moral of the story is that changing yourself artificially to be happy only appeals to you if you are already unhappy.
In a Transhumanist Society, you don't just have your physical needs met, you have your psychological needs meet too. The AIs don't just make sure that you have a fair or unlimited ration; they check in on you to make sure you are doing well. They help you talk through life's problems when you have no one else to talk to. They mediate unhealthy relationships and pair you with people who will make you feel good about yourself. An android will come to sit with you in the hospital while you recover, or hug you when you are sad, or play golf with you when your friend has to cancel last minute.
Yes, wireheading can be done, and it will make you feel perfectly happy, but just like most people can do a recreational drug, feel good, and then move on with their lives it will for most people just be a special occasional activity you do now and then like going to the park, because as long as your life is already good, there is actually not a lot of motivation to linger on partaking in something to alter that reality.
## Addressing Utility Vouchers
Since other answers have poked at the economics of your utility voucher system as just another fiat currency, I would like to point out the ways that it's actually not a fiat currency at all, and how to make that fact work with the idea of maintaining a Transhumanist Socialist society.
First of all, it is not fiat. As long as "money" is tied to a measurable and scarce resource, it is a backed currency. Since it is tied to power production, your "money" has a fixed value. A utility voucher could be expressed in terms of KWH, GGE, or BTUs and require a given amount of fuel reserves, or at least projectable power output, in order to be issued. A dollar is a thing a government can create ad hoc to suit its needs, but power output must be met in the physical world in order to offer a promissory note attached to that power output. If the government tries to "over-print money" by even a little bit, it will result in blackouts and other issues that will immediately be felt; so, your can't do things like have a rolling 20 year debt like you can in a fiat system.
Secondly, utility vouchers should be treated as a use-it-or-loose it currency. Power is easy to make but hard to store. This means that a kwh set aside for you last month, will probably not still be there for you this month. This makes person-to-person transactions with them grossly impractical. If I have a utility vouchers for March, 2053. Then by April, 2053, that voucher no longer is valid. So it does not have a lot of value to barter or trade with other humans.
But, your economy is based on robot labor, not human labor anyway. 98% of the buying you need to do will be forced through this utility voucher system which gives you a lot of wealth each pay period, but makes stockpiling wealth rather difficult. This is good for a socialist economy because it makes it harder for a Capitolist Aristocracy from rising up to challenge your system by accumulating massive amounts of wealth over a long period of time. If you want something that costs more than a month's utility voucher budget, you can perhaps request it in advance, and the government leverages against your income over time using its fuel reserves, but the dept the government can issue, and that which you can hold is limited.
The only way to stockpile wealth to circumvent the system is to request a product from the system each month with your excess vouchers that you can try to barter later if you need to, but even this is problematic since anything you can produce using utility vouchers to trade can be produced by anyone else just as easily; so, finding buyers will be difficult.
In most cases, person-to-person transactions will be quite limited. I might help you file some paperwork in exchange for a home cooked meal. Or I might mow my neighbors grass in exchange for him hosting game-night this week. But what I cant do is start up a billion dollar corporation with thousands of employees because no one wants to work like that any more and because even if I could get a billion dollars, they'd all be gone next month anyway.
[Answer]
### Take care for the "mystery unsurmountable technical problem" issue!
A really common "sci-fi tech problem" when batting around sci-fi ideas is that you unrealistically add a "mystery! difficulty!"- and the difficulty is just implausible.
Your basic premise is that
1. We have such astounding, amazing, incredible understanding of human brain/mind functions and the required nanotechnology, that, we can trivially make a device that perfectly manipulates human emotions.
2. However! We can't make people want to eat food!
So, headwires are an astounding hand-waving ultra-technology but, for some reason (why? how?) it's not possible to add a line of code to "make people eat". When people use the astonishing technology of headwires - they forget to eat.
As you can see, it just doesn't work.
It would be like saying "Cars can now drive in perfect safety at 500 mph at all times - but, oh no, it's impossible to make the indicators work at that speed! My God! The problem arising is that cars now have no indicators!"
This is a completely common thing in sci-fi. Sometimes you can get away with it.
* in the Star Wars universe, incredibly we have the power sources, physics and engineering to move through space between stars in seconds ... BUT ... it takes "a long time" to "do the calculations". It works because it's charming and it's Star Wars, but it makes no sense
* in Terminator, you can send mechanical things back through time but only if they're sort of coated in meat and hand-wavey hand-wavey you can't send bombs or weapons.
But if you don't get away with it, it becomes just dumb.
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[Question]
[
In my setting, I have created a technologically innovative faction which seeks to utilise various past technologies, namely, aircraft.
For context, the setting is a post apocalypse type setting following the dimensional collision of Earth and a fantasy world, which fried most electronics and resulted in the collapse of modern civilisation. It has been 98 years since the event, and various societies and groups, changed as they are, are beginning to return.
This brings us to the faction, a joint coalition of humans and gnolls which are defined by their utilisation of technology on a wide scale, in comparison to some of their more medieval neighbors. Of particular note is their attempt to establish an aviation program.
This is facilitated by their possession of an invaluable old world treasure: A vintage B-25 bomber, an aircraft renowned for its durability, ease of maintenance, and, most importantly, forgiving flight characteristics. Due to it being a collector's item pre-collapse, it was maintained to a near-new standard, and was stored in a hangar in ideal conditions until its discovery. Accompanying it were various manuals detailing the maintenance, engineering specifications, and instructions for flight.
They have also acquired several high-quality examples of common, simple to maintain aircraft, namely the Cessna 172 and Piper Cub, and numerous spare parts for them.
I chose propeller aircraft due to the belief that, despite their older status, they will be infinitely easier for a industrialising society to restore to a working status than modern jet turbine aircrafts, which are also are largely disabled due to the scrambling of complex electronics.
Whilst I feel it unnecessary to deliver too many details, I will add what may help with the question:
* They actively seek out information and technology which will increase their standing, and have placed a bounty on aviation-based information such as manuals and textbooks. They are not working from scratch, and have no intention whatsoever of doing so.
* They have engineers, machinists and mechanics, albeit trained to an inferior quality than modern equivalents, and are actively seeking out and training experienced individuals.
* There are several individuals trained as pilots, though mostly in theory, with the exception of two who have achieved flight in Piper Cubs.
* They have industrialised to the extent of having mining operations, and are capable of producing iron and steel in moderate quantities, machines such as small arms, having reclaimed various engineering apparatus such as lathes and milling machines, and have a working, small scale foundry.
* Population of roughly 6,000 EDIT: As one commenter pointed out, this may be an unrealistic population number, and thus may change
* They are aware of the existence of gasoline and its importance to the operation of engines, and have refined it in small quantities. They currently lack a large oil refinery/drilling operation, at least to the point of consistently producing aviation gasoline, but are attempting to create one, and will likely do so.
* Lack of trucks or other motor vehicles, due to the preceding point.
Essentially, my question can be boiled down to three points:
* Would aircraft be airworthy following 98 years of storage, regardless of their pre-collapse condition?
* How realistic is a post-apocalyptic, industrialising society maintaining the logistical and technological conditions necessary for (limited) aviation?
* How valid are my choices of aircraft? Under the factors underlined, would the faction be capable of maintaining larger, more complex aircraft, or am I severely overestimating the ease in achieving flight again?
NOTE: I feel I should specify that in regards to the B-25, they do not intend to constantly use it, it is more of a propaganda piece/flagship, meant to show the "technological mastery" effect the faction is trying to project. I had an interesting idea that they may frequently repaint it, so that it seems they have many more than they actually do. They do, however, need it to fly it in combat at least once, so that it is known that the thing exists. The majority of their air force would consist of less resource-intensive craft, like salvaged bush planes, and thanks to your very informative and helpful comments, various wood and cloth WW1-era biplanes, as well as several zeppelin-type airships.
Edit: Thanks to @schmuddi for the suggested edit for the grammar and formatting, it was very good.
[Answer]
## *"Population of roughly 6,000"* means, at best, Roman-era technology
... With a frosting of scavenged modern metals and glass.
A hundred years have passed since modern civilization fell. Metals are still available for the taking, and so is glass, but most plastics are already unusable by this time.
The most severe constraint posed by the question is the tiny population. Six thousand people. Six thousand people, under wondrously good leadership, *might* sustain a 2nd century CE Roman-era technological level. Most likely, 4th century BCE classical Athens-era technological level. Anything more advanced is a golden legend about their unfallen ancestors.
Let's break down the six thousand and see what they can do.
* We begin by noting that they don't have anything like post-19th century medicine. In particular, no antibiotics and no vaccines. Which means a horrendous childhood mortality, implying that in order to avoid going extinct they will *have to* have lots of children. Very optimistically:
+ Out of the 6000, children under 10 years of age . . . . . 1100.
Out of the 6000, children under 15 years of age . . . . . 1700.
* Remain about 4300 adults of all ages, 15 to 60. (In such primitive conditions, people are considerd fully adult at 15.)
* Out of those 4300, about 1500 are women of child-bearing age, who are busy making children, educating them, washing and sewing, spinning thread and weaving cloth etc. Their work is absolutely essential for the survival of the village, and for the perpetuation of civilization, but doesn't help with maintaining technology.
Remain about 2700 men of all ages 15 to 60 and women past 40.
* Out of those 2700 people, at least 2000 will be fully occupied with growing food and tending sheep and cattle. This is a *very* optimistic assumption; normally, out of a population of 6000 with modern but pre-WW1 technology, one would expect about 4000 people to work in agriculture; with pre-modern technology, even worse.
Remain about 700 people to do technology is the broadest sense.
* Out of those 700, most will be occupied with the basic technologies of all times: wood-working (wood is by far the most useful material in pre-modern societies), pottery and ceramics is general, tanning leather, making charcoal or digging for stone coal, copper and iron smelting, iron-working.
Let's continue in the super-optimistic mood and say that with 400 people you can cover all the basics. Remain 300 people to be occupied with nice-to-have technology.
* Those 300 people, 5% of the total population of 6000, will have to do everything which came after the end of the 3rd millennium before the common era:
+ Making paper and ink, as a fundamental requirement to maintain a literate civilization.
+ Teaching reading, riting and rithmetic to chidren, teaching the basics of physics and chemistry to adults, doing all the experimental work to re-invent basic dyes, and hot-metal typography, and glass-making and so-on.
+ Keeping records, keeping the peace, ruling and leading the village and other such aristocratic duties.
* Overall, out of the 6000, *with the most optimistic assumptions*, you *might* have maybe 100 people busying themselves with an attempt to re-create the lofty technology of their ancestors. Will they tackle aviation first? Oh no.
They will first address how to make steel in quantity, electric power and electric light, and steam engines. Then stainless steel, and crude petrol engines, and maybe some synthetic dyes, some simple sulfa drugs, and aluminium; or, given that they live on a post-apocalyptic Earth and metals are aplenty ready-smelted, at least how work with scavenged steel and aluminium.
## If they really really want to fly . . .
It is infinitely easier to make a small simple wood-and-fabric airplane in the style they had the 1910s, WW1-era, than to restore a modern airplane. Those post-apocalyptic people have no rubber and no hope to make any, no mineral oil, no high-octane gasoline. The wheel tyres, the belts, the hoses, the gaskets in the fossil aircraft are gone and cannot be replaced; and all the hydraulic and lubricant fluids are gone and cannot be replaced.
Build a new aircraft instead.
[Answer]
I'm no expert on aircraft engines, but car engines have "soft parts", belts and hoses, sealants and gaskets, hydraulic control lines and such, made of more organic materials (rubber, plastic or other synthetics), that age and weaken much faster than metal parts.
Also, tires for take off and landing.
In 98 years (and decades of storage as museum items), they may look okay (or not) but would burst under the strain of full use.
I would imagine your group got a lesson in this with the Piper Cubs.
If you've lost most of your infrastructure, you can't just pick this stuff up with your groceries; you have to figure out how to manufacture it again.
It seems like this is addressable, but something you should consider before trying to fire up these engines. Even if they run, without proper coolant and circulation, they will burn themselves out in no time. Cracked blocks and ruined parts.
[Answer]
1. Will the original aircraft be airworthy? No. All the rubber and other organics will be dryrotted. Any ferrous metals will be rusted to a degree. Piper Cubs and B-25s are advanced aircraft. It really takes a 1940s level of tech to maintain them, and abundant oil and gasoline to run them.
2. Can this society build and fly aircraft? Yes.
3. Your choices are not valid at all because they rely upon aluminum for weight savings and structural support.
If they want to fly, then WWI-era canvas and wood aircraft will do nicely. They can be reliable and stable.
The question is, can your society make a gasoline engine light enough to power such a plane? they should start small - single-seat biplane kites (pretty much) and then work their way through the tech levels. If you cannot make a Wright Flyer, then you cannot make a Sopwith Camel, a Gotha bomber. or a Jenny.
In the beginning of the age of powered flight, there were numerous small teams working independently to develop the first airplane. They watched each other and stole ideas as appropriate. The Wright Brothers just happened to get there first. Had they waited a month, it might have been Curtis. Who knows. So you'll need a thriving if small set of enthusiasts to make this happen organically.
*Question - would a chainsaw motor support an ultralight?*
I don't know. But the Wright Flyer (circa 1903) had a 12 horsepower engine. A top-notch WW1 fighter (circa 1918) had perhaps 110 horsepower engine. Anywhere between these numbers will work, with the higher end allow for quite useful aircraft.
[Answer]
**Hot Air Balloons.**
If a couple of French dudes could pull them off in the 18th Century, your post-apocalyptic weirdos shouldn't have too many problems.
[Answer]
Gasoline might be very difficult to come by unless they are somewhere near a surviving petroleum seep & even then they would need to build a fractionating still.
As an alternative, consider methanol, which the ancient Egyptians produced by pyrolysis of wood. If your protagonists are going to maintain any sort of technological civilisation they'll presumably have pottery kilns, so should be able to produce methanol as modification of this technology. My reading is that some kind of airtight chamber for the organic matter to be pyrolised would be required then the gasses released would need to be cooled sufficiently for the methanol to condense. Same principle as a fractionating still but a lot less precise so easier to make in a low tech environment.
Pure methanol has an octane rating around 110 octane which should be able to power a primitive (Think WWI) engine powerful enough to get a light aircraft off the ground.
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[Question]
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To my understanding, Christopher Columbus's plan to sail around the world and reach Asia was widely considered a doomed journey (not because most educated people thought the earth was flat, but because the distances involved would have been too vast, and nobody knew about the Americas at the time.)
Columbus's voyage was only funded because the king and queen of Spain were so excited about crusading that they figured they might as well.
Once Columbus reported back about the Americas (and his genocide campaign, which isn't strictly relevant to this discussion), the general public became aware of the new world, and additional explorers went out to find it.
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Suppose for a moment that Isabella and Ferdinand chose not to fund Columbus's voyage. How long would this have delayed the discovery of the Americas? How different would the Americas (and Europe) be when the discovery was made?
Strictly speaking, the rediscovery of the Americas would always likely be a chance event, but I would like to know at what point such a chance event would become a near certainty. Perhaps the question is better expressed as "had Columbus not been funded, at what point in history would it be extremely unlikely that the Americas had not been discovered?"
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Note: I am specifically talking about a large-scale interaction between the old and new world. This doesn't necessarily mean colonization, but it does mean that any commoner on the street would know that the Americas existed, and that regular trade ships would travel between the Americas and Europe.
Note 2: I understand that Lief Ericson and crew founded Vinland in the Americas back in the day. However, Vinland died out and was forgotten. Any answers that start before columbus's voyage aren't relevant to this discussion.
[Answer]
The [book "Before 1492"](https://portuguese-american-journal.com/book-before-1492-the-portuguese-discovery-of-america-editors-note/) lays out a case that the Portuguese were already exploring South America a decade before Columbus returned to Spain. That's why they didn't want to sponsor his voyage; they already knew about the Americas and wanted to keep them secret.
Whether or not this theory turns out to be true, the evidence for it suggests that the European exploration of the Americas wasn't "a chance event" per your question, but in fact an inevitable result of the combination of new sailing technology and global trade motivations. That is: the money was there and the tech was there, someone was gonna do it.
Given this, I'd suggest that someone else would have made a high-profile exploration of the Americas within 20 years of Columbus not sailing, with a significant probability that it would have been within 5 years (Cabot's voyage was in 1497). I'd further argue that if it was more on the 20 years end of the scale, that would have been because the explorers decided to keep their find secret for several years.
The alt-Columbus could have been:
* The Portuguese, also looking for a route to India, whether Dias or another explorer;
* The Basques, selling information on "islands near their secret cod fishing grounds";
* Cabot or another English-funded explorer, following up rumors of new lands discovered by the Vikings or the Celts;
* Even someone else funded by the Spanish Crown, since they clearly had the money for it, a desire to compete with Portugal; most likely this would be [Amerigo Vespucci](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Vespucci), who was looking for exploration money at the same time that Columbus was.
It's unlikely that Skandanavians would have sent anyone, as the 15th century was still deep in the Little Ice Age. And the Venetians and Genoese had too much of an investment in Eastern trade routes to fund an expedition.
[Answer]
Based on some references it's suspected that Basque and English fisherman were aware of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in the period before Columbus. There's no evidence (yet) that they actually landed, but it's not an impossibility to think it would have been inevitable. In any event, Zuan Chabotto (John Cabot) sailed an exploratory mission on behalf of the English Crown in 1497 and reached North America. What's important is that the mission was *not* an exploratory expedition looking to extend Columbus's voyage. Cabot was also seeking a sea route to the East Indies, but on a more northerly latitude, since the distance around the globe at a higher latitude was less.
Of additional importance was from where he sailed: since 1480, ships from Bristol had been seeking the legendary island of Hy-Brazil, which Celtic myth said was somewhere in the Atlantic, and merchants in the city believed ships from Bristol had made it there in the past but the location had been lost. Also of note was that while Vinland may have been lost, *Greenland* certainly wasn't. The last Norse settlements had died out only a few decades before, and people knew where it was.
The combination of these things make it pretty much inevitable that English-based ships would have reached the Americas, if they hadn't already, not much later than they really did.
[Answer]
**Bart!**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomeu_Dias>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wjOiVm.jpg)
Bartolomeu Dias was a serious, serious navigator and explorer. He was sponsored by the Portuguese and went all over the world.
>
> After Diogo Cão's second voyage failed to reach the end of the African
> coastline, King John II remained determined to continue the effort. In
> October, 1486, he commissioned Dias to lead an expedition in search of
> a trade route around the southern tip of Africa...The Dias expedition
> had explored an additional thousand miles of African coastline,
> ultimately rounded the southern tip of the continent and demonstrated
> that the most effective southward course lay in the open ocean well to
> west of Africa - a route that would be followed by generations of
> Portuguese sailors....
>
>
> It was not until 1498 that another voyage was commissioned and Dias
> was asked provide assistance.[17] Using his experience with maritime
> exploration, Dias contributed to the design and construction of the
> São Gabriel and its sister ship the São Rafael. These were two of the
> ships used in 1498 by Vasco da Gama to sail around the Cape of Good
> Hope and continue to India. Dias participated in the first leg of da
> Gama's voyage but stayed behind after reaching the Cape Verde
> Islands.[18]
>
>
> Two years later he was one of the captains of the second Indian
> expedition, headed by Pedro Álvares Cabral. This flotilla was the
> first to reach Brazil, landing there on 22 April 1500, and then
> continuing east to India...
>
>
>
Not only was Dias the first to go around the tip of Africa he discovered Brazil, then died trying to go around South America on the way to India. Dude was the real deal and no-one made fun of him for going around in a skirt.
Given a guy like this on hand as well as other activities of the Portuguese that were contemporaneous with those of Columbus, Portuguese explorers would have found the New World within a couple of decades of 1492 - probably via the aforementioned crossing from Africa to Cape Verde to Brazil.
[Answer]
As people are mentioning, yes, people from the old world visited the new world before Columbus. Not just the Vikings, but it is technically possible there were some more ancient, and also possible some people even a few decades before Columbus to my knowledge.
That aside, Columbus did not exist in a vacuum. In the 18th and 19th centuries, to my knowledge, a lot of mythos was created about Columbus, stuff like that he was the first person to propose that the Earth was round. Beyond the fact that most educated people believed already in that, there was a great deal of exploration going on in that time, aided by notable improvements in tech.
I am certain that if it hadn't been Columbus, it would've been someone else, maybe even not more than a decade later. It would have perhaps though been a wholly different country and circumstance of discovery. I'm sure you can find some alternate history videos or posts online about it.
[Answer]
In the 1400s or 1500s. There was lots of exploring going around in the time as well as advances in ship technology. There were other big explorers. Most of all though was there were kingdoms who would fund them. Eventually we probably would see someone else who would have the same idea as Columbus or ship technology would be advanced enough where Europeans would be confident they could reach Asia by sailing there directly.
[Answer]
While we are doing alternate history, how about this alternative?
What if the Chinese exploration of the new world in 1421 had not been lost? What if China had proceeded to colonize what we call America had establish trade routes across the Pacific?
[https://www.amazon.com/1421-Year-China-Discovered-America/dp/0061564893](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0061564893)
[Answer]
Frame challenge.
Christopher Columbus did not decide on his own to set sail, he was commissioned to set sail. He was sent with one particular purpose - to claim sovereignty over the land that they KNEW was there. Europeans had globes with an unknown land mass where North America is. If he had not been successful, there would be a host of immediate followers sent out by the various royalty of the countries at the time. it was a race to find and claim this land mass, not a whim of some particular sailor.
This is made very evident in [the original charter](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/15th_century/colum.asp) that was issued to Chris Columbus.
>
> FERDINAND and ELIZABETH, by the Grace of God, King and Queen of
> Castile, of Leon, of Arragon, of Sicily, of Granada, of Toledo, of
> Valencia, of Galicia, of Majorca, of Minorca, of Sevil, of Sardinia,
> of Jaen, of Algarve, of Algezira, of Gibraltar, of the Canary Islands,
> Count and Countess of Barcelona, Lord and Lady of Biscay and Molina,
> Duke and Duchess of Athens and Neopatria. Count and Countess of
> Rousillion and Cerdaigne, Marquess and Marchioness of Oristan and
> Gociano, &c.
>
>
> For as much of you, Christopher Columbus, are going by our command,
> with some of our vessels and men, to discover and subdue some Islands
> and Continent in the ocean, and it is hoped that by God's assistance,
> some of the said Islands and Continent in the ocean will be discovered
> and conquered by your means and conduct, therefore it is but just and
> reasonable, that since you expose yourself to such danger to serve us,
> you should be rewarded for it. And we being willing to honour and
> favour You for the reasons aforesaid: Our will is, That you,
> Christopher Columbus, after discovering and conquering the said
> Islands and Continent in the said ocean, or any of them, shall be our
> Admiral of the said Islands and Continent you shall so discover and
> conquer; and that you be our Admiral, Vice-Roy, and Governour in them,
> and that for the future, you may call and stile yourself, D.
> Christopher Columbus, and that your sons and successors in the said
> employment, may call themselves Dons, Admirals, Vice-Roys, and
> Governours of them; and that you may exercise the office of Admiral,
> with the charge of Vice-Roy and Governour of the said Islands and
> Continent, which you and your Lieutenants shall conquer, and freely
> decide all causes, civil and criminal, appertaining to the said
> employment of Admiral, Vice-Roy, and Governour, as you shall think fit
> in justice, and as the Admirals of our kingdoms use to do; and that
> you have power to punish offenders; and you and your Lieutenants
> exercise the employments of Admiral, Vice-Roy, and Governour, in all
> things belonging to the said offices, or any of them; and that you
> enjoy the perquisites and salaries belonging to the said employments,
> and to each of them, in the same manner as the High Admiral of our
> kingdoms does. And by this our letter, or a copy of it signed by a
> Public Notary: We command Prince John, our most dearly beloved Son,
> the Infants, Dukes, Prelates, Marquesses, Great Masters and Military
> Orders, Priors. Commendaries, our Counsellors, Judges, and other
> Officers of Justice whatsoever, belonging Courts, and Chancery, and
> Constables of Castles, Strong Houses, and others; and all
> Corporations, Bayliffs, Governours, Judges, Commanders, Sea Officers;
> and the Aldermen, Common Council, Officers, and Good People of all
> Cities, Lands, and Places in our Kingdoms and Dominions, and in those
> you shall conquer and subdue, and the captains masters, mates, and
> other officers and sailors, our natural subjects now being, or that
> shall be for the time to come, and any of them that when you shall
> have discovered the said Islands and Continent in the ocean; and you,
> or any that shall have your commission, shall have taken the usual
> oath in such cases, that they for the future, look upon you as long as
> you live, and after you, your son and heir, and so from one heir to
> another forever, as our Admiral on our said Ocean, and as Vice-Roy and
> Governour of the said Islands and Continent, by you, Christopher
> Columbus, discovered and conquered; and that they treat you and your
> Lieutenants, by you appointed, for executing the employments of
> Admiral, Vice-Roy, and Governour, as such in all respects, and give
> you all the perquisites and other things belonging and appertaining to
> the said offices; and allow, and cause to be allowed you, all the
> honours, graces, concessions, prehaminences, prerogatives, immunities,
> and other things, or any of them which are due to you, by virtue of
> your commands of Admiral, Vice-Roy, and Governour, and to be observed
> completely, so that nothing be diminished; and that they make no
> objection to this, or any part of it, nor suffer it to be made;
> forasmuch as we from this time forward, by this our letter, bestow on
> you the employments of Admiral, Vice-Roy, and perpetual Governour
> forever; and we put you into possession of the said offices, and of
> every of them, and full power to use and exercise them, and to receive
> the perquisites and salaries belonging to them, or any of them, as was
> said above. Concerning all which things, if it be requisite, and you
> shall desire it, We command our Chancellour, Notaries, and other
> Officers, to pass, seal, and deliver to you, our Letter of Privilege,
> in such form and legal manner, as you shall require or stand in need
> of. And that none of them presume to do any thing to the contrary,
> upon pain of our displeasure, and forfeiture of 30 ducats for each
> offence. And we command him, who shall show them this our Letter, that
> he summon them to appear before us at our Court, where we shall then
> be, within fifteen days after such summons, under the said penalty.
> Under which same, we also command any Public Notary whatsoever, that
> he give to him that shows it him, a certificate under his seal, that
> we may know how our command is obeyed.
>
>
> GIVEN at Granada, on the 30th of April, in the year of our Lord,
> 1492.-
>
>
>
They knew a LOT more than revisionist North American history gives them credit for. It is strange what weird conspiracy theories North Americans are taught as 'the truth' in their school system and mass media, even though the truth is documented within their own University archives. The Europeans knew there was a continent in the way, they knew it was unclaimed, they knew it was potentially very profitable, and they knew it was perfect for imperialist colonization.
They were definitely NOT flat-earthers. They knew within a very slim margin of error what the diameter of the Earth was, they knew where Asia was in relation to that globe, and they knew how to navigate on the 'far side' of the Earth using the sky. That is, they knew what the sky would look like all around this globe.
Discovering the Continent was NOT an 'accident'. It was deliberate, directed, exploration with the intent to 'conquer and subjugate'. The Europeans were determined to navigate to it, whether Chris did it or someone else did.
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We all know a LOT of the soft sci-fi/science fantasy/mecha genre applies heavy doses of handwavium to sudden deceleration and impact injuries. Iron Man would realistically be liquified in his suit should he actually crash land to a dead stop after flying at Mach 1. Exoskeletons in much of military sci-fi allow people to go hurtling through the air, be thrown through walls, fall off buildings, be punched by superhumans/monsters/robots/whatever large enemy.
Realistically, rigid plate armor doesn't really protect one from falling, sudden deceleration, bomb blasts, or other impacts. **How would we design a suit for military sci-fi that includes a strength-enhancing exoskeleton as well as a way to protect the wearer from some halfway decent impacts, like falling 15-20 feet, being thrown 20 feet through the air, maybe being hit by a car at whatever speed is somewhat commensurate with those forces?**
Think "light/Medium Protection" -- i.e. nothing on the level of Iron Man or other genres. Falling off a skyscraper still kills you; but the giant from Game of Thrones might need to hit you a few times before you stop breathing.
Have fun with this, I think there is not as much as one would expect to find on the net regarding the specifics of making this work.
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There's two issues here. One is to protect your body from being physically squished by the impact of a giant taking a beating on your unfortunate soul. For that, you need armour, and it's not going to be light. A solid, incompressible exoskeleton would prevent the wearer from being compressed. It would look like a harness, though if you don't care about stab or bullet wounds a cage would function as well.
The other issue is sudden acceleration when the kick propels you, or deceleration (which is acceleration from a different point of view) when you hit something solid at great speeds. For measures to protect oneself against those forces, you need only look at jet pilots, who regularly undergo those forces when making tight turns in a plane that goes at the speed of sound.
One thing they do is position their body so that the acceleration comes from the direction the body can best handle. If you're accelerated upwards, blood leaves your brain and you pass out. The best direction is forwards, pressing you into your seat. So in combat, you might want to take care to turn to face away from whatever is going to hit you, though that is problematic because one might want to spend that time moving to dodge the impact instead.
There aren't that many other options; the body is just not designed to take such pounding. The most exotic idea in circulation is [liquid breathing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing). You see, the body is mostly water, which is really hard to compress. When you are going splat, it is the empty pockets in your body, mostly your lungs, which collapse and give way to any organ not supposed to be located there. Goodbye ribcage. But if you were to fill your lungs with some liquid that can carry oxygen as well as air can, then it cannot compress that easily any longer, meaning that you would be able to withstand greater acceleration. That's why this idea is being researched for jet pilots; if you can make tighter manoeuvres without risking your life, you have a strategic advantage. There are similar concerns for astronauts.
So far only rats have breathed liquid and lived; it is theoretical, and scary. But it is not impossible, and a near-future supersoldier might want to use it if they think they are going to face giants.
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>
> How would we design a suit for military sci-fi that includes a strength-enhancing exoskeleton as well as a way to protect the wearer from some halfway decent impacts, like falling 15-20 feet, being thrown 20 feet through the air, maybe being hit by a car at whatever speed is somewhat commensurate with those forces?
>
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When you're thinking of an exoskeleton, what you're really designing is a *vehicle*.
We can certainly design vehicles to take impact damage for us - that's what crumple zones do. It might be possible to design a "suit" to provide provide protection in that sense. This requires that the "suit" is *flexible* in terms of having structure designed to deform on impact. It the deformation of crumple zones that absorbs energy and reduces deceleration forces on the occupant.
Such a skeleton suit would need a core that does *not* deform and an external part that deforms to absorb the energy of impact. This allows the core to decelerate *relatively* slowly while it remains unchanged.
Note that the energy of impact depends on the square of the velocity. Double velocity and you quadruple the energy you need to absorb.
Another way of looking at this is that the force of impact depends on the inverse square of the time to stop. The slower the impact (for the core safety cage) the better. The purpose of the external "absorbance cage" is to deform and slow that impact down for the safety cage.
Being hit by a car is not necessarily lethal. When you see a speed limit in an urban area set at e.g. 30 km/hr it has been chosen because below that speed survival is significantly more likely than above that speed.
Being thrown 20 feet is not the problem. It's exactly how you were propelled in the first place (that could involve dangerous forces itself) and exactly how you land. If I throw you by your head you're in trouble either way, as I could be breaking your neck. If you land and whack your head into the ground (with or without a helmet) you could end up with a concussion or worse.
You want the vehicle occupant to have support for their neck and spine to reduce the danger of neck and spinal damage. Look at F1 drivers and you'll see they have a brace they wear on their necks and shoulders that performs this function. In cars the co-called head-rest is actually there to support your head and neck in a collision and stop them being thrown back violently.
Likewise the purpose of harnesses (like safety belts) is to reduce movement and prevent you from being thrown against objects (including other people if you're in the back seat !). Airbags and other safety systems are there to reduce the effects of impact (both the initial impact and "rebound" effects).
You would most likely separate the functions of strength from the functions of safety. Again it's in your interest for the occupant to be protected from sudden application of forces by the strength part of the gadget (as for every force there is an equal and opposite reaction), so you don't want the "strength" part preventing the "safety" part from doing it's job.
You might be able to use complex sensors to detect problem acceleration or deceleration on the safety cage and activate the "deform" mode of the suit by turning off systems that make the strength part rigid. The occupant can withstand relatively high loads for very, very short times so this should not compromise safety significantly - hey, it's the military - some risk is acceptable for certain sceanarios.
So it's possible in theory to make such an exoskeleton.
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Starship Troopers (Heinlein). The powered armour contains rockets in the feet to cushion falls. Add a load of those that can rotate to face towards your direction of motion, and then fire at just the right time to stop you safely. Job done.
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Thinking about a full suit, I would begin by combining crumple-zone capability in the outer skin, with just-in-time impact cushioning in the inner skin.
## Concept
I'm sure we are all familiar with this kind of toy:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/O82rg.jpg)
When squished, the soft bits "ooze" out of the netting.
Now, consider this toy as a metaphor for the construction of our exo.
## Construction
First, the exterior (and overlapping) plates would be extremely rigid, such that impacts are spread across a wider area. These would be Mandalorian armour style plates, but many more of them. They would not be smooth, but rather knobbly, with plenty of curves, to aid in deflection of projectiles.
Behind the plates would be a strong but flexible continuous interlocking mesh, perhaps something like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RRxha.jpg)
Not in discrete pieces, like the picture, but rather continuous across the entire suit. Flexible enough to permit movement of limbs, but strong enough to retain its shape during compression. Notably, the mesh is thicker and stronger towards the outside, getting thinner and more flexible the closer to the skin we get (or perhaps the other way around - a few crash-tests will help determine which). I envisage a 3D-printed mesh for this purpose: not only would it then be possible to make the suit exactly fit the wearer, but this also allows the interlocking, which would not be possible to build with conventional manufacturing.
The mesh layer has membrane coatings on both the inside and outside. A bit like a wetsuit, only considerably more resistant to rupture than neoprene, with the outer membrane much stronger than the inner one. The interlocking mesh is bonded to the membrane (both inner and outer). It is important to note that the inner membrane must be a smooth fit against the skin, across the entire body. There must be no gaps. This should not be difficult since the suit will be a perfect fit for the wearer.
In between the membranes, is the "squishy" layer. This is a thick viscous fluid that surrounds the mesh and occupies all the space between the inner and outer membranes.
## How It Works
When there's an impact, the armour-plating serves to distribute it over a wider area, thus diminishing the actual PSI of force acting on the body.
But as the armour plate moves against the outer membrane, the mesh bends and flexes with the impact, spreading the force out even further (due to its interlocking nature) and transferring it into the fluid.
The fluid (which is incompressible) perturbs the inner membrane only slightly, and over an even wider area in turn, ensuring that the actual impact that reaches the body is a small fraction of the force it began with. To illustrate, a "Superman punch" in the chest might be felt as increased pressure across the whole front of the torso... but would not be enough to do any significant internal damage.
## Optional Extras
The mesh could be made up of nano-poles that generate tiny amounts of electricity when the poles are compressed. And the fluid could be electrically responsive, turning thicker in the areas where current is applied. The result is that the fluid thickens automatically and instantly in the areas where the poles are compressed due to impact.
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Falling over short-ish distances is detectable by the zero-g and the exoskeleton may have time to quickly extend some telescopic shock absorbers in preparation for the landing - feeling of guts, a fall of 5-7m won't require excessive distances to bring the max acceleration at landing in a survivable range, after all the velocity of impact falling from 7m (23feet) is 11.71 m/s or just 42.17 km/h.
Protection against being hit by a car - large impact surface - may be possible by a set "surrounding awareness sensors"+"defensive AI" embedded into exoskeleton, to deploy the same shock absorbers and intercept the hit. It would be harder to intercept a hit - of the same energy - of a baseball bat or the tip of a spear/bullet, though.
Some back-of-napkin calculation: decelerating from 12m/s to full stop without passing the limit of a survivable 8g, requires a deceleration time of 153ms achievable over a deceleration distance of 0.92m. So, using shock absorbers of about 1.2m should do.
The total energy a 120kg (80kg the human, 40kg exoskeleton) falling from 7m is 8232J. Not very impressive to dissipate even for today's mechanics. There may be a problem stopping some projectile at this energy level, it's almost equivalent of being shot with [two shots of a 12-gauge shotgun at point blank range](http://wredlich.com/ny/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/muzzle-energy.png).
What else?? Ah, the friction necessary to hold your ground while the shock absorber dissipates a blow worth of 8232J... So, assuming a constant friction shock absorber, dissipating 8232J over 0.9m means a friction force of 9146N = 932kgf.
Standing on a flat ground, unless the exoskeleton takes care to keep you in place (I don't know, deploys a prop on the opposite side of the blow or starts a rocket there), you *will* take off 'cause there's no way the friction between you and the ground can be close to 1tonne-f. And if the exoskeleton compensates just to keep you in place, it better be tough, a crushing force of 1tonne isn't something to sneeze at.
---
See also:
* [G-force Horizontal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-force#Horizontal)
>
> Early experiments showed that untrained humans were able to tolerate a range of accelerations depending on the time of exposure. This ranged from as much as 20 g0 for less than 10 seconds, to 10 g0 for 1 minute, and 6 g0 for 10 minutes for both eyeballs in and out
>
>
>
* [human tolerance for jerk (and snap?)](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0143-0807/37/6/065008)
[Answer]
**Airbag Suits**
You may be interested to know that such a thing is already in development by various companies for motorcycle riders. Granted, it is more of a one time use thing, but it does protect against impact and being thrown through the air.
In your case, the exosuit would likely need some kind of sensors to detect impact so the airbags are deployed in time. Here's an example and a link below.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nh1NB.png)
<https://www.bikebandit.com/blog/dainese-d-air-motorcycle-airbag-technology-next-wave-in-safety>
[Answer]
**Your suit pre-empts and reacts to impacts for you**
Cover the suit in sensors, and thrusters. When it sees an impact coming from a specific direction, it starts to accelerate you in the same direction. When the impact is over, it starts to decelerate you to avoid a 'landing' impact.
This would fulfil your desire of making it able to resist some punches from a giant, until your sensors/thrusters are too damaged, or you get trapped between the giants punch and, e.g., the ground.
But as long as you don't allow thrusters with enough power to make you fly, it couldn't sufficiently mitigate the fall from a skyscraper.
This would also have all sorts of fascinating side effects to the combat - like using this mechanism in an opponent to force the suit wearer, e.g., underneath a falling building, and trying to find attacks/angles that the suits fail to detect, penetrating the armour, or sandwiching them with enough force to crush it...
You could also add computer systems that make the suit smart enough to try to dodge - i.e., there's a giants fist incoming, the suit can reduce the impact by accelerating away from it, or the suit can push to the side, and avoid it.
edit: This answer may require a higher tech level than what we have, but so does a viable exoskeleton of any kind.
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You know what they say: one man's handwavium is another man's science & engineering.
Anyway, let's have fun with it! Here's what I would suggest:
Each "plate" of our exoskeleton can use a combination of MEMS (micro-electromechanical system) technologies to transform the kinetic energy of the acceleration/deceleration event into different forms of energy (which we can use or shunt elsewhere).
Our combination of MEMS could consist of the following (from bigger to smaller):
1. Each bulk "plate" is actually a series of plates, with carefully placed electromagnets on each plate. The electromagnets on each plate can generate a field such that particular plates repel/attract. In this way, the plates may act as a sort of dynamically driven magnetic spring.
2. A Non-Newtonian fluid-reinforced piezoelectric crumple mesh & thermoelectric regenerator (in between the series of plates): it would work a lot like a viscous coupling unit (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscous_coupling_unit>), but with the addition of piezoelectric cells which convert the mechanical forces of the sheer thickened fluid into electricity. The thermoelectric cells take the heat produced during the process and converts it into electrical current; while also cooling the device.
3. Vortex Tube + Pyroelectric Crystal system: Along with the liquid fluid between the plates, there could also be gaseous fluids. As particular plates contract, the gases could be micro-channelled to a vortex tube (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube>). The resulting heat could be used to quickly charge pyroelectric crystals, which produce a large voltage (i.e 600 V) under thermal stress.
The combined voltage & charge produced by the 2nd & 3rd stages drive the spring action of the plates in the first stage. The suit is constructed such that most of the momentum is transferred into the frame of the suit. The associated kinetic energy is absorbed by the plates of the suit. All of the processes described above are physical processes, so the shields can be regenerated (without the addition of more mass).
It's worth noting that this combination of technologies could be made as/include a pyroelectric fusion device (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroelectric_fusion>). Basically, the gas in between the plates would serve as the fusion fuel. The plates (or some portion of them) would be made from graphite, such that the neutrons produced in the reaction would be absorbed by that graphite, and produce heat (the Wigner Effect). The heated graphite could further drive the pyroelectric crystals, or the thermoelectric module.
In this way, the plates would serve as both a power source and a shield. Since power tends to be the biggest practical barrier for such suits, multipurpose functionality might be very welcome.
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Borrow from Neal Stephenson's Smart Wheels in Snow Crash.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash#Smartwheels>
Cover a suit in sensors and plating supported by telescoping arms. When the suit senses an incoming object (such as a giant fist) the plates could extend and intercept the object and begin absorbing its force earlier than it normally would; the same way an airbag or a car's crumple zone spreads an impact's force over time.
Should the user find themselves falling from a height, the suit could do the same thing, reaching out and spreading the users impact with the ground over time, the way a foam mat or air bag would when people do falls in stunt work.
[Answer]
The pilots of the suit are encased in an acceleration pod that controls the exosuit via a neural interface. The egg like pod contains a form fitted aerogel cushion that is pumped with an oxygenated fluid until it is the same density as the pilot. The oxygenated fluid is also pumped to the pilots lungs replacing the air. This allows the pod to mitigate the effects of pressure waves by minimizing the amount pressure waves reflect when they transition from a higher/lower density medium and to mitigate the effects of high acceleration by reducing the compress-ability of the lungs. The aerogel cushion also serves to spread impacts across the entire surface area of the pilot reducing localized peak compression.
The pod is suspended in an active controlled impact harness that is tied to the frame of the exosuit. The harness has computer controlled tie points allowing the pod and the tension of the ties to be adjusted to lower the intensity of an impact by increasing the duration of the impact. For example pulling the pod as far as possible in the harness cavity from the estimated impact point and lowering the tension of the tie wires allowing the pod to decelerate the entire length of the harness cavity over say a second instead of all at once in a millisecond.
The pod also serves as a ejection seat/escape pod in emergencies.
The real downside of a pilot pod system is that a exosuit using a neural interface driven pod system will replace vs enhance the strength of the pilot and of course is considerably more expensive than just strapping a pilot in a strength enhancing exoskeleton suit. The benefit, however, is your pilots and their suits will last a lot longer if a proximity explosion that can't even penetrate the suits armor can knock out your pilot.
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# Oragami Armour
No joke.
Oragami has the potential to be used for Force Absorption, and with a suitable metamaterial and the right structure, scale and density would be useful in minimizing impact forces on the wearer.
References:
[Oragami Ballistic Barrier](https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3923&context=facpub)
[USAF Darpa Patent](https://patents.google.com/patent/US8436508B2/en)
[Oragami / DNA Based Nanotech](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.9b01561)
[3D printed Dynamic Oragami Metamaterials](https://techxplore.com/news/2018-12-d-printed-metamaterials-mechanical-properties-magnetic.html)
[3D printed Nano-Oragami Lattices](https://phys.org/news/2017-12-origami-lattices-nano-scale-surface-ornaments.html)
[Oragami Metamaterial](https://www.futurity.org/origami-metamaterial-impact-2076812-2/)
[Answer]
I am going to have some fun with this.
I think you want a compact, portable, high-performance kinetic energy converter & projector. Any projectile launched at the wearer bears a huge amount of kinetic energy. Upon making contact with the armour rather than converting the kinetic energy into strain energy, the converter quickly drains the energy from the approaching mass. This sets the projectile's velocity to zero without traditional deceleration. This only works in close proximity, though. A larger shell, heavy club, vehicle or building will still exert force on the armour.
This is where the projector comes into play: The absorbed energy can be stored in a kinetic capacitor, ready to be transferred into the body of the wearer. A heavy impact will still send the wearer flying. However, with a all of his mass being brought to speed in equal degree, his body will not take damage. Upon impact with the next wall, foe or the ground, the same mechanisms kick in but the other way around.
The system has its limits so it does not make the wearer invincible. The circuits are prone to overheating, especially if overused in prolonged combat. Completely ineffective against all types of beam-attacks.
The kinetic energy converter is produced by the same company which provides the inertial dampener's to the Star Trek Federation. I always guessed Tony Stark had some kind of prototype in his suits. Judging by [his comment](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/171941/a-suit-that-realistically-protects-against-impact-falling-being-thrown-around/172042#comment537613_171941) I suspect John O worked for them, but cannot tell the specifics due to an NDA.
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I want to know how / if we could train monkeys to do a variety of human tasks. Is it possible to teach monkeys human trades and set them free throughout major cities to do jobs and interact with humans?
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Not without majorly altering the monkeys to the point where they aren't monkeys anymore and its a new subspecies. They aren't smart enough. The expression 'Monkey see, monkey do' comes to mind - they can be trained, yes. They can be trained to do things. But there's no way for them to go 'Planet of the Apes' on us. Thankfully.
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[japan do that](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjHQrAVT5yU) and most south east asian country also train monkey for certain activity, from picking coconut or other fruit to [street circuss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scYwoFEAEpk) to act like human like [riding bicycle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kVW7G_-wz0),smoking, even as drug cartel, etc.
i dont know about japan but the training that i know though..... is pretty much would make animal lovers like PETA mad because it choke the monkey with chain to force them standing in two feet etc and pretty much torture them, picking coconut and drug cartel is more humane though because you give a treat as their payment ([yes they understand some kind of value](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg)) and not require them to standing in two feet.
also if you want the monkey into military they probably do better as grenade thrower because they naturally know how to do it.
and i just want to put this image just because
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WJLjh.jpg)
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You can train apes to do human jobs, but I doubt it would be worth the trouble.
Apes can understand the concept of work and payment, but their ability to grasp complex tasks is, on average, much lower than that of humans. They can also be moody, prone to distraction, and have their own personality traits that differ significantly from those of typical humans. Chimpanzees, for instance, are very aggressive and nearly impossible to control.
Instead of thinking of them as trained animals, think of them as severely mentally handicapped humans with serious personality disorders. They can be put to work, but in many cases this will prove a liability.
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You can do whatever you want in the fictional world but you need to understand that they will not be monkeys in the way we know them in this reality. They have no sense of value in anything beyond basic family or troop relationships, so “money” means nothing to them. Damaging property, stealing, giving things away, will never be concepts true monkeys can understand. They won’t arrive to work on time because they don’t know what time means. They will do whatever makes them feel good.
In your alternate world, you will have to give your monkeys a higher IQ and an ability to understand abstract thoughts, and to reciprocate moral values. The basic concept of a “troop” exists with real monkeys, and that could be developed in your story into an understanding of citizenship and civic duty after their intelligence is improved.
Again you can’t pretend these are “real monkeys” as we know them in this reality. If being “real monkeys” is crucial to your story, then the answer is simply, no.
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Teach no
genetically engineer (uplift), then teach, yes.
but uplifting a species is still way beyond our ability you would need severely advanced genetic engineering, likely generations away. Our first uplift will also be a more intelligent species likely an ape (although we could drive the rest of apes extinct before we get there), lastly our first uplift will also be largely trail and error, so they will spend a long time, generations, in the testing phase.
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We are still at the stage that we don't know most of the molecular mechanism that how our body works. Even one day we know that, we still don't know how brain-to-mind works. So we can never be sure whether we can train monkey (or any specie that have a complex enough brain) to do advanced human things. Without theory support, the only thing we can do is to try and try like Edison did.
For complex and mysterious system like brain/mind, every thing is possible, it just still doesn't happen. Maybe a new special method of stimulation/training, or maybe a few gene modifications that make monkey trainable with existing methods. Any of this will triger another revolution like the 20th century physics did.
But the key is that that is not enough. You train moneys to be like human, then they will demand rights and more, and finally get that through wars just like we did. They won't work without demand like you expected. They are just us, and there are already enough us and we don't need more. So the even more hard question is how to train money to be human with no demands which I suppose is impposible.
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In my world there's a company that needs to kidnap a person or a number of persons (reasons are out of scope of this question) and must do this in the way that no one (and I mean: *no one*) would object, have or ask questions, seek for a missing person etc.
Thus, I'm saying about breaking all that person's family, friends, neighbor and social connections, i.e. "removing" it from the world without creating disturbance and without causing question.
The seized person may really be kidnapped, i.e. not willing to take a part in this process or it can fully cooperate with the company in this process. In both cases the kidnapped person will not seek any chance or way to "get out" (i.e. will be cooperating willingly or unwillingly or will be deluded itself and kept unconscious or not aware of the kidnapping event). So we only need to take care about other persons, not about person in topic.
As chairman of this company, personally involved in "kidnapping", what options do I have?
Things that I considered so far:
1. Changing facts, social wires, news, faking situations to pronounce person dead. Creating a fake grave for it and let the family and friends believe that it is dead (aka. "La Femme Nikita").
2. Faking a situation in which person in subject is sent to highest-level jail for ten or twenty years sentence without an ability for a parole and without even a possibility to see anyone.
3. Faking a letter as written by subject to let family and friends think that this person is "gone" for a longer period of time (years?), i.e. decided to join a contemplative order, some community, sect etc., decided to go for a long-time, world-span trip and deluding family and friends during this period by sending a fake mails, photos and even making fake phone calls (technology allows it in this world).
4. Not doing anything in preparation stage. Simply kidnapping this person and reacting on all events or situations as they arise (quite very risky?).
Are any of above options plausible? Are there any other options to consider?
**Edit**: *Once people are kidnapped and kept hidden within company's premises (no matter whether willingly or unwillingly) they are kept completely and totally separated from the world. They don't have access to the Internet, telephone nor to any kind of media. So we discuss / cover only their past web-presence. They are not able to create any new Internet/media/world presence.*
**Edit**: *As JBH correctly points out there will always be some kind of disturbance created with disappearing of any person (broken social connections). That's fine. I'm only talking about not creating disturbance that can't be handled, i.e. that leads into asking "wrong" questions.*
[Answer]
**Keep it simple**
Unless there is some handwavium, Men in Black memory erasure device, someone will remember each person, even if it is only the tax office. There will be questions asked, no matter which method you use. The best you can hope for is to minimise the investigation and thus the chance that anyone will solve the kidnapping. Any attempt to fake evidence is providing clues that may backfire - as soon as there is a body that can be proved *not* to be the missing person it confirms there is something fishy going on, fake emails that can be proven fake ditto etc. So just make the original snatch as simple as possible with no body to recover. That means going to the water covering most of the planet.
The best case option is that the seized person is willing to cooperate, has moderate wealth (enough to travel to the coast), can swim and can get to a fairly deserted stretch of coastline. They go on holiday, swim out and never come back (actually picked up by boat or submarine). Second-best option is to manipulate them into the above scenario and kidnap them while they are swimming. Even the then [Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Holt) went missing and was never found under similar circumstances despite a major investigation. While bodies may be found in such situations, no one is really surprised if they are not. If the person is high-profile then there may be conspiracy theories (as there were with Harold Holt) but with no proof they cannot be acted upon.
If the subjects are inconsiderate enough to be non-swimmers then you need more creative means of them apparently being consigned to the watery depths. Induce them to travel to a poorly-regulated country and get them to go missing in a maritime accident. Scenario works best with a honey trap - get them travelling with an attractive person of their preferred gender who is in on the kidnapping. One option is that the couple hire a boat from some dodgy operator in slightly dubious weather conditions and never return - the boat can be found capsized, the taser used to subdue the subject will not leave forensic traces on the boat and all of the snatch team except the travelling companion wear crime-scene suits, masks etc to ensure no DNA is left.
A similar option is to arrange for travel in hurricane/cyclone season then:
* the travelling companion sabotages the subject's phone, tablet etc so they are out of touch with friends and family;
* travelling companion leads them to a deserted area where they can be kidnapped quietly;
* wait for a disaster such as the [sinking of a ferry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sinar_Bangun); and
* plant identifiable personal effects where the search and rescue or accident investigation officers will find them.
Steps c) and d) require some luck and quick reactions, but there are some parts of the world where the mean time between such disasters is distressingly low. Note that the companion needs to be either disposed of or relocated with a new face and identity in this scenario - they are too risky a loose end otherwise.
[Answer]
Faking death is the best viable option. You just need to corrupt a coroner, tamper with some medical data, and the body must be otherwise unrecognizable.
This will also work if you set up a fake "serial killer", so that, at regular intervals, other people can conveniently disappear and, as far as the law is concerned, stay dead.
[Answer]
I assume that the person won't cooperate, otherwise the situation it's only easier.
Depending on the company's power (financial and political) and mostly on it's evilness, you could make a lot of people disappear without prolonged claims and/or investigations by faking some small or big incidents.
**Your greatest advantage** (which is also mandatory for the perfect murder) is that there's no connection between the company and the kidnapped, because there's no motive to choose a specific person (as far as I understand the question). If the faked incident is somehow suspicious, the first and most relevant question for a crime is "cui prodest?". Since there are literally no connection between the company and the kidnapped, the authority will search through the kidnapped's history and related people without finding anything about the evil company.
---
### Single person example
Recently a person fell in yellowstone acid lake and went dissolved within hours, you only have to kidnap one person and throw another corpse in the lake.
OR
There are several feud for trivial reasons, especially in low education places, that often end with feral fight, gun shot, knife stab and so on. This usually happen between relatives or neighbors, and the escalation takes long time and it involves menaces, offenses and minor aggressions.
If you only monitor the situation and then kidnap someone involved in the feud, i'm quite sure that the investigations won't affect the company, since there's a really strong connection and precedent aggressions and literally now connection with your company.
### Multiple people example
Simulate a shipwreck or plane crash: you could kidnap the people of small vessels and small charter planes at the departure (or during navigation, but it's difficult with a plane), use the vehicle as supposed, launch a mayday and sink/crash che vehicle in the ocean. Lot of people got lost because of accidents, and untill the vehicle condition and the circumstances don't show anything suspicious some researche will be done, but the goal would be to find people, not investigate a crime.
### Important note
If your evil company has plenty of power and resources it could even organize a mass kidnap, covered by some huge terrorist strike. Apparently, even years after the 9/11 attack, [families of 1,113 of the 2,753 who died still have no biological confirmation of death, according to New York’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner](https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/09/10/loved-ones-survivors-still-struggle-pain-sept-11/89359192/).
This could seem a good way to concentrate 10 years of kidnaps in one go but the required power to operate at this level is huge, therefore the circle tightens. Moreover, more important, **if you want to keep a secret** you have really limit the people involved as per the "[Grime's law](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905)".
[Answer]
Have all the targets "win" an amazing holiday somewhere.
By "coincidence" all the targets end up on the same plane.
Then have the plane "disappear" over the ocean, possibly after a suitably cryptic final message and/or suitable spoofed telemetry.
Debris from the plane should wash ashore after a few weeks.
One cover story could explain the whole thing. For example a wealthy and eccentric billionaire announces a "happiness plan", He's going to fly 1000 people selected at random to a luxury holiday. Everyone in the country is entered in the lottery, he even hires people to go out and sign up homeless people and poor people who normally miss these chances.
900 of these people are genuinely selected at random, the other 100 are rigged. Those 100 then get put on the same plane.
That plane "disappears" in a tragic accident, the other 900 though get their holiday as planned (although somewhat dampened by the tragic accident).
[Answer]
**Murder is the best solution here.**
A fake death means that no one will be looking for this person, as mentioned in other answers.
The best way to do this depends on the nation, but in the United States the best option would be to arrange a car accident. You'll need a corpse that matches the build of the person you're kidnapping (get into their doctor's record) just in case any questions come up in the future, they'll look at bones and those need to match. Looking at bones to determine aspects of the body is something done by an expert on-site, so if they don't match there's nothing you can do at that point to maintain the illusion.
DNA is less obvious, and is done in labs, so if even if someone tries to do it later you still have a chance to intercept it.
You'll need to... get the coroner on your side. They're going to be looking at a long-dead corpse. Even burned, they should know what they're looking at. Make sure that they actually don't.
Then your kidnapping victim is going to take a long drive into a nearby tree. They took a drive down a country road and plowed into a tree. Shame that the airbag wasn't properly connected, they smashed their head into the wheel and dash, and now their head is in pretty bad shape. (Do this so that no one can come in and recognize the corpse - if the face doesn't resemble a face, well, why bother asking someone to recognize it.)
Oh, and then the fuel lines caught on fire, and because no one was around their body got burned to a crisp. (Again, make it really hard to recognize the body. They have a tattoo that your decoy corpse doesn't? Oh, well it's just burned away.)
[Answer]
Sometimes the best way to kidnap someone is just to kidnap them.
"Witnesses saw the subject kidnapped at gunpoint by four masked men who jumped out of a white van. it's definitely the work of the Vladimir-Estragon mob, they always use the same MO. You'll get a ransom note in a couple of days."
But something goes wrong, the gang apparently gets suspicious and after initial contact the family never hear from them again and the police have no leads. So everyone 'knows' what happened to the victim, but nobody knows....
[Answer]
* If it gets public, *some* people will protest. Even vile criminals deserve the protections of the rule of law, because you can't just take the word of the king or sheriff that they **are** vile criminals. There must be a public trial.
* That being said, the notions of *rule of law* and *trial* differ across the world. Fake travel to North Korea and raise a stink that he didn't come out. Fake travel to Syria and regret his hit by a drone missile.
* Many people disappear each year. Consider the recent case of [Captain Hughes](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/11/us/missing-airman-william-howard-hughes-jr/index.html), who seems to have deserted from the Air Force for 35 years. In his case there were *some* clues of a deliberate, self-imposed disappearance, like the money, but no firm evidence to prove one way or the other.
* With enough money, start a Mars one-way colonization project with a varied group of volunteers (a "cross-section of a real human society" or some such). One of the ships goes silent soon after launch, and recovery is impractical ...
[Answer]
If the problem is people asking for the kidnapped person, you have two options:
* find a person where no-one will ask
* replace the kidnapped person
It can be hard to find someone where really nobody cares about, but replacing a person is not easy eather. Maybe it is easier if it is only for short time, when the replacement tells everybody about moving to [far away]..
[Answer]
# Research
As long as the kidnappings don't have to happen in an unreasonably short time frame, you can discover what each target truly enjoys (surfing, chess, a Bahamas vacation, hiking, etc.). Then lure them in by presenting an opportunity that is good but not too good to be true. Once you have them willingly going off some place, you can control their disappearance or fake death.
The main drawback is that this requires a lot of manpower. If this has to be done in a short time, then you need one team for each disappearance. If this can happen over an extended period, you can have one team move from victim to victim.
However, there are many advantages to this:
1. There is little to connect the disappearances/deaths to each other
(a hiker disappears in the Amazon and someone attending a chess
championship gets mugged, etc.). This is especially true if the
disappearance can happen over time.
2. The victims have taken care of handling the leaving of anyone they
know already.
3. If the victim's desire is illicit, it's even better. The victim
will cover up their own tracks and clues will point back to the
victim. Also, there will already be a list of potential suspects
for the disappearances.
[Answer]
Put them in prison on sex offences and tell everyone that he commited suicide while the cameras were malfunctioning due to the shame. Meanwhile drug them unconscious and leak a photo of them "dead" to the a chatroom like 4-chan pretending to be a nurse at the hospital. Spread stories to the press about the incompetence of the prison guards in letting someone die on suicide watch.
Meanwhile also flood the media with outlandish conspiracy theories in order to make anyone who questions the official version of events seem crazy.
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[Question]
[
Background: The oceans and waters in my setting have an incredibly strong pH between 11 to 14, this calcifies anything that enters them (not instantly but pretty quickly).
I know in nature that some creatures live purely off vegetable matter because it has a great amount of water inside it; would that have to be done here? The problem is while my creatures could most likely do that the larger creatures that live on the world with them would probably find that insufficient.
Question: What/how would they hydrate? Or would they drink nothing if that's possible?
*(Please tell me if the question seems too broad or could be improved. Thank you in advance.)*
[Answer]
I would suggest that most of the life on the planet undertakes atmospheric Nitrogen fixation in a manner similar to that used by terrestrial [Rhizobium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizobium) bacteria. The chemical pathway for this fixation is strongly acidic and will leave free protons that the body can use to prevent the build up of alkaline compounds by neutralising them and maintaining them in solution instead of them forming insoluble precipitates. Everything needs Nitrogen as a chemical building block in amino-acids and proteins, on Earth most lifeforms get this in the form of nitrates sourced either from the soil or in the case of animals ultimately from plant foods but if you posit that life on your world relies on Nitrogen fixing organelles not entirely dissimilar to [Mitochondria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion) then all plants and animals would get their Nitrogen directly. [Consumers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_(food_chain)) then eat only for Carbon and trace elements and most creatures could have a similar pH to what we see on Earth and pass the majority of the Calcium compound load they have to deal with in their water. In fact such lifeforms would rely on highly alkaline water to maintain their internal pH balance the same way clover needs lime soils to grow well on acidic soils.
[Answer]
I would imagine that, if the waters of this planet have always been basic in nature, that life must have simply arisen within that environment. If that is the case, then subsequent organisms would simply have evolved to cope with extremely basic water, perhaps even making some kind of use of whatever basic chemicals are in the water.
Native animals would simply drink extremely bitter water!
[Answer]
Micro organisms live in our bodies at pH of 4. They have proton pumps. The pH inside their cells is close to 7 even though they live at pH 4.
A similar mechanism can exist on your world. There is precedent (sort of) here. Your organisms drink the water, Proton pumps neutralize the water (perhaps calcium carbonate precipitates out and is passed), and everything is hunky dory.
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Rain could be a source of fresh water. It is also reasonable to suppose that any impermeable rock surfaces would collect rain water and allow animals to drink. Any solid alkali would be eventually be washed off into the alkali oceans. But if alkaline gases such as ammonia were ever present in the environment then it would not be possible to have fresh water on the surface at all as ammonia would immediately dissolve in any present making it alkaline. In such cases the animals would have to adapt to drinking alkaline water or die.
[Answer]
I believe you may be narrowing a bit your question. Hydration is just one way in which we obtain the main solvent for our organic chemistry to work: water. We obtain lots of water from food as well. The key point I'm trying to make is to think of water as a solvent, not a source of hydration alone, because this will dictate the macro-molecular structure of your beings.
In Chapter 3 of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" he hypothesizes what other organic chemistries that are not carbon based would be possible to sustain life (a very different type of life, of course). He basically boils life down to building blocks and solvents, using carbon and water as a start (i.e. our building blocks). The paragraph of interest is as follows:
>
> I think the lifeforms on many worlds will consist, by and large, of the same atoms we have here, perhaps even many of the same basic molecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids - but put together in unfamiliar ways. Perhaps organisms that float in dense planetary atmospheres will be very much like us in their atomic composition, except they might not have bones and therefore not need much calcium. Perhaps elsewhere some solvent other than water is used. Hydrofluoric acid might serve rather well, although there is not a great deal of fluorine in the Cosmos; hydrofluoric acid would do a great deal of damage to the kind of molecules that make us up, but other organic molecules, paraffin waxes, for example, are perfectly stable in its presence. Liquid ammonia would make an even better solvent system, because ammonia is very abundant in the Cosmos. But it is liquid only on worlds much colder than the Earth or Mars. Ammonia is ordinarily a gas on Earth, as water is on Venus. Or perhaps there are living things that do not have a solvent system at all - solid-state life, where there are electrical signals propagating rather than molecules floating about.
>
>
>
It seems you are constrained to an acidic solvent, so your creatures would ideally have paraffin based structures (think "Alien"). I thought Sagan's ideas were quite applicable to your case!
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[Question]
[
So I wish to make a sci fi setting that uses gravity manipulation tech and inertial dampeners.
I have a number of ideas for how such a system works, and about how it should go. At the moment I'm fielding an idea I've borrowed from the game Mass Effect.
However for various reasons, I strictly speaking don't want to accidentally create a perpetual motion machine or a planet busting superweapon a car mechanic could build in his garage.
To be clear this isn't hard sci fi, how precisely this work doesn't entirely matter, so the technobabble goes something.
**The Aetheric Field Generator**
There exists a technology capable of generating what are called aetheric fields. Which are basically artificially metastable regions of space time, which can be tweaked to have somewhat different properties than the vacuum of our own universe. The generators and fields also have a capacitive property and have to be actively maintained and kept metastable.
Firstly, it does *not* free the ship from the rocket equation. You cannot, for example, make the ship weigh less and therefore expend less fuel to accelerate it.
The aetheric field, particularly when used to spin a paragravity field, works to alleviate the affects of acceleration for the crew inside a ship.
They use as well in inertial manipulation of projectiles. Through mass manipulation, they can impart velocity to a projectile coming out a gun, but the projectile doesn't gain energy from nothing, it takes it from the aetheric field.
I also have an idea of how it could be used as a force field. Though I'm not sure how it would work out.
At its core, the aetheric field generator is obviously fantastical. It may cheat, bribe, negotiate, or pass on the debt to any sucker willing to take it on. But the one thing consistent about it, is that it can never outright escape paying the bill in the end.
This is just the rough draft for the concept of course. Assuming this is workeable, What problems are there that I need to address or patch over for this work?
Or am I better off inventing something else?
[Answer]
The main use of inertial dampening fields and inertial compensators in scifi stories appears to be to stop the contents of your ship from being reduced to a thin layer of paint on the aft bulkhead when you try to accelerate at 100Gs or something. The concept is so vague that lots of inconvenient things get swept under this particular carpet, but compensating for variations in inertia transfer (you know, acceleration) throughout the volume of your ship is more or less the whole point.
The sciencey solution is to suspend your delicate cargo in a neutral buoyancy environment that applies acceleration force evenly across the entire body. It's not a perfect solution unfortunately since the body isn't perfectly homogenous and blood (and internal organs, and... so on) tend to accelerate slower due to different densities and how force propagates through the body. You can get a little further using pressure wraps to hold things in place a little better and squeeze the blood up against the pull of the acceleration force, but 100G is still going to kill you pretty quickly.
But what if you could generate a field that applied the acceleration force directly to the entire volume of your ship? Instead of the engine pushing the back of the ship and that force propagating through the structure and contents, imagine that acceleration being applied equally across every part of the ship. If everything in the volume - including the fluids in your circulatory system, your organs, everything - is accelerating in the same direction at the same rate then it would be indistinguishable from free-fall. You might be accelerating at the equivalent of a few thousand Gs, but it would feel like you're in microgravity. As long as all acceleration is delivered via the field you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference.
Not only does this resolve any little issues with physics (apart from being impossible as far as we can tell, but this is science *fiction* after all) it shouldn't be particularly costly in terms of energy. The same amount of thrust is being generated to produce the acceleration, it's just applied directly to the ship's contents instead of indirectly.
There are a few problems with just using it as a drive system, so how about having the field generate a cohesive, rigid inertial volume. Any force applied to the volume is distributed across the whole thing, which then reacts to the force as if it were a rigid object. You could bounce your ship off a moon and not disturb anything inside the field. Missile explodes on the side of your ship? Nobody noticed except the engineering team monitoring the inertial compensators and the navigator who has to fix your course. And the crew on that battleship you just side-swiped are going to notice the impact energy since they're outside the field.
Of course the generators are the weak point of this. They're dealing with a lot of energy all the time, and inefficiencies in the machines (because there always are) will produce some sort of byproducts, probably significant amounts of heat. Lots of fun to be had with the details of that.
Just don't try to justify how it works, or how it allows things to keep moving inside relative to the field itself. Maybe write some "bad things happened during development" paragraphs to let the reader know how hard it was to get this tech to work and move on. If they don't accept that then they're never going to accept the field itself.
---
(New week, clear[er] head. Realised I didn't explicitly address the question in the title.)
So... now that you have a field generator that is working hard (possibly at ruinous losses and with lots of heat buildup, but you can deal with that later) to create a zone of distributed force, how does that interact with conservation laws?
On the macro scale there are no problems. The field and its content is treated as a rigid body for all intents and purposes. The total mass of the body is applied to collisions (sorry Nosajimiki), acceleration and so on. The energy applied to create acceleration is conserved as momentum, the ship still falls in a gravity field, still bleeds energy as heat when it passes through an atmosphere at high speed, etc. At any scale where "the ship" can be treated as a single object everything balances as you'd expect.
At the micro scale things could get a little interesting - squishy crew need to be able to move around, breathe, pump blood and so on - but there's no need for violations of conservation. We may be violating causality at every turn, but conservation is well and truly intact. The field itself takes constant energy input to maintain, and perhaps the energy cost scales with acceleration or something. Likely the field is rated for some maximum power draw that equates to neutralisation of a specific max acceleration force, with some manageable ratio. Try to do too much and you could end up with a heap of glowing slag where your field generators used to sit.
So it's not a space opera inertialess drive (ala E.E. Smith's Lensman series), it's the kind of inertial compensator that has been used in SF shows for several decades now. It won't help you go faster or beat the light speed limit, but it will let you mount much larger drives and zip around the battlefield far more nimbly than ships without it.
[Answer]
Something that "turns off" inertia is no good. "Inertial dampeners", on the other hand, as depicted in science fiction, are just fine.
All you need to do is transfer any forces the accelerate the ship to distribute them uniformly across all of the particles inside the field. If every part of you accelerates uniformly, you won't feel it--that's why you feel weightless in free-fall. And thus, the inconvenient effects of inertia on squishy bodies inside ships undergoing acceleration are successfully dampened! We don't know of any way to do that with known physics, but it doesn't violate any conservation laws. An aetheric field that changes the properties of the vacuum inside the ship is as good an excuse for how that is accomplished as any.
[Answer]
## Sorta, but not really.
I myself have been looking for a way to justify inertia manipulation in my worldbuilding for a while. This is the closest I've come.
---
Why it breaks conservation laws
Changing inertial mass alone violates conservation of momentum & energy.
$$p=mv$$
$$KE=\frac{1}{2}mv^2$$
If $m$, say, goes down, and everything else stays the same, then momentum, $p$, and kinetic energy, $KE$, seemingly vanish from the system. If $m$ goes up then both are seemingly added to the system out of nowhere.
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## Let it happen
You could say it "goes/comes from somewhere else", relegate the problem to "undiscovered physics". If this okay for you, then spacecraft projecting an "inertia reduction field" lose some apparent mass but continue at the same speed. This might be useful if the rocket part of the ship pokes out of the field and the reaction mass is allowed to regain and exchange its normal mass-momentum.
The effect is like having a hammerspace to "hide" some of the fuel mass in which helps to increase the efficiencies of normal rockets.
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## Conserving 4-momentum
You can attempt to conserve both momentum and energy by retaining momentum and paying an "energy debt". To conserve momentum, $v$, goes up when $m$ goes down, such that $p$ is always constant. Switching on an inertia reduction field causes the ship to immediately accelerate to retain a certain quantity of momentum.
However, kinetic energy, $\frac{1}{2}mv^2$, is not conserved. It's easy to see why: kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity while momentum increases linearly. If mass is reduced by half and velocity is doubled (as per the rule of momentum conservation above) then kinetic energy is also doubled.
Where did that energy come from?
Well, we can pay for that energy through an "energy debt". To establish an inertia reduction field the energy debt in Joules must be paid, which is the difference in kinetic energies between start and end states:
$$KE\_{debt}=\frac{1}{2}\left(m\_{0}v\_{0}^{2}-m\_{1}v\_{1}^{2}\right)$$
$$\text{or,}$$
$$KE\_{debt}=KE\_0\left(1-\frac{1}{u}\right)$$
Where $r$ is the factor by which inertial mass is reduced, such that $m\_1=um\_0$ and $v\_1=\frac{1}{u}v\_0$.
The inertial reduction device converts electricity into kinetic energy (by mystical means), thereby conserving energy and momentum. By the same principle, the device returns the same energy once the field is switched off.
The device receives power from an onboard reactor and then later returns it once the field is dropped, the field acting something like a battery. This allows the ship to establish a field and move whenever it has a store of electrical energy by paying the debt/discharging the capacitor banks, and then recharging the capacitors with the returned energy once the ship stops.
*(If we're increasing inertial mass, rather than decreasing, the device actually dishes out energy at first, and then later demands it back when the field is to be dropped. Make of that what you will...)*
---
## Problem with that...
There's a big glaring problem with all that. Measuring the momentum of an object requires choosing a frame of reference. There are unlimited frames to choose from, and none are better than any other. So, when the field is established, in which direction does the ship gain velocity? Any change in velocity violates momentum conservation in all but the chosen frame.
You could assert that the field effect only works in one particular frame, maybe a frame that's important to everyone, such as the solar barycenter. Something, something, local space-time curvature gradients.
Unfortunately, this is where it falls apart, and as far as I can tell there's no reconciling it.
[Answer]
## There is more than one way to balance a momentum equation
The kinds of engines that we know how to make today work by adding energy to a system which increases the velocity and momentum, but there is one very often overlooked variable here because we don't know how to manipulate it: the speed of light.
Momentum = Mass \* Velocity = Energy / (Speed-of-light^2) \* Velocity.
If your field generator increases the speed of light without actually adding any energy to the system, then your Velocity will increase, but your momentum will stay the same. This means that a ship moving at 5km/sec could be sped up to a 500km/sec without adding any energy to the system. In this sense, you're not so much "dampening" your inertia so much as maintaining it while moving faster.
This solves a few very important problems with your idea:
>
> I don't want to accidentally create a perpetual motion machine.
>
>
>
It multiplies how fast you move, but you still need to invest in moving and overcoming resistance. As long as this "Speed-of-light" stuff is in some way finite or requires some input to harness, you can't just accelerate forever. But more importantly, the system does not create any more energy. Each interaction with the outside world reduces your momentum by the same % as it would if you had a lower speed of light. So, if you tried to turn a wheel with an accelerated motor for example, it would not put more energy into the system, just alter the "mechanical advantage" in more or less the same way you do with levers, gears, or pullies
>
> ... or a planet busting superweapon
>
>
>
This is the real problem with most FLT/relativistic drives. But with this, your 500km/sec ship will NOT actually hit any harder with its Aetheric
Field Generator turned on than it would moving at 5km/sec with it turned off because its momentum is unchanged.
[Answer]
When implementing technologies that manipulate properties and interactions around mass, even when mass can seem to be changed, an equal but opposite change appears elsewhere and can even cancel out the effects.
This will be an issue for ships carrying a generator. Imagine coming to a near immediate stop, using the field as a damper. If the field absorbs that inertia, the field itself may gain too much energy and the whole of the ship and generator will experience the full impulse of the break.
One option is to reimagine this tech to scale. Perhaps the universe is filled with field, but ships tap into it using some sort of engine. A downside to this could be that, like antennas tap into the EM field, ships can experience interference from waves/particles in this field coming from other massive objects or ships braking nearby. An extra boon would be that more portable versions if this technology can be used in weapons or personal vehicles.
You should also consider the reverse. If using the technology for inertial damping, what are the applications for acceleration?
[Answer]
First, there is nothing wrong with perpetual motion. What IS controversial is a Perpetual Motion Machine - something that will do work without any energy input ([Zero Point Energy](https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-use-quantum-mechanics-to-pull-energy-out-of-nothing-20230222/) notwithstanding). And here we get into the quantum mechanics decoherence conundrum - how does one know that something is happening perpetually, without observing it? And as soon as one observes it. you have the properties of a machine. Energy out (whatever is used to observe it) requires energy in. There are many hypothetical quantum systems that indeed can be perpetual until decoherence.
Second, as for a solution/answer, the first step is to recognize *exactly what 'inertia' is*. Not an easy task, since the physics mechanisms behind it were not known until a few decades ago. We knew what inertia *is* in terms of it's effects and application, just not what *creates* it. This was solved with the discovery of the Higgs Field and Higgs Boson. Without these, there would be no inertia. There is nothing else in any other physics concept that demands 'inertia' be a 'thing'.
Thus, any '*inertial dampening*' would, methinks, have to be somehow related to either the Higgs Boson or the Higgs Field, and/or the interaction between them.
It seems to me that if the Higgs Boson and the Higgs Field were 'frozen' together such that, as the Higgs Boson speed or velocity were changed, so too the Higgs Field altered synchronously. Much like electromagnetism - a wire moving through a magnetic field causes an induced current to flow. But if the magnetic field and the wire movements are synchronized, there is no induced current. If the Higgs Field and Higgs Boson are similarly synchronized, there will be no inertial effects,
So if there were some mechanism for completely containing the Higgs Field within the confines of the space/time of the spaceship, such that all of the Higgs Bosons within the spaceship were synchronized with the displacement of the field, no inertial effects.
In broad terms, it would be like the Alcubierre warp drive, in that a local bubble of space/time would be contained in an '*inertial field bubble*' such that all Higgs Boson-Field interactions would be completely contained and localized in its own relativistic bubble.
This does not really violate any principles of physics as documented in the newest thicker physics textbook, as long as there is sufficient energy being put into the system. There would hypothetically be a *LOT* of energy required to contain the Higgs Field (for your purposes, '*exotic energy*' as a word salad choice?) and manipulate it appropriately.
If the Alcubierre drive is acceptable as a science fiction trope, so too should this Higgs inertial dampening system be acceptable.
See, for instance, [this article](https://home.cern/news/news/physics/where-does-higgs-boson-come) on the recent musings over the Higgs Boson/Field.
[Answer]
Interacting with an as-yet-undiscovered field sounds like a viable option. It's neat in that you can handwave away all the seemingly physically impossible phenomena but you can do even better: you can make up the rules of your field.
And I don't mean "conjure up all the equations", nobody would be interested in that anyway, but treat it as some kind of semi-logical magic.
So for example:
1. Interacting with the field always requires prior input of energy. Think of it like "activation energy" in chemistry. This helps with "infinite free energy" type questions. Your car mechanic in their garage won't be able to produce enough activation energy to significantly affect the mass of the planet for example. (But expect a spate of newspaper stories about bored, middle-aged men thinking it'd be a good idea to get themselves and a crate of beer to hover and getting it wrong, this time without helium balloons.)
2. You can even make the energy requirement scale non-linearly: you can still make a reactor that produces enough energy to manipulate a spaceship's inertia but not for planets. Weapons are eminently possible, as the generator is in the weapon, not the projectile.
3. Drawing energy from the field depletes it locally. Again, this protects against infinite free energy but it also means that interacting with the field makes waves. Waves that can be detected.
4. If you leave an inertially manipulated system alone, it will return to equilibrium over time, as the energy levels equalise between the coupled fields.
These are only a few examples of plausible-sounding limiting effects, but how many, if any you want to adopt (and then how many of those you want to reveal!) can be dictated by what kind of narrative you want to weave around it.
] |
[Question]
[
In a fantasy setting, largely based on the European medieval period, red hair is perceived as the sign of the devil.
This is much like how red haired woman were prosecuted for being a witch in history.
In this world, a poor commoner with red hair, wishes to change hair color to escape the prejudice.
What would be realistic options to change hair color to any other natural hair color?
Assumptions:
* Materials need to be reasonable attainable for a poor commoner.
* Materials need to be found in a Northern-European climate (UK).
* Poor commoner is a knowledge-god; not bound by knowledge of the time.
* Last resort options are materials that are introduced to Europe after the medieval period (change of setting required).
Things I considered:
* Coffee and tea. Both could serve to darken hair, but neither is available in the region.
* Carrots, beets and henna. These add a red hue, unlike what the commoner wants.
* Walnuts. Would turn hair brown. Most realistic option for now. But wasn't introduced to Europe until the 17th century.
What are some options I missed that would work in the current setting? And what if I also allow materials introduced later?
[Answer]
Minor frame challenge: you don’t need to dye it darker, you just need to change the colour. Blond is also common in a lot of Europe.
Ammonia (commonly made from fermented urine in medieval times, and often even for the purposes of dying) will bleach hair.
[Answer]
There are many references to medieval hair dying.
[Ancient Remedies - Medieval Hair Dye](https://www.lacewingandkettle.com/blogs/world-of-l-k/ancient-remedies-medieval-hair-dye) describes how the hair was preconditioned with either pomegranate skin, vinegar, oak apples, alum or ash prior to dying hair.
[Medieval Hair Colours](https://www.medieval.eu/medieval-hair-colours/) states,
>
> that Agrimonia sp and Buxus sp (boxwood) could be used to colour hair blond, while Black Henbane or Sage was used for colouring hair black. This or a more golden colour might also be achieved by using burnt grapevine ash, crocuses, dragontree, dwarf elderberry, greater celandine, madder, myrtle berry, oat and saffron. Extracts from these plants were often mixed up with liquorice and used as shampoo. Other plants were used as remedies to lengthen hair or making it soft and curly (olive oil). Many of these recipes were handed down through the centuries in later cosmetic handbooks, of which we know of several from the 15th century. It appears there were lots of medieval hair colors around
>
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[Answer]
The Spanish ruler Abd al-Rahman III, Emir of Cordoba 912-929, and Caliph of Cordoba 929 to 961, had a problem.
His mother was a Christian slave from northern Spain. His paternal grandmother was a Christian princess from northern Spain. So he didn't look much like a stereotypical Arab leader.
>
> He is described as having "white skin, blue eyes and attractive face; good looking, although somewhat sturdy and stout. His legs were short, to the point that the stirrups of his saddle were mounted just one palm under it. When mounted, he looked tall, but on his feet he was quite short. He dyed his beard black."[17]
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd\_al-Rahman\_III#Early\_years[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Rahman_III#Early_years%5B1%5D)
So he dyed his beard black to look more like an Arab.
Of course he was a lot richer than a typical European monarch, to say nothing of a typical European commoner, and materials which were cheap in Spain might be expensive in Britain.
People did dye their hair in medieval Europe.
I find it hard to believe that people with red hair would be certain to be lynched as witches in medieval Europe. If every European with red hair would be lynched for a period of several centuries in medieval Europe, the genes for red hair would have become almost extinct and almost no Europeans would have red hair today.
>
> Red hair (or ginger hair) occurs naturally in one to two percent of the human population, appearing with greater frequency (two to six percent) among people of Northern or Northwestern European ancestry and lesser frequency in other populations. It is most common in individuals homozygous for a recessive allele on chromosome 16 that produces an altered version of the MC1R protein.[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_al-Rahman_III#Early_years)
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red\_hair[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair%5B2%5D)
>
> Red hair is most commonly found at the northern and western fringes of Europe;[3](https://hair.lovetoknow.com/alternative-hairstyles/womens-medieval-hairstyles) it is centred around populations in the British Isles and is particularly associated with the Celtic nations.[3](https://hair.lovetoknow.com/alternative-hairstyles/womens-medieval-hairstyles)
>
>
> Ireland has the highest number of red-haired people per capita in the world with the percentage of those with red hair at around 10%.[5](https://yvonneseale.org/blog/2016/10/09/the-veil-in-the-middle-ages/)
>
>
> Great Britain also has a high percentage of people with red hair. In Scotland around 6% of the population has red hair; with the highest concentration of red head carriers in the world found in Edinburgh, making it the red head capital of the world.[6][7] In 1907, the largest ever study of hair colour in Scotland, which analysed over 500,000 people, found the percentage of Scots with red hair to be 5.3%.[8] A 1956 study of hair colour among British Army recruits also found high levels of red hair in Wales and in the Scottish border counties of England.[fn 1][9]
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red\_hair#Northern\_and\_Western\_Europe[4]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair#Northern_and_Western_Europe%5B4%5D)
So your character is lucky to live in a fantasy society which resembles the world world region where red hair is most common and most taken for granted.
>
> Throughout the Middle Ages, marital status was shown by whether a woman's hair was covered. Unmarried women and young girls wore their hair loose and uncovered. Sometimes they would wear braids or plaits. Married women and widows, however, were held to a greater degree of modesty and required to keep all hair covered in public. Their social status and financial status was shown by their headdresses and accents, such as silk or gold thread or ribbon. Loose hair on a married woman would lead to accusations of low morals or even witchcraft.
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[https://hair.lovetoknow.com/alternative-hairstyles/womens-medieval-hairstyles[3]](https://hair.lovetoknow.com/alternative-hairstyles/womens-medieval-hairstyles%5B3%5D)
>
> . For a woman to have walked the streets of a medieval town with her hair uncovered would have invited suspicion as to her sexual morality—that was the behaviour of a prostitute. (In fact, if an “honest” woman from the French town of Arles saw a prostitute wearing a veil, she had the legal right to rip it off.)
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[https://yvonneseale.org/blog/2016/10/09/the-veil-in-the-middle-ages/[5]](https://yvonneseale.org/blog/2016/10/09/the-veil-in-the-middle-ages/%5B5%5D)
So your female character may be protected by living in a region where red hair is more common and more accepted than anywhere else in the world, and by covering up her hair in public if she is a married women or a widow. And although it was rare to marry very young in the Middle Ages, there were probably enough examples of young wives and young widows that a girl with her hair covered would not seem too strange.
But maybe your fantasy world differs from the real middle ages and red hair is very rare - and thus suspicious - where your character lives and women usually go barehead. And maybe her superior knowledge you mention might make people suspect that she is a witch.
So she should dye her hair blonde or dark to avoid looking red haired, and also find a reason to cover up her hair despite that not being customary, so that patches of hair she missed dying wouldn't be noticed. She could become a nun and keep her hair covered if that is a thing.
If the cheapest dye materials she can find are for unnatural hair colors, she might try to start a fashion to dye hair bright green, or blue, or purple, or an unnatural fire engine bright red which everyone will know is obviously a dye job, and no one will suspect her hair is actually naturally reddish.
And possibly she could wear a hat, scarf, or helmet covering her whole head, with a face mask or a veil covering all except her eyes, and tell people that is to hide the horrifying scars from her terrible accident or disease.
[Answer]
Soot. Readily available, makes your hair look rather gross and unwashed, but who cares or notices in medieval settings? Or ash, for a bit of older/grey look.
[Answer]
You're looking for indigo. Extracted from the woad, which is basically.a weed it gives a deep blue color. Paired with something red or orange you end up with a shade of black or brown. Soot mixed with a binder might work temporarily.
If she is really a knowledge goddess she might build an electrostatic generator out of leather straps and a ball of sulfur, run carbon filiments through it to create graphene. Graphene hair dye has been shown to work well, maybe even better then current dyes.
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[Question]
[
So, in my world (or more rather the region in which my story takes place) when the nuclear war happened the majority of people survived in small, survivalist compounds, remote wilderness shelters, and underground bunkers. All in all, 20,000 people survived the war.
I wanted to use the Founder’s Effect, that genetic thing, to make the majority of people in the surviving communities colorblind. My question is, can the founders Effect make this happen?
[Answer]
Yes. This happened on a small Pacific island with a population bottleneck after a typhoon.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingelap>
>
> Complete achromatopsia is normally a very rare condition, and its
> prevalence on the island has been traced back to a population
> bottleneck in 1775 after a catastrophic typhoon swept through the
> island, leaving only about 20 survivors. One of these, Doahkaesa
> Mwanenihsed (the ruler at that time), is now believed to have been a
> carrier for the underlying genetic condition, but the achromatopsia
> disorder did not appear until the fourth generation after the typhoon,
> by which time 2.7% of the Pingelapese were affected. Since
> achromatopsia is an autosomal recessive disorder, inbreeding between
> the descendants of Doahkaesa Mwanenised would result in an increased
> recessive allele frequency.[8] By generation six, the incidence rose
> to approximately 4.9%,[7] due to the founder effect and inbreeding,
> with all achromats on the island nowadays tracing their ancestry to
> Doahkaesa Mwanenihsed.
>
>
> Today the atoll is still of particular interest to geneticists; due to
> the small gene pool and rapid population growth, the disorder is now
> prevalent in almost 10% of the population...
>
>
>
The same thing can happen in your post apocalyptic world. After a population crash (bottleneck) the founder effect leads to this and possibly other genes being represented at a markedly higher frequency. If I recall, you considered having reduced fertility among survivors. If there were a man back in the day who had a reputation as a baby maker, most or all of the survivors might trace their ancestry to him.
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Comments by @Mary is right. 20K is too many for the founder effect. I thought that 20K was the population rebounded some generations after the apocalypse and bottleneck. But you could have the founder effect responsible for colorblindness going into the apocalypse. Maybe there is a Doomsday cult that started with a charismatic leader back in the 1800s. Many of the current cult members are descended from that leader and his many wives. It turns out their preparation served them well, because the cult represents a large proportion of those surviving the apocalypse.
[Answer]
Twenty thousand people is an enormously large population to have a big Founder Effect. To produce this you would need:
* Some reason why this population is disproportionately color-blind, or if females carriers of it
* Some reason why it is selected for and not against.
One possibility would be that for some reason, ability to see through camouflage is immensely important; colorblindness helps with that.
Still, the sort of flukes that would get it started are much more likely to occur in maybe one or two small communities, and its spreading would turn on other communities be wiped out for the lack.
[Answer]
Your problem for limiting genetic diversity is that you have too many "breeding pairs" to get any significant genetic diversity. You need some way to limit that. The obvious way is to limit which men breed., or that you simply (for whatever reason) don't have that many men.
### 19,999 women, one man
Your survivors were a girl guide jamboree. The vast majority naturally were female, with one or two male site assistants. I have trouble imagining another context for the survivors being overwhelmingly female though, but this is kind of vaguely possible.
### Sterilising effect on male population
Your survivors were fairly evenly gender-balanced, but the effects of near-extinction killed male fertility. After 10 years of no pregnancies, the doctor screened sperm samples for all men, and found only one guy with properly viable sperm. He became the sperm donor for refounding the world. They could easily manage artificial insemination to increase reproduction - that's low tech with a turkey baster - but they wouldn't have the ability to gene-edit to fix anything wrong with his chromosomes.
[Answer]
I suggest going with the founder effect, as described in [Willk's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/182928/10324), combined with a political effect.
At first the colour blindness is just present in the leader and their family. They tend to get more children than other people making the gene more common.
Later anybody who claim to see these "colours" will be executed as this is an implication that the First Family is less then perfect.
Eventually the few remaining people who are not colour blind have learned to *shut up* about it.
[Answer]
Color vision is so vital to human survival that it would be difficult to explain this with only genetics. Red-green colorblindness is sex linked so it may be possible to explain a prevalence of red-green colorblindness after a war by explaining that men with good color vision went off to war and died, leaving noncombat military and those unfit for service behind to have children.
Blue-yellow colorblindness is rare as there are redundant genes for this, it would take quite a bit more effort to remove the blue receptor gene from the gene pool.
Blue-yellow colorblindness can be acquired from overexposure to UV light. Even cheap sunglasses will have a UV protective coating, and many kinds of glass (like the thick glass used on high rise buildings and in car windshields) naturally filter out UV. In a society that has had scarcity caused by war there may be people using lighting that produces a lot of UV, and people in dimly lit places will not be wearing sunglasses. This can have a genetic component in that some people have more natural protection against UV than others. Lights that produce UV are fluorescent lights, arc lamps, and various gas/vapor lamps. Mass produced lights of this kind will have UV filters but those improvised after a war might not.
Diseases like diabetes can cause colorblindness if not managed well. This has a genetic component as people can present inherited diabetes at a young age, or acquire it from a combination of bad diet and genetics for poor metabolism over time.
Vitamin A deficiency can cause colorblindness if allowed to last long enough. This is unfortunately quite common with children receiving poor diets. This can have a genetic component as some people absorb and process vitamin A more readily.
Some drugs can cause colorblindness. In a war torn society it's easy to choose a near certainty of color blindness over near certainty of death from some disease. A common tuberculosis treatment was known to cause colorblindness as an example.
I'd "stack" the causes of colorblindness to explain it's prevalence. Bad diet, bad lighting, and less than desirable treatments for disease leaves everyone colorblind before they become an adult. Add in genetics from many healthier people in the population going off to die in war makes them more vulnerable to such causes.
[Answer]
***A different kind of founder effect - disease:***
There are a multitude of diseases in the world, and viruses can cause some pretty unique ones. In conditions with poor healthcare, a minor virus no one ever noticed can become a huge public health problem. Polio was a significant virus mostly because changes in health standards meant people started catching it during a time in life where its side effects were most severe.
If ONE of your survivors had a virus that, in poor health conditions and sanitation, could infect the majority of your survivors and circulate in the population, you have a vector to cause any disability you want. Let's say your virus infected small infants during eye development and caused a defect in cones. No one noticed the virus before because it was rare, and good healthcare meant children rarely caught it. In an adult, it would be like a cold. Well-meaning survivors giving vital supplies to fellow survivors unwittingly have caused a new epidemic.
Your population wouldn't probably even understand why so many people were colorblind - the disease might not even cause any symptoms detectable in a baby. The great thing about this is that you can have it be as mild or severe as you want - some people might only have partial effects, others miss only certain colors, and a few rare people would have destroyed foveas and serious vision problems. The details are up to you, and wouldn't need to run in families (although they could, there can be sensitivities, or the disease can be hard to transmit without close contact).
The virus could also be neurological, affecting the parts of the brain that interpret color. For this, the virus could even affect adults - one day you're fine, then you catch a cold, and a week later you have red-green color blindness.
If you want to be poetic, make it a prion passed in tears - the sorrows of your survivors caused its spread.
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[Question]
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Imagine a world where all the magical and fantastical creatures that exist in mythology or folklore actually exist. Everything from dragons, griffins, goblins, harpies, trolls, etc. - they can taken from any history or culture, and assume that the ecosystem has evolved to accept them all.
In that world, which fantastical creature would be the most likely candidate to be domesticated and used by humans as livestock? What would be a fantasy world's equivalent of cows and sheep?
Mythical creatures rooted in folklore are preferred, but modern fantasy variations are also acceptable. Bonus for any lesser known mythical creatures suggested.
[Answer]
# Perfectly Normal Beast
Source: Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy (mostly harmless).
Location: Lamuella, Anhondo Plain
Food benefit: Arthur Dent makes their meat into a rather nice sandwich, and for it he become's "Sandwich Maker" to the people of Lamuella. Some actually call him "Bob's only Begotten Sandwich Maker" which should be a testament to the quality of the sandwich which is made from the meat of the Perfectly Normal Beast. Arthur claims that it is a bit like a cow.
Mysterious property: They migrate in an unexplained way twice a year on the planet of Lamuella before disappearing completely into oblivion.
Old Thrashbarg calls them "Perfectly Normal" Saying that "they come from where they come from, and they go to where they go to, and it's all Bob's will, so it's all perfectly normal".
"Who's "Bob"?"... "Don't ask."
Spoiler: They go to the Domain of "The King", which is apparently their true home.
[Answer]
**The perfect creature**
The [Sæhrímnir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A6hr%C3%ADmnir) is from Norse mythology
>
> "In Norse mythology, Sæhrímnir is the creature killed and eaten every
> night by the Æsir and einherjar. The cook of the gods, Andhrímnir, is
> responsible for the slaughter of Sæhrímnir and its preparation in the
> cauldron Eldhrímnir. After Sæhrímnir is eaten, the beast is brought
> back to life again to provide sustenance for the following day."
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>
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Basically it's a pig that comes back to life
[Answer]
Though it is extremely dangerous, if a Hydra were domesticated (or held in captivity successfully), it does provide enough meat to feed virtually any size population. If you cut off one head, two more grow back immediately, so the Hydra only increases in total head count. Presumably, there is some amount of Hydra neck which also comes with each head, from which several good sized Hydra steaks can be cut. I'd imagine the meat would be a bit like crocodile; probably about halfway between chicken and fish. Obviously, Hydra farming is not for the faint of heart, but considering how much high quality meat could be harvested from a single Hydra in a very short time, it would certainly be worth it.
Griffons and Hippogriffs are obvious candidates for domesticated riding beasts. The ability to fly with a passenger is a pretty good reason to use them.
Medieval Europe and Japan both had lots of stories about domestic fey which would hide around a peasant hut and (in return for small amounts of food left out for it) would do work that benefited the peasants, like repairing furniture or buildings or reaping a field in the night. Certainly no mythology-derived economy would be complete without worker fey.
Dragons are always interesting, not so much as something that is likely to be domesticated, but potentially as something which might be partnered with. Most myths have dragons being as intelligent as humans, and certainly in Western myths, they could often belt out fire hotter than that produced by any forge. The natural outcome of that might be a dragon-powered blast furnace that can produce alloys unavailable anywhere else. Obviously, the dragon would have to benefit from this arrangement, so there would have to be a quid-pro-quo of something they want in return for a few hours blowing into a big stone tower.
Will-o-wisps or pixies kept in jars may be useful sources of light in a pre-electrical setting. Maybe they can be fed with honey, or something equally cheap (though the tales of will-o-wisps usually imply that they "feed" on the dead souls of poor fools who follow their lights into a bog and die).
There are many, many more possibilities...
[Answer]
**The [Hydra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernaean_Hydra)**
It would probably be a real bitch to tame. But the reward for doing so is awesome: an essentially infinite supply of hydra heads that grow back near instantly.
(There's probably other mythical creatures with similarly fantastical regeneration/multiplicative abilities, perhaps ones that are less dangerous, but the hydra's the first that came to mind.)
[Answer]
## [The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_Lamb_of_Tartary)
An odd Northern European tale says there's a plant that grows in asia with sheep as its fruit. The sheep are very much alive, so it's not all plant - they walk around and graze the grass, attached to the plant by an umbilical cord. The plant and sheep die when the grass runs out, but I suppose you could keep feeding them more grass and get by.
The advantages? You don't have to support livestock except to feed them, which are usually harder to raise than plants and jack up your prices. You don't have to tame them, or watch them carefully so they don't wander away, worry about legendary enclosures for legendary creatures, etc. You just plant, tend, make sure the Big Bad Wolf stays on the appropriate side of your fence, and prune in season!
You'll even get the wool as a bonus. Livestock are good for more than just meat you know!
(In fairness about obscurity: it was at the top of a Wikipedia page. But who doesn't wish mutton grew on trees?)
[Answer]
# Humans
(And other humanoids such as elves, orcs etc.)
Outrageous, you say? Wait until I'm done.
It may seem a little evil and inhuman to raise intelligent, sentient beings for food and leather. That's clearly not enough, so use the [polymorph spell](http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/polymorph.htm) to make it proper and a lot evil by turning them into actual livestock! And then you can turn them into whatever beast suits your economic needs at the moment.
Advantage over other alternatives: besides having the right cattle for the right time, you solve problems related to POW's, overpopulation, crowded prisons and dissidency, all in one go.
[Answer]
Of course, a serious economical evaluation—what is the most profitable creature to use as livestock?—should consider feeding and well-being costs specific to the species, which may vary wildly for the same creature in different traditions (something like creature X in tradition Y only mates once per millenium, but in tradition Z it mates on every blue Moon)
**Option 1:** [**The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs**](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goose_That_Laid_the_Golden_Eggs) assuming you can clone it or get it to reproduce it in some other way and it qualifies as a mythical creature (which arguably does).
* **Update:** a number of sources go back to [this paper](https://www.agriculturejournals.cz/publicFiles/131329.pdf) to say that a goose's egg is about $150\,cm^3$ or around $2900\,g$ of gold (given gold density of $19.32\,g/cm^3$. That means about $93\,$troy ounces (assuming the golden eggs are the same size as regular goose eggs). At current gold market price it means USD\$$\,$110,000 per egg. The number of eggs a goose lays per year [goes from](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_goose) 5 (for mediocre wild geese) to 50 (for the best domestic geese). So you could get anything from $15$ to $150\,kg$ of gold per goose per year worth $0.5$ to $5$ million USD respectively.
The world's annual gold production is approaching $3000\,tons$ (3 million kg). So even a farm with hundreds of geese wouldn't affect the world gold market too heavily. (In the *worst* case 100 laying geese hens would make $150\,kg\times100\,geese=15000\,kg=15\,tons$ of gold per year.)
>
> **Conclusion:** one farm of golden-egg-laying geese would be **enough to make you rich, but not enough to disrupt the world gold market**.
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Now, if these geese are super abundant/easy to reproduce, that's a different story.
**Option 2:** **Unicorns**. They can provide both transportation and food. Their [horns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn_horn) purify water and have several medical properties, including serving as antipoison. Their [tails and blood](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/8889/what-are-the-uses-of-unicorns) also have magical properties.
[Answer]
# Dragons
Of the several varieties of dragons, farming can be greatly adantaged by replacing traditional oxen, cattle or ass with farm dragons to pull the harvest and sowing machines. Agriculture can most definitely be benefited by flying serpants and pest control is an assured, hence minimal crop damage.
Clearing corn feilds would also be a sinch given a few fire breathers and most dragons are friendly like cattle but can be ridden like horses. There are several more obvious advantages that I'll best leave to your imagination.
[Answer]
A [Cockatrice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockatrice) might pass for a decent farm animal. It is part chicken, which means it probably tasted good. They also lay sizable eggs, which can serve as an additional source of protein.
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[Question]
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Most weapons and artillery are split by bore diameter, e.g. naval rifles of 203mm, 406mm etc.
Railguns and coilguns probably won't be classified the same way, I think. Cause if multiple models use a 25mm slug or what have you, but they perform differently, what's a good way to separate them?
Muzzle velocity? Like a 2km/s railgun versus a 5km/s one? Or input energy? That then puts forth what's a "realistic" number to power a railgun? Output energy/impact energy have the same problem.
[Answer]
As with artillery there should be some *sub-types*, say howitzer 88mm is quite different from a 88mm anti-air gun.
Same logic can be applied to railguns, but with the main metric being for example **impact energy**.
Let's say a navy 2MJ railgun with a range of 100 km, or a 50kJ man-portable one with penetration ability of 2000 mm plate steel at 5 km, etc.
[Answer]
# Gauss
>
> The [gauss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss_(unit)), abbreviated as G or Gs, is the cgs unit of measurement of magnetic flux density (or "magnetic induction") (B). It is named after German mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss.[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss_(unit))[2] One gauss is defined as one maxwell per square centimeter. The cgs system has been superseded by the International System of Units (SI), which uses the tesla (symbol T) as the unit of magnetic flux density.[3] One gauss equals 1×10−4 tesla (100 μT), so 1 tesla = 10,000 gauss.
>
>
>
I would say the best way to rate a railgun is by its Gs output.
[Answer]
Ammunition diameter x ammunition length x launch velocity, also including muzzle energy for those who don't want to work it out for themselves. They'll almost all be Armour Piercing Fin Stabilised Discarding Sabot (APFSDS) so that need not be mentioned unless different in some way, e.g.:
5x50mm 5km/s 98kJ Steel
This could be a man-portable crew-served tripod weapon or vehicle mounted railgun firing steel flechettes
Or, a more terrifying ship-launched:
50x1000mm 7km/s 919MJ DU Guided
Which would be a depleted uranium flechette with a guidance package used for bunker busting.
Or a tank-launched:
20x400mm 4km/s 19.2MJ DU
That pretty much gives all the information that anyone with any knowledge of ballistics would need to work out the terminal effects of the round and its flight performance.
[Answer]
## **Joules.**
... but for railguns, it's the 'cartage' that will have the rating, and the rifle will have to be approved to fire it: *"Chambered for the popular XM107 round!"*
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**.308** verses **.50** BMG
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QNncG.jpg)[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z9xb4.jpg)
But those are just numbers that would make us wonder if it will penetrate 3/4 inch thick steel plate at 200 yards (which is no and yes, respectively). However that's the only single number to look at for "ballistic performance".
I think that if or when they come to market, railguns will be (hopefully) named akin to their caliber, but they will be rated in **the largest weight 'cartage' that they can chamber** and reliably fire. In all actuality, it's going to be called by whatever name given by whatever manufacturer produces the most prolific round (and eventually appear as a truncated, standardized version as deemed by the government). Often, **new weapons are specifically made to use a premier cartage**; not the other way around - they're at the very least, made alongside (I'm so tired of video games that a new rifle drastically changes everything, all the while firing the same cartage...).
They will not be rated in muzzle velocity because as you can see, the differences between those two cartridges is negligible, but their impact is *not*, due to a .50 BMG being about four times the weight of a .308, and traveling at basically the same speed.
The problem with portable railguns is their imaginary power supplies. Who knows, they might be called *iRifles*. Whatever they're called, the bottom line I'm looking for on a projectile is *energy on target*.
Perhaps the nomenclature will be as thus: *"Certified to fire [XXX] grain, [.XX] caliber projectiles, at the UN specified minimum speed of 3k ft/s."* ... because you're relying on the rifle to accelerate the projectile, the manufacturer of the rifle will have to be acclaimed by the projectile manufacturer (whom would get to name the cartage). Call the rifle whatever you want; it has to be rated to fire (in specific calibers, obviously) **a given weighted projectile** (at the more or less acceptable speed of 3k ft/s).
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TL;DR: some combination of **weight and caliber**. One tells me if it fits in my gun, the other tells me how much of a mess it's going to make.
[Answer]
Current researchers classify railguns by their muzzle energy, such as the US Navy's 32MJ railgun, and researchers were looking to double the energy to 64MJ.
This really is independent of the size and mass of the projectile, you could have a 64MJ railgun firing a very small pellet at hypersonic velocity, or large cannonball shaped projectiles at a much lower velocity. However, we accept that current chemical tube artillery can have very different trajectories and terminal effects even if the same calibre; for example a 105mm howitzer has a much different profile than a 105mm L7 tank cannon (or a 106mm recoiless rifle, which was actually 105mm in calibre, but marked "106" to prevent confusion in the logistics train)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FrA8X.jpg)
*105mm Howitzer*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EoA0V.jpg)
*105mm L7 on a German tank*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aYFUj.jpg)
*106mm recoiless rifle*
So railguns and electromagnetic cannon in general could be characterized by their muzzle energy, without too much distinction between the actual role of the weapon. This could be a secondary descriptor i.e. 64MJ naval surface bombardment railgun or 10MJ naval antimissile railgun.
[Answer]
[ammunition diameter] by [exit velocity]
Essentially, you notate the diameter of the weapon's accommodation, and then notate how fast it can get a slug of that size going. That latter would probably be a range of velocities, given that different lengths of slug will take different energy inputs to accelerate.
Also consider if you want to be able to shoot to wound instead of shooting to kill. Chemical propulsion doesn't allow for that, but a railpistol might.
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## Introduction
I'm creating humongous city in a renaissance-esque fantasy setting. This city is governed by a council/senate with 51 seats. Division of these seats is based on ownership of stocks in 5 different merchant guilds in the city.
## Question
How would one design a division algorithm that gives the illusion of a fair allocation of seats/stock, but is ultimately unfair in that it grants more seats to the super-rich and none/very few to the not-so-rich.
### Notes
* One person can hold many seats
* + ...but never a majority of them, unless they own ALL stocks.
* Each merchant guild has exactly 1000 stocks, which means 5000 stocks in total.
* + Only stocks are divided by merchant guild. The seats does not necessarily go to specific guild stocks.
* + One can own stocks from multiple guilds.
* Anyone can buy stocks
* Owning a few stocks does not guarantee a seat (obviously)
* It should be possible to mathematically figure out the system, but complex enough that most people can't do it.
* This is a ridiculously unfair system as it literally states that you need lots of money to be allowed influence over the government.
* Seats are not voted on by the stock-holders. You either have enough to get a seat or you don't.
### Answers from comment questions
* Seats can not be empty. All seats are divided among the stock-holders and you cannot decline a seat, when you're given one.
[Answer]
You wanted complicated maths and loophole abuse? Let's do this.
We're going to use the Log function. Specifically, the inverse log.
By Calculating the inverse log of the number of seats you want, divided by 22.03, then rounding that number to the next whole number of shares, we reach the threshold of shares required to own that number of seats.
If you're wondering why 22.03, it's because using that number forces you to need exactly 1000 shares for 10 seats.
This gives us the following thresholds:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7A5CT.jpg)
Now, at first glance you'd think that any schmuck with a share would have a seat, but that's why I say it's a *Threshold*. You need at least that many shares. Seats are actually determined in order of most owned shares. So, if you own the most shares at 501, you have met the threshold for 9 seats. The next guy, even if he owns the other 499, can only claim the remaining 1 seat.
The 51st seat is reserved for the guy who owns the most stocks across all 5 merchant guilds.
Now, if you want to work out how much shares are worth, you need to perform the following maths (lets say we have 50 seats, for simplicity, and we want to find out X, the number of seats):
>
> 50 = invLn(X)/22.05
>
>
> 50\*22.05 = invLn(X)
>
>
> 1101.5 = invLn(X)
>
>
> Ln(1105.5) = X
>
>
> 7.008... = X
>
>
>
So, we can have 7 seats with 50 shares. Assuming no-one owns more stock than us anyway.
So, you could theoretically own 46 seats, whilst only holding 2,505 shares in total. That is barely half of them.
((If someone better at formatting can help with my Seats -> Stocks table, I'd appreciate it))
[Answer]
So there are 51 seats, meaning each guild gets 10, and there's one left for the ruler or something.
Each guild has 1000 shares of stock, meaning that if you own 100 shares then you should have a seat.
Looks simple. But there won't be clean lots of 100. Someone might own 125, while another owns 70, and you have a handful of merchants with 1 share each. Now, a person who owns 70 might go out and look for smaller shareholders with similar beliefs to support their claim on a seat, essentially a proxy position, but if the shares get split up a lot, with a lot of poorer people with only 1 share then that might be hard, so what would probably happen is that the guy with 125 would just vote the second seat so that at least all the votes are accounted for.
The rich people who own enough stock to already own one seat would be in place to claim the empty seats, while the less rich would be unlikely to get any say at all, and the normal people who can't even afford a single share would be even less likely.
Also, 5000 shares is pretty limited for any decent size city, meaning that they won't be cheap, and you'd only be able to buy one if someone else was willing to sell, which would drive the price up if someone was bidding to get enough for a full seat.
**Example:**
Bill has 125 shares.
Ted has 120 shares.
Sherryl, Pam, Nancy, Sam, Pat, and Rodge have 105 each.
Don has 70.
the rest are split up to varying amounts among merchants and gentry.
Everyone above 100 has enough stock to legitimately claim one seat, and because because Bill and Ted have more than the others and they are on the council already they claim an extra seat each.
If Don wants a seat he has to go out and talk to the people who own the remaining 55 shares, and see if they will either sell them (assuming he can afford more) or let him borrow them as a proxy. If he can get over the 100 share threshold then he'd be able to take the extra seat that Ted is claiming. Now Ted might not like this, and so can go to the people loaning Don their shares and make them a better offer, give them sweetheart deals or tax breaks, offer to pay more for their shares, or in some cases use extortion (which would be dangerous since these are still wealthy enough people to own stock at all).
If he can get Don back bellow 100, then Don would lose the seat and Ted could claim it back.
On the other side, if Bill can muster enough support as proxy, maybe by recruiting Don and a few others, he could get enough borrowed stock to claim the extra seat that Ted has, giving himself 3 votes.
[Answer]
Let's say you need one hundred shares to get a seat, since that is the fairest (or fairest-looking) allocation. Then you want to minimize the number of people with 100 shares.
So, *in the name of democratic accountability and fairly-shared ownership*, you want to encourage each guild's thousand shares to be spread as evenly as possible (read: in the smallest lots possible) among the guild's members.
We can do this entirely with real-world shareholder capitalism.
1. Discourage owners of small holdings from selling - this inflates the cost of buying up lots of small holdings to combine into the required hundred.
These shares should pay a dividend, or allow voting in internal guild matters, or have some other benefit so the owners will be resistant to selling their share(s).
2. Discourage potential purchasers from buying - same motivation as above through a different mechanism.
You could add a transaction tax ("to discourage speculators") to further reduce liquidity. Offer a discount to people already with large holdings (say, >100 shares) if you need an even bigger bias towards consolidating ownership in large holdings.
Now, hopefully those leave us with fewer than ten seat-eligible shareholders per guild, so we need a way to allocate the remaining seats.
1. Provide a proxy to vote "on behalf of the owners" of any blocks smaller than one hundred
2. Have the Guild itself nominate the proxy
* either have the proxy voter be the largest shareholder in that guild
* or, if you want to disguise the concentration of power, you can use a variant of the (also real-world) non-executive directorship:
Nominate the largest shareholder of a *different* guild to be the proxy voter. Maybe allow all guild shareholders to vote on *which* other guild's controlling shareholder should be chosen as the proxy, but don't allow anyone else to be nominated.
---
Now we should have lots of small fragmented share holdings, owners who want to keep their shares, and tax disincentives for anyone thinking of acquiring a seat-eligible shareholding.
If all this isn't enough, there are another couple of tricks we can borrow from the real world:
* Class B shares:
In an effort to share the Guild's wealth more widely with its members (who could object?), the Guild is offering an exciting new class of shares. Each costs only one hundredth of a single normal share, and offers a proportional fraction of the dividend! More members can own a share of our profits than ever before!
Obviously the only way for the Guild to issue these without diluting existing shareholders is to buy back one share to issue one hundred new shares. The new shares however have *no* voting rights, so the original class A share is added to those controlled by the Guild's proxy.
* Nominee accounts:
Guild shares were originally issued to Guild members, but our success sees non-members wanting to invest, and we feel that Guild members with small shareholdings would benefit from a secondary market so they can cash out without having to sell their share back to the Guild.
Behold, a new marketplace where Guild members can sell shares freely to non-members!
Obviously we don't want non-members acquiring a vote in our internal affairs, even though we're happy to share our dividend payments. So, shares owned by non-members will be held on their behalf by the Guild. They're free to buy as many shares as they want, and to sell them back to both members and non-members, but *voting rights will be exercised on their behalf by the Guild proxy*.
[Answer]
It sounds to me that you want to delve into the maths behind “proportional representation” - a principle of electoral theory that states that the number of seats won by each political party in an election should be as proportional as possible to the votes they received. Except in this case, we’re replacing votes with stocks; parties with shareholders; and proportionality with favouritism for the rich!
For obvious reasons, most work in this field has been dedicated to getting proportional results, not the unproportional results that we want. However, some systems have proved to be less proportional than their designers originally hoped.
What comes to mind for me in particular is the D’Hondt quotient system. Under the D’Hondt system, first, give a seat to the shareholder with the most stocks. Then divide that shareholder’s stocks by 2. Let’s say that same shareholder still has the most stocks - so give them a second seat, and divide their *original* stock by 3. And so on.
Another way of thinking about it is you give each seat one by one - you could think of this as “rounds”. In each “round”, you give the seat to the shareholder with the highest “score”, where their “score” is the number of stocks they hold divided by one more than the number of seats that shareholder has already won.
You can always look this up - I’m sure someone else has explained this much better than me!
Once grasped, the system intuitively seems fair, but in practice tends to give more seats to shareholders with more stocks.
EDIT: Here’s the BBC’s explanation: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/91150.stm>.
ANOTHER EDIT: As Bobson points out I misunderstood the setup slightly, replaced “guild” with “shareholder” in every occurrence.
[Answer]
This is a great question, because it doesn't look that hard, but it keeps getting harder the longer you look at it.
The first hard part is the **"seemingly fair"** part -- it is a requirement that the system provides "the illusion of a fair allocation of seats/stock".
In my opinion this rules out a simple open market in stock, as that hardly seems fair at all.
Let me offer up an alternate system based on a series of modest proposals:
Firstly, that all 5000 shares will be distributed among the populace by means of a **fair lottery**.
Sure, that seems fair -- but is it? What about those bumpkin farmers that just show up to sell their weekly vegetables? Surely we don't want to add them to the lottery on the off chance they happened to be in town on census day.
Fine, fine -- we'll add a **residency requirement**. You'll actually have to live in town for a year and a day. But now we've got shady landlords claiming that all these people are renting a closet in their tenements! That amounts to a bunch of foreigners buying tickets into our government lottery, and that will not do.
Alright then, we'll institute a requirement that someone needs to actually be a **landowner** within the city (along with being a resident.) That sort of seems fair. If someone doesn't even have a house in town, they hardly have any real interest in the good government of the city. They could just pack up their bindle and move on to the next town tomorrow. (Such a requirement is not exactly unheard of in the real world -- to pick one example, [a senator, today, in Canada is required to own at least $4,000 of land](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_of_Canada#Qualifications) in the province they represent.)
While we're at it, it seems a bit unfair that a family of ten brothers, each holding a 400-square-foot villa of their own, get ten chances at the lottery, while their father with a single 4000-square-foot warehouse gets only one. So we'll give people lottery tickets based on square footage somehow.
Once the lottery happens, the shares are attached to the land parcel, not the owner -- if the land changes hands, so does the share.
This takes us, through a series of relatively-reasonable steps, to a situation where rich people who own lots of land are going to end up with most of the seats in government.
To fulfill the "no one can own a majority of seats" requirement, maybe we can make that the trigger for another round of the lottery. Which means that a super-rich person can trigger it at will, which they probably see as a feature.
This system also (I believe) fulfills the requirement of "more seats to the super-rich" *without* circularly-defining the super-rich as someone who owns lots of seats, which appeals to me.
There's probably a few more details and tweaks to be sorted out, but I think that gets us pointed in the right direction.
[Answer]
Similar to the answer [Joe C](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/128317/50) added, this sounds like you'd be looking for a proportional representation system, similar to [the one the US uses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington%E2%80%93Hill_method).
The formula here is $A\_n=\frac{V}{\sqrt{s(s+1)}}$, where $V$ is the number of shares a given shareholder has, and $s$ is the number of seats already allocated to that shareholder. You calculate the $A\_n$ value for every shareholder, and then allocate a seat to the one with the highest value. Then $s$ goes up and you repeat.
There's a worked example on the Wikipedia page linked to above, and you can find instructions for building a spreadsheet to calculate it [here](https://medium.com/@benjaminquam/how-to-model-congressional-apportionment-in-google-sheets-or-excel-8234602c059a). I took the provided google spreadsheet and changed it to calculate seats for 10 people: Three rich, one middle class, and six poor.
Here are all the numbers of seats and the shares I used to calculate them:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lpf6L.png)
You can see that the rich have notably more voting power than the shares they have, and the poor are very disenfranchised.
This is what the calculation looks like in process: [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qzCC6.png)
---
>
> * One person can hold many seats
>
>
>
Yep.
>
> ...but never a majority of them, unless they own ALL stocks.
>
>
>
It doesn't quite manage this - a second shareholder needs 134 shares to get one seat.
>
> * Each merchant guild has exactly 1000 stocks, which means 5000 stocks
> in total.
> * Only stocks are divided by merchant guild. The seats does
> not necessarily go to specific guild stocks.
> * One can own stocks from
> multiple guilds.
>
>
>
These are all covered by simply looking at the total number of stocks, rather than what guilds they're from.
>
> * Anyone can buy stocks
>
>
>
It's likely that with a constrained supply, the demand will cause the price to continue rising so that only the rich will be able to *afford* a share (see: [Taxi medallions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_medallion)), but that's outside the scope of what you're looking for.
>
> * Owning a few stocks does not guarantee a seat (obviously)
>
>
>
Yep.
>
> * It should be possible to mathematically figure out the system, but complex enough that most people can't do it.
>
>
>
Yep. I doubt anyone in the real world works these numbers by hand, as there's a ton of calculation involved. It's certainly *possible*, but not easy.
>
> * This is a ridiculously unfair system as it literally states that you need lots of money to be allowed influence over the government.
>
>
>
Large concentrations of shares are disproportionally favored, but not by so much that it's blatantly obvious. (The US gets around this problem by assigning one Representative to each state before doing this math, which shifts it to disproprortionally favor the small states instead.)
[Answer]
Right now your system is quite resilient, yes you can buy the whole system but that's expensive.
Current system:
* ~98 stocks per seat.
* Fill any remaining unclaimed seats with the largest remaining stockholders.
There's not a lot of room to exploit this system other than the direct purchase of stocks. The only thing more resilient would be:
* Largest 51 stockholders.
We need to create some weaknesses to get our crowbar into the cracks
* 10 seats per guild.
* 1 seat appointed by first past the post election for an upstanding member of society to break any tied votes.
Now you have the opportunity to [elect the pirate king](http://pirates.wikia.com/wiki/Pirate_King) and get a free extra seat, however you still have to be the largest player in the game. So lets add an extra rule:
* Minimum holding of 100 stocks (total across all guilds) to hold a seat
Now if I hold 1 stock there's a seat empty somewhere and that can't be. It needs to be offered to someone who holds enough stocks to hold a seat, which basically means someone who already holds a seat is getting an extra one cheap. The balance of the system is now off kilter, the small stock holders are affecting the major players by giving them a boost.
* The more stocks held by stockholders holding <100 stocks, the more valuable each stock over that 100 threshold is.
* If there are enough small players then a small group of large stockholders can control the whole system.
[Answer]
Perhaps each stockholder with a seat chooses the number of a stock they do not own each "election cycle", and whoever holds that stock gets the seat. Of course, anyone with 100 or more stock gets a seat automatically (and 2 seats if they have 200, and so on).
This is fair in theory - each council member must give up their seat every few years (depending on the period picked, say 4). However, in practice there could be a couple wealthy people with ~150 stock each, and the rest distributed among poorer people. Then those people could trade seats and have nothing change, despite them only owning 30% of the stock.
This could be exacerbated by a portion of the stock being tied to property, so that half (or some other percent) of the stock is given to landlords (even moderately wealthy ones), as then it would be harder for someone else to collect 100 stock for their automatic seat. If you have to buy someone's business to get his stock, it's a lot less likely you can get him to sell.
[Answer]
**Disclaimer: Any resemblances to modern-day political election systems are purely in your mind**
Shares are allocated based on population affiliated with each guild in the city. As you have already pointed out, no single guild (no matter how populous) can have a majority, so there are minimum representation share quotas (say a minimum of 3 shares per 250 must be allocated to each guild). Within the guild, resident members who can prove they are residents via stamped documentation (which carries a stamp tax and administration fee) can vote for representatives to take the seats that their shares allocate their guild. In light of fairness, there are regulations restricting individuals from abusing personal wealth to essentially buy votes, but merchants within each guild can of course campaign on behalf of their favored seat occupant. As there are a finite number of seats for each guild, each seat is assigned a subset of the guilds voting population from which it is to be filled (though you can campaign for a seat outside of your residential guild subdivision). All seats are filled with a simple majority vote, discarding all non-majority votes for that subdivision.
This system allows the ultra-wealthy to promise kickbacks to special interest groups and merchants in exchange for their support (all off the books of course). This also allows current seat holders to re-divide their guilds' subdivisions to skew support in their favor and the favor of their constituents. All the while, each individual in the city is promised an equal voice and told how valuable their vote is, while the mentioned fees for voting ID documentation keep the lowest earners from every having a voice. Oh, and for good measure, the voting should take place during a time where it inconveniences those who can barely afford to live.
This is just scraping the surface of the potential abuses of a system of course, but it should be a good starting point with ample real-world examples to fill it out.
EDIT: If you want to make it even more ridiculous, divide the 50 seats out evenly, and force the election to be for representatives to vote on the occupant of the last seat. For this last seat to hold power, each guild should aim to polarize their seat occupants to always vote with each other on every issue, thereby locking issues to guild-lines, and making the single seat the deciding factor on almost every issue that has the city divided. violators should be shunned by the propaganda machine and made an example of, to ensure loyalty in the future.
[Answer]
These are shares in a guild, not in a company - so tie them to Companies in the guilds, with some restrictions on stock ownership:
* Each Company can control at most 1 seat, and elect their representative to sit in it.
* Seats are allocated to the 50 companies with the most stock, with some form of run-off election in case of a draw (e.g. 10 companies with 6 stock each competing for the last 4 seats) voted on by **stockholders not in the running for a seat**
Now, every Butcher, Baker and Candlestick Maker in the city can buy stocks. So long as they own at least 1 stock, they have a small chance to win a seat, and a larger chance to vote on *who* gets a seat.
The problem is, of course, conglomerates: Merchant Moneybags owns a shipping company, a warehouse & storage company, and a wholesaler. And possibly an exotic goods bazaar a jewellery store, and a clothing shop too. Oh, half of them may only offer goods and services to each other, but those *are* 6 different companies.
He doesn't even need to own the most stocks, either, so long as he can either keep the most companies in the Top 50 - or the most single-stock companies to control the tie-breaker elections and wring concessions from *everyone* on the cut-off line. Anyone trying to stockpile as many stocks as possible in 1 company actually works in his favour - as it reduces the number of stocks needed to get into the Top 50 companies
As for "how can one person run that many companies"? Well, maybe he doesn't - he just happens to be the Wealthy Patron for a large number of people who do run companies, who agree to give him shares in their company.
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I’ve got a fantasy world in which the landmass is essentially a large series of archipelagos and island chains. For a real world comparison, think the Hawaiian islands in range of size and distance from island to island. For their early history, these islanders travelled to and fro for commerce and war in boats of various sizes and types. Later, however, an empire emerged that linked the nearby islands with a series of titanic bridges.
For the purposes of the question, don’t worry about the possibility of building these bridges; magic is in place that makes the work possible, but not easy. The question remains, why would this empire choose to put massive work in to build these bridges when a rich shipbuilding culture exists? In case it is relevant, the empire in question has approximately Antonine Rome's technology, besides the magic, and is expanding in order to add strategic resources like iron and horses to its collection.
[Answer]
For the same reason why the British filled in the [Braye du Valle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braye_du_Valle,_Guernsey) in Guernsey in the Channel Islands. its a lot easier to defend
**Historical Example: the Braye du Valle**
The Channel Island of Guernsey was two islands seperated by a small channel, which were connected at low tide, however at high tide they were completely separate (Guernsey has a 10m tidal range) during the 17th and 18th centuries, the French had a nasty habit of landing troops to try and take the channel islands, and when they did so on the larger island they were repelled by the local garrison, however when they landed on the smaller island if done at high tide then the British garrison had to march across a single connecting bridge to reach the invading forces or wait until low tide to cross elsewhere.
in 1803 they had had enough of this and decided to block off both ends of the Braye du Valle and then drain the interior, this began 3 years later, this meant that in the event of the french invading once more they could move troops far more easily.
**Your islands**
Yes bridges are expensive to build and maintain, however if other nations regularly attack then the ability to move troops without needing to wait for something else is important otherwise the invaders may fortify their position and make it a lot harder to take back. and anything your plot requires could cause a delay:
* Tide
* Availability of a ship
* Adverse Weather
* Even just the wind wasn't in the right direction to allow for a decent speed
All of these reasons played a part in real life naval combat at some point. so it makes sense that it would do so in your world to some extent as well.
After that its just justifying the cost and time. but quite often "we need to do it or someone will turn up and kill us" has been a fairly realistic excuse
[Answer]
I'll go in a different direction, and I'll offer a picture instead.
## To live there.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0uN0Z.jpg)
Maybe your people ran out of space in the mainland to both farm and live. Maybe the mainland is too volcanic, and a dangerous place to live. Maybe there is a monster there.
Maybe having a giant city-bridge just sounded too cool for the rulers to pass.
Still, the main gist of it is that the islands themselves wouldn't be the main living areas of your people, for *reasons*. Instead, they would live in gigantic bridge-cities - building the bridges not only would enable your people to travel but would also offer a better building spot than those dangerous/plagued/unstable/magical pony-infested lands.
Oh, also - if you have merfolks or other water based people, those cities could be an awesome place to live for them, too.
[Answer]
Basically the same reason Romans went into road building in a big way, efficient communication and movement.
Tonga tried to do this a long time ago. The reason was although you could move an army by canoe (they were big canoes), Land travel is much easier especially for large groups of warriors. Unfortunately for the Tongans it wasn't practical due to the deepness of the sea and distances involved. Nethertheless they did move some house size boulders in their attempt before their empire fell to bits.
Realistically their empire may have endured if they were able to move warriors efficiently and cost effectively. Without it they were always effectively outnumbered on any big island if there was a major insurrection with no way of communicating easily with Tonga let alone getting reinforcements.
[Answer]
Bridges are weather proof-ish, roads, well made roads, are less likely to experience massive loses of cargoes during hurricanes etc... As civilisation becomes more advanced, professionals more specialised, and processing more industrialised, supply certainty becomes more and more important, you not only have to deliver *more* materials to workshops and factories you have to deliver them more often and with fewer disruptions. Boats are more vulnerable to the vagaries of storm, wave, and accident than road traffic, and as such they are less and less desirable as a transport mode as civilisation gets more sophisticated. This is especially true when the technology of boat building doesn't advance into steel hulls and powered craft.
[Answer]
1. Because they can: to show off the prosperity of their empire or the vision of a ruler, etc.
2. Because it is faster and easier to move a large amount of wares over dry land than over sea. You don't have to take into consideration the weather.
3. How many people know how to navigate a boat over sea, even if it's just from island to island? Granted, people living on an island have a greater motivation to learn but if their work does not involve sea travel then they might not have the means to pay for the upkeep of a boat they rarely use. Also, learning to navigate the local atolls and currents probably takes years of practice.
[Answer]
Perhaps the ruler's family or caste never use ships. There could be a religious or social/traditional reason, or it could be the result of some events (feud against the shipbuilder caste, drowning of a past emperor, etc.). So far they've managed to build and maintain the empire through their armies and civil servants, but now there's a reason they must cross onto the other islands in person, so they need bridges.
Otherwise, it could be that one of the distant islands has a precious resource that cannot cross by ship. For instance, elephants that could be very useful as work animals but are afraid of deep water, or some precious substance that gets ruined when shaken by waves.
[Answer]
This is because local sea monsters started attacking ships. Those are smart and hungry beasts, and when a ship sank in a storm, they got a taste of its especially juicy cargo. They sank a ship or two, got what they wanted, and now they are raving for more.
There is the giant snake variety that undulates through the water and throws its head over the ship, down the other side and squeezes the ship (see Voyage of the Dawn Treader). There is also the burrowing fish that in just a few hours or so eats its way through the wooden hull (it usually burrows into coral reefs).
There is also the fact that forests are a limited resource on the islands; there are simply not enough trees to replace all the ships that were lost in the great storm of '36.
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[Question]
[
In a world close to ours, on a planet, intelligent "Ents" or tree-like creatures live. The problem is, the creatures become dormant during the day; they "hibernate" when the sun is up, which heats up the planet. They become active when the sun goes down and it gets colder. The tree-like creatures need sunlight, oxygen and hydrogen (*water*), and soil to live and survive. The "hibernation" process is like sleep for humans, only caused by sunlight and heat.
What could be the reason and explain the "hibernation" process of these creatures? The cold doesn't cause them trouble, but without sunlight and heat during the day they will die, but they are awake when there is no sunlight and heat. Sunlight might be a source of energy for them, and they accumulate it while they are dormant during the day. That is the reason they don't go to live underground.
[Answer]
Have you ever heard of a [Tardigrade](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade)??
They’re hardy, ubiquitous little insects that can survive boiling, freezing, hard vaccuum, hard radiation, crushing pressure and almost total dehydration by entering a sort of hibernative state (with the awesome name of [cryptobiosis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptobiosis)) whenever the environment gets a bit tough. In one case a payload of Tardigrades bound for the ISS was atop a rocket that exploded. The report said ‘some of the Tardigrades may have died’. Not some may have survived: the default position was that they’d be OK with being blown up. When Tardigrades are hibernating they’re nigh on invincible (ok, that’s hyperbole, but they can survive a damn sight more than anything else I know)
So too your trees. They need the cold. They like the cold. When the environment gets too warm and hostile? They just shut down in self defence, then when it cools down again they shake it off and carry on as normal. If they were to remain active in the heat they might die, so instead they just... stop.
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Nature already provides you the answer. If your tree creatures are alive, they require energy. If they host complex neural pathways which give them human-like intelligence, they require even more energy.
If the only time they can generate and store energy is during the day time, then they will have evolved to shut-down all portions of their body not required to produce energy ([ATP->PGAL->glucose actually](https://www.dummies.com/education/science/biology/how-plants-acquire-their-energy/)) so as to be more efficient.
Your psuedo-ents, erm, creatures will likely need to produce large amounts of energy to function during the night time. This means that they will turn the glucose in to more complex compounds, such as fats and proteins, which can be metabolized during the dark period. This could manifest in something simple like what we call fruits (maybe interesting for others to visually be able to see the energy levels of your plants), but also just stored internally-to-the-cells in vacuoles.
Why exactly do they need to be stationary to generate energy? Water. They need to "root-in" to the ground to gather enough water to complete the photosynthesis process. This is an energy intensive process which is basically an investment with negative returns over the short-term (i.e. the tree will use more energy rooting than it will gather for say the first 3 hours of sunlight). Therefore the creatures must remain stationary, borderline in stasis/hibernation, for long periods.
Depending on how much you want to stretch science, another, likely secondary, reason why they need to enter a deep sleep is that the membranes binding the necessary enzymes used during the photosynthesis process may become more rigid, and therefore less efficient, when the creature is in the awake state (say do to a higher "metabolic" rate).
For a great and simple explanation see [this page on the Calvin-cycle.](http://lifeofplant.blogspot.com/2011/10/calvin-cycle.html)
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**Hibernation Is Universally For a Few Simple Reasons**
In nature a very large part of evolution revolves around dealing with cyclical resource shortages and dealing with periodic unfavorable conditions. Two major methods are migration or hibernation. A major evolutionary reason why human's and other large mammals sleep at night is to avoid the night period where resources are harder to gather and the risk of becoming prey is increased. Its a major evolutionary advantage to curl up in a safe space and sleep thus conserving energy and avoiding the worst of the predators. The most plausible cause of your tree-creatures "sleeping" is that the resources they require are not available at night.
You see, being a tree is great. You can photosynthesize your own nutrients, no need for risky survival strategies like hunting, or avoiding predators. Best part is, since you aren't moving all of your nutrients can be directed at either growing, reproducing, or storing for later. All of these advantages quickly disappear if you start adding mobility to the mix. Photosynthesis is an efficient method of deriving nutrients when you are not moving, but once you are you find out that a metabolism that supports even basic slow mobility is an order of magnitude more hungry than simply sitting there passively collecting sunlight and absorbing water. If you granted the ability to move to a plant here on earth it could never photosynthesize even a fraction of what it needed to be capable of true mobility. Granted, your tree-beasts aren't really trees, but they are more or less deriving their nutrients from similar processes.
Now you mentioned that they are using hydrogen and oxygen, along with minerals from the soils. This tells me that they are probably reacting oxygen and hydrogen into water and using the energy from that reaction to run their metabolism. (Normally this is a big hot explosion, but we are going to assume that these reactions are taking place internally and at a much slower pace.) The soil contains the minerals and chemicals they need to both build their own structure and also to create the reaction necessary to combine oxygen and hydrogen into water, thus releasing energy. You can't just mix the two gases together, you need to add energy to start the reaction. So my theory is this, your tree-beasts utilize alkali metals in the soils and combine them with water in the presence of hydrogen and oxygen in trace amounts to spark this reaction.
Sunlight adds heat, which lowers the amount of energy that needs to be added to the hydrogen and oxygen mix in order to create the chemical reaction that is driving the tree's metabolism. So during the day the tree-beasts are actually basking in the sun and sleeping to conserve energy while their bodies perform this chemical reaction. Again we run into the question of why they even evolved to move, so I posit this.
They move at night using the energy stores they built up during the day in order to search for soils high in the reactive chemicals they require to perform the chemical processes necessary for their metabolism. Also, it should be noted, with a bio-chemistry like this they will essentially burn like literal rocket fuel or even explode, so that could be a unique weakness they have.
**End Note**
*I'm just trying to make the fiction sound more realistic because no known biological processes work like this utilizing these chemicals and I don't even know if it's possible, I'm just trying to make it as believable and scientific as possible. For any chemists or biologists on here please don't cringe and scream at the screen too hard.*
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If your trees have brains they may very well need sleep, which on earth is normally done at night. Most creatures sleep at night because the sun helps them see and being in the dark is dangerous. Your trees however, are nocturnal. They are adapted to being in the dark because there aren't as many living creatures moving around that could potentially hurt them. And when the sun rises, they go to sleep and let automatic processes like photosynthesis take over. Save energy during the day when standing still helps with photosynthesis, have a sleep period for their minds, and avoid hostile creatures by moving at night only. Triple whamy reasons.
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This kind of reminds me of a book called "Sentenced to Prism", by Alan Dean Foster, except in reverse.
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentenced_to_Prism>
>
>
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In the book, the MC meets silicon based lifeforms that can only move while the sun is up and they are able to convert the sun's rays into electricity the immediately use. They don't have batteries, so no storage. Unfortunately, there are silicon/carbon hybrid creatures that can destroy them at night, but that goes off the point I was getting to.
Maybe your trees can't move while storing energy, or find that it's most efficient to store energy when not moving, i.e. there is a perfect "stance" they take that maximizes their solar intake. Since they can freeze their limbs in place and don't want to move, they simply fall asleep Then at night, they wake up and are free to move around due to their batteries being full.
Possibly the heat simply feels good and they really like to bask in it, like a lizard or cat. The cold is uncomfortable, so they need to move to "keep the blood moving". There's a lot of heat generated when thinking, so movement isn't necessarily a requirement. Maybe the heat of the day is just more than they can handle, so just "shut down" when it gets to be too much.
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Camouflage.
These tree-like creatures are a potential meal for a number of large predators. These predators will identify the creatures by sight. If they see a "tree" moving about during the day they will attack, kill and eat it.
So during the day the tree like creatures mimic trees. They become dormant. A predator could pass by and not notice anything. But during the night, the predators can't see so it is safer to move about.
We see something of this adaption among rodents that hide during the day, and become active at night. They do this to avoid the predators (such as birds of prey) that hunt by sight during the day. An "Ent" cannot hide in a tunnel but if it is sufficiently still it can "hide in plain sight" as a tree.
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Their internal body temperature is below zero degrees celcius. Ice is essential to their metabolic activities, many essential enzymes use ice-crystals as a catalytic substrate. If they thaw, they die. They are not of course solid ice, their bodily fluids are filled with antifreeze, but they must preserve the ice crystals in the heart of their cells.
Metabolic activity produces heat, more heat than they can afford. During the day, the Tree-Folk rest to keep as still, calm, and cool as possible while it hides from the scorching sun beneath its leaves. Its skin is a reflective white and its thick fleshy leaves are a deep golden color to reflect the heat of the sun, but capture the vital UV rays that are needed for its photosynthesis. The leaves are deeply veined to maintain their cooling bloodflow, and feed the perspiration from the dark undersides of their leaves. When the sun sets, their leaves raise up to catch the wind and show their darker side to the darkening sky.
When night falls the cool air can sustain them, then they awaken thirstily from their slumber and begin to roam the land in search of ice and snow. This is their food and fills them with a vital coldness. They graze the ground for frost and fresh snowfall and store it away in their bodies in preparation for the coming day. In truth, it is the sugars from their leaves made during the daytime that give them energy, but they recognize coldness as the greater virtue. For what good is syrup, when it's too hot to move?
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Humans feel sleepy when they have high levels of adenosine as a signature to signal that their energy reserves are lower. Sleeping allows body to filter adenosine, converting them to ATP faster, hence they are recharged. Trees on the other hand, can do photosynthesis during day time only. At night they can burn the storage using regular respiration, but this is not very efficient. Thus they cannot properly rest during the night. During the day time they sleep, during the night they are active. Deep hibernation is an adaptation to further reduce energy consumption during the daytime. After all, trees do not have a predator and can sleep in peace any time of the day, uninterrupted is better.
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Background:
In my world, there are a number of species that stemmed from the 'original base' (humans) who traveled through space for years before a collapse in organized government crippled logistics and left colonized planets abandoned and to their own devices. After an extinction level event on the original 'base' homeworld, the other humans were left for millions of years as their technology failed and they reverted back to a stone age. By this point, some of the evolved humans are only now reaching interstellar travel once again and happening upon each other.
One such species, dubbed 'valkyries', are evolved humans possessing feathered wings protruding from just beneath the shoulder blades have adapted to live on a severely mountainous planet using these wings to keep them plummeting, though they cannot fly, only glide.
Problem:
Another problem is that these valkyries are described as having a halo that hangs above their head that appears to be freestanding. How is it possible for this to be the case? be it artificial, biological, or any other means. I would like to know if it is possible for an 'angel', for sake of simplicity, to exist with a halo appearing to be freestanding above their head.
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**It’s an illusion and only appears to hover.**
1) They wear their hair that way.
2) Rite of passage into adult hood and everyone wears one after, it is a simple metallic ring and is attached to the back of their head.
3) Genetic drift has allowed for horns to grow. Their horns generally sprout from the back of the head and tend towards symmetrical design and turning in towards each other. These horns could also be trained to artificially form circles.
**It’s an artificial construct. Possibly it is an artificial self-replicating device that uses some long forgotten technology to hover.**
1) The race was long ago injected with self-replicating nano machines. They are passed on to children through the mother. Among other activities, they build the halo.
2) Some ancient machine spits out a supply of these and they are granted to those who earn them.
3) There is a limited supply of these, though they are mostly indestructible. They are passed down along family lines and occasionally new ones are doled out from the limited reserve.
**It is real, but it is not physically present.**
1) Their hair glows in certain conditions. This glowing will sometimes make it appear as if they have a halo.
2) Their bodies now produce extra electrical energies and they have learned to control this. This sometimes manifests as a halo of electricity around their heads.
3) When their science was at its height they tapped into other dimensional levels. They are now more connected with their 3rd-5th dimensional counter-self. This manifests as the appearance of a halo. However it doesn’t exist on this plane, so you can’t actually interact with it.
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The concept of a halo the way you describe needs to be questioned; the modern cartoon representation of a halo is a ring of light floating above the head, but in the religious iconography in which halos appear (particularly Catholic iconography up to the Renaissance period) the halo was really a glow that appears to come from the back of the head, like a torch that has been turned on about 30cm (1 ft for our US friends) behind the head pointed at the head itself.
If we take this as the real halo experience, then a simple bioluminescent organ on the back of the head with a 'cover' that reflects all the light almost perpendicularly (but slightly forward) of the head would work.
The real problem would be energy output; do you want to be able to see this halo during the day? The amount of energy that would need to be expended to do this would be significant. Remember that fish like Angler fish have evolved bioluminescence because it gives them an advantage worth the energy cost. This is only possible because they live in very dark conditions. Unless these Valkyrie of yours also live on a dark planet or eat twice their bodyweight every day, maintaining a halo visible on a bright day is simply impractical from an energy use perspective.
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**Their head would first emit a mist be it steam or actually spraying small amounts of water.**
This could be justified as a thermal control adaptation like sweating
**They then could emit bioluminescent beams from their head outward, which would look like an ethereal halo.**
I could only justify this as a mating adaptation.
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See the [Anglerfish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglerfish). It's clearly possible to evolve a light-emitting object, so the only question is why. Perhaps there are extensive cave systems teeming with life, and in the pitch-blackness inside these caves, the Valkryes evolved a similar appendage to the anglerfish. It's definitely possible, but the rest is just part of your story.
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It could be a parasitic, and/or symbiotic organism. In a very cold mountainous environment, it's possible that some native organism is drawn to the heat emitted by warm-blooded humans.
The symbiote may in turn provide some benefit to the Valkyries, say protection against some dangerous native micro-organism or insect.
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Halo is an artificial object they developed because of one simple purpose - to look like angels from the Earth tales. It may have other uses, like reading mind waves and converting them into non-verbal commands for their machines, but the looks were designed to produce psychological effect - the other branches of humanity (and even other valkyries) now may unwittingly perceive halo wearers as pure creatures of light and goodness.
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Ever seen one of these?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/B32Ix.jpg)
It's called a sun halo, and is vaguely similar - science-wise - to a rainbow. Sun halos are caused by ice crystals in the air refracting the suns light in a certain way, giving the effect of a circular halo.
I'm no expert in this field, but say that there was a species of airborne microbe which aggregated around the Valkyries' heads to feed on their hair - which, with some appendage or another, produce almost 360 degree bioluminescence. These microbes could be crystal shaped, like a bacteriophage:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4yUJm.png)
And also translucent, and would, essentially, simulate the effects of a sun halo.
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The only way I can see how this can occur is if the skull of the valkyries possess a circular magnet and their halos are wide-temperature-superconducting bioluminescent dandruff-like substance that clump together to follow the circular region of optimal magnetic flux. Okay. Let me break it down.
### Toroidal Magnetic Field of Optimal Flux
The skull of a valkyrie has a circular portion lined with magnetic materials that was evolved from the time they used to migrate from one side lf their world to another. Think of this magnetic skull as a supersensitive biological compass. Possible enough to derive such structures from mihratory birds since your valkyries are basically winged humanoids. The average magnetic field of these materials form a region of strong magnetism shaped into a circle that forms above the skull.
### Magitek Dandruff on Hair/Scalp/Feathers
Some of the cells found in the hair and scalp and feathers of valkyries glow after they are shed and mixed in with particulate matter like dust and dirt in the air. It turns out that once these cells are shed, they became wide-temperature superconductors that stay flux-pinned into magnetic field sources regardless of temperature changes.
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I admit those two components are a little too overcomplicated to pass as scientifically sound and naturally evolve-able, but imagine the scenario they can create for your valkyries, when they learn to exchange synthetic materials to decorate their halos.
## Halo Accessories
Halos once appeared as natural as uncombed hair. They are messy, incomplete, but still a byproduct of weird valkyrie biology that got a bit too beautiful to even change. Young valkyries have at least a small arc of glowing superconducting dandruff. This small arc gets denser, accumulating and forming a complete circle that maintains its shape as the valkyries ages. Apart from the fact that stolen halos are easy to distinguish since they wobble on heads that are not naturally fitted to them, halos can be a sign of merit. They show just how often and how long a valkyrie has been working hard that their skin literally falls off, and then glows, and then floats, and then forms into a circle crown that proudly and firmly hovers above the head of a distinguished valkyrie.
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A human that lives in an environment with more powerful sapients could evolve to produce a toxic vapour from their head in order to protect from other sapients. They may later journey underground, and pose their eyesight. They may later evolve to make their head glow in order to lure creatures with eyes. This combination of traits will make the species appear to have a classic halo around their head
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I'm writing about vampires in my story and I'm curious what exactly it is about sunlight that makes them vulnerable to it.
Are there any books or stories that define why the sunlight kills them? Wouldn't the reflection of sunlight off the moon cause a similar problem? I know that the reflection off the moon is only 1/5th (could be wrong, but I know it's a small amount) but wouldn't it still be an issue, or has it been explained that its just not enough sunlight to cause death to them?
I've read a lot of vampire stories but none of them really explain why it kills them that I can think of.
If there are no specific reasons, are there any scientific theories that would be plausible if vampires were real? UV, Radiation ect?
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Well for starters there are diseases that get nick named 'Vampire Disease'. Porphyria being the most well known. The actual disease of allergy to Ultraviolet Radiation is called Solar Urticaria, and is pretty rare. I have this disease myself and while it is horrible, it's not life threatening.
Most of the 'historical' reasons for why Vampires burst into flames is mostly Christian/ Hollywood magic. These were vile 'demonic creatures where anything light and holy would destroy them. Crosses, the sun, holy water, etc.
In a more modern setting the moon could definitely effect vampires. You could write something that during the Full Moon your vampires are weakened slightly, but they aren't incapacitated.
All in all I think it really depends on the context of your story. Is this a modern story where science can debunk things? Or is it a fantasy story where any reason could cause it? You could have it where for some reason the UVA/UVB light is damaging on a cellular lever for some obscure scientific reason. Or it could be that the Vampires were children of the moon and humans children of the sun, and the sun is a vampires weakness and the moon is the humans weakness and maybe they avoid going outside in the moon because of it. There are all sorts of possibilities! :D
As far as a scientifically speaking you might want to go the route of a severe allergy, but that the don't exactly burst into flames(maybe the bursting into flames came about as a fishermans tale so to speak, where each time it was retold the story was exaggerated). Maybe their bodies are extremely sensitive because they have a heightened immune system(immortality explanation as well ;) ) when their body absorbs the Ultraviolet radiation it interacts with the mast cells in the skin. The mast cells release histamine and can cause a severe anaphylactic shock!
My best suggestion is to take a look at these already existing diseases: Solar Urticaria, Mastocystosis, Mast-cell activation disorder, Xeroderma Pigmentosum, and of course how or why the body might produce an excessive amount of histamine! :) I hope that helps!!!
Edited to add: Conditions such as Solar Urticaria for example have a wide range of sensitivities. For instance, my sensitivity is on the severe end. I break out in hives from being under light bulbs that emit UVA. All of the bulbs are LED in my house. All of my TV's and computer screens are LED backlit. Lights that emit UV include fluorescent, incandescent, halogen bulbs and more. So depending on the sensitivity your characters may have to wear a special suit. I myself have to wear a special suit to go out in the sun. Even going out at night under a full moon is dangerous for me. I've had reactions under the full moon at night before. But I do always carry my epinephrine with me just in case!
You can also look up the Xeroderma Pigmentosum suits that they have to wear for some inspiration or other ideas. Those are extremely bulky suits but the suit that I wear is composed entirely of a double layer of UPF 50+ rating material(check out the link for what the ratings mean). Although in a fantasy story it would be completely plausible that they have a type of cloth that is such a tight weave it blocks out 100% UV so they don't have to wear a double layer!
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_urticaria>
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mast_cell_activation_syndrome>
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastocytosis>
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeroderma_pigmentosum>
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_protective_clothing>
<https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2009/ch_3.html>
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Well in the original story of Bram Stokers Dracula the sun did not affect him like we think, it was the first movie adaption that gave us that idea take a look below:
<https://www.woot.com/blog/post/the-debunker-was-sunlight-fatal-for-bram-stokers-dracula>
which lists scenes from Bram Stoker's novel where Dracula appeared in sunlight. Apparently he prefers the night but isn't bothered much by daylight.
and:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Dracula>
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Many stories depict vampires with pale, ghostly skin.
It is often suggested that their lack of pigmentation is due to decreased exposure to sunlight: if you don't go outside as often (because it hurts you) you don't need a reason to develop pigment, so you will end up pale.
This can be reversed. Your vampires will burn **because** they're pale - they aren't pale because they burn.
Their bodies produce less pigment, so the sun is harsh, and it's easiest to stay active during the night.
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The reason vampires are depicted as being threatened by sunlight is more allegorical: Vampires are manifestations of evil or the unbridled human Id (take your pick) which is generally represented by darkness, while good (or the human Superego) is represented by light (a good idea is often depicted as a cartoon lightbulb, for example).
So a lot of this will depend on the nature of your story. Are your vampires real or allegorical manifestations of evil or unbridled emotion? Then light is the opposite and unmasks them/drives them away/destroys them. You could also turn this on its head by postulating a hyper rational vampire (using its cold and calculating nature to carefully study its intended victim and plan the hunt, kill and escape: a perfect crime even a modern criminologist could not solve). These vampire would then be a creature of light (logic) and shun the darkness.....
So long as you are using vampires as mythological or allegorical creatures, there is actually not need to get into "how" sunlight destroys them (much like no one ever gets into how spaceships maintain one gravity fields perpendicular to the floor in SF movies and TV shows, or why the magical sword glows in the presence of evil).
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Well, in reality, all humans have an extremely small amount of phosphorus in the muscle cells for extremely fast movements, but only for an extremely short time. Now assume that vampires are humans that have a mutation that allows them to accumulate much more phosphorus in the cells than normal humans. This can explain two characteristics of vampires:
1. They can move way faster than any normal human
2. They will be incinerated by daylight because, as light goes through the skin and reaches the cells, the phosphorus in them will blow up in fire (better by UV light, because it will penetrate deeper into the body)
That is my explanation of Vampires. I hope you can use it.
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I'm thinking about writing a short story in which the protagonist is a member of a tribe that continuously fights with another tribe. Neither tribe has ever come close to winning, because the two have a sort of unspoken agreement that they will only fight over the land on their borders. However, aside from never encroaching on the enemy's "home" territory, the fighting is conducted exactly the same as it would be with a real opponent, with unrestricted slaughter. The purpose of this arrangement is, ultimately, to provide both groups with endless combat training, and make them impervious to any other potential invaders.
Assuming a level of technology somewhat lower then medieval (think early Romans, perhaps, though I'm not fixed on this particular point), would this arrangement be advantageous? Or, more properly, would it be *more* advantageous than a simple alliance, assuming that fighting with other tribes is very common and the need to continuously have your soldiers be psychologically steeled for real combat is rather great?
I'm looking for a way to deal with the more obvious weaknesses in this scenario, since it obviously is not very intuitive to "help" each other by hosting the occasional mutual skewering on your borders.
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The scenario you describe is unsustainable.
The tribes will be killing off their youngest and strongest (but not yet experienced) warriors in ***pointless and endless*** skirmishes which bring no net gain to either side.
Furthermore, a lot of bad blood will build up between these clans, as each side has their fathers, brothers, and sons die off.
As a side effect, constant conflict in the area will drive away merchants, reduce the workforce for critical tasks such as farming, and cause political instability as occasionally influential men are killed in combat.
The situation would inevitably reach a boiling point and cause one clan to simply annihilate the other.
Instead, if they want to train their warriors and maintain some healthy competition while not crippling their respective clans they should do as @bowlturner said and organize tournaments, or "mock battles" where groups of warriors can test their skills without the losers paying with their lives (except in accidents, etc.)
Pooling their resources together and raiding the territory of some third clan/kingdom is also a viable alternative.
I would read up on Vikings, as they seem a good fit to what you're trying to accomplish.
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This is pretty close to the concept of [flower wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_war), ie Aztec ritual wars against their enemies.
I think that the key element that makes it viable is that both tribes observe the rules and don't use it as an opportunity to gain a strategic advantage (a similar concept can be encountered in ancient Greek warfare; both side will stop hostilities during the winter). As a result, war is not necessarily continuous, allowing for other activities (including real wars).
Also note that each tribe might think that they benefit more than the other tribe - perhaps one of them focuses on the religious aspect (e.g. getting sacrifices) while the other views it as a training ground.
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It would be quite useful.
The two hard parts to teach warriors are intent to kill people you have never even seen before and keeping focussed while somebody is trying to kill you. Probably in that order. The second issue is fixed by simple experience, while there are apparently people who spent years at war firing in the general direction of the enemy without once trying to hit. I'd assume that many new soldiers with your technology level would concentrate in defense to the point where they would be no danger to their enemies.
In your scenario you send the fresh young warriors to the field to prove their manhood and make sure they all "show the right spirit". So your **actual** fighting force would be entirely composed of people who have already proven they have overcome those two big issues. And they'd all know it too. So the morale would be on par with veteran troops I think. You'd still need proper equipment, tactics, and weapons training, but unless you are inferior in those or just plain old numbers, you'd probably win any fights. Unless you run into to professional troops, such as Roman legionnaires, or your opponents are real combat veterans. And even the Romans usually had issues with high morale opponents.
I probably should explain a bit here. The battle was not usually decided by killing opponents, it was decided by the morale of one side breaking, at which point their formation broke. After which the real killing started. So the big differentiator is ability to keep discipline in combat and veteran or professional forces have a huge advantage here. In many colonial wars (or wars Romans had millennia before) the opponents had superior numbers, much better motivation, similar equipment and were just as brave. And still were soundly defeated simply because European (Roman) forces could keep formation longer.
So your "kill or be killed" play wars **could** give a big advantage. If...
Do not waste already proven warriors. Seriously. Make it an initiation for becoming a warrior. Expected of all males once they reach certain age. But not compulsory, a boy who doesn't want to be a warrior and is willing to take the reduction social status or has another calling such as a blacksmith, a priest, or shaman should be allowed to. Similarly there is no real reason why a girl who demonstrates skill with weapons would be prevented from proving herself.
It is a religious ritual. It should start with a solemn ritual by the leaders and priests of both tribes. The warriors should be blessed and clearly marked with something like body paint or ritual dress. And given the specific weapons used for the initiation. So no armor or ranged weapons, even if such are usually used. Instead short spears or swords that require getting up close and personal. Should be nicely decorated though. And once it is over both the survivors and the casualties should be blessed in shared ritual by the two tribes.
Older, already proven warriors would participate and go along to give advice, instructions, leadership and so on. Basically act as NCOs to make sure inexperience does not result in an embarrassing failure of the ritual. But they would not fight and attacking them would be forbidden.
Realistically, while male mortality is much more tolerable than female mortality since it has much less effect on fertility, it would be unsustainable to do this for the whole male population. So instead this would something for the elite warriors. Instead of initiation to become warrior and full adult, it would be for membership to elite warrior society that in war becomes officers, leaders, and elite troops. During peace they would be the personal guard of the king or similar privileged position. So there would be enough incentive to risk your life.
Alternately you could take steps to reduce mortality. There was recently a question on serrated weapons and in my answer I noted that such a blade can be made so it makes messy but shallow wounds and be coated with a substance that acts as both disinfectant and makes the wounds hurt like hell and scar. Such weapons could be scary enough to fill the purpose while having low enough mortality for the initiation to be near universal.
Not sure which suits your vision better.
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Tournaments. Host tournaments between the tribes. It tests both sides without the serious worry of losing trained fighters. If they are really more allies against others, then killing off each others troops IS counter-productive. You will just make each other weaker for others to pick over.
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It already happened in Mexico
The Mexica people(Aztecs to their enemies) had a long ongoing war with the Tlaxcalan people nearby. Neither would conquer the other because both had a religious system that demanded a continuous supply of war captives for sacrifice.
One of the main reason that the Mexica fell was that the Tlaxclans fought alongside Spanish as a way to gain a leg up in the multi-decade series of wars.
It raises an important question if your two nations fight each other, even if it is just for training, what keeps them from seeing each other as the main enemy after many years of killing each other? What makes it so when the real foe comes they will ally together?
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One problem with that plan is that warriors and soldiers need experience in combat to become better. But after a certain point further combat experience makes them less effective soldiers. So there is a big problem with scheduling the training wars so that the maximum number of your men are at the peak of military effectiveness instead of being under trained or burned out and suffering PTSD at the time a real war turns up and you need the best militar you can get.
It may also be better from a military point of view to have a lot of living half trained warriors than a few living highly trained warriors. It would certainly be better for the warriors and their families.
And if the societies are tribes they are likely to be small societies with small numbers of warriors using relatively old fashioned weapons. What happens when enemies belonging to more advanced nations or even empires show up with many times more fighters and/or many times more effective fighters?
What happens when you have to use your small number of spear or arrow using warriors against invasions by your world's version of the Assyrians, or the Roman legions, or the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan, or the US cavalry, or extraterrestrials with flying saucers, death rays, atomic bombs, and force shields?
You better learn how to say "We surrender!" really fast.
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As far as I know, the pre-columbian mesoamerican cultures implemented a similar ritualized concept of warfare. Being dependend on prisoners of war for human sacrifice to suite the gods, they waged ritualized wars but could not aford to defeat the neighbouring tribe/state lest they loose their supply of offerings. As both taking prisoners to gain social status and becoming a casualty or prisoner-to-be-sacrificed to gain religious status were quite attractive while loosing social status by cowardice, this system turned out to be quite stable for several centuries.
Having read this several times in different articles and having watched a movie based on this concept recently I might be mistaken with pre-columbian Mesoamerican cultures implementing this concept as I don't know my sources nor their quality, yet the concept would work perfectly in a world sprung off fantasy's realm.
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Sounds like better part of history of Europe. With everyone fighting and backstabbing everyone, it's no wonder only the post powerful and best adapted countries prevailed and subjugated rest of the world for several hundred years (a bit like natural selection, just on societal level). Until certain war in first quarter of XX century turned out to be just too big, weakening all the behemoths so much that they fractured and collapsed, re-creating a bunch of countries that lost the game at some prior point (compare 1913 and 1922 map).
I'm not entirely sure if it works on a scale of tribe, though. You need periods of safety, and no matter what, some people need to live relatively ordinary lives, if this state is supposed to be sustainable. And definitely won't work with just two. You need at least three, so that unstable alliances preserving status quo can be forged. As soon as one side becomes too powerful, the other two will back-stab it, but as soon as one of those backstabbers becomes to powerful, there will be another shift, just like it was in Europe until very recently.
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Hijacking DaaaahWhoosh's [backstory](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/21225/can-you-shoot-someone-with-a-bullet-from-orbit), let's say our sniper takes the shot anyway, but he accidentally hit one of his weather balloons he set up, and now he's out of tungsten bullets. Frustrated, he decides to go [fishing](/questions/tagged/fishing "show questions tagged 'fishing'"). He pulls at his fishing rod and casts it into a body of water. He then reels up a nice juicy fish. My question is:
1. What is his fishing rod, line, hook, and bait made out of?
2. How does he cast it *out of orbit*?
3. How accurate did he need to be to have his hook land somewhere with fish?
4. How strong is he, given he pulled a fish *into orbit*?
5. How sensitive does he need to be to feel the fish pulling on the line?
I hope this is possible, for our sniper's sake! There ain't much food is orbit!
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1. His fishing line is carbon nanotubes. Nothing else is strong enough. The rest of it doesn't matter other than the bait has to take the passage through vacuum.
2. He will need something to cast with. Nobody is strong enough, nobody can move their muscles fast enough.
3. If he's in a geosynchronous satellite he won't have an accuracy problem--either there's water down there and it works or there isn't and it's hopeless. If he's not in geosync the hook is moving too fast, no fish is going to be able to bite. If the line doesn't go straight down you've got a lot of line on a slant that gravity is trying to straighten--the hook is moving too fast for the fish to catch. Thus he's in geosync.
4. Pulling the fish into orbit is no big deal. He's got plenty of time to wind in that 25,000 miles of line, boosting the fish to 2mi/sec in the process is of no concern.
Now, reeling in that line is quite another matter--he's going to have to have a mighty pulley system to do it. He will have starved to death long before the fish is reeled in.
5. He can't. The line is too long, the fish is long gone by the time any possible signal reaches him. He won't be able to tell it apart from the wind tugging on the line anyway.
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Physics makes it impossible even with a superhuman hero and matching fishing line composed of perfect carbon nanotube (CNT).
At geosynchronous orbit (GEO), our hero is moving at 3.07 km/s To make a perfect straight down cast our hero would have to actually drop its orbital velocity to zero horizontally plus whatever vertical component he can manage. Momentum conservation just changed our hero's orbit, he is no longer in GEO as required for an orbital fishing platform. Because even the perfect CNT line 35800 km long has a significant mass, the orbital change will be correspondingly large.
Now our hero is also smart and realizes he needs to compensate for the orbital change and casts a second ballast line in the opposite direction the same time to stay in GEO.
When the line finally hit the atmosphere, the atmosphere will be traveling at about 465 m/s (equatorial velocity) -- it just became impossible to hit any target. Wind drag will quickly accelerate the bait end of the line to 465 m/s. From this time on, the line is also pulling our hero out of GEO.
Even worse, the ballast line is running out of line at about the same time. It just became a uncontrolled [space tether](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tether) that will also pull him out of GEO. The ballast line will also rebound and jerk our hero out of GEO. Cutting the ballast line just before rebound eliminates this, so our hero needs very keen eyesight or impeccable timing to cut the ballast line. However, without the ballast line we also get pulled out of GEO, just as if he never cast the ballast line in the first place. Definite problem for GEO in either case.
Meanwhile, back in the upper atmosphere our bait is now falling at terminal velocity which is dead slow compared to GEO (actually slower due to the increasing tension in the line). This means the fishing line will spend a lot of time pulling him out of GEO, and our heroes orbit will be pretty far out of GEO by then. Too hard to guess what terminal velocity will be, but the terminal velocity of the CNT line itself would be very low. I would expect the descent time spent in atmosphere would be hours long, if not days long (like dropping a feather).
Somehow, defying all odds, the hook is set. Since you cannot feel the other end of the line, you know this because of your keen eyesight (0.14 seconds later due to the speed of light) and you start to reel in your catch.
So close, but you discover that pulling on the line does not result in a pull at the other end. Turns out that the speed of sound is a limiting factor, the line pull cannot propagate faster than the speed of sound -- [perhaps 20km/s](http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2012/501686/). So, setting the hook takes 1790 seconds or 29.83 minutes, your fish is long gone before your jerk on the line reaches the other end.
No fish for you.
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Thanks to Hagen von Eitzen for the quick explanation of speed of sound dependency for setting the hook. Perhaps the following explanation will help too. If you stroke a hammer on a railroad line, the speed a sound in steel is how fast the sound propagates through the rail line. But what is sound? It is a compression wave. I.e., the speed of sound in a material is how fast a compression or tension wave propagates through the material.
To be honest, I had forgotten to reflect that the speed of sound in a solid changes with temperature and pressure, but I don't know how to compute the net effect, as I don't know how the density and modulus of elasticity of a CNT will change in the cold vacuum of space. For comparison diamond and quartz have much lower density changes due to temperature than do common metals. So I expect a similar low change in a CNT. So, I expect the overall change is small, even given the extreme cold in space. Perhaps the time required to set the hook is off by as much as a minute or two.
Also admission of dumb mistake. Originally used 42,000 km line, should have used 35,800 km line as you only have the reach the surface of the earth, not the center of the earth - I adjusted my answer.
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I wanted to know just how heavy the fishing line would be. On the [space elevator blog](http://www.spaceelevatorblog.com/?page_id=968) there is a [space elevator spreadsheet](http://www.spaceelevatorblog.com/media/SESpreadsheet/Space-Elevator-Analysis_v1.0.xls). Appears thorough, did not try to check any of the formulas, etc.
If you want to double the end load, double the total weight of the fishing line/ space elevator. 130 GPa is very optimistic for a real world CNT (I did say perfect in my answer), a real measured CNT maxes at at 63 GPa . A safety factor of 2 is really not enough in my opinion for a space elevator (crashing to earth after a break would be very bad), but it is probably ok for a fishing line. A safety factor of 2 means that the is designed to be twice as strong everywhere as the theoretical minimum value. A safety factor of 1.0 means theoretical minimum everywhere (no safety factor)
* Strength: 130 GPa, Safety Factor: 1.0, Load: 10kg, Line mass 147 kg
* Strength: 130 GPa, Safety Factor: 1.5, Load: 10kg, Line mass 271 kg
* Strength: 130 GPa, Safety Factor: 2, Load: 10kg, Line mass 444 kg
* Strength: 130 GPa, Safety Factor: 2.5, Load: 10kg, Line mass 683 kg
* Strength: 130 GPa, Safety Factor: 3., Load: 10kg, Line mass 1010 kg
Or more realistically
* Strength: 63 GPa, Safety Factor: 1.0, Load: 10kg, Line mass 470 kg
* Strength: 63 GPa, Safety Factor: 1.5, Load: 10kg, Line mass 1084 kg
* Strength: 63 GPa, Safety Factor: 2, Load: 10kg, Line mass 2228 kg
* Strength: 63 GPa, Safety Factor: 2.5, Load: 10kg, Line mass 4300 kg
* Strength: 63 GPa, Safety Factor: 3., Load: 10kg, Line mass 7985 kg
Also in the real world you have other problems that I have neglected.
- On entering the atmosphere your line would burst into flames and disappear
- I've neglected to mention that your platform continues in GEO while your line is descending. You need to throw it very fast indeed to reduce this problem
- Casting a fishing line works because the plumb is much heavier than the line so the line follows the plumb. We have something that cannot actually be cast
- The line is an incredible safety hazard. The end diameter is so small, you would not be able to see it and would probably slice off body parts trying to attach the hook
- Who fails to pack lunch for space but brings along a tiny space elevator just in case?
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With regard to accuracy, it's completely impractical.
**1.** You haven't stated what orbit he is in. If it is not geostationary then it will end up dragging over sea and land.
**2.** If he is in geostationary orbit then he must be above the equator. You can't have a geostationary orbit above the poles.
**3.** If he is above the equator, he has a real problem. The line has to be ultra light-weight. Unfortunately this means it can easily be blown around by air currents as he lowers it. At the equator the air flow at the upper layers of the atmosphere diverges towards the poles. The fishing line might never touch water or, if it did, the place would be very difficult to predict.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0H2cw.jpg)
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If the cable is made of "string"(string theory) it would be even able to touch (wihtout getting any fish, the fish weight would break it) **the surface of a black hole**, but since in reality materials are much more weak it could still be viable doing that in example on earth,
the key is to find a cable **strong enough to sustain its own weight** (when you have kilometers of cable it starts to be much heavy).
You will be surprised by how many materials would allow fishing from orbit.
A steel cable would break under its own weight at a lenght of approximately 25 kilometers (it is a strong material, but also a heavy one, and so is not appropriate for "fishing operations")
spider silk looks like a much more valid alternative (you can do a **spider silk cable long up to 109 km**, yes a natural material beats by an order of magnitude a man made material).
However the most promising material for doing that is **colossal carbon nanotube** with over 6000 km of avaialable lenght (before breaking under its weight).
All the above numbers are taken from [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_strength)
However there's a pitfall, *I assumed the rope would be the same diameter*,
in reality you could engineer a rope wich is thickier at greatest height, that would require much more material, but also allow to create a longer "rope" (I'm not sure to call rope something that has not the same diameter along the whole lenght). Doing that would allow to fish from very big distances, until you touch other physical limits (if your rope has the mass of a star or of a black hole it will collapse and have its own gravity field, by the way a body with a strong enough gravity orbiting around Earth is going to take out of the surface the water and all fish it contains without the need for a rope).
Using another engineering approach is to reduce the "fishing rod problem" to the "space elevator". As noted in the comment, if space elevator is possible, then it is also possible a "space fishing rod", and seems there's already people planning to build a space elevator:
[Space elevator is possible](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/space-elevators-are-totally-possible-and-will-make-rockets-seem-dumb) so it is space fishing rod.
So fish for you is possible ;).
EDIT: I wanted to note that on worldbuilding there's much discussion among "experts" that both claim such thing is not possible or claiming the exact opposite. I believe it is possible (different from claiming it is possible), and materials are already present, we just need "logistic effort". I've also read on papers that is theorically feasible (also on LeScienze, wich is the italian version of "Scientific American")
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There is a way, but it bends the idea of "casting" and "line" into a taffy like mess.
Hans Moravec is credited with developing a variation of a space elevator called a "Rotovator". Essentially it is a satellite who's centre of mass is in LEO, but has two equal extensions the rotate around the centre of mass much like spokes on a bicycle wheel. One end at a time will plunge into the atmosphere in order to hook on to cargo, then lift it up into orbit and release it at the top of the cycle, ejecting it into a high orbit. To maintain momentum, the rotovator can also accept incoming cargo from high orbit and drop it to Earth.
Rotovators can come in all sizes, from "short" rotators which pick up cargo from hypersonic aircraft or even low altitude rocket vehicles in the upper atmosphere to truly titanic devices which can (briefly) touch down on the surface and pick up cargo from a cargo facility. This would be like a combination of air to air refuelling and a "touch and go" runway landing by a supersonic jet, so the cargo pod would need to be rugged and carefully aligned before the Rotovator comes overhead.
You can read his paper here: <http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/proje...ers/scable.pox>
And a somewhat fun YouTube video that explains the concept visually: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z81wpmqXQLo>
For fishing, if the Rotovator can be aligned to come down over a stretch of ocean which is already identified as having a large school of tuna or equally large game fish, *and* the intrepid fisherman is clinging to the end with his trusty spear gun, *and* is getting real time intelligence as to the location of the fish (perhaps by using the sniperscope from the previous question) *and* the gods of fishing are all smiling that day, he might be able to spear a tuna at the moment the rotator arm touches down on the surface of the ocean, and bring it back into orbit for a fish fry.
Maybe.....
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One issue with fishing from orbit is the massive pressure difference between orbit and the sea. Even disregarding the pressure of the water itself, the pressure of the air is about 14 PSI. Any gases and fluids in internal organs would swell up immensely, and any free gases in the bloodstream would form air pockets. it's even possible that the fish might explode, similar to how deep sea fish sometimes explode when surfaced too quickly.
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problem 1:
The fishing line snaps under it's own weight because it is longer than indended by the manufacture.
He then goes and gets a thicker gauge of line. This leads to problem 2.
Problem 2:
The weight of the line pulls the satellite out of orbit. If this were not the case, then he would have won a Nobel prize for creating the first space elevator.
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The fish will long be gone if a hook system is used. A better solution would be actually using a cage/container which the fish cannot leave, with a bait placed inside it. The container should be sealed and pressurized so that the fish won't explode due to vacuum and could possibly survive until arriving in geostationary orbit to be cooked and eaten.
The fisher will need a spaceship capable of neutralizing the forces that are enacted on it when the fishing module enters the atmosphere. The fishing module will have to be outfitted with a heatshield and a parachute, of course. The string will probably be carbon nanotube stuff.
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In my world, daytime lasts for 9 years. I am trying to make this as realistic as possible.
* How would life live on this planet? How would they sleep etc.?
My own theories are that they would migrate with their natural half and that plants would evolve ways of hibernating knowing when night is coming since sunset and sunrise would last around 239 days.
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not enough time for a full answer, but a 9 year *night* is hard to survive, since sun is the source of almost all energy on a planet. I think they life would migrate so that it was always day for them by slowly traveling with the sunlight. Things that can't move (plants) would only bloom once every 9 years. Very little would try to live during the 'night'.
Since migration *is* simple though, it's easy to have a never-ending day. After that it's pretty easy to look at local life to see how it may adapt. There would likely be a slighter focus on efficient movement (for instance, more upright walkers like humans, who are quite efficient at long distance travel). Likewise the concept of 'territories' may change some with the need to migrate. I imagine many short lived creatures that establish a territory but will die within the 9 years so don't need to worry about migrating. All longer lived creatures will have a tendency to slowly shift their territories to keep up with a slow-pace migration.
You would have creatures evolved to the twilight, the areas where sun light is just starting to hit part of the planet, or just starting to leave as well.
Of course migration only works if you can migrate. Thus I would imagine flying and aquatic creatures as the most common. Land based critters would run into physical limitations preventing them from traveling across the entire glob.
Of course this is only part of the answer. Not all creatures will migrate, and I can think of other adaptations. I don't have time for them right now though, just wanted to toss out the most interesting/common.
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Edit:
To answer the question as to rather life would live during night time, yes it would. That's part of the answer I didn't have time to elaborate on.
Life always finds a way to live in the harshest of environments on earth. If there is an area without life *something* will adapt to live there; so long as some sort of energy source will be found. I could think up many examples of what could, but didn't want to elaborate on all of them. I think migrating species will be the most prominent creatures, by a noticeable margin, and the ones most like mammals of earth and thus most interesting to human readers, but they will not be the only types.
Look at deep see fish, that live in conditions of never-stopping night. Things could live due to heat vents and other geo-thermal energy. Some creatures will be scavengers that live by preying on things that die after night falls. Some equivlents of giant tress will simply loose it's leaves for 9 years while living off of stored energy, in fact some animals will likely evolve some extreme hibernation tactics to allow this as well (there are frogs that can live in a sort of frozen suspended animation for an eternity; and after 9 years you better believe it will be below freezing). If creatures live via the above methods in the dark then creatures will adapt to prey on the above creatures as their food source.
However, all of the above (beyond geothermal energy) effective rely on consuming energy sources generated during the 9 years of daylight, finding ways to store up energy during your 9 years of 'summer' for 9 years of 'winter' effectively. In fact maybe some version of squirrels that can store energy sources to feed them for 9 year nights by stockpiling for 9 year days could exist, though it seems less likely since that strategy only works if the squirrels can manage to keep other creatures from raiding their food supply for 9 years. A species like that would have to have a very good strategy for protecting the resources they stockpiled.
However, living during the night requires some extreme adaptations, which are different then the ones for days. I could, in fact, imagine creatures that migrate with night the same wah some migrate with day, to keep a never-changing night. Imagine a scavenger species that lives in night, and travels right at the 'edge' of night time, looking for creatures that died recently when night fell and they couldn't find food.
Creatures that live in one location for night and day seem less likely, just because of how hard it is to evolve adaptations that work in both enviroments. The most common of such species would be the 'hibernate' type, that simply go dormant during night time and start living again during day. Though, as said all adaptations will exist, some species will find a way to live through night and day cycles somehow, life is resourceful, they will just be quite uncommon.
Oh, I should mention that another option to hibernation that will be very common is 9 year life spans. A creature that lives only while it's day and dies at night, but not before planting the seeds for the next generation. Many species have adopted this strategy, most obviously in the desert where some species only live during rainy seasons and then die after leaving behind seeds/eggs for the next generation. Obviously plants will mostly always do this, but eggs capable of surviving for 9 years are possible too, though any species with this strategy would have to be *HEAVILY* R select species, which means they lay lots and lots of eggs expecting most to die, and aren't very intelligent.
Which, of course, means one of the most common adaptations for creatures that live during the night may be finding the eggs and seeds left for the next generation to eat. A treasure trove of stored energy left behind by the last day. Imagine a massive evolutionary arms race between better protecting your seeds/eggs so they survive for 9 years, and predators finding better ways to find these well protected eggs.
Still, migration or dying after 9 years are going to be *by far* the most common strategies. Hibernation (including trees that loose their leaves and similar) being the next most common strategy. Creatures living through both day and night will be quite uncommmon, though some will show up.
And now I wasted even more time on this answer; good going. There are still questions about the world itself, in particular how much energy it gets from the sun and how it regulates it, but also it's gravity, atmosphere, etc etc, which is quite relevant to creatures adaptation. For the most part I assume a 'mostly earth like' world in this answer, but I think that very interesting weather patterns would arrive from one part of the world receiving all the energy while the other doesn't; which would in turn have a strong effect on adaptions. However, I'm afraid I really don't have time to go into them.
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I doubt that life could evolve on such a planet, though it might be able to survive if it was put there.
First of all, let's establish some basics - in order to have an orbital period of around 2.4 Earth years (~21/8.9) the planet needs to be about 1.8 times as far from the its sun as the Earth is from ours. In our solar system, that would be about halfway between Mars (1.5 AU) and the inner-most part of the asteroid belt (2.2 AU).
With our sun the planet would probably be too cold, but if you say its sun is about 33% brighter than ours, the planet would be getting about the same amount of energy as Earth currently does.
(Side note - I think an almost-tidally-locked planet that far away from its sun is stretching plausibility a little. The process happens fastest to planets that are much closer to their suns)
So, if the planet is given about as much energy as the Earth gets, what does it look like? *An oven on one side and a freezer on the other*. With constant sunlight for almost 10 Earth years, temperatures are going to get very high on the day side. There will still be some liquid water but only because the air is so humid that it can't hold any more water. So any pools would have water temperatures above 100 degrees Celsius. There's no way for anything to reduce it's body temperature - everything is uniformly hot.
The night side isn't much better. Without any sunlight for 10 Earth years, it's going to be frozen solid, so any oceans will end up covered in a thick sheet of ice. However, this will insulate the water below it, preventing the ocean from freezing solid. This makes the oceans potentially survivable, though the lack of sunlight prevents a good food chain from being established. Anything on land is going to die - all water is going to be frozen solid, and any plants would shatter as the water inside them froze. Hibernation isn't a viable for animals - body temperatures need to stay above freezing, and with how cold it would be they would still be spending a lot of energy simply staying warm. There's no way they would be able to store up enough energy ahead of time to survive.
So what about the dawn and dusk areas? Here, the temperatures are not so extreme, so you might think that it would be a good place to live. Think about it though - on one side you've got a large mass of cold, dry air, and on the other side you've got a large mass of hot, moist air. That's a recipe for massive storms. Anything living here would be subject to constant thunderstorms and tornados. Unfortunately, that means that there's not enough sunlight for plants (even if they could avoid being torn out by the high wind-speeds).
This planet is going to be very hostile to life. There's no way that life could evolve there - it would not have billions of years of evolution behind it to help it survive extreme conditions. Life would not have enough energy on the night side. Everything gets cooked on the day side. The dawn and dusk areas are perpetually storms, preventing anything from getting established.
**What if we turn down the sun a little?**
This could make the day side of the planet habitable - if the sun is providing just enough energy to keep the day side at a reasonable temperature, plants and animals could live there. Animals would always be gradually moving toward dawn. Plants would follow pretty much the same strategy as they do here - use wind and animals to spread their seeds, especially toward dawn where no plants are living yet (as it is just becoming newly habitable again).
The night side is still (and even more so) uninhabitable. The temperatures are just too cold for anything to survive.
The dawn and dusk area as still stormy. With temperatures being more moderate on the day side I believe the storms won't be as intense, but I'm not sure how different they would be.
How would life evolve there? This is the hardest part. Ocean currents would have to be just right for millions and millions of years. As life was getting started and evolving, it would not have any capability of migrating on its own. It would have to rely on ocean currents to keep it in on the day side. However there's going to be warm and cold water mixing, just as there's warm and cold air mixing. This makes the ocean about as dangerous as the sky. It's going to cause ocean currents that pull warm water into the night side, and push cold water into the day side. Primitive life would have to stay away from both the dawn and the dusk sides if it hoped to survive and, as I said before, it has no way to do that on its own.
So again, it is very unlikely that such a planet would be capable of developing life, but developed life could be put there and survive.
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Without any other forms of heat, the night side of your planet will be extremely cold. With a night of around 4 local years (just over 9 earth years), there will be plenty of time for things to cool.
If the ambient temperature at the coolest time of night (between 3-4 years after the end of twilight) dips below the freezing point of any of your atmospheric gases, you'll end up with some impressive winds.
To start with an earth based example, if the temperature in a locale dropped below -57C (-70F) then all the Carbon Dioxide would freeze out, creating a small local decrease in pressure, causing inbound winds. With CO2 forming less than 0.04% of the air, the effect would be low.
But, what if this happened with Nitrogen (temperature below -196C, -321F)? Your local partial pressure would be very low, with 78% of the atmosphere falling to the ground as liquid or as solid.
So, from an ecological standpoint your environment will include temperature extremes between the depth of night and the height of day. Both sunrise and sunset will be characterised by violent storms with winds blowing across the day-night terminator at high speeds. Mornings will be extremely cold as it will take significant time for the sun to melt all the gases back into the atmosphere.
[The effect reminds me of the world "Trenco" in the Lensman universe, though the technobabble used to justify it there is pretty out there.]
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I love this questions, it really captures the imagination! What a great world.
Mushrooms don't photosynthesize. There could be giant fungal forests!
To evolve non hibernating land mammals that *don't fly* (ie humans), you would need a land mass that includes every longitude. The easiest would be a land mass that just includes one of the poles - it could go all the way around the equator, but that seems less likely.
Rather than being constantly on the move, I think people would stay for years in cities they built the day before. They would migrate throughout different times of the day. Communities could send their members back and forward in different times of the day, depending on their needs. (Need to start setting up the next city - send a group forward towards dawn! Need more food that is harvested in dusk - send them back!)
I particularly love the area just after the sun has set. At first I thought that people would not really spend much time in dusk, but the world is still fairly warm, so I think that many people would still be harvesting all the seeds that were planted in the day.
Did you know there are three different types of dusk?
Civillian dusk (The sun is 6 degrees below the horizon): Civillian dusk is the point at which we need artificial light to read. Objects are still visible. Civillian twilight occurs for 6 degrees ~ 127 of our days.
Nautical dusk (12 degrees below the horizon): objects and the horizon are no longer visible. I think this woul be the time for the serious predators.
Astronomical dusk (18 degrees below the horizon): The sun no longer interferes with astronomical observations - important for science!
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If you used an earth sized world you could use your clock for reference with each hour of your time being 137 days(ish) on the alien world. So with that in mind here are some ideas of what it would be like and what would live there. I almost always start with the environment fleshed out before building an alien life form.
With an environment like that I would go with pretty extreme weather between the sides. The continuous light and heat would cause intense storms as the water vapor carrying all that heat would rush up to be cooled in the upper atmosphere and condense back into water. It is possible for the day light side to be covered in constant clouds as the vapor heats and cools in the upper atmosphere and never reaches the surface. It could be a churning storm of lightning and thunder without end. In some areas where there is no water you would have intense heat and wind
Along the boundary there would be intense storms and flooding as all the water comes back out of the upper atmosphere. Further in you would have snow and ice hundreds of stories thick from the constant moisture. As the sun reaches these frozen zones it would begin to flood back into the low lands. The night side would be frozen glaciers hundreds of stories thick. Every dusk would build them up and every dawn they would shatter, melt and flood.
Under this kind of constant assault flood plains would cover the world. Large features would be shattered and shoved along by the flow of ice. On the night side as the ice would freeze and expand being pushed up into towering mountains of ice along raised features.
The rocks and debris of mountains crushed under the ice would cause canyons and fissures to be cut through the landscape. The grand canyons and massive cave systems would be carved world wide.
Now out of this idea you could go with life having to be very hearty. thermal vents and hot springs would have to be the source of many life forms but the flooding would be washing them away. Some may evolve within the clouds boiling along the hot and cold zones of the upper atmosphere.
The cold night mean they would have to drop back to the ground and survive the freezing nights. So life may be more virus like or able to die and come back since nine years of night is a bit much to store food for.
The native life could be a mix of various floaters and fliers that evolved in the upper atmosphere of this world. Made of carbon or other elements of the atmosphere they could forever live in the sky following the clouds.
Other life forms are born from seed like objects on the ground. They hatch when the dawn comes, ready to feed and grow and finally reproduce and die when the snows come some 3 years later.
Yet other life forms simply move with the sun. Their life cycle short enough that they can be born and migrate as the sun moves eating the seeds of the other aliens that haven't warmed enough to hatch yet or preying on other dawn followers.
Humans colonizing this world would need to live on crawling cities. At 3285 days(earth time) for an entire day cycle the city would have to travel at about 3mph to stay in a sweet spot, weather wise.
A city couldn't be made to sit in one spot since the flooding could leave it crushed at the bottom of the ocean or crushed by growing glaciers at night.
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> NOTE - Having come up with this, I've decided to work it up as a
> Question in its own right. I'm not sure whether to duplicate what's
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Let's not be too Earth-centric about this. There is nothing magical about 24 hours. We just think there is because we have evolved to fit in with days of that length. I suggest that whatever life form evolves on a planet will have its metabolism in sync with the local day length. Thus, in relation to Earth, there there could be 'slow' planets and 'fast planets'.
**Climate**
It is entirely possible that the world's atmosphere protects it from extremes of heat - and from rapid changes in temperature. I can think of several ways this could happen. For simplicity let's posit a planet blanketed in clouds that filter out a lot of the infrared. Some wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation would get through easily and these would be called 'light' by any intelligent inhabitants that had evolved. I fact they would be able to 'see' their sun just as we see ours. It just wouldn't frazzle them.
**Life forms**
I suspect that the life-forms that would evolve on your planet would at first be similar to slime moulds. They would move and process information extremely slowly.
Given time, it is quite possible that they would evolve intelligence and the ability to 'walk' - they would just perform these actions incredibly slowly by our standards.
For intelligent beings, subjectively their lives would be occurring just as fast as ours do because everything around them would be slow to match.
For example 'tornadoes' could occur in the form of rotational air movements but these could be moving thousands of time slower than on Earth.
**Problems**
As long as the planet and its life forms were left undisturbed they would experience no problems that we don't.
Difficulties would occur only in the event of an invasion from a faster planet. The aliens would appear to be zipping around at incredible speeds or might not be seen at all. They could make changes at a rate that would be incomprehensible to the natives. Furthermore, the invaders might not even realise that the native species was sentient - they could just see them as plant life.
**Conclusion**
Life on such a world need be no different in essence to our own. Not as far as the locals are concerned anyway.
**Speculation**
Maybe we on Earth are really very slow - after all we think that sound travels fast - that's purely a subjective perception. Perhaps we are being observed by a civilisation that is not only advanced but much, much faster in everything they do.
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In the year 21--, a crew of 100 sets out from Earth on the good ship *Tenzing Norgay*, bound for Epsilon Eridani. The journey is estimated to take . . . well, quite some time, given that it was calculated that the time spent to engineer a significantly faster propulsion system (compared to the technology of the day) would negate the benefits of going at the faster speed, and would end up costing too much more.1 This means that the crew is stuck with using a ship outfitted with the Rockaway Plastopedic ThrustomaticTM 2 engines, making the trip take at least 250 years - far more than twice the lifespan of a normal human. It was also decided, to the crew's dismay, to not pursue suspended animation technology, thanks to budget cuts.
The one thing that the make of the ship *did* foresee was that a future generation might not be too happy about having to live and die in a ship, without ever stepping foot on a planet or doing anything besides get ready to reproduce and die. There is a very real threat of a person (or a group of people) hijacking the ship some day, and moving it to some nearby system. The computers are always on autopilot, but there's always a way to hack them.
The government decides to go with a foolproof method: using genetics to make sure that future generations on the ship will not rebel, using in vitro fertilization onboard via automatic systems. This is all very well and good, but I, the creator of the story, need to come up with a plausible explanation. I can imagine a few ideas, but they're not too good; they all boil down to neural modifications - changing genes to influence the brain. I'm no neurologist, but this doesn't sound feasible.
How can genetics be used to quell a rebellion before it begins?
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1 Please, *please* don't dispute this. I think I can find a way to justify this, no matter what objections are made.
2 The Rockaway Plastopedic Thrustomatic is a trademark of Rockaway Blastopedic Industries, soon to be of Epsilon Eridani.
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The problem with genetic modification isn't going to appear during the trip, but rather once they reach the destination. A group which has been modified or selected to be docile and relatively apathetic is not going to be the best choice of people to deal with unknown and potentially dangerous colonizing situations.
Face it, humans being tough and pretty ornery is the recipe for our evolutionary success despite ice ages, sabre tooth tigers, mega volcanoes and pretty much everything else that has been thrown at us to date. What you really need is some way to redirect that sort of aggression and problem solving ability without wreaking the ship. While you might get a large fraction of people zones out by having an on board FaceBook server, you would probably need something more constructive.
I would suggest some sort of VR "game" which is based on the sorts of observations and knowledge available to the designers before the ship set off, to allow people to "train" for the day the ship arrives. Each generation gets more detail as the ship approaches the target and more detailed observations and information gets added to the "game". If there is the space available, a "holodeck" sort of arrangement can also be added for some real life physical training action as well.
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## Rerouting isn't an option for non-fantasy engines
For all currently feasible propulsion options and realistic physics, *movement* doesn't require energy, but *acceleration* does. A trip from A to B spends half of fuel/energy accelerating and half of it decelerating; and the fuel/energy amount spent influences only the speed, not how far they will go. Boring, but with rather interesting implications.
1. A simple stop in the exact middle means that you need twice as much fuel/energy than a non-stop rule. Which you likely don't have, since fuel is most likely 90%-99% of your ship mass, and taking double fuel isn't really an option.
2. Once you have done the main acceleration, the course is pretty much set in stone, and you'd only have enough fuel to stop. If the colonists rebel and reprogram the computer, the only thing they can do differently is either to stop elsewhere along the same line - in the middle of empty space, or alter the course to some other location where they'll only be able to stop by crashing into it at Ludicrous Speed (tm), annihilating the ship and possibly causing something similar to the dinosaur extinction event that happened on Earth.
Of course, a story can make different rules, but these can cause interesting situations even without deviating from reality.
[Answer]
## Genetic control
The first matter to deal with is to ask what level of genetic modification is possible. If we are limited by standards *slightly* more advanced than today's, then we have a few options. We can..
Reduce or remove the production of certain [catecholamines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catecholamine), deflating some riot situations.
Reduce or remove the production of [serotonin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin), causing memory loss. (What was i angry about?)
Modifying the image of a "perfect being." More specifically, giving a genetic bias towards a certain leader figure. Studies have shown that [completely irrelevant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heights_of_presidents_and_presidential_candidates_of_the_United_States) genetic traits have contributed to public image. So what if the perfect match *happens* to be the current ship captain.
### Kind of genetic
There is the ability to genetically hamper the supply of [insulin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin#Diseases_and_syndromes) to artificially administer diabetes. This could *very* quickly nip rebellions in the bud if the only insulin supplies are located at secure nodes.
In the same way, albeit somewhat less cruel, get everyone on a certain drug and watch as rebellions struggle through withdrawal before crawling back in surrender. (Never mind, just as cruel)
### Other
Rather than using genetics (a recipe for some resistant hero to arrive), use neuroscience. As soon as someone gives birth, transport the newborn to a government approved "educational" site, guaranteed to improve IQ by *looks in PR folder* 20%. What is actually happening is basic [conditioning](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning). While curbing any rebellious thoughts for the next 2-3 years, the young will be fed direct associations between rebellion and pain, and conversely be given compliance and reward. As an added bonus, anyone audacious enough to not put their newborn through this *liberating* process will have the child labeled as being in possession of a lower intelligence.
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Why bother with genetics? Instill the importance of the mission into future generations with education. Raise it to the level of religion if necessary. It's certainly cheaper.
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Harry Harrison's *Captive Universe* had an interesting approach to this:
Split the population into two separate groups, engineered for low intelligence / docility , not allowed to interbreed during the voyage, but set up so that when they're allowed to interbreed on arrival, the children will have normal intelligence. The passengers don't know they're on a generation ship, and the crew had a monastic culture designed to discourage changes.
(see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_Universe>)
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If you are firmly set on using genetics, you can take a look at **[novelty seeking](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Novelty_seeking)** and associated genes.
Novelty seeking is a personality trait associated with behaviours you want to restrict in your crew: curiosity, asocial attitudes, risk-taking, impulsiveness. People who demonstrate low levels of novelty seeking are perfect working bees. They tend to have highly developed [conscientiousness](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Conscientiousness), high preference for risk aversion, and introverted behavioural patterns. The downside is that they are less creative or flexible.
There is a caveat. Novelty seeking is important for psychological well-being and overall satisfaction with life. Therefore, you cannot get rid of it completely.
There is some evidence that novelty seeking is linked to the Dopamine receptor D4 gene on chromosome 11, specifically the length of its alleles. If you find a way to regulate this you might end up with a perfectly suitable colonist: Not too adventurous, but not docile either.
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Run behavioral tests on people on Earth. Select for whatever traits you want in your crew members both during the voyage and when you colonize. Take gene samples of the people with the most favorable traits (i.e. docility and work ethic for ship crew, curiosity and aggressiveness for colonists) and add them to a genetic library.
Then you can launch your ship and for every "in vitro" fertilization, you can use CRISPR to edit the fetus's genome to be one from the library (or just have frozen cloned eggs available). As long as the library size is well over twice the maximum expected population, and always processed in the same order, two genetic clones of the same library element won't be alive at the same time. When you establish a colony, you can resume natural breeding techniques.
For extra insurance, you could run long-term trail runs of the ship with cloned crew close to Earth (or a simulator) to verify they won't rebel. If you find some subset of the clones do rebel, remove them from the library and run another trial.
The advantage of this approach over minor direct gene editing is that it doesn't have to account for unexpected complex interactions in the genes of a single human. Therefore it is less likely to have unexpected consequences. It's also repeatable.
**Notes:**
1. I think there are serious ethical implications to human cloning and editing the genes of humans pre-birth, not to mention forcing generations to exist in interstellar space without their consent. I see these as forms of human-sacrifice, slavery, and [eugenics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics), which might make this world an interesting dystopia.
2. A rebellion could take another form. One of the most basic tenets of moral thinking is The Golden Rule: Treat others the way you like to be treated. The ship inhabitants may resent having been created only to form a reproduction link from the Earth to the Colony. They may not want to impose the same fate on future generations. To prevent this they may go on a birth-strike and refuse to reproduce. Luckily, trait selection for cloning should work to prevent this as well. There are plenty of people who are irrationally optimistic with low moral reasoning.
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Why not make them intellectually disabled? The crew aren't exactly crew. they are more like cargo. They aren't necessary for maintaining the ship or directing it, they just need to sit quietly and not make a mess. So, make them docile simpletons. Mild intellectual disability will allow them to eat and reproduce and not much else. They won't have the ambition or the ability to redirect or destroy the ship. We know of lots of genetic disorders that cause intellectual disability. Down's syndrome could be used, or perhaps William's syndrome since that specifically impairs visuospacial reasoning. Once you reach the destination you can fix the disorders in the new children and have a normal colony. Just remember to round all the sharp corners on the ship and put child safety locks on the airlocks.
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## Artificial Wombs
There is not really much to do between point A and point B. In fact, there is so little to do that you don't really need a crew to get to Epsilon Eridani. Any course corrections needed to get there will be so trivial that a computer can do it for you. In fact, all you really need those 100 or so people for is when you arrive at the planet to start colonizing it.
While a fully developed human being is hard to put into stasis for 250 years, human reproductive cells can be frozen indefinitely using today's technology and still produce viable offspring. Not only is this cheaper than adult stasis technology. It is cheaper than supporting a live crew for all that time too.
Also, since you mentioned that stasis technology was cut due to budget reasons, it suggests that adult statis DOES exist in your setting. So, instead of sending 100 adults in stasis, you instead use your slashed budget to send just 4-5 people in stasis. Then 20 years before landfall, you wake them up and start growing your test tube babies (maybe about 10 per year). Your small handful of adults would then have to raise and educate them. Yes, this sounds like a lot of babies per captia, but would be somewhat eased by the fact your adults don't need jobs, and many common household tasks can be automated with a little bit of robotics. Since all of your next generation is born so close to thier destination, everyone born during the trip will arrive at the target world with no need to change course... in fact, they will be so close to thier destination, it will likely be too late to change course even if they wanted to. So when you arrive on planet, you will have ~100 grown colonists: age 10-20 and 4-5 Earthlings age 40-50 to lead them.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/B9zRf.png)
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This option isn't exactly what you asked for but it would contribute to the end goal you trying to achieve - with a certain genetic flair.
**All Female crew for the flight duration**:
If you can freeze enough male eggs and female eggs, you could artificially fertilize the woman to only have female children for the duration of the trip. Woman tend to be less rebellious and boisterous then men, so this is a low effort genetic "manipulation" to help keep the crew in line :p
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My story occurs in the near future after a nuclear holocaust, the human population is reduced to mere thousands spread out all over the world.
A mysterious disease seems to infect the survivors of the apocalypse, people suddenly turn into ghouls and cannibalize one another.
As time goes by people get suspicious of each other and arm themselves with lethal weapons and improvised traps, my question is will loneliest loneliness inevitably set in as hope withers by the hours and is it fatal?
Basically nearly all forms of communication ceased after the war and outside at ground zero, the thick ashen smog will burn any exposed skin in minutes.
Unless people hid in a well built underground shelter or bunker with adequate supplies of clean water, preserved food and stock piles of oxygen cylinders then they are as good as dead.
But I wondered what if the thing that kills people isn't the aforementioned basic needs but something else completely.
[Answer]
**Judgement: Believable**
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> The influence of social relationships on risk for mortality is comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality.
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The above quote, comparing social isolation (aka, loneliness) to conditions such as obesity, smoking, etc., found that social isolation is at least as deadly as those other well-established threats to life. The study was published by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor at Brigham Young University, titled "[Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review](https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316)."
The editor's summary states:
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> **These findings indicate that the influence of social relationships on the risk of death are comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality such as smoking and alcohol consumption and exceed the influence of other risk factors such as physical inactivity and obesity.** Furthermore, the overall effect of social relationships on mortality reported in this meta-analysis might be an underestimate, because many of the studies used simple single-item measures of social isolation rather than a complex measurement. Although further research is needed to determine exactly how social relationships can be used to reduce mortality risk, physicians, health professionals, educators, and the media should now acknowledge that social relationships influence the health outcomes of adults and should take social relationships as seriously as other risk factors that affect mortality, the researchers conclude.
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Loneliness doesn't kill directly.
[Alexander Selkirk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Selkirk), just to give an example, managed pretty well on a deserted island.
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> Alexander Selkirk (1676 – 13 December 1721) was a Scottish privateer and Royal Navy officer who spent four years and four months as a castaway (1704–1709) after being marooned by his captain, initially at his request, on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean. He survived that ordeal, but succumbed to tropical illness years later while serving aboard HMS Weymouth off West Africa.
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Being alone however makes death more likely should anything go wrong, because if one for any reason is not able to get food/water on their own, they are out of luck.
In your scenario, when one has to be alone with a stockpile of food, that doesn't seem the case. However the lack of interaction and other meaningful activities might take a toll on the mental well-being of whoever is enduring that ordeal.
So be sure to include something to kill time and keep the body and the mind busy together with the canned food.
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We are social animals. We evolved to depend on each other.
Even if a character in your world is fit and has access to fresh resources, imagine what happens if they have appendicitis, frequent epilepsy attacks or some other life threatening condition. They won't be able to treat themselves and will die a very slow, very painful death.
In the lonely apocalypse, if you get bit by a rabid dog, you will die because even if you find anti-rabies vaccines you won't know how to prepare and use those unless you are a nurse or a doctor. But if you are a nurse or a doctor, you won't know how to handle machinery nor maintain a shelter because you are not an engineer nor from any profession that does those things. If you are someone who can do medicine and engineering, then you still lack the skills to hunt or grow your own food. If you are the McNinja kind of guy who knows medicine, engineering, farming, husbandry, geology, metalurgy etc., then you are either a videogame character or a character in a book where suspension of disbelief is long gone.
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We are social animals and there is no amount of crackpot theory about individualism that can change that. Survival ALONE in a bunker, even with all the food, air, water and books in the world will take its toll on you.
Probably the thing that will make you the most damage is that as you don't need to search for your food you have very little to do day to day, somewhat like in solitary confinement. And when you see the state of people that are in solitary confinement, it is NOT a pleasing thing, as the high number of suicide attempts prove.
It is not impossible to survive indefinitely in that state, but you need to be somebody that naturally enjoy their own company, and have stockpiled enough books, music and movies to last a few lifetimes, hoping that having nothing to look forward other than that is enough to keep you going for 50 odd year.
So yeah, loneliness can very easily lead to your mental health going down the drain and eventually make you end your life. It might not be something that will happen in a day.
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Assuming that your character has no outside reasons to die, like a snake bite. Could he die out of pure psychological/soul reasons? I think it depends on your character. Some theravada buddhists monks (e.g. in Thailand) spent years without interaction, just sitting alone in a cave (but with access to food), without dying. They are training their mind and even like not having interactions.
Also loneliness hits very different when everyone else is having fun and they hate only you and that is excluded from the group. If you're alone, simply because no one else is around or because everyone has gone mad/suspicious about the others, I think your character feels much less lonely.
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Something missing from other answers, people in this situation would also likely engage in poorly thought-out risk taking behaviors. The loneliness itself doesn't kill but eventually one of those risks comes up on the wrong side and another contestant is out of the game.
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Imagine a planet that sustains life, has oceans and continents plus an earth-like atmosphere; a planet similar to earth in most ways, but with only extremely dry and extremely wet biomes. Science fiction is rife with desert-worlds, swamp-worlds, ice-worlds, gummi-worlds... Could there be a swirl world, of swamps and sand?
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## Highs and lows
The Tibetan Plateau is a vast elevated region in central Asia, resting north of the Himalayas. The average elevation is 4500 meters and it is very dry; mostly arid steppe and tundra.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CS84T.png)
The dryness is not just due to the rain shadow of the Himalayas down south; it is the elevation of the region itself. Incoming wind has to rise a couple kilometers, as it does so it cools down. And cool air can maintain less water than warm, so it water droplets condense and rain is released on its way up. A plateau of this altitude can never be swampy.
Just down south, over the mountain peaks, Nepal is full of valleys like these:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DwZbv.jpg)
And below that is Bangladesh, which is obviously even wetter.
So one solution for a planet of wet and dry is to have extended plateaus sprawling over the surface, with wetter valleys and seas between them. Definitely make both the poles plateaus as well, unless you can live with an ice cap biome.
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## The dominant form of autotrophs require water for their reproductive cycle, and have been unable to evolve a way around this
The type of planet you are describing actually existed for a time in Earth's history, from the middle Devonian to the Carboniferous periods (~380-300 Ma), primarily in the Devonian though. The reason for this is that plants didn't conquer the land all at once, the very earliest branches of vascular plants (ferns, horsetails, and club mosses) are resistant to drying out as adults but still require water to reproduce. They lack seeds and rely on water to allow their sperm to fertilize their eggs (and keep their eggs from drying out). In a sense they are plant "amphibians".
What ends up happening in the Devonian and Carboniferous is you get this system where the coastal wetlands and immediate riversides are heavily vegetated swamplands (i.e., the coal swamps), but plant life drops off really quickly the further one gets away from the riverside. There were some horsetail meadows in areas slightly further away from the rivers and uplands with some seed plants but that was about it. This is because most of the major trees are some form of giant club mosses (Lepidodendrales), giant horsetails (*Calamites*), or tree ferns, all of which are dependent on water to reproduce.
Now, what happened in our world is that seed plants evolved and were able to colonize the drier areas of the planet that the ferns, horsetails, and club mosses couldn't. But if seeds never evolved (i.e., there was some evolutionary constraint preventing it) then plants would still be stuck around the waterways. This would produce a world that would mostly be ocean, "swamp", and "desert", though there would be some other biomes present as plants tried their best to escape their ties to the water even if they couldn't fully break them.
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**Non-rotating planet.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/48aCPm.png)
A day lasts a year on this planet. It is an extreme place. The sun relentlessly bakes one half of the planet. All the land dessicates into desert. No rain falls. On the other side it is night. The land radiates away its heat to space and everything freezes. There is no wind and no weather. Both sides are bone dry. They switch places over the year.
There are two places where it is not so dry. One is the ocean. It might freeze over on the cold side but deeper down the temperature is the average yearly temperature and it can be reasonable.
And the day/night terminator. [This is the place where night turns into day and day turns into night](https://sos.noaa.gov/catalog/datasets/daynight-terminator-daily/). This line slowly makes its way around the planet. All the water that evaporated from the hot side condenses as it moves into the cold side. Torrential rain and storms ensure. The terminator is where your wetlands are. They are wetlands only for a while, as they thaw under the storms. Soon they will bake dry in the heat of day. Some of the terminator life does its things only in the short season, then hibernates the rest of the year. A lot of the terminator life is mobile and moves along with the rain.
Your wetlands move around the world, separating hot bright desert from cold dark desert. On those rare occasions you can see the sun through the clouds, the shadows are long because it is always dusk or dawn at the terminator.
More on this scenario is written here by the inimitable Cort Ammon.
[Effects of a non-rotating Earth](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10581/effects-of-a-non-rotating-earth/10582#10582)
Inimitable, but I try.
[Answer]
It sounds like your world has a much more efficient water cycle than the Earth, coupled with different weather patterns.
On Earth, the water cycle acts much like a dehumidifier. If it wasn't for the water cycle, then evaporation from the oceans would cause the atmosphere to become completely saturated with water vapour, that is, the humidity would be 100% everywhere. The reason we don't have that is that the sun heats the ground, which heats the air and causes it to rise, and as it rises it expands and cools, which causes water vapour to condense and fall as rain. Once that's happened you're left with much drier air.
It sounds like on your world the same processes happen but much more efficiently. Water evaporates from the ocean, producing moist air. Due to the prevailing winds this moist air blows onto certain areas of the land, where it rises and falls as rain. But while on Earth this tends to happen more or less everywhere to some degree, on your world the rain tends to fall straight away on those areas downwind from the sea, leaving very dry air that doesn't produce rain elsewhere.
So why would this happen? There's a few things I can think of. Maybe the water cycle is just stronger on your world - the sun is hotter, or the ground generally darker so that it absorbs more heat, for example. Perhaps there is also less water on your world - smaller oceans than Earth, compared to the amount of land - so that the air is less saturated with moisture generally.
Maybe there is also a lot less wind in general, so the air doesn't get mixed about a lot like it does on Earth, and maybe the weather patterns are generally a lot less chaotic. This could be an effect of the topography - there are mountain ranges in just the right places to channel the global wind circulation into very consistent patterns. This seems quite plausible to me, and I would expect worlds like yours to be within the natural variation of Earth-like planets in the universe.
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You might be able to have a world that was created by different formations of tectonic plates & cosmic events affecting the ice ages of a planet.
A swamp planet that gets hit by an asteroid at such a speed that it created a desert! It might be a glass desert to be honest. I'm not sure how long this would be able to last, it may come to equilibrium over time. I also doubt that this would even work.
Not to mention that this theory would result in a single patch of desert (or even a series of desert patches caused by an asteroid storm) rather than beautiful swirling deserts to bogs.
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[Question]
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How could a society of about 10 giants remain hidden from the world in this day and age? These giants are ~50 feet high, uneducated, and eat humans. They run very fast and are very strong. How could they remain hidden to humans?
P.S. I got this idea from the BFG
[Answer]
**Only the Natives Know**
You'd need a couple things first.
1. African/South American Redwoods. You want something big in the tree department so as to totally obscure your giants from the air. And not just hide them, but also be big enough that a chopper flyover is unlikely to show the tell-tails of a large animal moving through the woods/jungle.
2. A secluded, deep-jungle/forest valley. Something that you can't drive/boat into or out of, with cliffs such that your giants can't climb out without it being more trouble than your giants will think it's worth.
3. Surrounding low-value wilderness. I'm talking "impenetrable" jungle, preferably hundreds of miles of it, along with treacherous terrain and well away from coastlines. Something that not only keeps the valley from the general run of people, but also is of itself low-value so as not to attract unwanted attention.
With those three things in place, you could have limited human interaction on the "native stone age tribe" level. Because humans are EVERYWHERE. But, lucky giants, nobody believes the "ignorant natives" when they tell stories of giant men who live in the deep woods. Sure a villager goes missing every now and then. And, sure, that one idiot with and his cameraman went in 15 years ago and the cameraman came out (without his camera conveniently) screaming about the Ingonyama (or whatever the natives call them). But the natives obviously don't know anything about the real world! Nevermind the fact that the wider world didn't believe in mountain gorillas for literal centuries.
If your natives get the South American Treatment and remain uncontacted until close to modern times, their traditional land will be protected. Those that want to can live how they always have. Those that don't will move into "civilization" and be laughed at about giant humans until they don't talk about them anymore. Sure the odd crackpot might come looking, but the odds of them finding anything concrete enough to be believed in the wider scientific world is unlikely.
The reason I say there should be *some* primitive human knowledge of them is that anywhere on earth where a person CAN go they WILL go. Probably went centuries ago. So you need a native population to act as a "buffer" between your giants and the rest of humanity. Otherwise the "realistic" answer is somebody either found them centuries ago OR they were spotted by loggers/whoever else came along later to destroy/exploit/harvest their natural habitat. But with a native population involved you can realistically keep them a "myth" almost nobody knows about, especially in the "modern world." For a look at something similar, check out mokele mbembe, the supposed species of long-necked sauropod living in the Congo River basin.
Your second play could be an island, but islands tend to shrink down big things (and humans are big for mammals on average) not make them get bigger. Which is why Homo Floriensis was tiny. That'd realistically be the only way to keep a species of giant wholly out of human knowledge (though again unlikely, sailors tend to have maps of everything and what they didn'nt find, satellite photography did). The downside is the second someone found the island they'd go have a look, and then your giants are out of the proverbial bag.
[Answer]
1. They live in the Antarctic. They eat seals.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/c6anw.jpg)
<https://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/animals/seals/elephant-seals/>
2. They only come out at night and usually stormy nights. Even then they mostly stay in the water. They might hunt from the water or emerge to chase seals up onto the land.
3. During the day they sleep in caves. These caves are entered from under the surface of the water. Some are on land underground and some are ice caves. The giants dig them out.
4. The few humans in Antarctica look tasty but the other stuff not so much. Machines especially are scary. The giants steer clear.
As regards eating humans, sure. These giants eat whatever they can catch. That is mostly seals but they will eat penguins, whales, humans - anything that moves or used to move.
As regards something which *regularly* eats humans also being unknown by humans that one is too tricky for me.
[Answer]
**Protection by a state actor or large drug cartel**
Ignoring the impossibility of a 50' / 15 metre tall giant humanoid existing at all, with roughly human proportions then how much would one mass? Let's say a lightweight 6'3" runner has a mass of 75 kg, then a 50' humanoid with the same proportions has a mass of 75 kg \* 8^3 = 37800 kg.
Now assume that they have a really efficient metabolism and only need to eat 0.5% of their body weight per day, this puts their daily intake at 189 kg of food per day. Multiply by 10 for the number of giants and the tribe needs 1890 kg of food per day. Humans are a major part of their diet - guessing at a number, let's say one third of the total diet - so 630 kg of human per day.
Even with the most optimistic estimate of the giants being able to feed on 90 kg humans - that's a pretty big and well fed person - the giants are eating seven people per day, or around 2500 people per year (more if the average mass is <90 kg). This is an unsustainable rate of predation for anything smaller than a large city. However, giants routinely killing and eating thousands of people in the vicinity of a large city in modern times would be seen and subsequently appear on YouTube within days, which breaks the conditions of the question.
There are only two options that I can see. One is that the giants are kept in a location that provides security for an area of vital importance to a successful Central / South American drug cartel, and the majority of the giants' human food is provided by dumped murder victims, supplemented by trespassers. (Note that Mexico's murder rate for 2020 was over 32,000 people, the majority of which were killed in drug-related violence.)
The second option is that a state actor is using the giants to secure or possibly deliberately depopulate an area. This would require a state actor that has sufficient control over the internet and other media / communications to prevent any word of this activity getting out, in addition to both motivation and willingness to kill a large number of its own people. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which government/s meet these requirements.
However, the big weakness with all of these scenarios is the requirement for absolute secrecy. A 15 metre tall, 38 ton humanoid would be very easily detected by satellites both on visual and thermal sensors, especially if they are operating in areas that are of interest to countries such as the USA (which would take an interest in the target areas due to both the War on Drugs and ... friction with certain insular state actors engaging in genocide). There is also the question of how secrecy was maintained up until the present day - assuming that the giants have existed continuously for hundreds or thousands of years consuming thousands of people per year, how has no one ever survived with evidence.
[Answer]
1. Living in mountain and in isolated places.
2. Recruting humans to spread disinformation
3. If they have access to it some form of magic use it.
4. Kill witnesses, make it look like an animal attack.
[Answer]
As several people have pointed out, the metabolic requirements of a tribe of giants the size you want are hard to justify if you want them to rely on humans as a food source. **It's not as bad as some would have it though, and it might be fixable if you bend biology a bit!**
The giants are about 8 times taller than human males (source: observing my Scandinavian friends), and with the same proportions should weigh about 500 times as much. Let's say 40 tonnes.
According to [Kleiber's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiber%27s_law), food requirements scale roughly as an animal's metabolic rate scales approximately as mass to the power 3/4, and the giants thus each need to eat just about 100 times as much as a human.
How much human does a human need to eat to survive? According to [What If](https://what-if.xkcd.com/105/):
"If the average human weighs 50 kilograms and eats a couple thousand calories per day, then—according to Ryan North—then one person contains enough meat to feed another person for about a month."
(My reference humans are heavier than 50 kilos, but not by THAT much, and if you would instead take the exponent in Kleiber's law to be 2/3 [as some have argued](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiber%27s_law#Exponent_2%E2%81%843) this doesn't affect my calculations much.)
Using the scaling calculated above, we find that each giant would need about **3 people per day**. If they could supplement their diet with animals or even some vegetables or grains, you could probably get down to one human a day and still have this qualify as a "major part of their diet".
10 giants would thus need about **3600 humans a year**. This is still a lot, and places serious limitations on how an "uneducated" tribe of giants could look, if the word is meant to imply that they are like the dimwitted trope trolls we see in popular fiction.
As this question is marked with reality-check, I will answer **"Yes, it's possible", but it's hard.** I like the answer by Dario Quint, and if you only require the giants to snack on humans occasionally Willk's answer is really great!
If you are not strictly limited by our current understanding of biology, however, the answer changes to **"Yes!"**. You just need a bit of currently un-understood biology, or "magic" if you will.
The first that came to my mind was to **have the giants periodically turn to stone**, like some trolls are known to do, but in a reversible way. People and animals made of stone are spread about many cities, and they are known to consume very little energy. If they depetrify during nights with a full moon, that's 60 percent of the time which translates to 6 humans a year per giant. They manage to catch on average one every other time they are awake, and otherwise they eat other animals. Of course you could have the depetrify even more rarely or more often, but keep in mind that the depetrification process itself likely requires some energy. If the cycle is repeated too often the gain will likely vanish.
If we assume the bowel content of the giants doesn't petrify, this opens up huge possibilities for them to use the long hibernation to digest stuff that is really hard for other creatures to use. Wood comes to mind, but grass or other plant matter works as well. **You could thus have giants living i remote places, being able to sustain themselves largely on chewing up trees (or even houses, as I'm sure I've read about giant's doing!) and stealing cattle, while sometimes catching humans as an important supplement to their diet!**
Long ago, giants were more numerous than today and constituted a small but reproductively stable population. Early in human history, one of the early projects of the emerging civilisations was to seek out and destroy giants, mostly while they were petrified. This is why you find legends about giants everywhere.
Since their lifespans are so stretched out, even a declining and not reproductively stable population can linger for a very long time. Over the last few thousand years, giants have learned to be extremely cautious around humans and to avoid detection at all costs. One main reason for them to prefer eating humans to other animals is simple revenge. Most of them hate humans above anything else!
The petrification process is precisely controlled by the giant biology, to make sure the stone is both resilient and reversible. Dead giants petrify in a chaotic manner that leaves the stone brittle, and are not readily distinguishable as humanoid after only a few years or even months. This is why we don't find any giant remains that would expose them to the world. Any proof of their existence are lost to history.
] |
[Question]
[
The gold standard is a monetary system where a country's currency or paper money has a value directly linked to gold. The U.S.A (United States of Amestris) operated on this standard, allowing the amestrian dollar to avoid inflation and making it the top reserve currency in the world. However, in 1971, the current fuhrer switched to the fiat standard. This was done to prevent the continued depletion of gold reserves. This allowed the government to print as much money as it wanted, leading to hyper-inflation and the cheapening of the dollar.
The current fuhrer, Donatello Trumpestus, decides to reverse this trend by calling on the state alchemists. Alchemy is the science of transforming on element into another. There are two taboos that alchemists must not break. The first is to not attempt human transmutation, which would lead to the creation of homunculi. The second is to never transmute gold.
Trumpestus has decided to free state alchemists from this second rule, allowing them to create as much gold as the government needs at the time. This has returned confidence in the amestrian dollar because the currency is once again backed up by something physical, and has allowed gold coins to be put back into circulation.
With the alchemists essentially making gold for the state, how can Trumpestus go about returning the world to the original standard to prevent inflation and make anestrus great again?
[Answer]
**You haven't re-instituted the Gold Standard, you've turned the Gold Standard into a fiat currency and you've done so with horrifying consequences.**
Value is determined by two factors - supply and demand. If you were to increase the supply of gold as the demand stayed the same, the price would drop and then the gold would be devalued. Attempting to switch back onto the gold standard while increasing the world's supply of gold would devalue gold and consequently devalue your own currency - and this is what I would say under normal circumstances. But these aren't normal circumstances.
You've done something far worse. You haven't merely *increased* the supply of gold, what you've done is you've unleashed the alchemists onto the supply and have created what is an effectively limitless pipeline of potential gold. Everyone now holding gold not only has to contend with the possibility that gold will be *worth less*, they have to contend with the possibility that gold will be *worthless*, should the United States of Amestris decide to pump out gold to pay its badly mismanaged debts to other countries. You have, in effect, turned *gold* into just another fiat currency, now of a country named Amestris because all Amestris money can be swapped for gold. And now that's the case, every other country in the world will stop caring about gold and all the alchemists in those countries can make as much gold as they want, just to screw over Amestris. (Imagine terrorists depositing huge amounts of gold in all major Amestris cities.) You haven't *prevented inflation* - you've jumpstarted it. By doing these actions, you will very quickly destroy the Amestris economy and create hyperinflation.
In short, printing money doesn't work. Never has, never will.
[Answer]
**Economic perspective: pointless.
Industrial perspective: devastating.**
Trade, barter, money... in the end it's all about trust. The "Gold Standard" created the illusion of trust by suggesting that (e.g.) \$1 USD in paper or coinage was backed by \$1 USD in real gold.
*And then the value of the U.S. economy exceeded the value of all the minable and mined gold on the planet.*
You might not realize that the gold standard dealt with more than just the paper and coins in play. It affected every value transaction. So if, today, a hundred-billion-dollar buy-out occurs wherein no actual paper/coin money is transacted, that would need to be backed by your "gold standard." Every bank account using debit cards would need to be backed, too. All that virtual money — backed by real gold.
Now, you could do it, but only by ascribing to gold such a high value that you can actually back the entire economy with it. You might end up having to claim that an ounce of gold is worth, say, \$100,000.
*Of course, the economy might outgrow that arbitrary assignment in a year, but let's roll with it.*
Having just forced gold to have a value of \$100,000 per troy ounce in order to force your economy to be based on a gold standard, you just destroyed the computer industry and every other industry that uses gold as part of the manufacturing process. Your \$1,500 computer of yesterday is now \$25,000 because of the gold used in its manufacture. Jewelry is right out.
*And that's the biggest problem with any precious-metal-based money system — it forces all industries that depend on that precious metal to follow.*
So, from an economic perspective, a gold-standard is pointless because the government would need to assign an ever higher value to the limited amount of gold to account for the increasing value of the economy as a whole.
And from an industrial perspective it's devastating because that forced value makes the goods that depend on gold so expensive that no one can afford them.
[Answer]
**Even with transmutation, you better get digging!**
### How to
1. Create a new currency. Fix its value to gold. We'll call it USG, for "US-a Great-again" - Trumpus was on the committee and vetoed "US Gold".
2. Announce that USD will be phased out and retired on a date in the future, USG is now legal tender, and USG dollars are available for purchase at a 1:1 rate. All mint to bank deliveries are now in USG, which is basically the existing money with different faces on it.
3. [Issue US Security bonds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Treasury_security) at a rate above the market if purchased using USG. Offer to purchase existing bonds in USD and reissue them at a higher rate in USG. Inflation is so low at the moment that this wont be hard. 6.6 Trillion USD in bonds are currently owned by other foreign countries, a small increase in return rate will get those countries purchasing bonds, helping to transition the national debt from USD to USG
4. Flick a switch and all bank accounts change from USD to USG, and all trade must be in USG.
5. Announce a reduction in exchange rate coming soon. 10USD now only buys 9 USG.
6. Keep reducing the exchange rate.
Don't underestimate the timeframes for this. Some of these warnings need to be given 10 years out to avoid panic.
Note you don't have to re-enable "convertibility" to gold. 1 USG represents a small chunk of gold, but the Treasury doesn't have to let you swap it. The USD has been gold-backed at points in its history, but conversion money to gold has been blocked since the 1930s.
You should also do the 1930s thing of banning private gold ownership - all gold must be converted to USG. (I believe this got relaxed in the... 70s? I think. Not sure). You should also force all alchemists to work for you or die in jail, and if any other countries start to research alchemy, make sure to "liberate" them.
Also, you don't have to allow auditors into Fort Knox, you don't really need the alchemists at all, but lets assuming (out of character for Trumpus) that you're being honest and plan to actually make this much gold.
### How much
You need to make gold to back the currency.
So how much gold do you need to make?
To know that you need to know how many US dollars there are in the world, right?
Physical currency (Or in treasury jargon - M0) + checking accounts (M1) + Savings accounts and money market funds (M2) + Certified Investments (eg Government bonds) (M3) = all the USD in the world.
In this [2006 press release](https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/H6/20060316/) the US federal reserve announced they've stopped tracking the most inclusive definition of this number (the M3 value). Extrapolating from the 2006 figures, you're looking at 1/3rd of all USD is in [M3 Certificates of Deposit](https://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/budgeting/certificates-of-deposit.htm).
This [2020 press release](https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/default.htm) shows as of July 2020, there was 18.3 trillion USD in existence in the M2 figure. Extrapolating for our hidden M3 value, we're looking at about 27 trillion USD in existence...
... Which is just over the value on <https://www.usdebtclock.org/> (26.7 trillion as of this writing). That debt is the other side of investment bonds held by foriegn countries, retirement funds, investments, etc. You can't just zero that debt without destroying everything.
(The US Debt Clock estimates the total currency and credit derivatives as ~700 trillion - but I'm uncertain this is a good choice, derivatives derive from other value, they aren't their own. But it's possible I'm underestimating by a factor of 20 here.)
Gold is currently trading at ~\$2000USD / 0.0311035kg (a "troy ounce". What is it with freedom units?). Thats $64,000 per kg.
Works out to 421 million kg of gold is needed to back the USD.
The world [has mined 190 million kg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve) in all history. Your alchemists need to make more gold than has ever been mined.
Assuming they're converting Lead to Gold at 100% efficiency, and can convert 100kg in a 5 minute ritual, [it would take over a year](https://www.ila-lead.org/lead-facts/lead-production) for the USA to mine enough lead to cover all the USD, and 120 man-years for the alchemists to convert it to gold.
Gold is now valued at "Cost of Lead" + "Cost of alchemists' time". All those people who bought gold for their retirement fund are now going to starve.
And lead is now surge priced - all the miners are working on overtime, trying to meet the alchemists' demands as well as existing industry.
[Answer]
A gold standard is a way of pegging the value of your currency to the value of something else (gold). We do this sort of thing all the time in non-financial contexts. For instance, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures owns a "prototype meter bar" that serves as the official benchmark for the meter (at least until recently). The definition of "one meter" was defined by rule to be exactly the length of this specific piece of metal. There was one official prototype and the entire metric system was based off of it.
A similar system mapping a currency to the value of some official prototype could indeed work, as that's essentially what the gold standard tries to do. The system that you describe has a really important difference, however. Your universe has alchemists that can alter the supply of gold, thus altering its value. You're attempting to peg your currency to a reference point that isn't constant. It's analogous to defining the meter as the height of that small tree in the park across the street. The tree is going to grow and as it does, the definition of the meter would change and every length ever recorded would have to be re-computed, continuously. The meter wouldn't be a reliable unit of measurement in any sense. You're essentially asking "how can we restore faith in the gold standard, while simultaneously making gold completely unsuitable for use as an economic standard?"
It's not a workable system. If your goal is to keep inflation in check, there are much safer ways to do it. Government can inflate the currency by printing more money, but they can also deflate the currency by removing money from the money supply (i.e., take some of your tax revenue and destroy it instead of spending it). I suppose you could achieve the same effect by having your alchemists transmute some of the gold into something else, but at that point it's just a normal fiat currency that's unnecessarily difficult to manufacture.
[Answer]
Short Answer:
It would be possible to back the world's money supply with gold without badly disrupting the world's economy. But it would be a big project.
Long Answer:
Step One:
Find an iron nickel asteroid.
Step Two:
Bring the asteroid into orbit around Earth.
Step Three: Cut the asteroid into pieces and bring them down to Earth. Or melt the asterod using tremendous amounts of energy and separate all the elments in it.
Step Four: Separate all the elements in the asteroid. Or bring the separated ingots of single elements down to Earth.
Step Five: Sell the iron separately from the nickel, which should be about 5 to 25 percent of the asteroid, and the cobalt, which should be a smaller percentage. Iron, nickel, and cobalt should make up over 95 percent of the asteroid, and no doubt many other elements are part of the other 5 percent or less, and can also be sold.
>
> The overwhelming bulk of these meteorites consists of the FeNi-alloys kamacite and taenite. Minor minerals, when occurring, often form rounded nodules of troilite or graphite, surrounded by schreibersite and cohenite. Schreibersite and troilite also occur as plate shaped inclusions, which show up on cut surfaces as cm-long and mm-thick lamellae. The troilite plates are called Reichenbach lamellae.[9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve#:%7E:text=The%20World%20Gold%20Council%20estimates,value%20of%20approximately%20%2464.3%20million.)
>
>
>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_meteorite#Composition> [1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_meteorite#Composition)
>
> Kamacite is an alloy of iron and nickel, which is found on Earth only in meteorites. The proportion iron:nickel is between 90:10 and 95:5; small quantities of other elements, such as cobalt or carbon may also be present.
>
>
>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamacite[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamacite%5B2%5D)
>
> Taenite (Fe,Ni) is a mineral found naturally on Earth mostly in iron meteorites. It is an alloy of iron and nickel, with nickel proportions of 20% up to 65%.
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taenite[3]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taenite%5B3%5D)
>
> Troilite is a rare iron sulfide mineral with the simple formula of FeS. It is the iron rich endmember of the pyrrhotite group. Pyrrhotite has the formula Fe(1-x)S (x = 0 to 0.2) which is iron deficient. As troilite lacks the iron deficiency which gives pyrrhotite its characteristic magnetism, troilite is non-magnetic.[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamacite)
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>
>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troilite[4]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troilite%5B4%5D)
>
> Graphite (/ˈɡræfaɪt/), archaically referred to as plumbago, is a crystalline form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a hexagonal structure.
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>
>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite[5]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite%5B5%5D)
>
> Schreibersite is generally a rare iron nickel phosphide mineral, (Fe,Ni)3P, though common in iron-nickel meteorites. ...In 2007, researchers reported that schreibersite and other meteoric phosphorus bearing minerals may be the ultimate source for the phosphorus that is so important for life on Earth.[6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohenite)[7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product#:%7E:text=In%202017%2C%20according%20to%20the,according%20to%20the%20World%20Factbook.)
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>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schreibersite[8]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schreibersite%5B8%5D)
>
> Cohenite is a naturally occurring iron carbide mineral with the chemical structure (Fe, Ni, Co)3
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohenite[6]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohenite%5B6%5D)
So it seems that iron nickel meteorites and asteroids contain mostly iron, nickel, and cobalt, with sulfur and phosporus. But I suspect that many other elements are also present in iron nickel asteroids, including many heavy metals like lead, platinum, uranium, and gold.
And with an asteroid sized mass, there should be significant amounts of even the rarest elements in the asteroid.
So if an idividual, corporation, organization, or government can sell asteroid material at a profit, they should keep the gold and sell the rest and then:
Step Six:
Repeat many times. Or maybe repeat many, many, many times. Sell the other asteroid materials at a profit and keep the gold, adding it to an ever larger stockpile.
Step Seven: When the gold stockpile is large enough, issue money backed by the gold standard, enough money to run the entire world economy.
>
> The gross world product (GWP) is the combined gross national income of all the countries in the world. Because imports and exports balance exactly when considering the whole world, this also equals the total global gross domestic product (GDP).[nb 1] According to the World Bank, the 2013 nominal GWP was approximately US$ 75.59 trillion.[1] In 2017, according to the CIA's World Factbook, the GWP was around US $80.27 trillion in nominal terms and totaled approximately 127.8 trillion international dollars in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP).[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamacite) The per capita PPP GWP in 2017 was approximately Int$17,500 according to the World Factbook.[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamacite)
>
>
>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross\_world\_product#:~:text=In%202017%2C%20according%20to%20the,according%20to%20the%20World%20Factbook.[7]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product#:%7E:text=In%202017%2C%20according%20to%20the,according%20to%20the%20World%20Factbook.%5B7%5D)
>
> The World Gold Council estimates that all the gold ever mined totaled 190,040 metric tons in 2019[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_meteorite#Composition) but other independent estimates vary by as much as 20%.[2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamacite) At a price of US$1,250 per troy ounce ($40 per gram), reached on 16 August 2017, one metric ton of gold has a value of approximately $64.3 million. The total value of all gold ever mined would exceed $7.5 trillion at that valuation and using WGC 2017 estimates.[note 1]
>
>
>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold\_reserve#:~:text=The%20World%20Gold%20Council%20estimates,value%20of%20approximately%20%2464.3%20million.[9]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve#:%7E:text=The%20World%20Gold%20Council%20estimates,value%20of%20approximately%20%2464.3%20million.%5B9%5D)
So the gold reserves of the world, at their present market value, have less than 10 percent of the total value of the world's economic activity in one year. In order for all money to be backed by gold without a drastic change in the value of gold, causing various kinds of economic disruption, the gold supply has to increase by at least 10 times. But of course increasing the gold supply by 10 times would tend to decrease the fair market value of gold, so more gold would have to be supplied to make up for the lower value of gold, and so the value of godl would fall more, requiring more gold to be added to make up for the decreasing value of gold, and so on.
So at least 1,900,400 metric tons of gold would be needed to back the world's money supply with gold without drastic economic disruptions.
I'm feeling too lazy to estimate or calculate how many cubic kilometers of iron nickel asteroid material would have to be brought to Earth in order to back the world's money supply with gold. But that should be an interesting calculation for someone.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm building a world with cities of extremely different technological capabilities. One has a monopoly on gunpowder and one has complete understanding of the magic system in the world.
The only thing missing is fast communication without the use of radio waves, so I thought a network of light towers using something similar to morse code could be used. I'm asking if this would be feasible and how would I keep this form of communication discrete from enemies.
[Answer]
What you want is a form of [heliograph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliograph), which is a fairly well-studied and used form of communication. These systems use a mirror to reflect sunlight at the target in flashes, so their maximum range is determined by the size of the mirror. Using large, emplaced mirrors and telescopes between fixed positions, ranges of up to 300km are possible, and your nation could use relay stations or a series of fortresses to spread them further. Portable versions could be used by troops in the field to communicate with their home base.
Heliographs rely on sunlight, and won't work at night or in overcast conditions; similar light signals can be sent via oil lamp but I doubt they have as much range. For vital messages, it would probably be best to have a backup system of messengers in place. (Modern light signals can be sent even in daylight using carbon arc lamps, but that sounds like more sophisticated technology than you're aiming for.)
In terms of hiding signals from the enemy, heliographs are inherently fairly secure because the reflected flashes are only visible in a narrow cone; when transmitting to a fixed location, you can use tubes to narrow the aperture even further. However, those signals can still be read by enemies along the path of the beam. The conventional solution would be to use a codebook that translates words and phrases into numerical codes, which are then kept secret from the enemy.
You can see what that looks like in a diplomatic example with the [Zimmerman telegram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zimmermann_Telegram_as_Received_by_the_German_Ambassador_to_Mexico_-_NARA_-_302025.jpg), which consisted of a long string of numbers broken up into blocks. More common words would receive lower number codes. The diplomatic code contained many thousands of entries to cover every possibility; a military code could be considerably shorter.
The disadvantage of codebooks, of course, is that they can fall into enemy hands. For this reason, it's prudent to keep track of who has them and what happens to them, and have a plan to roll out a new code if your existing one is compromised.
[Answer]
The world has been there, done that, and has the T-shirt.
The term 'telegraph' actually preceded the electrical version of the communication system. It was applied to light towers spread from city to city for long-distance messaging. The light towers were made obsolete by the electrical version.
>
> The word telegraph is derived from the Greek words tele, meaning
> “distant,” and graphein, meaning “to write.” It came into use toward
> the end of the 18th century to describe an optical semaphore system
> developed in France.
> ...
> Another widely used visual telegraph was developed in 1795 by George
> Murray in England. In Murray’s device, characters were sent by opening
> and closing various combinations of six shutters. This system rapidly
> caught on in England and in the United States, where a number of sites
> bearing the name Telegraph Hill or Signal Hill can still be found,
> particularly in coastal regions. Visual telegraphs were completely
> replaced by the electric telegraph by the middle of the 19th century.
>
>
>
<https://www.britannica.com/technology/telegraph>
The trick to keeping it secret is in the code that is used to represent the letters.
The shutter system, in fact, was one of the first digital codes that was developed hundreds of years before the computer. The advantage of shutters is that they were visible both day (black and white shades) and night (light and no light).
See also <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph>
>
> The most widely used system was invented in 1792 in France by Claude
> Chappe, and was popular in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth
> centuries.[1][2][3] This system is often referred to as semaphore
> without qualification. Lines of relay towers with a semaphore rig at
> the top were built within line of sight of each other, at separations
> of 5–20 miles (8.0–32.2 km). Operators at each tower would watch the
> neighboring tower through a telescope, and when the semaphore arms
> began to move spelling out a message, they would pass the message on
> to the next tower.
>
>
>
[Answer]
Yes this is entirely possible. In fact such systems have been used quite widely in times gone by. For example during the Crimean war the Russians used a series of semaphore signalling stations which allowed information to flow from the front to Moscow and on to St Petersberg in just a few hours. Where as British and French communications took days at the start of the war and didn't improve until towards the middle of the war when the British laid a telegraph cable across the Black sea. Even then there were delays due to vital missing links at odd places like the Danube which meant that the Russian high command was always first to know what was going on.
So such light towers actually work quite well and the signals can be coded if it is necessary to keep the information hidden.
[Answer]
Not a terrible idea. Navies the world over still use signal lamps with indicators flashes in morse code. [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/G94gl.jpg)
But with line of sight and what the human eye can visually discern from a distance. Based on the curve of the Earth: Standing on a flat surface with your eyes about 5 feet off the ground, the farthest edge that you can see is about 3 miles away. Using the Pythagorean theorem, that calculates to an average curvature of 7.98 inches per mile or approximately 8 inches per mile. For every 200 feet in height your towers would see about 20 miles away.
[Answer]
To help keep the information discrete (in addition to a cryptographic approach which might be broken by enemies), you only want the receiver to see the light you send out instead of broadcasting it, and for that you can utilize:
a non-electric laser <https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/157140>
side-node, light and radio waves are the same thing ;) only at different frequencies.
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